The purpose of this dissertation is to reflect on and make sense of my practice as a teacher educator. As a response to the growing field of self-study research in the field of teacher education, my study answers the following question: What is my lived experience as a White teacher educator? This research took place during the student teaching…

This dissertation investigated teacher perceptions of the Advanced Academics Review and Referral process within a large urban school district. The study focused on the elementary level of implementation of the district process for identifying students for gifted education/advanced academic services. The study discloses gaps in teachers'…

For decades there has been much research done on the best ways to prepare teachers for racially diverse students. With over 50 years of U.S. teacher education program (TEP) reform (Liu & Ball, 2019), TEPs are still in a nascent stage for training preservice teachers to teach Black and Brown students. Public schools have fallen short of…

This single-case, descriptive study explored one K-4 teacher candidate's identity and attempts to teach toward social justice within and beyond a series of small group discussions in a Professional Development School context. More specifically, it studied how this teacher candidate positioned her identity through the lenses of social justice…

The popularity of distance learning has increased among higher education students owing to its flexibility and convenience, as it enables learning from any location and at any time. Despite the substantial number of enrollments, distance learners are experiencing high attrition rates, leading to low completion rates compared to students enrolled…

The primary purpose of this study is to explore gifted education teachers' ideas when asked how they would create more inclusive practices in gifted education to include students with high potential from traditionally underrepresented populations to increase diversity in the gifted education program. The voices of gifted education teachers are…

Racism has always been a factor in U.S. education, whether it be anti-literacy laws aimed at enslaved Africans (Mitchell 2008), segregated schools in the south during the era of Jim Crow (Ladson-Billings, 2004), or funding disparities in the northern United States between schools serving majority white students versus those serving predominantly…

The purpose of this study was to examine the impact Hip-Hop culture can have on white faculty who are committed to interrogating their identity and the constructs of whiteness, as it relates to implementing a sustainable process to interrogate race as a critically self-reflective educator and the development of a culturally sustaining practice in…

This research implements and evaluates the effectiveness of three scaffolds: critical theories in classes, critical friends groups to discuss white identity, dominant ideologies, anti-racist practices and diverse field based experiences. These scaffolds provided white pre-service teachers the opportunity to reconcile how their identities influence…

The purpose of this study is to explore the efforts of a K-12 Mid-Atlantic school district to support the identity development of Black-White biracial students. The methodology is a qualitative case study and the case unit is a K-12 Mid-Atlantic school district. Data collection in the form of semi-structured interviews, documentation, and archival…

Adequate teacher preparation is critical when working with students of color in urban schools. High teacher turnover often results from a lack of teacher preparation when working with systemic racial concerns that impact students of color. Understanding how the Courageous Conversations About Race Framework can influence teachers to examine the…

The teaching force in the United States is largely White, female, and unprepared to acknowledge the significance of being White and work effectively with a racially diverse student population. To better serve students of color, teachers must be able to understand their own racial identity to be able to respectfully acknowledge the racial and…

Misrepresentation of culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students in special education is a continuing issue that requires attention. This is likely occurring due to educators' lack of knowledge, awareness, and/or training to work with diverse populations. The educational needs of CLD students require that schools, teachers, and staff…

Children who develop a negative student self-concept are more likely to disengage from school and this disengagement can lead them to eventually drop out. This study was designed to examine the experiences of an instructor-inclusive team tasked with using a logic model to identify a systemic problem that negatively impacted students and led them…

Statistics and data analysis have been part of the K-12 mathematics curriculum for the past few decades, and in conjunction with mathematics standards documents, the Guidelines for Assessment and Instruction in Statistics Education report clarified learning progressions for statistical content in K-12 mathematics (Franklin et al., 2007). Yet many…