Browsing by Subject "K-12 education"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    The Efficacy of Project Lead the Way: A Systematic Literature Review
    (American Society for Engineering Education, 2016-06) Hess, Justin L.; Sorge, Brandon; Feldhaus, Charles; Department of Technology and Leadership Communication, School of Engineering and Technology
    Project Lead the Way (PLTW) is a non-profit organization offering project-based STEM education curricula for K-12 students. As of 2015, PLTW was by far the largest pre-engineering program implemented throughout the United States with a presence in over 6500 schools. Since its conception in 1997, PLTW rapidly expanded and today covers all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The PLTW Engineering curriculum offers a sequence of courses that students may take over the course of high school, and many university programs allow students who complete this sequence the opportunity to earn college credit. The PLTW Gateway curriculum targets students in Grades 6-8 and the PLTW Launch curriculum targets K-5 students. See the PLTW website for current program titles. They now simply use PLTW Engineering, PLTW Gateway and PLTW Launch. This study investigates the efficacy of PLTW efforts through a systematic literature review process. Specifically, we explored the following research questions: • To what extent has PLTW been an area of scholarly investigation and what has been the nature of these investigations? • What primary strengths and weaknesses of PLTW have these investigations identified? • What gaps in PLTW literature exist and what future research is needed? After an initial data collection and literature reduction processes, we synthesized 31 articles that collected and analyzed empirical data related to PLTW. Our gathered literature included 16 journal articles, 11 dissertations, and 4 theses. Using an emergent coding process, we found that primary strengths of PLTW curricula include motivating students to pursue STEM degrees, providing teachers with professional development opportunities and support, and facilitating student interest in STEM subjects. However, weaknesses of PLTW include minimal evidence supporting PLTW in improving students’ mathematics and science abilities, scheduling and space issues, and moderate financial costs for schools to participate in PLTW. Altogether, the literature collected varied widely and, as a result, each of these strengths and weaknesses requires further investigation. This study concludes with an identification of gaps in PLTW literature that can focus future PLTW-related investigations and, if investigated, help improve future PLTW-related interventions.
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    Learner-Centered, Future-Focused K-12 Education
    (2023-05-09) Jenner, Katie
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    Teacher Evaluation in the State of Indiana: Alignment Efforts in University Based Teacher Instruction
    (Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research, 2014-04-11) Buckwalter, John; Feldhaus, Charlie; Jackson, Rose; Daily, Caris
    As teacher evaluation in the state of Indiana continues to evolve it has become increasingly difficult to prepare, expose and train pre-service teachers to the evaluation process utilized in K-12 education. While the State adopted The Rise Evaluation instrument to create a common standard of measurement, many school corporations modified, interpreted and scored each domain differently. During the evaluation process many shared themes were discovered in over 20 different school corporation evaluation instruments. In an effort to find the basis for a common assessment, a new instrument was created that incorporates these common themes. The new evaluation form has been constructed into a reusable digital template. This new instrument not only helps with teacher training but also aids in comparing University induction evaluation to each individual school corporation. This data is critical in supporting Woodrow Wilson teachers as they enter and work through Induction years. This effort will also serve as University based data collection for Teacher Education program evaluation, while also allowing for a more delicate transition into the fast paced competitive K-12 workforce.
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    Understanding Online Teacher Best Practices: A Thematic Analysis to Improve Learning
    (SAGE, 2014-01-01) Corry, Michael; Ianacone, Robert; Stella, Julie; Technology and Leadership Communication, School of Engineering and Technology
    The purpose of this study was to examine brick-and-mortar and online teacher best practice themes using thematic analysis and a newly developed theory-based analytic process entitled Synthesized Thematic Analysis Criteria (STAC). The STAC was developed to facilitate the meaningful thematic analysis of research based best practices of K-12 education delivery options. In the study, data for the thematic analysis consisted of published research about best practices in both brick-and-mortar and online education. The use of both brick-and-mortar as well as online teacher best practices provided an opportunity to identify commonalities among these modes of delivery. Based on these commonalities, the thematic analysis detected emergent themes, which could be used as a foundation upon which online teachers might build specialized practice. As well, research-validated teacher best practice themes generated from this study may be considered a starting point for defining teacher best practices in online education and for their development. Emergent themes were discussed in the context of the data and the environment of online education. The STAC analytic process provides a foundation for analysis and may be used by researchers for other thematic analyses in the future.