Theses and Dissertations at Montana State University (MSU)
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Item Leadership and science achievement of afterschool students(Montana State University - Bozeman, Graduate School, 2016) Robinson, Jordan Ailsa; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Peggy Taylor.Adolescents are driven by interactions with their peers. Social pressures can have heavy impacts on a student's academic motivation and achievement, and social development. In order to provide a space to work on having productive peer interactions, I designed a classroom research project that incorporated leadership initiatives into the enrichment activities at Teton Afterschool. Leadership initiatives used were teambuilding activities and group discussions and debriefs. Students participated in one science unit without leadership initiatives, followed by a unit where each lesson began with a teambuilder. The focus question for this project was: What are the effects of introduction leadership initiatives into enrichment time of Teton Afterschool? Data collected showed statistically significant improvements in science content quizzes and self-reported leadership confidence surveys between units. There was also a decrease in the number of disciplinary actions that had to be taken by staff during the leadership unit. Student interviews described a range of attitudes about leadership, and mainly positive attitudes about science lessons and Teton Afterschool in general. These results show that the inclusion of teambuilding in programs for upper elementary and middle school students has potentially very positive effects.Item What are the effects of science outreach by college students with elementary school children?(Montana State University - Bozeman, Graduate School, 2011) Knutson-Person, JoDean Lynn; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Peggy Taylor.This project focused on developing a service learning group of college students to do science outreach with elementary students as a win-win opportunity to increase the content knowledge of all the students involved, give the college students the opportunity to empower the elementary students, and fulfill some of the needs of the college awareness program at an elementary school. Analysis of this project was completed using results from pre- and post-outreach experience questionnaires as a way to establish demographic information of the participants, get comparative awareness and interest of college and science information, and find some common points to make connections between the groups of students. Questionnaires were also used for the classroom teachers to understand how outreach benefited their classroom. Journals were utilized with college students as well as wrap-up meetings after each outreach experience in order to document personal experiences both as a mentor as well as students growing in their own content mastery. I also kept notes of the experience from my viewpoint.