Bagwell College of Education

Explore the innovative research projects at Bagwell College, where scholars investigate critical topics impacting education today. From understanding grief experiences among undergraduate students to examining childhood representations in children's picture books, and supporting Latinx pre-service teachers, these projects aim to address pressing issues in educational leadership, early childhood education, and STEM integration. Learn more about these projects, their goals, and how they contribute to enhancing student success and teacher preparedness.

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Educational Leadership (Debalina Maitra)

Disrupted Pathways: The Affirmative Action Ban and FAFSA Glitch's Impact on Multi-Marginalized Students

  • In the year of 2023 the Supreme Court struck down race-conscious affirmative action in college admissions programs, stating race will not be a factor for higher ed institutions to look for new ways to achieve diverse student bodies. Race-blind admissions policies will further exacerbate the existing inequalities and challenges that Black, Hispanic, and Native American students encounter throughout the admissions process and college experiences, specially in STEM disciplines. By ignoring the significance of race, the recruitment and retention approach will only  risk creating a wider divide of equal opportunities for the communities of color. However, most institutions do not declare the consideration of race in their admission process as per a report by (Reuters, 2023).

    Now the decision of banning affirmative action would force colleges and universities to revisit their policies and implement new recruitment plans that are color blind. Also, we are at the intersection of growing anti-DEI narratives, amid the 2024 presidential election and the FAFSA issues that have impacted millions of families in the US, specially from those with marginalized backgrounds. Also, FAFSA delays posed significantly more challenges to the immigrant families without Social Security. As per a report from Diver Education by Herder, (2024) these interruptions are already having a negative impact on the students who need financial aid the most: first generation students, students of color, and those from low-income backgrounds.

    The result of all the FAFSA related chaos could be a diminished impact on freshman class entering postsecondary education in fall 2024 and a continued racial gap in educational achievement. To exactly understand the impact of FAFSA delay and ban of affirmative action on marginalized communities we ask the following questions for this study are-How do interplay of affirmative action removal and FAFSA issue impact experiences of undergraduate multi-marginalized students in STEM? Did it result in fewer students of color and/ first gen students in KSU in STEM ?  What are the Implications of policy change and process mishaps on students of color? This study will embrace a mixed methods approach. We will send out survey, analyze publicly available enrollment data and finally interview 15 undergraduate students from STEM. This study will directly inform us of the impact of affirmative action ban and FAFSA delays on the college plan and changed career trajectories of marginalized groups in the STEM disciplines for the class of 2024 (intended freshmen students for 2024).

  • The student will learn basic research skills like literature review, assisting the PI with Institutional Review Board approval process involving human subjects, assisting to form survey and interview questions, interview techniques and finally data analysis and dissemination. Hopefully, after this work student will be interested towards taking education and other social science discipline for their further inquiry. This work will also serve for the student to consider graduate school. 
    • First 2 weeks- conducting literature review
    • Next 4 weeks- IRB approval documentation , constructing a survey instrument and preparing interview protocol
    • In November/December- Interviews 
    • January- Coordinating with the participants for gift cards and learning data analysis 
    • Feb, March and April- Data Analysis
  • Hybrid
  • Dr. Debalina Maitra, dmaitra1@kennesaw.edu

Educational Leadership (Michael Ota)

Student Liaisons for Autism: Using College Students in Bridging the Communication Gap

  • This action research will pair Kennesaw undergraduate students with autism together with a research student who will act as a liaison and resource for supports. Student researchers will address behavioral and social issues for college students, acting as a liaison between peers or professors due to miscommunication, mentor executive functioning skills, and keep tabs on socialization and balanced living. If these skills/issues are not addressed, it will lead to mental health issues, early dropout, and under/unemployment. Protocols for single-case research design with pre- and post-interaction will be used and an article for publication will be prepared and/or presented at a national conference. Student researchers will also be fully trained by the principal investigator, who is a board certified behavior analyst, and receive certification as a registered behavior technician.        

    Excellent candidates, but not limited, will have interested in special education, experience in peer mentoring, and lots of patience.

  • Research students will learn the action research framework, collection of data through standardized assessments, and methodology of single-case design, which includes regression analysis, visual analysis, and holistic discussion of results. We will also use the frameworks of Black Storytelling by Toliver where researchers are part of the data, fully disclosing positionality, but not divorcing themselves from the data and results. Finally, students will earned certification and an introduction in behavior analysis, which is a growing field in education (e.g., PBS) and special education making future employment marketable. 
  • Once they have been fully trained and matched, student researchers will meet with their mentee at least once a week to go over organization and task achievement and track daily the mentee’s progress digitally. They will also touch base with the mentee on how socialization and balance of life is progressing, and they will be available to talk through and even meet with peers/professors when there is a miscommunication/misunderstanding. The actual data collection should last one semester in the spring, and then writing of the article and/or presentation creation would be over the summer and/or fall of the following year.
  • Hybrid
  • Dr. Michael Ota, mota1@kennesaw.edu

Elementary and Early Childhood Education (Paula Guerra and Sanjuana Rodriguez):

Maestr@s of Tomorrow: Supporting Latinx Pre-Service Teachers  

  • The purpose of this study is to learn about ways to support Latinx pre-service teachers as they progress through teacher education programs. This study examines how the pláticas (informal conversations) improve student success in the college of education. These pláticas are held monthly with Latinx students in the College of Education.   Research shows retaining Latinx teachers improves youth outcomes for PK-12 students (Figlio, 2017). In this study, we center the voices of Latinx pre-service teachers (PSTs) in addressing their experiences during their teacher preparation program and also explore how pláticas create collective knowledge in the group that serves to support them in a teacher preparation program and when they start their teaching careers. 

    The research questions guiding this study are:

    •  How does the pláticas project support students during their teacher preparation program?  
    • How does the pláticas project support increasing the enrollment, retention, and graduation of Latinx teachers?
    • What critiques of structures, practices, and policies in teacher education programs do Latinx PSTs construct through their pláticas? 
    • The student will be able to collect data for the research study.
    • The student will be able to organize data for the research study.
    • The student will be able to attend meetings for data collection purposes. 

  • The student will meet with faculty once a week to check in about weekly goals.

    The student will be expected to engage in data collection (attend monthly meetings) and organize data from those meetings (with assistance from faculty and GRAs).

  • Hybrid

  • Dr. Paula Guerra, pguerra2@kennesaw.edu

    Dr, Sanjuana Rodriguez, srodri51@kennesaw.edu

Elementary and Early Childhood Education (Jin Kim)

Family Dynamics in Asian American Children Books 

  • The purpose of this study is to examine how family dynamics are portrayed in Asian American children’s books. Since the family is a central unit for children, many picture books depict the family as a core aspect of the child protagonists’ lives. While there is an increasing number of children’s books addressing Asian American children and their families, there is not enough still. In particular, there is a need to closely analyze how Asian American families are portrayed in these books. 

    Through diverse theoretical lenses, this study explores who constitutes the family and the roles they play for child protagonists, with a focus on gender, social class, and specific other factors. Additionally, this study examines how children are situated within the diverse family dynamics portrayed in Asian American children’s books. 

    • Students will learn how to collect data.
    • Students will learn how to analyze, organize, and interpret data.
    • Students will present their research/creative activity to conferences
  • 1. Attend weekly meetings (hybrid) 
    2. Collect data (search for the list of children's picture books under each topic)
    3. Analyze data (finding patterns/themes for analysis, interpreting and synthesizing codes
    4. Participate in literature review 
  • Hybrid
  • Dr. Jin Kim, jkim224@kennesaw.edu 

Elementary and Early Childhood Education (Marrielle Myers)

A Light for Our Path: Using the Black Teacher Archive to Unpack Excellence & Articulate Change in Educational Practice

  • As America's classrooms become more diverse, the teaching population remains essentially unchanged. Data from a 2021 study by The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) reported that over 80% of public school teachers are white. This is in stark contrast to the K-12 student population, where over 50% of students identify as Black, Latinx, Asian, Indigenous, or bi-racial. This mismatch in the teacher and student population has persisted for several decades, and research indicates the need for change to ensure that students from historically marginalized groups experience academic and social success. For example, Black students taught by Black teachers are more likely to be placed in gifted classes (Barshay, 2016), less likely to be suspended from school (Lindsay et al., 2017), and experience deeper teacher-parent-community relationships (Gomez et al., 2008). Several studies have reported that teachers who are Black, Indigenous, and people of Color (BIPOC) consistently show increased learning gains for all students, regardless of the students' racial identities (Brayboy & Maugh, 2009; Gist & Bristol, 2022; Howard, 2003; Klopfenstein, 2005; Marin & Bang, 2015; Pham, 2019; Santoro et al., 2011). These findings make us curious about why these teachers experience success, particularly the well-documented impact of Black teachers.

    This project presents a unique partnership opportunity for an undergraduate scholar to work with a KSU faculty member and The Black Teacher Archive Project (BTAP) at Harvard University. This archive, which boasts over 50,000 resources from Colored Teachers' Associations (CTAs), "makes public the intellectual, political, and cultural contributions of Black educators during the Jim Crow era through the Civil Rights era."

    Undergraduate scholars matched with this project will engage with the following research questions:

    1. How does the Black Teacher Archive support understanding of educational practices from the Jim Crow era through the Civil Rights era?
    2. How does the work of Colored Teachers' Associations align with current Black-focused educational reform (e.g., Black Lives Matter at Schools Week, The Black Teacher Project)?
    3. How can we draw upon the Ghanaian (Akan) principle of Sankofa in using the Black Teacher Archive to understand the current educational landscape?
    4. How can we draw upon what we learn from questions one through three to support current and future educators in developing an identity of advocacy and excellence?

    The research team will collectively study primary documents research in the Black Teacher Archive to answer these questions. 

    1. Students will learn to conduct research on primary sources using a digital archive.
    2. Students will learn to organize data, look for themes, and raise questions using a notice/wonder protocol.
    3. Students will learn critical competencies, including problem-solving, cooperative learning, academic writing, and digital literacy.
    4. Students will learn to write and submit conference proposals.
    5. Students will learn to design and deliver local and state-level conference presentations.

  • Weekly duties include:

    1. Conducting independent research in the Black Teacher Archive
    2. Saving and organizing findings
    3. Recording keywords in a shared research file
    4. Participating in meetings with the project leader
    5. Completing a research log and structured reflections
    6. Preparing conference proposals and presentations
  • Hybrid
  • Dr. Marrielle Myers, mmyers22@kennesaw.edu

Elementary and Early Childhood Education (Roberta Gardner)

Stories about Reading in Schools and What they can tell Educators about Teaching Reading

  • Aliteracy is a phenomenon in which a person is unwilling or not interested in reading despite being able to do so. Teachers and researchers need to understand why some students choose not to read and what their schooling experiences as readers were like. What stories do you have about reading and learning to read. How have your schooling experiences shaped your motivation to read?

    We will explore aliteracy as a phenomenon and how schooling experiences influence it. Over the course of this research, children’s and young adult literature will be read and serve as prompts to inspire narratives about your experiences about reading and learning to read in schools

    • Participants will learn how to analyze books for critical exploration and code for thematic topics.
    • Participants will develop skills for advocating for reading to support a variety of readers.
    • Participants will analyze narratives and learn how narrative inquiry and phenomenology serve as data and methodology.
    • Participants will reflect about ways to inform reading education practices and text selection in schools.
    • Participants will read children's and young adult literature weekly
    • Participants will engage in response to literature using online discussion boards, and audio responses.
    • Participants will tell stories about their experiences reading in schools, including learning to read.
  • Hybrid
  • Dr. Roberta Gardner, rgardn21@kennesaw.edu

Secondary and Middle Grades Education (Johari Harris)

Examining Impacts of a Developmentally-Appropriate Middle School Anti-Bias Curriculum on Teachers and Students  

  • A central aim of K-12 education is to develop students into justice-oriented citizens who actively participate in democracy to improve society. Middle schools are well positioned to develop students into justice-orientated citizens due to early adolescents' rapidly growing social-emotional and cognitive skills. Not only are middle school students more connected to social issues that surround them, but they also have the abstract thinking skills to think of innovative solutions to solve pressing problems. 

    Over the past 2 years, Albemarle County Public Schools (ACPS), located in central Virginia, has implemented a developmentally appropriate anti-bias curriculum for all middle school students. The various lessons and activities are framed by stage-environment fit theory which moves across ecological levels (from classroom to school to district to community) when trying to understand students' experiences and outcomes. Central to stage environment fit theory is the understanding that students have 3 core developmental needs that must be met for students to feel successful in schools:  to feel connected, to feel like they have agency, and to feel competent. Teacher practices and curricular materials are often central to students’ feelings (Roeser & Eccles, 1999). Therefore, the lessons and activities for ACPS anti-bias curriculum were created to meet students’ developmental needs as outlined by stage-environment fir theory. Activities for students include identity-focused autoethnography, journey boxes, and youth participatory action research activities. The activities vary by grade level and are in line with middle school students’ developmental capacities. 

    As this work moves into its 3rd year, there are two strands of research related to the project. First, teachers and students participated in interviews and focus groups during the 2023-2024 school year about their experiences with the curriculum. There are three data sources to analyze from this work: student surveys, focus groups, interview transcripts, and student work. First Year scholars have the opportunity to analyze collected data and prepare findings for dissemination (conference, publication, etc.). The second strand of research is related to ongoing research for the project. During the 2024-2025 school year, teachers and students will again participate in interviews and focus groups, as well as complete questionnaires related to this work. First-year scholars will have the opportunity to lead interviews with participants (upon completion of CITI training) as well as analyze incoming survey data. Ultimately, with this ongoing study, first-year scholars can experience and participate in various parts of the research process. 

  • Through participating in this research study, first year scholars will be able to: 

    • Define the terminology associated with research and theory in their field
    • Conduct qualitative and quantitative research 
    • Develop questions for qualitative research
    • Lead participant interviews
    • Analyze survey data
    • Analyze, synthesize, organize, and interpret data from different data sources
    • Work effectively as part of a team
    • Write a research paper and conference proposal 
    • Present their research/creative activity to an audience (e.g., poster, oral presentation, performance, display)
  • Fall 2024
    • Stage 1 (1 month)
      • Learn processes for coding qualitative and quantitative psychological data
      • Reviewing relevant literature related to developmental science and early adolescence
      • Practice coding data
      • Learn how to conduct interviews and focus groups
    • Stage 2 (2-3 months)
      • Code and analyze qualitative data
      • Interviews, focus groups
      • Student work samples
      • Observation notes
      • Develop conference proposal

    Spring 2025

    • Stage 3 (3-4 months)
      • Begin draft for publication outlining pilot data
      • Conduct interviews and/or focus groups for ongoing study
      • Present research findings
  • Online
  • Dr. Johari Harris, jharr694@kennesaw.edu