2024 Doctoral Capstone Projects

With an ever-increasing mental health concerns and social-emotional needs of adolescents, it is more important than ever for schools to go beyond academics, and therefore, it is imperative to provide a universal social-emotional curriculum for students. Despite limited resources and the logistical challenges of scheduling additional content during the academic day, school districts must prioritize social-emotional learning in the same manner as core content as ELA and mathematics. Using a mixed-methods approach, this research study honed in on middle school teachers’ perception of SEL and its impact on student behavior. Qualitative data was collected from self-reflection pre- and post-surveys so that the researcher could better comprehend the depth of teacher’s understanding of SEL and its purpose. Quantitative data was gathered from the surveys to show to identify how effective staff felt an SEL curriculum is for students and to what degree they would be willing to implement an SEL curriculum during the instructional day. Additionally, student behavioral data, in the form of state reportable offenses, was collected before and after the implementation of the School-Connect SEL curriculum and then analyzed and compared to see if there was a causal relationship. Although there was no clear correlation between the SEL curriculum and a decrease in student behavior, there was, however, a positive change in teacher perception of SEL. At the inception of the SEL, general optimism existed as staff expressed a willingness to facilitate SEL lessons and saw value in the curriculum. The post-survey results saw that optimism evolve into enthusiasm to continue with the School-Connect SEL platform, as staff perceived SEL to be effective and were far more willing to facilitate the social-emotional learning lessons with their students. However, the research did not come without limitations, and therefore, further studies are recommended to better understand the impact of SEL on student behavior, and ultimately, student achievement.

Currently, the Knoch School District lacks effective professional development opportunities for our staff and suffers from a high call-off rate on in-service days. This Capstone Research Project sets out to understand effective professional development strategies that can be implemented within the school district. This includes reviewing how the district currently provides professional development for teachers and determining which of these opportunities are effective. It sets out to answer four questions: 1) What topics does the staff believe are most important when it comes to receiving professional development? 2) What would make staff more likely to participate in professional development that is offered by the district? 3) What style of professional development opportunities do teachers believe impacted their classroom instruction? 4) How does the professional development meet the objectives of the district’s vision? Data collection tools that will be applied include surveys, feedback forms, and call-off rates on the professional development days. These tools will provide both qualitative and quantitative data for review. At least three different models of professional development will be implemented throughout the school year. After each of these, a feedback from will be completed by participants. Both the surveys and professional development feedback forms include Likert scale-type and multiple-choice questions and will allow for some open-ended responses. Moving forward, all of the data collected will be used to create a district-wide professional development plan.