WSU Office of Research Grant Awards
Creating a Learning Community at Liberal Kansas High School through a Research Partnership
Grant Head: Dr. Jo Bennett
Client: WSU Office of Research
Dates: July 2009 - June 2010
This is an URCA grant application for Dr. Jo Bennett, in the WSU Ed. Leadership doctoral department, to conduct research in two phases at Liberal, Kansas to understand how a university and school district can work together collaboratively to enhance learning experiences and performance of their students. In Phase I, Dr. Bennett will help the school district assess their needs, especially with regards to their second language learners. The grant request is for Phase II, during which time doctoral students from the WSU Ed. Leadership department will work with the school district to facilitate and enhance aspects of school change as determined by the needs assessment and interests of the district.
External Grant Awards for College of Education
Wichita Teacher Quality Partnership
Grant Head: Dr. Sharon Iorio, Dr. Kim McDowell, Dr. Terry Behrendt
Client: U.S. Department of Education
Dates: October 1 2009 - September 30, 2014
Funding from the Teacher Quality Partnership (TQP) grant, will enable Wichita State University (WSU) and its Local Education Agency (LEA) Wichita Public Schools (WPS) and partners (i.e., The Opportunity Project (TOP), and Rainbows United) to provide high quality, integrative, comprehensive, preparation for urban education. The grant will transform, through the creation of the Urban Teacher Preparation Program (UTPP), elementary and secondary preparation and offer a teacher residency program for early childhood special education. The core curriculum for all levels of concentration will focus on urban education and diverse student needs, paying close attention to the literacy skills of the students in these high-need schools. Teacher candidates can then select an area of concentration or degree level, as applicable, based on their desired Kansas teacher licensure. At the pre-baccalaureate level, these areas include Elementary Education or Secondary Education. At the graduate level, there will be a Birth-Kindergarten Teacher Residency program, resulting in a master €™s degree and licensure in early childhood special education.
The UTPP program is based on the premise of close alignment of theory and practice and will incorporate the instruction and use of empirically-supported practices. Field experiences will occur throughout the program and be tightly aligned with course content.
Candidates in the program will be rigorously selected and intentionally matched with a well-qualified classroom teacher, serving as a mentor. An additional facet of the UTPP program is the close working relationship among WSU, WPS, TOP, and Rainbows United. Specifically, these partnering agencies will collaborate on the design and implementation of the UTPP program, including the curriculum, implementation, and evaluation/assessment of the program €™s effectiveness.
Recruitment efforts for teacher candidates will focus on individuals from under-represented populations and mid-career change professionals. The grant will focus on activities to retain graduates of these programs in the teaching profession.
WSU - Urban Teacher Preparation Program
Grant Head: Dr. Daniel Bergman
Client: Kansas Parent Information Resource Center (KPIRC)
Dates: September 1 2009 - January 15, 2010
This grant is to support improvement in inclusion of content and family members as co-teachers in CI 431C elementary Seminar CI 423 Instructional Strategies Assessment and Management and CI 424 Secondary Education Practicum to integrate urban education and meeting the needs of diverse learners.
Project ALIVE (All-State Low Incidence Virtual Endorsement; formerly Project LIFE)
Grant Head: Dr. Linda Mitchell (Mary Morningstar, Earle Knowlton, Co-Pi's KU)
Client: Department of Education - Office of Special Education Programs (DOE-OSEP)
Dates: July 1, 2009 - June 30, 2013
The goal of Project ALIVE (All-State Low Incidence Virtural Endorsement) is to bridge the gap in qualified teachers serving students with the most significant disabilities in Kansas. KU will do this by working in collaboration with the Low Incidence Consortium, supported by the KSDE State Personnel Development Grant, Wichita State University, and other institutions of higher education (IHEs) offering functional endorsements, as well as appropriate statewide support mechanisms for serving this population of students in preparing and supporting a satisfactory supply of teachers with the Kansas functional special education endorsement in targeted areas of need across the state of Kansas. The end result of this effort will be the development of a single point of entry for a functional special education endorsement that will be coordinated and taught across all IHEs responsible for functional endorsement programs. The primary mechanism for this effort will be the utilization of eLearning distance education strategies including online synchronous and asynchronous course instruction, interactive video conferencing for practicum supervision, and Web2.0 methodologies for instruction. The enabling objectives of Project ALIVE include:
1. Align existing coursework across IHEs to transform standards-based course content into an eLearning delivery format, and ensure its accessibility throughout the state of Kansas.
2. Develop and implement strategies to align and coordinate KSDE, Regents, and IHE policies regarding teacher preparation and teacher licensure/endorsement
3. Develop appropriate accreditation/program approval, and student matriculation procedures.
4. Use existing regional and statewide resources, conduct geographically-targeted recruitment new provisional functional endorsement students each year, and support their (a) online training, (b) employment in positions for which they are trained, and (c) induction into the profession.
AIMS to Inquiry - USD 259/WSU Partnership for enhancing science instruction
Grant Head: Dr. Daniel Bergman, Mary Robillard
Client: Boeing
Dates: July 1, 2009 - June 30, 2010
Mary Robillard and Daniel Bergman of WSU are coordinating supplemental training session for elementary and middle-level science teachers. These workshop will follow the teachers formal training and introduction to the AIMS (Activities Integrating Math & Science) curriculum and materials recently adopted by the district. The supplemental workshops are necessary in order to motivate and provide teachers with relevant information and practical methods for effectively incorporating the AIMS curriculum into the science instruction, especially including inquiry-based strategies. Followng the fall inservice training during the district staff development days teahers will be invited to particiapte in extended training at WSU during June for two-days of emersion into Inquiry hand-on science. The second event two-day elementary or middle school teacher inservice planned for the summer 2010, available for optional enrollment by teachers who can receive a stipend and/or graduate (or continuing) credit for participation and post-workshop contributions.
Kansas Writing Project Coalition
Grant Head: Dr. Shirley Lefever-Davis
Client: National Writing Project
Dates: July 1, 2009 - June 30, 2010
The focus for this state and regional writing mini-grant project is to provide flyers, promotional materials, website support and travel to support the state writing project during the 2009-2010 school year. Six teachers will receive $500 scholarships in support of their participation.
Development of a Comprehensive Assessment System for Spanish-speaking English-language Learners' Early Literacy Skills
Grant Head: Dr. Christopher Lonigan (Florida State University) and Dr. Kim McDowell
Client: Institute of Education Science (IES)
Dates: February 1, 2009-December 31, 2013
The goals of the proposed project are to develop and validate both a comprehensive assessment instrument and a screening measure for Spanish-speaking ELL preschool children's earlky literacy skills, and to conduct initial development work for a set of measures that can be used by early childhood educators to monitor the progress of Spanish-speaking ELL preschool children's early literacy skills. This measure, the Spanish Preschool Early Literacy Assessment will provide a comprehensive assessment of the key domains of early literacy. In this project, development of the screening and progress monitoring measures is dependent on development of the SPELA, given that there are currently no comprehensive measures available for Spanish-speaking ELL preschool children. The development work will be guided by our prior experiences developing comprehensive and screening measures for English-speaking preschoolers as well as our initial development work on measures to assess Spanish-speaking ELL preschools. A primary design goal of these measures is that they will be appropriate for Spanish-speaking ELL children regardless of dialect variations and validation activities will include children whose families represent variations in Spanish language spoken in the U.S. (i.e., Mexico, South and Central America, Cuba, Puerto Rico).
School Readiness Project for Preschool Children who are Spanish-Speaking English Language Learners Grant Head: Dr. Christopher Lonigan and Dr. Kim McDowell The project will be conducted as a collaboration between educational researchers from Florida State University, the University of Southern California, Wichita State University, and other local agencies. The goals of the proposed project are to understand how curricula used in preschools can help promote the development of school readiness skills, including skills in the domains of language, early literacy, early math, and socio-emotional development, for children who are Spanish-speaking English language learners (ELL). The initial phase of the project will take place over two years of implementation (i.e, one cohort of schools will participate in Year 2). The project will involve a comparison of outcomes for children exposed to three types of early childhood curricula: (a) A business as usual group (i.e., schools that continue to employ the curriculum currently in use), (b) A standard implementation of the Literacy Express Preschool Curriculum, and (c) A modified implementation of the Literacy Express Preschool Curriculum that is adapted specifically for classrooms serving children who Spanish-speaking ELLs. As required by the funding agency, participating schools will be placed into one of these three groups on the basis of a lottery to allow casual interpretation of the results. Children who participate in the data collection for the project will be those whose parents provide informed consent for participation. Project staff will assess children's skills in school readiness domains throughout the preschool period and into kindergarten and first grade. Project staff will assess classrooms in all curriculum groups to understand how fidelity of implementation and instructional activities help the development of children's school readiness. Health Education and Leadership Project (HEAL) Grant Head: Jeremey Patterson & Barbara Andres The mission of the Health Education Leadership (HEAL) Project is to empower individuals who have serious mental illnesses to take charge of their well being through physical activity and nutrition. HEAL will provide peer and professional wellness coaching, excercise opportunities and health education, within the context of medical and mental health treatment. Of approximately 17,000 persons who struggle with symptoms of mental illness in Wichita, Kansas; over 3,000 are helped by local agencies that provide mental health services to those with low incomes. The HEAL project will impact the health of these individuals through: (a) developing curriculum to be presented to project collaborators; (b) developing a Weight Reduction Coordination Center that provides health resources and peer support for project participants and (c) developing a certification program for wellness coaches. The vision to increase overall health of people who have a serve and persistent mental illness will guide the goals, objectives, and the evaluation process of this project. Goal A: Decrease the overall rate of obesity for 400 youth and adults who have a severe mental illness. Recruit, Retrain, Retain (R3) - Teacher Expansion through Alternative Certification for High Needs Schools Project KNOTtT: Strengthening Systems Capacity Collaboratively with Kansas, Nevada, Ohio, and Texas Club LATTE Mentoring. Research is very clear regarding the role mentoring has on individuals success in both education and employment. The positive effects of mentoring are thought to be derived from the support and role modeling these relationships offer (Rhodes, Spencer, Keller, Lian, & Noam, 2006). Mentoring has been shown to be highly effective in both recruitment and retention (Jewell, 2003). The project includes a dual mentoring piece: one-on-one mentoring involving an adult with whom the participant is paired based on similar interests (this adult will come from either USD 259 or local industry partners) and a small-group mentoring component in which groups of participants are involved in a grand-round session in which a specialist from local industry partners attends the Boys and Girls Club for a quarter and serves as a resource for participants interested in exploring that particular career field. Training. The training component of the project is closely linked to the other two components. Throughout their participation, students will participate in training modules related to various career fields within the aviation and health care industries. This training will involve week-long summer institutes at WSU and the technical institute as well as quarterly residencies at various industry partners, including on-site visits, shadowing, and project-based activities. These opportunities will allow participants to more fully explore career options within these two industries. Additionally, participants are provided with the opportunity to further their training through post-secondary educational endeavors focused on aviation and health care through scholarships/tuition waivers.
South Central Kansas Writing Project (SCKWP) Specifically, the reorganization grant will: Curriculum Enhancement Initiative: Collaboration/Teaming Superlative, Inc Group Internship (extension) Grant Head: Dr. Mark Vermillion This grant is for an internship for one of our students, Patrick Sheltra, to work for the Superlative Group (the group working on the premium seating for the new downtown arena). Project Hope Toyota Family Literacy Program (TFLP) The TFLP is a national model created in Kentucky approximately 20 years ago to help high-risk families support their childs education.
Curriculum Enhancement Initiative: Family/Parent Involvement Grant Head: Dr. Shirley Lefever-Davis, Norma Bricker, Mary Krehbiel The focus for this parental involvement aspect of the UTPP seminar courses will be the National Standards for Family School Partnerships. During the fall, 2008 semester the curriculum will include an emphasis on: Standard I- Welcoming all families into the school community; Standard II-communicating effectively; and Standard III- Supporting student success. The seminar will be co-taught by the WSU UTPP Liaison and the WPS UTPP Liason. The WSU UTPP Liaison is currently a trainer for the Wichita Public Schools for their Parent Involvement Site Contacts. The Identification of Minority Learners in Public Schools Grant Head: Dr. Gwendolyn F. Mukes, John Williams African American and Hispanic learners are grossly under-represented in gifted education in public schools (Davis & Rimm, 1998). Therefore, this pilot research study seeks to further examine teachers levels of awareness of gifted qualities in minority learners of color. The specific objectives of the study will describe in the aggregate: Grant Head: Dr. Mark Vermillion & Dr. Jeff Noble This grant is for an internship for one of our students, Jonathan Stimmel, to work for the Superlative, Inc Group (the group working on the premium seating for the new downtown arena). The original start date of this grant was the spring semester of 2008, progressed through the summer, and will finish at the end of this fall (2008) semester. Preparing professionals to educate students with exceptionalities in general education programs: A collaborative project of WSU and community partners Grant Head: Dr. Frances Clark This grant is through OSEP federally to states, then from states to universities with approved special education programs. This grant is used to support knowledge and skills both in our general teacher ed programs and within our special ed programs particularly thinking about inclusion strategies. Grant Head: Dr. Kim McDowell The projects specific aims are to: The project is directly related to clinical practice. If children with functional phonological delays are slower to learn phonologically similar words (Storkel, 2004), they may be at risk for later phonological awareness difficulties. This current study has the potential to provide clinical and therapy direction for targeting vocabulary skills but also foster growth in phonological awareness. The results of this study will provide researchers and practitioners with information regarding the impact vocabulary instruction has on the emergence of phonological awareness. Transition to College Comparing the Effects of Classroom Audio and Video Recording on Preservice Teachers' Self-Evaluations
Client: National Institute of Child Health and Development
Dates: February 1, 2009-December 31, 2013
Client: Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Breakthrough Club of Sedgwick County
Dates: August 2008-September 2011
Goal B: Increase the capacity within the primary mental health care system to support people with severe mental illness.
Grant Head: Dr. Judith Hayes
Client: U.S. Department of Education - Transition to Teaching
Dates: October 2006-September 2011
Through a collaborative partnership expansion between Wichita State University, the Wichita Public Schools and select high need districts, the R3 TEACH Program has been developed in response to secondary teacher education shortages. Candidates in this alternative licensure program have the potential to:
This is an expansion of an existing program designed to recruit, retrain, and retain qualified candidates in secondary teaching positions.
Grant Head: Dr. Judith Hayes
Client: U.S. Department of Education (Ohio State University) Transition to Teaching
Dates: October 2007-September 2012
Project KNOTtT is a federally funded Transition to Teaching (TtT) partnership designed to support recruitment, selection, training, coaching, and mentoring to retain teachers in high need, hard to staff school districts. This five year project serves 545 new teachers pursuing nontraditional routes to certification in four states: Kansas, Nevada, Ohio, and Texas. Led by The Ohio State University, these four states will collaborate with national partners to knot together three strategic strands of support for alternative certification programs:
National partners include the National Association of Alternative Certification, Association of Teacher Educators, Youth Policy Institute, and The Thomas B. Fordham Institute. Ohio State University services as the lead institution on this national grant.
Grant Head: Dr. Kim McDowell
Client: John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
Dates: January 2008-December 2013
The project incorporates the three core components reported in the research to be essential to a successful school-to-work program targeting the aviation and health care industries: education, mentoring, training. Education. Given that this project simultaneously targets the needs of two constituents, it must focus not only on the skills future employees of aviation and/or health care need, but must also focus on the educational needs of the youth served by the Boys and Girls Club of South Central KS. Therefore, the education component of the project focuses on tutoring and enrichment activities in the curricular areas of reading, math, science, and technology. The project provides for trained tutors who will follow KSDEs educational standards in the targeted curricular areas. Additionally, the proposed project allows for support into post-secondary education through the provision of scholarships/tuition waivers to participants to attend WATC, a community college partner, or WSU to receive education related to the targeted fields. Finally, the project has partnered with Kansas Career Pipeline (KCP), which provides an internet based interest survey and skill set survey so that potential career paths within aviation and healthcare can be readily identified by participants.
Grant Head: Sheril Logan
Client: Kansas Board of Regents
Dates: July 2007-June 2010
Wichita State University has partnered with Wichita Public Schools to increase the number of teachers prepared to teach in this underserved geographic area. There must be comprehensive multiple-strand approach with programs developed that extend over time to help to solve the teacher shortage. The Wichita State University proposal contains four different strands.
Each strand is focused on increasing available teachers in a relatively short time span and once fully implemented will continue to produce more teachers every year. Each of the strands will produce teachers at different points in time. This is intentional because our goal is to increase the teacher education pool of available students for not just one year but for the future as well. The grant funding for years 2 and 3 of the grant will be used to further enhance and strengthen each strand of the proposal.
Grant Head: Dr. Shirley Lefever-Davis
Client: National Writing Project (NWP)
Dates: July 2008-June 2010
The South Central Kansas Writing Project (SCKWP) is affiliated with the National Writing Project (NWP) whose mission is to promote the teaching of writing in todays schools by developing teachers writing skills. The SCKWP chapter of NWP began in 2000 with a summer institute at WSU where teachers from surrounding school districts met each day to write and learn about effective methods for teaching writing in their classrooms. In order to stay dynamic and meet the goals of the NWP the current SCKWP grant is a reorganization grant. The purpose of the grant is to develop an action plan that will address core issues of the NWP of writing, continuity and professional development.
These goals will be accomplished in two primary ways-- through an advanced invitational leadership institute where a study group will be formed and a focus for further reading and investigation will be formulated. The team will also visit other WP sites in Missouri and Kansas to learn about practices that have proven beneficial at those locations. The end result of the reorganization grant will be a stronger, more focused SCKWP more able to address the writing needs of students in South Central Kansas.
Recent Grant Awards for College of Education
Grant Head: Dr. Linda Mitchell
Client: Kansas Parent Information Resource Center (KPIRC)
Dates: September 2008-August 2009
Amount: $3,500
This grant is to support improvement in inclusion of content and family members as co-teachers in CI 611 Collaboration/Teaming: Families, Professionals and Community Members.
Client: Superlative, Inc Group
Dates: February 2009-May 2009
Amount: $4,000
Grant Head: Dr. Kim McDowell
Client: Cargill Cares Foundation
Dates: June 2008-May 2009
Amount: $20,000
Project HOPE has as its focus, three specific aims that serve as guiding questions:
Through systematic nutrition education, entrepreneurial activities, and mentoring, students attending the Boys and Girls Club in grades K-3 will develop life-long health and nutrition habits.
Grant Head: Dr. Brad M. Uhing
Client: National Center for Family Literacy via the Toyota Corporation
Dates: August 2006-June 2009
Amount: $600,000
The Toyota Family Literacy Program (TFLP) is a four-component model designed to improve childrens academic skills by increasing their parents participation in the school process. TFLP participants include Hispanic parents of children in grades kindergarten through third grade who primarily speak English as a Second Language (ESL). The TFLP offers a variety of essential skills designed to help parents engage in their childrens education, including:
Client: The Kansas Parent Information Resource Center (KPRIC)
Dates: September 1, 2008-January 15, 2009
Amount: $3,440
Client: WSU Office of Research
Dates: February 2008-January 2009
Amount: $4,200
Participants will include teachers from eleven schools from two Midwest school districts. Participants will be given a 25- item survey. The researcher will actively seek during the 2008-2009 school year, a national or state agency that would be interested in furthering the researchs findings.
Superlative, Inc Group Internship (see above for extension)
Client: Superlative, Inc Group
Dates: January 2008-December 2008
Amount: $17,000
Client: Kansas Department of Education
Dates: September 2006-December 2008
Amount: $69,000
Lexical properties, speech sound accuracy, and vocabulary: Potential impact on phonological awareness
Client: American Speech Language Hearing Foundation
Dates: December 2007-November 2008
Amount: $5,000
Two participant groups (n=50 total) were matched in age and were differentiated in terms of speech sound accuracy. Participants completed a measure of phonological awareness (elision and blending), oral language, vocabulary (receptive and expressive), speech sound accuracy measures, as well as passed a hearing screening, oral motor screening, and nonverbal intelligence. The participants participated in a word learning intervention project using study-specific storybooks with targeted stimuli words embedded within the narrative, balanced for density and probability and will receive multiple exposures per session. Analyses include multiple regression analyses to determine if vocabulary and speech sound accuracy predict phonological awareness and to determine if phonological awareness and speech sound accuracy predict vocabulary in this sample. Secondly, to examine group differences, a 2 (group-typical vs. those with functional phonological delays) x 2 Phonotactic Probability (common vs. rare) x 2 Density (dense vs. sparse) mixed ANOVA, correcting for sphericity and adjusting for Type 1 error (e.g., Geiser-Greenhouse correction). Finally, multiple regression analyses will be used with density and probability as predictor variables and phonological awareness as the outcome variable.
Improving Comprehension: The Event-Indexing Model
Grant Head: Dr. Catherine M. Bohn-Gettler
Client: WSU Office of Research
Dates: January 2008-June 2008
Amount: $4,500
When reading narratives, adults pay attention to specific dimensions specified by the Event-Indexing Model: Time, space, characters, goals, and causation. Shifts in any of these dimensions, such as an hour passing between events, affect both moment-by-moment reading and memory. Although the Event-Indexing Model is considered a dominant model in the field of text comprehension with regard to what good readers pay attention to, such studies only examine the data of readers who successfully answer simple comprehension questions. They do not examine the quality of their understanding of texts. This study seeks to establish whether paying attention to the dimensions specified by the Event-Indexing Model actually results in a higher quality understanding of the text. This will be accomplished by measuring reading times, assessing retellings, and examining interactions with cognitive variables such as working memory and comprehension skill. The results from this study could have important theoretical and practical implications. Theoretically, it could specify a clearer connection between what readers pay attention to and whether this is even important for successful comprehension. Practically, it might lead to the development of interventions for struggling readers that would help them pay attention to the information that will actually improve their comprehension.
Grant Head: Dr. Anh Tran
Client: WSU Office of Research
Dates: May 2007-December 2007
Amount: $2,500
The objective of this research project is to detect difficulties that English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) students may encounter in their transition to college, including college readiness and college cultural adaptation in the first semester. Fifty ESOL high-school seniors from an urban high school will:
The data collected from the focus group discussion questions (#4) conducted in the follow-up meeting for the first semester will be used to interpret achievements and difficulties the students experienced as freshmen. The research findings will be used as evidence to promote two ultimate goals: (1) to discuss an efficient program that helps future ESOL graduates from the school district be ready for college, and (2) to suggest strategies that assist ESOL freshmen to overcome difficulties in order to pursue successfully their postsecondary education.
Grant Head: Dr. Daniel J. Bergman
Client: WSU Office of Research
Dates: October 2007-September 2008
Amount: $4,486
The purpose of this study is to differentiate the effects of audio and video self-taping on pre-service teachers self-evaluations of classroom instruction. Participants include those enrolled in the general methods course for secondary educators and its school-based fieldwork counterpart. The two general methods sections met during the spring semester, allowing for two groups of participants. The audio group used audio-recorders during their fieldwork experiences to monitor their classroom teaching; the video group used video-recording equipment for their fieldwork experiences. Data indicates multiple findings about the impact of recording in general as well as results specific to each format. Analysis includes summaries of all participants and comparisons between the audio and video groups. Participants generally do not behave differently whether they are video- or audio-recording themselves. In their self-evaluations, participants in the audio group more frequently addressed questions and responses, praise, and wait-time; while those in the video group gave more attention to non-verbal behaviors such as facial expressions and gestures. Both groups focused more on the role of curriculum over instruction, and annoying mannerisms were the most frequently identified teacher behavior of among participants. Participants identified self-improvement as the primary reason for recording their teaching, yet cited time constraints, embarrassment, and distractions as reasons why they would not record themselves. Implications for research, teaching, and teacher education are discussed, including methods for enhancing and increasing the habit of teacher recording and self-reflection.