An examination of theory and research in curriculum development, implementation, and evaluation. Emphasis on current trends in the content areas.

This course engages students in a study of advanced models of teaching and learning such as concept attainment, inductive thinking, inquiry, problem-based learning, role play, simulation games and other models, with an analysis of research on the effectiveness of these models. Emphasis is on current trends in the content areas.

This course focuses on effective leadership, instruction, and management strategies for work in diverse educational settings. It is designed to provide increased self-awareness and insight into issues of diversity such as culture, ethnicity, exceptionality, gender, language, religion, and socioeconomic status. Demographic issues along with urban and suburban educational settings will also be addressed.

In this course, students gain an understanding of educational research and critically analyze resources of research, such as professional journals, Internet sites, technical reports, ERIC (Education Resources Information Center)documents, and reports of professional organizations. The students will examine historical trends and themes in education and how they have changed and progressed to newer, cutting-edge educational research that informs classroom instruction. Students will analyze research data and reports of research with the purposes of, gaining understanding of sound educational research techniques; evaluating research designs including issues of validity and reliability; gaining knowledge of both quantitative and qualitative data collection procedures; interpreting the results and implications of research; and learning the form of technical, scholarly writing. Through course experiences, students will be prepared to write meaningful research questions and design methodologies for conducting their own classroom research projects. Students will also learn to be effective consumers of research, equipped with skills needed to make sense of classroom, district, state, national, and international educational research studies.

In this course, students will develop their own classroom educational research project. Their designed study will be based in the literature in their educational field and focus on classroom research questions and problems that will inform teaching practices. In this course, students will develop an individual research problem statement, argue the significance of the problem, complete a written literature review and logical chain of reasoning related to the stated problem, write specific research questions to investigate the problem in educational settings, and design a research study (methodology) that will effectively investigate their research questions. Students design a research study that shows promise for improving education, written as the first three chapters of a scholarly classroom action research project. Prerequisite: EDUC 5394. This course is to be taken in the semester just prior to the final semester of the masters’ degree program, and in the semester immediately preceding EDUC 5397.

In this course, students will implement the classroom research designed and written in EDUC 5395, collect data from this research, and interpret results. Students will prepare a final, written research report that presents the investigation and its results in a 5-chapter professional format, such as would be prepared as a paper for presentation at a professional conference and/or publication in an educational journal. At the conclusion of this course, students will submit a copy of their research project report to the course instructor and present the completed project as their final capstone experience for the master’s degree in education. Prerequisites: EDUC 5394 and EDUC 5395. This course is to be taken in the final semester of the M.Ed. and in the semester immediately following EDUC 5395.

In this course students engage in activities and problem solving on concepts related to whole numbers, rational numbers and operations. Students in the course will learn to utilize research-based, problem-based teaching methods to promote children’s understanding. Students will experience how children learn these concepts as they themselves engage in computation and problem solving activities transferrable to classroom practice. In this course, teachers will engage in experiences to learn and teach their students on using numbers, number systems and their structure, operations and algorithms, quantitative reasoning, and technology.

This course engages students in problem-based teaching and curriculum development to help children learn problem solving and critical thinking with an emphasis on patterns, relations, functions, algebraic reasoning, analysis, and technology. The course incorporates research shown effective in helping children develop necessary skills for algebraic reasoning as a foundation for higher level mathematics learning.

In this course students will engage in learning experiences and readily usable curricula for teaching children concepts of probability and statistics, their applications, and technology. Students will examine student learning and research-based practices that best help students understand these mathematical concepts and that will promote their development of probabilistic reasoning abilities.

In this course, students experience and practice innovative curricula for teaching and learning problem solving. Students engage in hands-on activities and apply various problem solving techniques, using mathematical processes to reason mathematically, to solve mathematical problems, to make mathematical connections within and outside of mathematics, and to communicate mathematically. Students learn to identify relevant and irrelevant variables in problems and work through problems to arrive at meaningful solutions. Students examine research on ways to help children become effective problem solvers as transferrable to other mathematics topics and subjects across the curriculum.

In this course students will experience and incorporate active learning curricula that utilize a variety of manipulative materials, diagrams, models, and pictures to study geometry and spatial reasoning. The students will learn effective, research-based practices for teaching geometry to children and examines ways to best help children build geometric and spatial understandings as a foundation for later, more complex abstract visualizations.

This course focuses on inquiry-based, problem-based curricula that help children learn concepts of measurement including units of measure, standardization, and error. Students will learn to use teaching techniques that will promote children’s understandings, as well as the application of measurement concepts to other subjects and to everyday life experiences.