Teaching & Learning Capstone Projects

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https://ir.vanderbilt.edu/handle/1803/187

Capstone projects of the Peabody College Department of Teaching and Learning at Vanderbilt University.

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Now showing 1 - 20 of 376

Academic Uses of Social Media Technology in the High School English Classroom
(Vanderbilt University. Peabody College, 2011-04) Gotkin, Kelly
The goal of this paper is to explore the potential uses of social media in high school English classrooms. Also explored is the reasoning behind integrating social media into the English curriculum. Social media use falls under the heading of digital literacies, but social media requires users to interact with each other, which sets it apart from non-social media such as PowerPoint presentations and computer word processing. Social media allows adolescents to perform multiple identities and to produce a wide variety of texts. Bringing these out-of-school practices into the classroom poses challenges for educators, though. Recent research begins to delve into how and why social media deserve a place in the classroom. Furthermore, educators may rely on case studies and practitioner reports to help fill in remaining gaps such as assessment of social media texts and processes. The paper explores how some teachers use social media to meet traditional goals of the English curriculum. Social media is a relatively new field, so there is also a discussion of some of its issues and implications of its future use.
Adapting early childhood philosophies and practice in teaching math in second grade
(Vanderbilt University. Peabody College, 2008-04-09T20:31:45Z) Wright, Holly
The Affective and Social Needs of English Language Learners
(Vanderbilt University. Peabody College, 2008-09-12) Dillon, Kelly; Dr. Robert Jimenez
With a goal of exploring the impact of English language learners' (ELLs) affective and social needs on academic achievement, this paper examines the issue from four frameworks: the learner, the learning environment, the curriculum and instructional strategies, and, finally, assessment. The framework of the learner addresses issues such as self-confidence, inhibition, attitude, the need for positive adult models, and the need to belong and contribute as they relate to language learning and academic achievement. The section detailing the learning environment explores the critical role of the teacher, the importance of high expectations, the influence of peers, the physical classroom arrangement, and the presence of native languages. The critical need for comprehensible input, the use of cooperative grouping, providing students with opportunities for success, and giving ample wait time are all issues examined in light of curriculum and instructional strategies. In addition, this section briefly outlines and explains several language instruction approaches including the Natural Approach, the Language-Experience Approach, and the Counseling-Learning Approach, as well as bilingual instruction. The last framework of assessment addresses the limitations of traditional paper and pencil assessment and emphasizes the need for authentic assessment and continuous feedback. Finally, the essay concludes with a section describing how the above insights impact practice.
Algebra as a Civil Right
(Vanderbilt University. Peabody College, 2012-06-14) Mitchell, Lauren
This paper addresses the argument that algebra should be viewed as a civil right and mode for social justice. The framing question addressed is, “How and why is algebra a civil right?” The goal of the paper is to discuss how effective algebra instruction is beneficial for students beyond academic achievement. Algebraic knowledge provides students with a skill set that they can employ to better understand, evaluate, analyze, and critique the society in which they live. Through logical skills and quantitative analysis, students are able to view the world through a reflective and transformative lens. The conceptual frameworks for this paper include the tenets of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy and Social Justice Pedagogy. While some may argue that math is not for everyone because some jobs do not explicitly use algebra, these pedagogical philosophies allow educators to see the benefits that algebra has beyond mathematical literacy and achievement. If algebra is taught as relevant to students’ lives and as a tool for building equity, students can transfer their mathematical knowledge outside the classroom. During this paper, the Algebra Project will be used as an exemplary initiative to demonstrate both the academic and social benefits of high quality algebra instruction.
Alphabet Soup: Making Sense of Spelling Instruction
(Vanderbilt University. Peabody College, 2012-09-15) Silby, Kristine
This essay explores the orthographic discipline of spelling instruction. More specifically, the spelling of English words is examined and the resulting suggestions for implementation and instruction in the classroom are discussed and evaluated. Beginning with a broad sweeping look at the entire field, the opposing theories of “caught” spelling and “taught” spelling are examined and critiqued (Graham et al., 2008; Johnston, 2001). Those who ascribe to a “caught” theory of spelling believe that pure literary exposure will yield capable spellers. In other words, the ability to spell correctly is a skill that can be imitated if a student has enough exposure. On the other hand, many educators believe that simple interaction with literary devices such as books and oral communication does not guarantee an accurate acquisition of spelling knowledge and ability. Rather, the majority of students must receive a multitude of instructional techniques that include exposure, but do not solely rely on it for the means of spelling attainment. Evidence suggests that students must be taught how to spell and not just catch it when reading or writing (Bear & Templeton, 1998; Henderson, 1985; Moats, 2005/2006). Moving forward from this theoretical base, a look will be given to the history of the English language and then the focus will turn towards trends that have shaped spelling instruction. Next, the information presented will gain traction as it is applied to the actual practice of teaching as the implications for curriculum including methods regarding assessment and considerations for adaptations are discussed. Finally, a survey conducted by Carreker, Joshi, and Boulware-Gooden (2010) adds to the literature on teacher preparation and their insights regarding professional development bring depth to the link between teacher knowledge and student achievement.
Applying Backwards Design to a Traditional Textbook: An Algebra I Unit Plan
(Vanderbilt University. Peabody College, 2011-07-15) Patterson, Meredith
This Capstone project consists of a backwards design format unit plan based on corresponding units from a specific traditional Algebra I textbook. The student goals that I have identified are closely aligned with standards outlined by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, as well as relevant Common Core Standards. The unit plan is designed to allow for both conceptual and procedural fluency; since the textbook that serves as my basis stresses skills, I have added to its activities and modified the sequence to emphasize the important role that conceptual understanding plays in the ability to think algebraically. The rationales for my individual and overarching modifications and design decisions are based on my coursework in Mathematics Education and the accompanying literature. I have structured the unit plan using the Understanding by Design framework developed by authors and educators Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe (2005). By integrating some of the valuable activities, exercises, and questions provided in the teacher’s manual of the textbook with self-designed learning experiences, I have created a unit on linear equations that provides more socially relevant opportunities for students to develop a deeper conceptual understanding of linearity.
Approach to an Effective and Meaningful Character Education in Singapore
(Vanderbilt University. Peabody College, 2011) Sim, Swee Cheong; Hofwolt, Clifford
Character education is the intentional effort to develop core ethical and performance values that are widely affirmed across all cultures in young people (Character Education Partnership, 2010). Benefits of character education include helping students to decipher the right and wrong to make informed choices, to be more dynamic and responsive to changes, and to develop new knowledge, skills and mindsets to adapt and cope with any new ambiguity and complexity. Most educators will agree that schools, working closely with parents and communities, play an important role to guide and reinforce character values. The current delivery approach of Singapore’s character education, which is known as Civics and Moral Education, is taught separately from the rest of the academic subjects. In order for high school students to be able to think critically about moral issues, especially when facing 21st century challenges and moral dilemmas, there is scope to restructure the delivery of character education by connecting the moral and the academic domains. While it is easier for beginning teachers to adopt a sequential category lesson (i.e. the lesson starts with a focus on the academic domain and then finishes with the moral domain), experienced teachers can apply the integrated category to classroom learning (i.e. the moral and the academic domains move back and forth). Advantages of these approaches are less oversimplification of moral issues and more meaningful intellectual connections. Students’ learning will also be more customized to their needs and interests.
Art Education and Transformational Learning
(Vanderbilt University. Peabody College, 2017-06-15) King, Christina
This paper presents qualities of art education experiences that lead to transformational learning and renewed civic engagement in communities. Using critical place-based pedagogy and elements of oral history practices, arts educators can situate art-making at the nexus of learning about self and learning about community. Since art education takes on the development of self identity and broader connection- and meaning-making as some of its multiple purposes, the learning environment is ripe for raising critical consciousness and fostering authentic learning. Two cases that exemplify the use of a critical place-based framework and oral history methods are presented, along with analysis that includes the importance of dialogue and authentic community engagement as precursors to the success of socially engaged art education. Lastly, constructionism is drawn on as a theory of learning that informs art education as well as the method of using portfolios as a form of assessment
Assessing Fluency Assessment: A Detailed Look at One-Minute Fluency Measures
(Vanderbilt University. Peabody College, 2012-10-10) Caruso, Elise; Rowe, Debbie
In 2000, the National Reading Panel named fluency one of the five pillars of reading instruction. As a result, schools across America adopted a variety of fluency assessments. More recently, one-minute fluency assessments have taken over as a way to track and progress-monitor students. Unfortunately, the assessments are not always used appropriately or in ways that benefit the students. For example, these one-minute assessments have often been used to predict how well students will score on state-mandated standardized tests. However, these one-minute fluency assessments, while providing valuable information, reveal only one aspect of a student’s level of fluency. A key issue is the different definitions of fluency that educators, researchers, administrators, and policy makers subscribe to. Many people that have adopted a definition of fluency that includes comprehension have rejected one-minute fluency tests, because they don’t test deeper reading skills. Through a literature review of one-minute fluency assessments, their purposes, their use, and the data that surrounds their validity and predictability pertaining to state mandated standardized tests, this article will argue that one-minute fluency tests can be a useful assessment tool if properly used as one part of the overall assessment puzzle.
Authentic STEM Learning and Teacher Mindsets
(Vanderbilt University. Peabody College, 2018-03-15) Hollister, Kaitlyn
Many teachers in today’s classrooms, regardless of subject area, have little experience in the kind of learning they are asking students to engage in (Elmore, 2016). Rigorous standards in science and mathematics have set a new bar for what can be considered “authentic” STEM learning by requiring that students develop specific disciplinary skills, such as collaboration, application, argumentation, critical thinking and inquiry-based problem solving (NGSS Lead States, 2013). As states and school districts in this country continue to charge teachers with the challenging task of supporting students to engage in “authentic” STEM learning, teachers must develop the knowledge base and instructional aptitude implicated by these rigorous goals for students’ learning. Simultaneously, as teachers develop and refine their knowledge and practices of what is considered “authentic” learning in STEM, their views of student capability become integral to their instructional decisions. To have sustainable and successful policy reforms, school districts cannot afford to overlook teachers’ background knowledge, mindsets, and beliefs, including their potential deficit views of students. Therefore, attending to teachers’ mindsets and beliefs about what “authentic” STEM learning is and who is capable of it must be a priority for district leaders as they seek to implement effective and sustainable STEM-based reform initiatives across their schools. Several considerations are presented for districts seeking to help their teachers develop the instructional repertoire necessary to support students to engage in the disciplinary practices of authentic STEM learning.
“Basking in the mirror of yesterday’s glory…”: Engaging Disengaged Readers
(Vanderbilt University. Peabody College, 2012-06-15) Pointer, Raquel; Milner, Rich
In the paper I explore some of the history of disengaged readers and segue into an exploration of the ways in which more recent literature discusses disengaged readers. I conclude with implications as to how the more recent literature's suggestions impact middle school classroom teachers in urban schools.
A Beginning Urban Educator’s Guide to Understanding the Mindsets and Actions Needed to Harness the Power of Museums and Informal Learning Environments for Meaningful Learning in the Culturally Diverse Classroom
(Vanderbilt University. Peabody College, 2011-06-15) Tillson, Jennifer
This short guide is designed to speak to the novice urban educator that has limited training and experience on how to best meet the needs of a culturally diverse classroom, regardless of subject or grade taught. Through an easy to understand step-by-step guide, new urban educators are illuminated to the power, importance and tenants of culturally relevant and responsive teaching, how informal learning environments, like museums, align and promote culturally responsive and relevant instruction and how to begin to integrate informal learning into their curriculum as a tool to create meaningful, engaging learning in the classroom. Key Words: culturally diverse, culturally responsive, culturally relevant, informal education, museum, urban, teacher guide, meaningful learning
Bells and Whistles: Elementary Curriculum Supplements
(Vanderbilt University. Peabody College, 2011) Jones, Abby
This paper presents the idea of a “tool kit” that supplements curricula in an elementary school setting. It looks into what instructional strategies benefit ELL learners and how some of those same strategies can help further develop all students’ skills. It is an all-encompassing guide that enhances lessons, activities, and assessments by taking the learning styles of the students as well as research-based best practices into consideration. With each “tool” that is recommended I explain what it is, why it could be used, when it would be most appropriate to be used, and then examples of how to implement it. Educators can use this paper as a resource that will complement the instruction that is already being used and provide new ideas about instructional strategies that could be implemented for the first time.
Beyond Names and Dates: Teaching Students to Employ Historical Reasoning
(Vanderbilt University. Peabody College, 2008) Kelley, Matthew
This essay explores several obstacles that a student brings into a high school history classroom. Since the main goal of history is to develop abstract reasoning, it is troublesome that a student's cognitive development could impede this end. In addition to barely having developed what Piaget refers to as formal operation, the student's previous history training, as well as other classes, have led to a complacency with reading texts at face-value. As an adolescent, the learner will be, to a certain degree, egocentric, and will judge historical figures and events from his or her own perspective. Several researched methods are explored to alleviate these issues, including such tasks as developing specific historical skills within Vygotsky's zone of proximal development, creating representations that guide students toward the teacher's level of reasoning, and discussing paths of reasoning as a class during the lesson. These ideas are applied to a European History class, in a hypothetical attempt to demonstrate their applications.
Beyond the Guided Reading Table: Independent Literacy Tasks
(Vanderbilt University. Peabody College, 2016-06-15) Robinson, Julianne; Pendergrass, Emily
Black Girl, Be! Creating Transformative Spaces for Black Girls in Public Education Schools
(Vanderbilt University. Peabody College, 2017-06-15) Williams, Jewel
Throughout history, Black children have been dehumanized, criminalized, and sexualized. Additionally, though education can be a transformative and liberative tool, Black children have been deprived of quality and equitable education or pushed out of schools and into confinement through harsh punitive punishments that have oftentimes been found to be rooted in racism, sexism, classism, etc. Unfortunately, most of the advocacy and research that is has been done up until recently has been focused on the treatment of Black boys in society. While many advocacy and activist groups are working to change systems for Black boys, our Black girls are receiving harsher juvenile justice sentences and more punitive punishments than any other group of girls and are the fastest growing population in departments of juvenile justice. This paper discusses the keys—outlined by Dr. Monique Morris— that are needed to incorporate transformative practices for Black girls in schools. These keys are: a race conscious gender analysis; an erasure of respectability politics in Schools; a centered response to victimization; high expectations for all Students; practices that facilitate healing opportunities for Black girls; and a centering of voices of color and experiential knowledge.
Black Girls’ Experiences in Schools: Adopting an Alternative, Strengths-Based Model to Discipline
(Vanderbilt University. Peabody College, 2016-06-15) Perry, Briana
Although research on Black students disproportionality in suspensions and expulsions has been conducted since the 1970s, it has mainly centered Black male students (Smith-Evans et al., 2014). For decades, there has been an assumption in the education field that Black girls are having positive experiences in school settings since their achievement scores and graduation rates have been higher than their Black male counterparts. Recent research from Crenshaw et al. (2015) and Morris (2016) shows that Black girls are negatively impacted by school disciplinary policies, as they are disproportionately suspended and expelled at rates higher than any other group when broken down by the same gender. Utilizing intersectionality as a framework, this Capstone will consider why Black adolescent girls who attend public schools engage in behaviors that lead to punitive consequences; the outcomes of such policies; alternative models to stringent disciplinary policies, especially zero-tolerance; and the possible outcomes of alternative models on Black girls. I will further consider the necessary components of alternative disciplinary models in ensuring that Black girls are validated, maintained, and supported in school settings.
Bridging the Digital Divide: Using Video Games to Enhance Science Learning
(Vanderbilt University. Peabody College, 2014-07-15) Tan, Eric
This paper explores the affordances of digital video games in the learning of science amid a changing learner demographic. Current research in this area is largely focused on motivational aspects of video games. It is desirable, however, to investigate the effects of video games on learning of curricular content beyond mere engagement in the science classroom. Anchoring on diSessa’s (1993) “knowledge-in-pieces” model of conceptual change, it is argued that well-designed video games are primed to provide the bridge between conceptual learning in science and the motivation to engage in scientific content. Interviews conducted with 21 students from a preliminary field study of EPIGAME – a physics video game played by Grade 9 students from a public high school that explores Newton’s laws of motion, suggest that apart from motivating students to engage in the learning of scientific content, video games can impart curricular content if designed correctly and used with appropriate instructional strategies. However, the data also suggest that the changing expectations of learners provide a design challenge to educational video game designers.
Bridging the Gap: Increasing Parent and Family Involvement in the Early Education of English Language Learners
(Vanderbilt University. Peabody College, 2012-06-15) Kramer, Amy
This essay addresses the matter of how to connect with and involve the parents and families of English Language Learners in their children’s literacy education at the early elementary level as well as why this topic deserves significant attention.
Broadening Mathematics Curriculum: Linking Children’s Literature to Mathematics
(Vanderbilt University. Peabody College, 2011-06-15) Osborne, Sarah
Children’s literature provides connections across all content areas. When incorporated within mathematics, it provides an engaging, accessible, and authentic context for learning. The literary experience can lead to mathematical investigations that address communication and problem solving skills, which are highly encouraged and stressed by both the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics(2011) and the Common Core Standards(2010). Student motivations along with development of conceptual understandings are instrumental in leading to academic success (Bransford et al., 2000). The use of children’s literature connects with the needs of learners to create transferable understandings by way of multiple contexts and exposures. These contexts need to be motivating and encouraging of students to be active learners. Students can thrive as learners when these activities occur within a collaborative, supportive, and challenging classroom environment. Children’s literature provides a necessary addition to mathematics curriculum by addressing problem solving and communication skills. Investigations allow teachers the opportunity to assess students in these domains. Resources for teachers exist on how and why to use literature, as well as resources for teachers to use in making evaluations on the literary qualities and mathematical soundness of children’s books (Whitin & Whitin, 2004, Schiro, 1997). Teachers can access many resources that offer suggestions for quality children’s literature and effective, connected mathematical activities (Burns, 1992). However, in a growing standards based curriculum the propensity to follow the textbook exists. The growing body of research and resources should be more accessible to teachers in order to encourage the effective use of children’s literature to create deeper conceptual based understandings through the use of communication and problem solving.

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