American community colleges are typically public 2-year higher education institutions with a history and mission of providing educational access to the people in the communities in which they are located and serve. Nationally community colleges continue to become more diverse, providing increased access especially for the socioeconomically…

In its diverse forms, authentic writing carries the potential to connect literacy practice to an author's 'real world'. While contemporary approaches to authentic writing instruction--advocating writer-centred, intertextual and culturally relevant productions--are most often explored in formal learning contexts like classrooms, this paper seeks to…

This report examines the implementation of the Inclusive Innovation model across various pilot districts, spotlighting the collaborative processes of co-research and co-design involving students, educators, administrators, and community members. By centering the voices of students and communities who typically are furthest from opportunity,…

Community-academic partnerships are believed to increase the effectiveness and feasibility of action research. While factors facilitating and hindering community-academic partnerships have been identified, their influence on the collaborative process is unknown, especially during community-academic partnership initiation and development. This…

This dissertation was an investigation of how students in two-way bilingual immersion (TWBI) programs construct their bilingual identities inside and outside the school setting, highlighting the unique and multifaceted nature of their language development and cultural identity formation. TWBI programs aim to cultivate bilingualism and biliteracy,…

Background: While the Texas infant mortality rate (IMR) is below the Healthy People 2020 objective (5.7 per 1,000 live births), stark differences in IMR are seen across Texas communities. Health indicators for the state suggest important missed opportunities for improving maternal and infant outcomes. The Healthy Families initiative was a…

Grounded in critical policy theories and democratic conceptions of research, case studies of three community-based organizations, one in Canada and two in the U.S., were analyzed to determine if and how the groups engaged with research in their efforts to influence education policy. The findings demonstrate that the community-based organizations…