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SOE Grad Students Present Action Research at CSOTTE [01/20/2016]

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SOE graduate students (l-r) Shannon King, Mollie Musgrove and Jordan Barlow

Three Baylor graduate students presented research posters in the “Emerging Scholars Track” at the annual conference of the Consortium of State Organizations for Texas Teacher Education (CSOTTE) in the fall.

CSOTTE-Jordan-blog-325Jordan Barlow, Shannon King and Mollie Musgrove attended the 2015 conference and presented the in-classroom action research that they had conducted while School of Education seniors serving as teaching interns. Barlow and King are master’s candidates in the Department of Educational Psychology, and Musgrove is a master’s candidate in the Department of Curriculum & Instruction.

Barlow, who earned her BSEd in elementary education, conducted research in five sixth-grade science classes, exploring the best avenues for teaching science vocabulary words and whether allowing students a choice in their learning activities would make a difference.

She found that students who created vocabulary booklets demonstrated the greatest learning gains. Barlow conducted her research at Waco ISD’s Atlas Academy, a gifted and talented program within Tennyson Middle School.

CSOTTE-Shannon-blog-325King, also a 2015 elementary education graduate, researched the awareness of passion and interests in gifted and talented students through a project at Midway ISD’s Woodgate Intermediate School.

After conducting a pre-assessment, King’s first and second graders spent three weeks charting their emotions while participating in various school activities. Then, King measured whether their interest surveys had become more descriptive, specific and elaborate. She found that once students were aware of their likes and dislikes, they were better able to understand their interests and passions.

CSOTTE-Molly-blog-325Musgrove, an elementary education graduate who did her internship at Atlas Academy in Waco ISD, researched the impact of vocabulary study on mathematics understanding in sixth graders.

In a pre-assessment of mathematical vocabulary terms, Musgrove found that students were familiar with 40 percent of the terms she tested, but could only use a few of the words in context to solve a problem. After two weeks of a daily 7- to 10-minute math vocabulary lesson, a majority of the students showed mastery of the content, and all students showed some increase in comprehension.

The CSOTTE conference was in the Dallas area on Oct. 25-27, 2015. The master’s students also had the opportunity to attend the various conference sessions presented by university faculty and classroom teachers.

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