This qualitative inquiry uses the methodology of portraiture to investigate the relationship between founding holistic school leaders and the schools they lead. The guiding question of this investigation is, how do founding holistic school leaders embody their pedagogy through their approach to leadership within holistic schools? Through an…

The current study examines the relationship between suspensions and attendance rates concerning the school environment of four whole-child and Traditional public schools. The concerns were the disparity of social-emotional skill outcomes needed to develop the whole child. As American educational policy is aimed at Preparing students for competing…

The purpose of this qualitative study was to listen to the voices of youth ages 9-12 about environmental contributors or resources that influence their positive youth development. An adapted version of this Clark and Moss (2011) participatory research method, the mosaic approach provided youth an opportunity to use their voice to provide insight…

As internalizing and externalizing problems often co-occur, this dissertation utilized a longitudinal dataset of 784 at-risk children (predominantly from low-income families and academically at-risk; 52.6% male) followed yearly from grade 1 to grade 12 to: (a) explore the heterogeneity in the co-development patterns of internalizing and…

The dissertation aims to understand how individual efforts/choices, family environment, and education systems contribute to human capital development and shape educational outcomes. The first chapter studies what drives the parental investment gaps in children in both time and money across socio-economic groups. I develop a dynamic model of…

This study examines civic identity (i.e., civic values and responsibility to community and to people) in middle childhood, a previously unexplored developmental period in the civic engagement literature, and how adults and socialization processes in the home and school contexts are associated with children's civic outcomes. Middle childhood is a…

This dissertation examines the ways in which a principal of a K-12 school in Chile exercises leadership through talk and nonverbal communication when engaging other educational practitioners about how to view particular school events. More specifically, this study focuses on the verbal and nonverbal means that the principal uses, as a political…

Relational aggression (RA) involves either indirect, verbal, or covert acts with the intent to humiliate, exclude peers from groups, and/or damage a peer's reputation and social status. RA is believed to be particularly devastating psychologically for adolescent girls, as they tend to form smaller and more intimate social groups. Unfortunately, RA…