Education Article Assignment
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Dissertation Reviews
Brunarious McKever Sr.
Liberty University
EDUC798_B02_202640
Dr. Jillian Wendt
September, 13,2026
Dissertation Reviews
Review 1: Maintaining Elementary Student Engagement and Motivation During STEM Activities
Summary
Christopher Feiler's (2025) dissertation, titled Maintaining Elementary Student Engagement and Motivation During STEM Activities: A Phenomenology, examined how elementary teachers sustain student engagement during STEM activities. The study focused on an ongoing issue in early STEM education: teachers have a difficult time finding a balance between developmentally appropriate content and strategies that will sustain students' motivation over time. Feiler (2025) pointed out that previous studies have not definitively identified exactly how elementary teachers maintain enthusiasm during the “cool down” phase of an activity. The aim of this study was to capture the lived experiences of 10 elementary STEM teachers from the United States as they tried to keep their students engaged and motivated in their classrooms. Feiler (2025) sought to create practical insights that would be useful to both classroom practice and teacher preparation programs by focusing on teachers' voices.
The study was based on Bandura's (1977) self-efficacy theory, which states that people's self-efficacy determines their effort, persistence, and performance. In the context of teaching, this model posited that teachers' self-efficacy in teaching STEM content would directly affect their teaching decisions, which would either support or hinder student motivation. Constructivist theory and self-determination theory were also used to provide a rationale for the importance of autonomy, hands-on exploration, and real-life applications to young learners, as explained by Feiler (2025). This was a combination of frameworks which enabled the researcher to relate teacher self-efficacy with classroom engagement strategies, instead of separating these two.
Feiler (2025) adopted a hermeneutic phenomenological design, a qualitative method that is appropriate for capturing the deep, interpreted meaning that teachers give to their own experiences. Three complementary research tools were used to gather the data: individual interviews, reflective letter writing, and focus group discussions. This triangulated approach enabled the participants to talk, write and discuss their experiences with one another, thus enhancing the quality and depth of the data. Thematic analysis was then used to detect any common themes in the interviews, letters and focus group transcripts. The central research question was how elementary STEM teachers describe their experiences of promoting engagement and motivation, with three sub-questions related to strategies, professional development, and instructional ability.
Ten elementary teachers from schools in diverse geographic and demographic locations across the United States volunteered for this study. Feiler (2025) purposefully selected participants to ensure that they had direct, current experience in teaching STEM content at the elementary level. The responses were themed and each participant was introduced in the findings chapter individually in the form of a personal profile. The relatively small sample size was information rich, and in keeping with the accepted phenomenological practice of emphasizing depth of description over breadth of representation.
Analysis yielded a number of key themes: the need for student-driven, experiential STEM learning and the conflict between the need for relevance and practical concerns like time. Participants regularly cited an identified need for skills in their own STEM preparation and expressed a need for continuous, intensive, and collaborative professional development instead of one-off trainings. Feiler (2025) understood these patterns in the context of three broad concepts: teaching as adaptive engineering, engagement that is not something that just happens, and relevance as the key to maintaining engagement. The results indicated that teacher confidence, contextual support, and meaningful and authentic tasks are the factors that interact to predict the maintenance of STEM engagement throughout the school year. Feiler (2025) found that building teacher SE, structural time, and ongoing, practice-informed professional learning are all necessary to strengthen elementary STEM instruction.
Analysis of Research Quality
The combination of three different data sources (individual interviews, letter writing, and focus groups) examining the same phenomenon is one of the best things about Feiler's (2025) dissertation. This triangulation helped to validate the results as there were common themes present in each of the data collection approaches. The hermeneutic phenomenological design was also well suited to the research questions, as the study was focused on understanding lived experience and not measuring outcomes. Feiler (2025) also enhanced the study by addressing the trustworthiness criteria explicitly namely credibility, transferability, dependability and confirmability. These methodological decisions demonstrate a thoughtful and intentional attempt to achieve rigour in qualitative research, and not a shortcut or convenience-driven design.
Another strength is that the schools sampled were not just in one district or region of the country, but were from across the United States. This geographic diversity enhances the likelihood that the themes found are representative of the teaching of elementary STEM across various contexts and not a context-specific artifact. By focusing on Bandura's (1977) self-efficacy theory, the researcher provided a coherent and well-established framework to interpret teachers' self-efficacy and instructional decisions. The theoretical underpinning also allowed the findings to be linked to a wider body of educational psychology research, thus facilitating the placement of the study within the existing literature.
While these are some of the strengths of the study, the findings are not generalizable to the larger population of elementary STEM teachers due to the limited sample size of the ten teachers. It is important to note that this study does not confirm that the strategies teachers reported actually led to measurable increases in student engagement as all data were self-reported by teachers. Another potential issue is social desirability bias, as teachers may discuss their effectiveness in interviews and focus groups in a manner that is different from how they actually teach students in their classrooms. Since there is no classroom observation data, the study reflects teachers' perceptions of their practice, not the actual practice.
The voices of students themselves would have also benefited the dissertation, because engagement and motivation is experienced by the students, not by the teachers only. The authors did not provide demographic detail of the participating teachers, including years of experience and/or school socioeconomic context, which restricts more detailed subgroups analysis. Like in most phenomenological studies, the researcher's positionality was a factor in the interpretation of the data, although Feiler (2025) has taken this into consideration and has done so reflexively, there is some subjectivity in the development of the themes. The study also failed to consider whether the strategies teachers reported differed significantly from grade to grade across the elementary grades (K-5).
If doing this research, I would add a short student engagement survey to the teacher interviews to see how the teachers think and how the students think. I would also gather some basic demographic and contextual data, including years of teaching experience, school funding level, and access to STEM materials, to determine if there is any connection between these data and the themes identified. Including classroom observations (a small number) would offer a control on the self-reported data and any differences between the described and enacted practice. Twenty or twenty-five teachers organized around grade bands would allow for more meaningful comparisons and yet maintain the qualitative depth Feiler (2025) obtained. The additions would be based on the strengths of the study and not supplant the qualitative, teacher-centered approach.
Personal Analysis and Practical Application
Feiler's (2025) dissertation on reading engagement further affirmed that student engagement in STEM is not guaranteed, even with lessons that feature robotics, construction, or other materials that engage students' hands. The finding that engagement must be actively built, rather than assumed, challenged my earlier belief that hands-on activities alone are sufficient to sustain motivation. Rather, the dissertation revealed that teacher confidence, continued support, and intentional teaching decisions are what make initial excitement into sustained engagement. This lesson is personally relevant because it addresses the responsibility of engagement to instructional design and teacher preparation, not the novelty of the materials themselves.
This dissertation is directly related to my own research interest in early elementary STEM engagement because it focuses on the instructional aspect of the relationship which I have approached from the student side. While my previous work examined children's development of science identity, spatial reasoning, and confidence, Feiler (2025) shed light on the teacher actions and attitudes that enable children to achieve these outcomes to begin with. The theme of relevance as the key to maintaining motivation resonates with other elementary STEM literature that demonstrates that tasks that are authentic and real world are more important than technology for the sake of technology. Likewise, the skills gap identified by participating teachers parallels similar concerns identified in other parts of the country regarding the lack of preparation of teacher education students in STEM.
In the classroom context, the dissertation proposes that professional learning should be continuous and integrated into practice, not limited to a one-time workshop at the beginning of the year. Teachers may also wish to have dedicated time for them to work together to design STEM lessons with other teachers, as they were cited as feeling isolated when teaching STEM. Creating relevance in STEM lessons by using real-world problems, like those used in community-based scenarios in other elementary robotics research, seems to be one tangible approach to maintaining motivation. Using the results, school leaders might be able to safeguard instructional time for STEM activities and ensure that time limitations do not negatively impact well-designed lessons.
This dissertation addresses a larger issue in the education field: how to teach teachers to feel confident when teaching a relatively new subject in many elementary curricula. Findings indicate that curriculum requirements are not enough without teacher self-efficacy, as STEM is being introduced to earlier grades. The results of this research might serve as a basis for policymakers and teacher preparation programs to argue for more focused, extended STEM-specific preparation over shorter, more compliance-based preparation. The study also contributes to a growing body of evidence that indicates that engagement is a relationship between the teacher's practice and the student's experience, not a given characteristic of a lesson or tool.
Overall, Feiler's (2025) dissertation provided me with a greater understanding of what sustains, not just ignites, STEM engagement in elementary classrooms. The candid recognition of teacher uncertainty and constraint was more useful than an idealized version of STEM success stories. I really appreciated the concept that good STEM teaching is much like adaptive engineering, not a formula that can be followed. This viewpoint will influence my assessment of future STEM interventions because I now know that the design of a program is less important than the support provided to teachers implementing the program.
Review 2: How Prerequisite Skills Training Affects Math Achievement Scores for Students with Learning Disabilities
Summary
Timothy Ryan Reedy's (2024) dissertation, titled How Prerequisite Skills Training Affects Math Achievement Scores for Students with Learning Disabilities: A Quasi-Experimental Control Group Study, examined whether teaching prerequisite math skills before new content improves achievement for high school students with specific learning disabilities (SLDs). Reedy (2024) found that the literature on prerequisite skills training had previously been limited to elementary-age students, and that few studies had examined the high school students with SLDs. The issue was that students with SLDs continue to under-perform on state and national assessments despite decades of legislation to improve their access to instruction. The study aimed to see if there was an increase in math achievement scores for ninth-grade pre-algebra students with SLDs when they received direct instruction on prerequisite skills (exponents, fractions, decimals, variables, and inequalities.
The study was based on Bloom's (1956) Taxonomy, which classifies learning into six levels starting with knowledge and moving up to comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. This approach to teaching and learning suggests that students need to acquire prerequisite and foundational skills before they can learn and apply more complex skills like solving multi-step algebraic equations. Based on this, Reedy (2024) suggested that students with SLDs who do not have a solid understanding of basic numerical concepts will find themselves at a disadvantage when faced with more abstract pre-algebra content. The theoretical framework supported the study's core intervention, which was a targeted review and reinforcement of prerequisite skills prior to the introduction of new pre-algebra skills. Reedy (2024) used a familiar cognitive model to situate the design, linking to decades of learning research that shows learning is cumulative.
A quasi-experimental, quantitative design with a pretest-posttest control group was employed to compare the students who were given prerequisite skills training and the students who were not given any training. (Reedy, 2024) Due to the inability to achieve true random assignment in the school setting, the design controlled for pretest scores statistically. The Mathematics Achievement Test (MAT) was used as the main tool for data collection, with exit tickets at the end of each class session also used. To examine the differences in math achievement between the two groups, a single guiding research question was addressed using a one-way Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) that statistically controlled for the pretest covariate.
The study consisted of 70 ninth-grade students with a specific learning disability in mathematics who were taking pre-algebra classes and served under an Individualized Education Program (IEP). Participants were recruited from a single high school that served students from all over the state of Pennsylvania and were sampled in a convenience manner. Students were sampled from a single school, and the broad similarity of the educational context of the students reduced some sources of variation between groups. While reedy (2024) reported some demographic breakdowns beyond disability classification and grade level, the participant description was limited to eligibility for the study.
The ANCOVA results showed that there was a significant difference between the experimental group and the control group in math achievement scores after accounting for the pretest scores. Students who were taught prerequisite skills prior to new content instruction had higher performance in that content area than students who were not taught the targeted skills. Reedy (2024) interpreted these findings as a support for the fact that Bloom's (1956) taxonomic principle of foundational knowledge prior to higher-order learning is valid for high school students who have SLDs in math. Reedy (2024) suggested that future studies should utilize larger and more demographically diverse samples, and explore other instructional approaches to teaching prerequisite skills.
Analysis of Research Quality
One of the strengths of Reedy's (2024) dissertation is the use of an ANCOVA design in which pretest scores were statistically controlled, thereby enhancing the causal inferences. In a situation in which true random assignment was not possible, this is a strength. Adoption of a validated instrument, the Mathematics Achievement Test provided the study with a consistent and defensible measure of the dependent variable for both groups. The time of intervention (8 weeks) was sufficient to enable the instructional strategy to be implemented meaningfully, not just one short session. The researcher was able to track students' skill development over the course of the study, as opposed to just taking a snapshot of students' skills before and after the study.
The study was based on Bloom's Taxonomy (1956) as a theoretical foundation for the intervention rather than the prerequisite skills as an add-on to the curriculum. The study examined a specific, under-researched population (9th-grade students with SLDs in math), and a real and well-stated gap in the literature. The intervention was embedded in the classroom and the IXL program was implemented with a pre-algebra curriculum, which suggests that the results might be replicated in other high school environments. Additionally, Reedy (2024) clearly defined the independent variable (prerequisite skills training) and the dependent variable (math achievement), enhancing the internal clarity and replicability of the study.
The findings of this study, however, have limited generalizability to other schools, states, or students because of the use of convenience sampling from a single high school. The sample size of 70 students is suitable for a quasi-experimental classroom study but it is not large enough to exclude the possibility that one unusual group of students could have a meaningful impact on the results. Due to the lack of randomisation of the students within the classes, some uncontrolled differences between the groups, such as teacher effectiveness or class dynamics, cannot be excluded as alternative explanations. Some of those limitations were directly recognized by Reedy (2024) who suggested that a larger and more varied sample is needed for future studies.
The 8-week duration of the intervention is enough time to be effective, but it is not known if the achievement gains that were seen would continue throughout the school year or over the course of future math courses. The study also lacked a qualitative dimension (interviews with students and/or teachers) which could provide insight into the reasons for the success of the prerequisite skills training or some barriers to the success. The study cannot determine if other methods of prerequisite skills training would yield the same or different results, since the intervention was delivered in one instructional method (IXL program). The single-site design also limits the generalizability of the results to other schools, as curriculum pacing or resource availability, for example, could have affected the results in ways that do not apply to other schools. The limitations indicate that although the intervention looks promising, it is unclear whether it will be effective in the long-term and across contexts.
If I were to do this research, I would try to recruit a sample from several high schools in various districts to make the sample more diverse and representative. I would also extend the study to a full semester or academic year to see if the achievement gains of prerequisite skills training are sustained over time. A qualitative strand, in the form of short teacher interviews or student reflections would complement the quantitative results, and not just provide confirmation of a difference. Comparing two or more methods of delivering prerequisite skills training (not a single instructional platform) would help determine which practices are responsible for the observed improvement. These changes would maintain the robust quantitative foundation of Reedy's (2024) design, while addressing its most important scope and generalizability issues.
Personal Analysis and Practical Application
The work of Reedy (2024) in her dissertation helped me to understand that Bloom's (1956) taxonomy remains a direct influence on instructional decisions in the classroom today. This was especially helpful in reinforcing my understanding that gaps in prerequisite skills will add up as students progress to more abstract content, since the explicit review of prerequisite skills was found to have measurable effects. This lesson is personally relevant because it focuses on a specific, low-cost instructional change that any teacher could make without having to purchase new curriculum or undergo a massive amount of extra training. It also made me realize that there is a different, but equally important, question that can be answered with a quantitative and statistically controlled design than the qualitative studies that I have read before.
While Reedy's study (2024) was conducted in the context of high school algebra, the main point about prerequisite knowledge is relevant to my own interest in engaging students early in STEM. The achievement gaps described in this dissertation could just be observed later, in high school pre-algebra classrooms such as the one studied by Reedy (2024) if the basic mathematical and reasoning abilities are not well developed in elementary years. This implies that early and inquiry-based STEM and math experiences might have a preventative role and help to minimize the magnitude of the gaps that need to be remediated later. The application of Bloom's (1956) hierarchy also aligns with the self-efficacy and engagement perspective that is prevalent in early STEM research, as self-efficacy and basic competence likely build on each other over time.
The dissertation recommends that teachers explicitly check their students' prerequisites before teaching new material in a classroom setting, as opposed to assuming that the students have learned the material from previous years. Short, low-stakes assessments like those in this study are a practical means of tracking student readiness to advance without the need for a summative test to identify gaps. In particular, this dissertation aids in the development of shorter, focused units of review in lessons for students with SLDs rather than reteaching entire units when students experience difficulty. School leaders and special education coordinators might use these findings by adding a short prerequisite skills screen to IEP-based math instruction at any grade level.
This dissertation is part of a larger discussion on the role of special education services in the transition from compliance with IEP requirements to instructional methods that have been proven to have a positive impact on the outcomes of students served by special education. Students with SLDs also continue to be underperforming on national assessments even after decades of legislation to ensure their access to the right education, as Reedy (2024) pointed out, indicating that access is not enough. The dissertation provides additional evidence that certain instructional practices, based on sound learning theory, can effectively close that gap, if applied with fidelity. It also emphasizes the importance of quasi-experimental designs in educational contexts, where randomization is not always possible but careful statistical controls can still help to make meaningful causal statements.
Overall, I feel Reedy's (2024) dissertation leaves me with a clear example of an instructional adjustment that can result in a measurable increase in student achievement based on evidence. Careful matching of a sound theory with an appropriate rigorous statistical design of the study provided the study with a degree of confidence that could not be achieved through purely qualitative and purely descriptive research. The message that I took away from this, and one that I found really helpful, was that legislation and inclusion policies are important but are not enough to close achievement gaps for students with disabilities. The dissertation will influence my future thinking and approach to instructional design because it shows that the identification and reinforcement of prerequisite knowledge is a tool that is available to any teacher.
References
Feiler, C. (2025). Maintaining elementary student engagement and motivation during STEM activities: A phenomenology [Doctoral dissertation, Liberty University]. Scholars Crossing.
Reedy, T. R. (2024). How prerequisite skills training affects math achievement scores for students with learning disabilities: A quasi-experimental control group study [Doctoral dissertation, Liberty University]. Scholars Crossing.