This mixed methods research explores superintendents' beliefs about and engagement in state education policymaking processes. Through interviews with 58 superintendents and a national survey of superintendents, I find that superintendents feel their voices have value in state policymaking spaces; however, actual policy engagement is relatively…

An "active learning" classroom design recognizes the importance of students becoming engaged in their own learning. Using a mixed-methods approach, this study compared student-reported data (n = 219) and used the "community of inquiry" framework to evaluate the impact of environmental features on students' experience. Students…

The benefits of instructor immediacy have been well researched over the past 40 years. This study investigated students' comfort with instructors' nonverbal immediacy behaviors. University students reported their comfort with three nonverbal communication behaviors: haptics, proxemics, and kinesics. A series of paired-sampled t tests suggested a…

Understanding the emotions experienced by higher education instructors related to assessment feedback, how instructors understand student emotions, and how instructors might manage these emotions positively, can help to secure the educational benefits of feedback. In this research, we aimed to explore the emotional responses that instructors…

It is known that Florida school employees known as Migrant Advocates facilitate or broker MSF health care access for migrant and seasonal farmworker (MSF) families, but it is not known how states without a Migrant Education Program might also broker MSF health care access. To address this, present study examines the role of school employees in…

To respond to the epidemic of sexual assault on college campuses, many postsecondary institutions have instituted campus climate surveys, strengthened sexual assault misconduct policies, and created sexual assault task forces to coordinate entities "within" the institutional setting. However, few colleges and universities have engaged…

This study looked at the factors Latina mothers want to see in their children's preschool centers, in order to provide a more holistic approach for defining high-quality preschools. A qualitative study was conducted in which 40 Latina mothers from a western region of the United States were interviewed to understand their views about quality…

Ethiopia has made significant investments in early education programs since 2010. A national goal set by the government of Ethiopia aimed to enroll 80% children below the age of 6 years in kindergarten-level "O-classes." However, effective partnerships with communities and families are required to achieve this goal. This study explores…

Twenty-first century education reform shifted the pursuit of public education from democratic principles to the pursuit of private interests for individual benefit. Reasoning from an applied behavior economic theoretical framework assumes consumers seeking economic benefits from their public schools will seek public schools with more resources.…

In the current study, we investigated the ways in which the acquisition and transfer of spatial knowledge were affected by (a) the type of spatial relations predominately experienced during learning (routes determined by walkways vs. straight-line paths between locations); (b) environmental complexity; and (c) the availability of rotational…

The pandemic period of the past two years has altered many aspects of the high school and college experience for students. With more emphasis on hybrid and virtual experiences, how has this impacted the college search process for high school students? What do they value, what do they need to know, and what information have they seen? Ruffalo Noel…

Purpose: This paper aims to investigate the extent professionals from the vocational sector are networked individuals. The authors explore how professionals use their personal networks to engage in a wide variety of learning activities and examine what social mechanisms influence professionals' agency to form personal informal learning networks.…

If current trends continue, international students will comprise half of U.S. science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) PhD graduates by 2020. The proportion of international PhD-level students on temporary visas to study STEM subjects in the United States has doubled over the past thirty years. Further, these students are much more…

This study intends to investigate how multi-symbolic representations (text, digits, and colors) could effectively enhance the completion of co-located/distant collaborative work in a virtual reality context. Participants' perceptions and behaviors were also studied. A haptics-enhanced virtual reality task was developed to conduct…

A significant number of distance students report they "stray" from their home universities by using local libraries, despite the fact that distance education librarians work hard to provide customized resources and services tailored to their programs and needs. Are public libraries and special libraries able to meet the research needs of…