In cultures where children have regular contact with same aged peers during the first years of life, peer sociability plays a fundamental role at early stages. Currently, the only social emotional skills children are exposed to are those that they learn alongside academic learning. Additional social emotional skills are often not taught. These skills include social awareness, self-awareness, dealing with ambiguous situations, adapting to social situations, managing stress, and learning how to learn (Lindsay, 2013). It is especially challenging for English language learners (ELL), who have the additional task of learning multiple ways of communication, including both language and cultural rules. Research on social emotional learning has shown that when children are able to deal with, manage, and maneuver the social and emotional landscapes of their lives, their capacities to learn and function socially on all levels improve (Lindsay, 2013). This study seeks to compare the social emotional outcomes for ELL students with their native English-speaking peers in classroom settings. The study includes literature review and data analysis on data collected by Second Step Study researchers at the College of Education from approximately 5,000 children across 40 schools in 5 districts. One of the teacher-reported measurements used in the study is the Devereux Student Strengths Assessment (DESSA), a behavioral rating scale that measures skills associated with social-emotional competence, resilience, and academic success. The other teacher-reported measurement is the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ), a behavioral screening questionnaire which measures children’s strengths and difficulties related to behavioral characteristics. Results from the measures will be compared between native English speakers and ELL students. The aim of this study is to increase teachers’ awareness of the importance of social emotional development of English language learners.

The world faces mounting environmental problems and environmentally-minded citizens are necessary to help find solutions. Education is a critical component in shaping future citizens who think globally and act locally. However, the current system of education often disconnects concepts and ideas from geographic locations. The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of place-based lesson plans on student learning, and to explore whether or not place-based examples help to stimulate environmental stewardship and engagement in school and local issues. To this end, I conducted qualitative interviews with local high school science teachers and performed a meta-analysis of current literature about place-based education and methods for environmental education. In addition to this research, I developed several place-based biology lesson plans for Alaskan high schools. The results thus far support the idea that place-based examples are effective tools for teaching science, and do in fact help facilitate student engagement in the classroom. Through the process of creating the lesson plans, I found that a real life example contextualized the lessons and gave them greater meaning. The use of place-based examples within science education has the potential to stimulate a connection between students and local environments. It is essential that today’s students, as future citizens and decision makers, have an established connection with the environment to prepare them for creating positive change in the world.

 When students study abroad, some find it harder than others to integrate within the culture of their host country. Scholars have created models mapping students’ process of acculturation over time. A stage of crisis, or “culture shock,” is identified as a fundamental phase of the abroad experience. This study investigates four elements influencing students’ ability to overcome this crisis stage: students’ interaction with the host community, confidence using the host language, previous experience traveling abroad, and the disparity between students’ home and host culture. This study aims to determine the role communication plays in the navigation of the crisis phase; I do so specifically by examining these four elements, and how the connection between these factors and student adjustment manifests. Past studies have flagged these elements as major predictors of a students’ achieved assimilation while abroad. This study aims to determine if and how a connection exists between these factors and students’ cultural adjustment. The qualitative method of semi-structured interviews was used to collect responses via Skype from four students in Quito, Ecuador and four students in Rome, Italy during their Winter quarter abroad. The eight students' narratives provide insight on the modern impact of the four key elements on intercultural development—and an understanding of why: why some students overcome the crisis phase and achieve healthy cultural adjustment while others remain culturally stagnant for the entirety of their exchange.

What began as a practical question for our large, interdisciplinary organization has taken on scholarly weight given active debate in the literature regarding professionalization of peer/student writing tutors -- as studies on beneficial tutoring outcomes turn away from difficult-to-assess outcomes for writers toward outcomes for tutors. What this literature says about professionalization, however, seemed troubling in that it is predicated on the assumption that tutors will necessarily go on to be educators -- patently untrue for this interdisciplinary group of student employees. Existing concepts of professionalism are also (troublingly) opposed to our center’s non-expert, collaborative approach to tutoring. Our team currently investigates two questions: (1) How might our tutors’ actual professional objectives/career paths differ from those imagined for them?  (2) How might tutors’ sense of appropriate professional practice diverge from other visions of professionalism in the context our non-directive center? Phase I of this investigation involved interviews with 50+ active tutors using a standard form we developed; tutors described both short-term goals for tutoring practice and longer-term career goals. Phase II will involve capstone interviews asking graduating tutors to report on specific experiences of professional development (transferable skills). In interviews to-date, tutors openly identified widely-varied short-term and long-term goals. Contradicting existing scholarship, we found that even tutors uninterested in writing-instruction-related careers articulated complex connections between their tutoring work and their future careers. Further challenging commonplace assumptions, interviewees articulated tutoring goals aligned in sophisticated ways with this writing center’s approach, suggesting that thoughtful tutor professionalization need not involve training in more expert, directive tutoring practice but instead can be flexibly self-directed in alignment with tutors’ own professional goals. Our methods and findings have important implications for those interested in: employee motivation and deep learning; grounded planning and programming that avoid administrative assumptions; richer professional development for students across fields.

As a senior undergraduate at the University of Washington, I have personally seen, along with many of my peers, many students drift in the endless forest of knowledge at the university. They become frustrated because they cannot conceive of how to integrate and apply the knowledge they acquire into their daily lives. I hypothesize that this bewilderment comes from not knowing when or how to synthesize and apply the knowledge we have obtained in classes and losing awareness of its purpose. Many educational researchers argue that mentoring is one solution for it. It is often considered a program to advance a mentee's values, skills, knowledge, and understanding. This research project used observation and survey methodologies to analyze two models of mentoring relationships: mosaic mentoring theory and collaborative mentoring theory. In mosaic mentoring theory, pre-existing common interests and strengths of peers generate interaction among themselves which extend to nurture those interests. In collaborative mentoring, individuals unite through developmental learning relationships under the goal of education that supersedes individual interests. This research identifies and evaluates the factors that make such relationships effective for both career and personal development of college students. I anticipate my preliminary results will confirm the mentoring theory such that collaborative and mosaic mentoring relationships help students to advance their psychosocial and career functions. Both models help students in determining their "life calling" through their studies and skill development.

Are attempts by the United States to improve student educational outcomes by increasing classroom spending worth the effort? How successful have these efforts been in improving the outcomes of public school students? Using data from 2002 to 2010, which includes expenditures allocated to classroom costs per pupil and averaged freshmen graduation rates, I investigate the impact of increased federal spending on students, more specifically on expenditures allocated directly to classroom spending as opposed to administrative and operations expenditures. Major classroom costs include teacher salaries, supplies, special education programs, textbooks, and other various minor costs. After controlling for factors that may influence educational outcomes such as parental educational attainment, years of teacher experience, and teacher-to-pupil ratios in the classroom, my results show that when a higher percentage of a state’s expenditures on education are spent on costs directly related to the classroom, students succeed at a higher rate as measured by graduation rates.

“Permaculture” refers to a design approach for creating resilient and integrated systems using principles and tools grounded in ecology. Permaculture design is usually applied to agriculture and food production, but recent permaculture-based projects in economics, urban planning, and governance have emerged as alternative applications of this design approach. However, there are few examples of applying permaculture to education systems; a gap in the general knowledge of the permaculture community and the field of education reform that I hope to help fill. This study examines how the ecological principles demonstrated in permaculture design can be used to address the problems that standardization has produced in K-12 public education in the United States. Standardization has emerged as the dominant approach of education reform, most visibly manifested in No Child Left Behind and the Common Core State Standards initiative (U.S. Department of Education, National Governors Association). However, as recent research has shown, standardization as a paradigm in education causes more harm than good for students, teachers, and schools (Robinson, Ken). Through research in educational philosophy, curriculum and instruction, development and learning, and systems theory, I justify how permaculture design principles can be applied to educational systems. From this I develop an original synthesis of education theory and permaculture principles as an alternative to standardization. My argument is presented in a three-part paper: a review of the critiques of standardization as a dominant paradigm for education; explanation of the twelve permaculture principles in the context of education; and a demonstration of applying these principles in the re-imagining of American schooling.