Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2023, EDU Policy and Leadership

The National Fund for Public Investment and Development (FONACIDE) is a government investment program aimed at improving the quality of education in Paraguay. This study analyzes FONACIDE's monetary investment in the city of Encarnacion over a 10-year period and highlights the program's shortcomings and repercussions. The research was framed in a case study adopting the documentary bibliographic modality for the policy analysis. The city of Encarnacion, located in the department of Itapua, in southern Paraguay, was taken as a case study. The study reveals that, despite FONACIDE's investment in Encarnacion, there are still problems in the educational infrastructure, such as the lack of repairs and construction of key spaces in schools. In addition, it is noted that the investment has not been distributed equitably in urban and rural areas, as some schools have received more funds than others, which has generated inequalities in the quality of school infrastructure. Furthermore, it is noted that the FONACIDE program has also had some negative management in Encarnacion. For example, there has been a lack of transparency in the distribution of funds, problems in the decentralized administration of resources, lack of citizen participation for better accountability on the part of the authorities, which has generated a sense of impunity among the population. Despite FONACIDE's monetary investment in Encarnacion, the educational infrastructure continues to show shortcomings. It is necessary to implement measures to improve transparency in the management of funds and ensure equitable distribution of resources to improve the quality of education in the city.

Committee: Antoinette Errante (Advisor); Ann Allen (Committee Member) Subjects: Education Policy

PHD, Kent State University, 2022, College of Education, Health and Human Services / School of Teaching, Learning and Curriculum Studies

The purpose of this study was to examine the use and cognitive load associated with Open Educational Resources (OERS) and Affordable Digital Textbook (ADT) among pre- licensure Baccalaureate of Nursing students in an asynchronous on-line health policy course. OERS and ADT provide low student cost curriculum options for nursing faculty. The participants in this study were 171 pre-licensure nursing students who used both an OERS and ADT in their health policy course. A Convergent Mixed Methods design was used. Quantitative and qualitative data was gathered using a participant completed survey that measured textbook usability, cognitive load, and information about how the textbook were used and whether confusion arose while using the textbooks. The results revealed that most students used both textbooks throughout the course to complete assignments and understand course content. A paired sample t-test revealed no statistically significant difference in perceived cognitive-load scores between the textbooks. Students did report confusion related to navigating the texts and managing high volumes of content when using each of the textbooks. A statistically significant difference was found in textbook usability scores that suggests participants found the ADT provided greater usability. A MANOVA was performed. The number of civics courses and the number of policy courses had a main effect on cognitive load when using the ADT. An interaction effect between race and number of civics courses was observed when analyzing cognitive load when using the ADT. This study suggests that OERS and ADT are cost effective curricular choice in pre-licensure health policy courses.

Committee: Todd Hawley (Committee Chair); Barbara Broome (Committee Member); Anthony Vander Horst (Committee Member) Subjects: Higher Education; Nursing

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2020, EDU Teaching and Learning

The goal of this qualitative study was to better understand what guides middle-school mathematics teachers' colloquial evaluation (CE) of digital mathematics resources and to explore how the introduction of the EDCITE evaluation rubric, more recently published as the Digital Content Evaluation Rubric (DCER; Gallant & Luthy, 2020) influenced said evaluations. This study is based on the year-long professional development (PD), Algebra Ready, intended to help develop teachers TPACK through the use of digital resources, digital resource evaluation, and the implementation of technology, but also to better prepare their middle-school students for the transition to algebra by having teachers explore mathematical activities and student work. Participants included 33 middle-school mathematics teachers, coaches, and intervention specialists. Teachers explored digital mathematics resources and responded to informal prompts to judge the quality of the resource (CE), which served as the data source for this study. These CEs were explored qualitatively through multiple lenses—emergent, TPACK, magnitude, and the EDCITE evaluation rubric framework. Qualitative results were then quantified to provide further insight into findings. Emergent findings showed that the digital mathematics resources' attributes of usability, student feedback, implementation, accuracy, and affect were the most frequently cited characteristics. With respect to TPACK, more than one-third of all comments aligned to pedagogical constructs, followed by pedagogical content and technology. The other T-related fields contributed very little to the overall number of CE comments. This is akin to the findings when coding with respect to the EDCITE evaluation rubric in which pedagogy was the most frequently cited dimension. Most surprisingly, however, was the lack of attention paid towards the alignment of the digital mathematics resource to standards which is in conflict with previous findings. When (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Hea-Jin Lee (Advisor); Kui Xie (Committee Member); Theodore Chao (Committee Member) Subjects: Educational Technology; Mathematics Education

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2018, EDU Physical Activity and Educational Services

Many college students struggle financially, and student debt continues to grow in the United States. Students that complete a degree can have high monthly student loan payments, and those that do not complete a degree can struggle financially even more. There is a growing amount of research examining methods to reduce these financial challenges. Since financial knowledge, attitudes and behaviors have been studied as to how they impact student debt, the purpose of this study was to examine financial knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors of community college students and consider an educational intervention as a possible way to impact those variables. The intervention was in the form of exposing students to a series of short, specific, digital learning objects. The research objectives of this study were to describe community college students' financial knowledge, financial attitudes, planned financial behaviors, and actual short-term financial behaviors in the areas of budgeting/saving, credit, and student loans, before and after exposure to the digital learning objects. There was a statistically significant treatment effect for financial knowledge, but not for financial attitudes. For financial behaviors, six unique intended and actual financial behaviors were examined, with half of them showing a significant difference after exposure to the digital learning objects. Planned and actual behaviors in the areas of budgeting, saving, and payment behavior were most effected. Certain ages and racial groups reported salient results in some areas. Students identifying as Black/African American had lower than average scores and lessor treatment effects for financial knowledge, higher than average rates of behavior and higher treatment effects for monthly budgeting, and lower rates of behavior and lower treatment effects for positive payment behaviors. Students under 25 years old reported below average behaviors and treatment effects for monthly budgeting, savin (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Christopher Zirkle Dr. (Committee Chair); Caezilia Loibl Dr. (Committee Co-Chair); Melena Whittington Dr. (Committee Member) Subjects: Adult Education; Community College Education; Education Finance; Educational Technology; Finance; Teaching; Technology

Master of Arts, Case Western Reserve University, 2018, History

In 1980, the Gay Educational and Awareness Resources Foundation (GEAR) purchased a building in Cleveland, Ohio and opened one of the first gay community centers in the United States. Yet GEAR closed within two years, reverting to a tenuous existence just as the AIDS crisis and homophobic violence propelled queer issues into the public spotlight. In 1988, GEAR rebranded itself as the Lesbian Gay Community Service Center, moved into a gay enclave, and achieved some stability. In this paper I use social theory and spatial analysis to contrast the organizational strategies of these two centers, arguing that GEAR shifted the discourse of homosexuality in Cleveland and empowered gay and lesbian activists by encouraging visibility, collaboration, and sovereignty in its programming, funding, and public relations strategy. I ultimately suggest that queer people can create lasting spaces founded on the ideal of visibility, even if the resulting sense of safety is illusory.

Committee: Renee Sentilles (Advisor) Subjects: Glbt Studies; History

Doctor of Philosophy, University of Toledo, 2014, Curriculum and Instruction: Educational Technology

Workplace bullying is a significant problem carrying wide-ranging consequences in organizations of various sizes and in a variety of work environments. Research suggests ten to twenty percent of employees are exposed to workplace bullying annually. A review of scholarly literature established workplace bullying as a problem impacting employee and organizational performance, with many researchers suggesting human resource professionals should be integral in addressing workplace bullying in organizations. This study utilized the central tenets of human performance technology, specifically systems theory, to focus on the organizational subsystem of human resources as it relates to preventing, identifying, and addressing workplace bullying. There were three identified purposes to this study. The first purpose of the study was to provide a valid measure of workplace bullying reporting from the perspective of the human resource professional. The second purpose of the study was to take an occupation-specific approach to investigate if employees in correctional organizations report workplace bullying behavior to their organization through human resource professionals at a different rate than in other fields of employment. The third purpose of the study was to investigate if correctional organizations are utilizing performance improvement interventions discussed in current scholarly literature to address workplace bullying. Results indicated human resources professionals in this survey have a different perspective on workplace bullying as compared to those considered in the comparison study. Further, correctional organizations are not widely using performance improvement interventions to address workplace bullying. The Rasch Mathematical Model was used to evaluate the research instrument. The Rasch analysis suggested the research instrument could be revised for improved functionality.

Committee: Berhane Teclehaimanot Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Gregory Stone Ph.D. (Committee Member); Lisa Kovach Ph.D. (Committee Member); Robert Sullivan Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Education

Master of Arts, University of Toledo, 2004, Economics

We examine the relationship between fourth grade student proficiency scores, various educational spending categories, student and teacher characteristics as well as population socioeconomic characteristics using a building-level database containing 1,965 Ohio elementary schools. While most economic studies of the relationship between student performance and educational resources show a weak link, we find a strong link between student performance and resources. We argue that use of the appropriate spatial scale is an overlooked issue in previous economic studies. Furthermore, we provide an alternative method of capturing variation over geographical space through the estimation of locally linear models. By estimating a separate model for each individual building, we see that the global estimates provided by previous estimation methodologies may not be provide valid inferences. The locally linear estimates and inferences suggest that location-special forces exist in the relationship between resources and student performance.

Committee: James LeSage (Advisor) Subjects: