Abstract/Notes: This paper examines the challenges facing the public school system as it attempts to live up to the promise to provide a “free appropriate public education” to all of its students. The funding mechanism for public schools, with its reliance on community funding, lends itself to inequities. The lack of an effective response to the rising challenge of mental health issues, the unwillingness to respond to the changing skill demands of the workforce by revising curriculum and the ineffectiveness of efforts to close the achievement gap have all led the public to question whether or not they are receiving an “appropriate” education. The response increasingly has been to look for a better educational alternative elsewhere, in charter schools. The effect of charter schools overall has been to weaken public schools’ abilities to provide a quality education for each and every student. An analysis of each of these challenges and possible responses will provide a possible road map for traditional public education to do a better job of living up to its mandate, to “promote the general welfare”.

Language: English

Published: River Falls, Wisconsin, 2020

Language: English

Abstract/Notes: Tato diplomová práce se zabývá školním hodnocením. Práce je rozdělena na dvě části, a to teoretickou a praktickou. V teoretické části dochází nejprve k vysvětlení Montessori pedagogiky a jejich principů jako jsou svoboda dětí, předem připravené prostředí či principy věkové heterogenity. Dále se zde pojednává o didaktickém materiálu, které tyto typy škol využívají. Poslední částí této kapitoly je postavení učitelů a dospělých ve škole. Poté následuje kapitola o hodnocení. Dochází zde k vymezení jeho definice, jaké funkce hodnocení existují a také typy, které jsou ve školách využívány. V neposlední řadě pak formy hodnocení, tedy klasifikace pomocí známek a slovní hodnocení. Druhou částí této práce je praktická část. Cílem praktické části je najít odlišnosti ve způsobu hodnocení ve dvou typech základních škol, tedy v Montessori základní škole a běžné základní škole a také zjistit, které typy hodnocení, o kterých pojednává teoretická část, jsou v hodinách nejvíce využívány. Pro výzkum byla použita metodu pozorování a hloubkové rozhovory s vyučujícími, u kterých probíhal náslech. Výsledky praktické části ukázaly, že oba typy základních škol využívají jiné formy hodnocení. V běžné základní škole se jedná nejvíce o známky, které jsou i na vysvědčení. V Montessori základní škole se využívá slovní hodnocení a zpětná vazba žákova výkonu. Na konci roku pak žáci dostávají tzv. dopisy, které shrnují jejich výsledky na uplynutý rok. / This diploma thesis deals with a school assessment. It is divided into two parts, the theoretical and the practical one. In the theoretical part, first of all, the Montessori pedagogy and its principles like a freedom of children, beforehand prepaired surroundings or principals of the age heterogeneity are clarified. Further on the didactical material, used in those types of schools, is discussed. The last part of this chapter deals with the position of teachers and adults at school. Next there is a chapter about the assessment. It circumscribes the definition, functions and types of the assessment used in schools. Last, but not least, the forms of the assessment, which means classification by marking or a word evaluation. The second part is the practical one. It is aimed at finding the difference between the way of assessment in two types of primary schools, which means the Montessori primary school and an ordinary primary school and also at finding out, which types of assessment, concerned by the theoretical part, are used the most during lessons. For the research the method of observation and in-depth conversations with the teachers, at whose lessons the sitting in on a classes took place, were used. The outcome of this work was that both types of primary schools use different types of assessment. At the ordinary school it is mostly about the grades, which also occur at the school report. At the Montessori school, the verbal assessment and a feedback to student’s performance is used; at the end of the year the students receive the so called letters, which summarize their results from the last year.

Language: Czech

Published: Prague, Czechia, 2017

Language: English

Abstract/Notes: Class meetings, community building

Language: English

Language: English

Published: Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 2015

Abstract/Notes: Scope and method of study. The purpose of this qualitative study was to investigate the connection between the beliefs, attitudes, and expectations teachers exhibit towards students who have attention challenges in three independent schools in England and the pathognomonic-interventionist continuum as identified by Jordan-Wilson and Silverman (1991), which identifies, along a scale, where teachers' beliefs lie. Teachers' sense of efficacy as they meet individual student needs was also explored as was what educators in these schools, who have limited, if any, recourse to special education assistance, do to support students who display the characteristics of attention deficit. The pathognomonic-interventionist continuum and Bandura's (1977) construct of self-efficacy were the lenses used to focus the research. The study records participants' responses and reflections about the phenomenon under study, describing what it is they do, how they perceive their responsibility towards their students, and how they support each other. Findings and conclusions. Data compiled from a sample of 10 teachers and 3 head-teachers, were disaggregated to provide a picture of how participant teachers work with attentionally challenged children in selected English independent schools. The results provide evidence that teachers whose profile identifies them with the interventionist perspective present stronger senses of self-efficacy. They are prepared to undertake prereferral-type activities to determine where the student is experiencing difficulty and are then willing to manipulate the learning environment to meet individual student needs. Teachers in these schools perceive it as their professional obligation to design teaching scenarios to benefit all students. Teacher efficacy, their sense of their ability to positively influence their students' educational performance and achievement, is unrelated to years of experience or educational background, but is related to the beliefs which they hold.

Language: English

Published: Stillwater, Oklahoma, 2006

Abstract/Notes: This basic qualitative research records the author’s findings from the one-on-one in-depth personal interviews with twenty-three teachers, trainers, and administrators working for the Christian Montessori schools. The purpose of the study was to explore the experiences of the teachers in facilitating meta-learning, the how-to-learn and the why-to-learn, among students in the Christian Montessori schools. The findings are as follows: First, both the Montessorian training and the Christian spiritual preparation of the teachers in the Christian Montessori schools enables them to effectively facilitate both the how-to-learn and the why-to-learn meta-learning, which endorses their claim that they are the true heir of the original Montessori method; second, the teachers’ most meaningful way of facilitating meta-learning is students’ receiving spontaneous training through the teachers’ respectful scaffolding; third, the Christian Montessori school model is an integrated and viable system for educational reform pursuing both the how-to-learn and the why-to-learn at the same time.

Language: English

Published: Deerfield, Illinois, 2020

Abstract/Notes: This mixed method study seeks to utilize a comparative analysis to explore the impacts of two types of parental involvement in urban elementary school students’ academic performance. Epstein’s (1995) widely cited typology describes six different types of parental involvement, and this typology serves as a framework for this study. More specifically, this study compares learning at home and collaborating with community, as parent involvement types, to student academic performance. The study utilizes descriptive statistics and correlational analyses to compare parent-reported student performance via a survey instrument and semi-structured focus group interviews to collect narrative data. Parental involvement has been vigorously studied over the last two decades, however, not much data appears to address how collaborating with the community, as a form of involvement, influences student performance and other studies provide an ambiguous picture for learning at home as another parenting type. Furthermore, there is evidence that direct-action parent organizing, as a parental involvement form of collaborating with the community, may impact educational outcomes and this study examines these research areas. After analyzing the data, the researcher did not find evidence of a significant relationship between learning at home and parent-reported student academic performance. However, the study did reveal a significant association between parents who were collaborating with the community and the parent-reported academic performance of their children. This moderate correlation from an often overlooked parenting type, collaborating with the community, may harbor rich findings within the literature and point to the need for greater scrutiny herein. In fact, this provides a warrant for additional research to explore the “efficacy” of collaborating with community as a type of parental involvement that significantly influences positive student academic performance.

Language: English

Published: Baltimore, Maryland, 2018

Abstract/Notes: Elementary education has theoretical underpinnings based on cognitive psychology. Ideas from cognitive psychologists such as James, Dewey, Piaget, and Vygotsky coalesce to form constructivism (Cooper, 1993; Yager, 2000; Yilmaz, 2011). Among others, the Montessori Method (1912/1964) is an exemplar of constructivism. Currently, public education in the United States is heavily impacted by the No Child Left Behind legislation (Paige, 2006) which emphasizes high stakes academic achievement testing. Absent from the literature is an examination of the academic achievement of Montessori students in public education. This study explores the academic achievement outcomes of public school students who completed varying numbers of years in Montessori elementary education. Singer and Willett's (2003) multilevel model of change serves as the statistical tool utilized to explore the academic achievement outcomes of a first grade cohort through their elementary and secondary school careers. Accrued years in Montessori did not account for significant variance amongst the trajectories, and gender and ethnicity, when considered without the interactions with accrued years, had minimal impact. Socioeconomic status, when the variable of accrued years in Montessori was removed from the equation, was a significant predictor of reading and math achievement.

Language: English

Published: Commerce, Texas, 2014