PART A:

PART B:

Name of U of A class or sport: EDST 4213: Religion and Education

Instructor/Coach of class or sport: Dr. Rhett Hutchins
“teaching religion in schools”
PART C:

Thesis One:

1. The author of the theses is Mary Hill.

2. The Name of the theses is Elementary Educators' Perceptions of Conscious Discipline as a

Management Strategy.

3. The year this was written was 2017.

4. The institution that the author attended is the University of Arkansas.

5. The purpose of this theses is as follows from the abstract: “This study explored elementary
educators’ perceptions of Conscious Discipline as it is implemented in the classroom as a
management technique. To gather data, the researcher created a survey that asked about the
demographics in the schools, how the teachers view Conscious Discipline, and the teachers’
opinions on the Conscious Discipline program as it relates to management in the classroom.”

6. The conclusion of the paper states, “According to the results of the survey, educators tend to
agree Conscious Discipline is a viable behavior management model to use in the classroom
setting. There was no significant difference based on differences in teacher demographics. Most
teachers agree students benefit from the program and teachers tend to have a positive opinion
on the program. Despite the educators’ grade levels taught, most participants agreed Conscious
Discipline has positively impacted students. Since some of the participants were counselors or
part of administration, these respondents encounter students across multiple grade levels. The
results indicate most educators agree Conscious Discipline is an effective management program,
no matter the age. This study also found many educators believe that Conscious Discipline
positively impacts the students’ social and emotional learning (SEL) in the classroom, based on
many participants’ open-response answers. This agrees with Rain’s research which states
Conscious Discipline significantly improves students’ SEL within the classroom (Rain, 2014). The
results of the study suggest most educators who have had training in the Conscious Discipline
program agree with its effectiveness as a management model. Since many participants indicated
their schools offered professional development and a book study for Conscious Discipline, this
may indicate these schools are in the process of implementing or have already implemented
Conscious Discipline as a schoolwide discipline program. If this is the case, the teachers would
not have had a choice in the way they discipline in their classroom. Because of this, Conscious
Discipline may not be liked by everyone in the school and this could be why many did not
participate in the survey. One participant seemed to disagree with Conscious Discipline’s
curriculum based on his or her responses. 8.33% (one person) often disagreed with the
Conscious Discipline questions posed to participants. This could be for many reasons. This
participant may not have agreed with Conscious Discipline as a management model and he or
 she may have had to implement this program in his or her classroom without his or her
complete approval. Another possibility is this participant may not have had complete
information about the topic of Conscious Discipline. They may not be fully trained or have the
complete knowledge of the program in its entirety.”

7. In my field which is Educational Studies, it is important to understand which types of teaching is

efficient and why it is efficient. As I am pursuing elementary education through this degree, this
pertains especially. I would state that it is important to understand this essay because it looks at
classroom management and not only that but bases it in different demographics of schools, so
that we can see what is most efficient with Conscious Discipline.

8. I think that this theses was done well, but I think that I would have done a few things differently.
The first thing that I personally would consider doing different is the experiment itself. The
survey that was used only had 15 participants in it. I believe that in order to have an accurate
result, you would want several more participants so that you could better understand the actual
results. She only had one or two people from each grade, therefore the ideas could be very
similar, or very different and either way the results could have not been very accurate. The
other thing that I would consider changing is Appendix layout. Some of the images and writing
were harder to view than others, and this would have cleaned up the theses a little bit better.

Theses Two:

1. Dr. Cathy Wissehr is the professor that I have taken a course with.
2. She wrote this in 2011.
3. The name of the theses is Preparing for the Plunge: Preservice Teachers’ Assessment Literacy
4. Dr. Wissehr was at the University of Arkansas.
5. The conclusion is as follows: “Instead, more theoretical perspectives offer solutions. We could
propose that teacher actions are dependent not just on their assessment knowledge and
underlying principles, but on their views of learning. For example, in a chapter on assessment
literacy we propose a more complex model for assessment literacy that has ‘‘views of learning’’
at the core, surrounded by ‘‘values and principles,’’ and then four areas of knowledge (Abell and
Siegel 2011). This argument maintains that if teachers had a more reform-oriented view of
learning in general, their assessment practices would be more likely to change. While we saw no
data to support or refute this in our study, a study could be designed to examine this closely.
Finally, we can view the theory vs. practice issue as a problem of conditions. Kennedy (1999)
states that teachers require more help to recognize the classroom situations in which they
should be using the theoretical ideas they are learning. What these two last proposals have in
common is that the solution to the problem involves more teacher education around the model
of assessment literacy itself. If we shared our understanding of views of learning, principles, and
knowledge of assessment with preservice teachers for the purposes of having them reflect on
each of these themselves, this strategy might aid in developing assessment literacy. Or if we
shared our model of assessment literacy in terms of classroom conditions and situations that are
in need of the assessment concepts, and we centered instruction around cases of practice to
interpret and plan action, this strategy could offer a solution as well. Developing assessment
literacy is a crucial skill (Mertler and Campbell 2005; Otero 2006) that needs to be more
completely addressed within methods classes so that preservice teachers are better equipped
with the skills, beliefs, knowledge, and confidence to apply appropriate assessment practices to
enhance student learning in the classroom. This study is unique in that it examines the
development of preservice teachers’ assessment literacy by comparing their ideas about
assessment to how they include assessment in lesson planning. A key finding of this study was
the difference in how preservice teachers viewed assessment in the theoretical realm of their
teaching philosophies and journals—within the university ivory tower—as opposed to how they
included assessment in the practice of developing science units—on the diving board above the
sea of classroom practice. In addition, we looked at the neglected issue of how teachers develop
knowledge about equitable assessment during a science methods class. Although there is a
growing body of literature related to preservice teachers’ understanding of assessment, its role
in student learning, and the purpose of various forms of assessment, more work needs to be
done in this area. Knowing how preservice teachers understand different aspects of assessment
and then weave it into science teaching will add to teacher educators’ abilities to more
effectively prep.”