Being a graduate student while becoming a teaching assistant (TA) is fraught with struggles of knowledge and identity. While the field of rhetoric and composition has long theorized the needs of undergraduate students in first year writing (FYW) classes, it has only recently begun to theorize the needs of the TAs who teach a majority of the FYW…

This dissertation presents an in-depth examination of the effectiveness of implementing a noticing routine on 11 second-year high school students struggling with attendance. The study was conducted in a traditional high school in the largest Northeastern state school district and included qualitative and quantitative data collection methods. The…

Teacher noticing requires listening to student sense-making, interpreting the mathematical understandings teachers hear, and deciding how to respond based on what they notice in a specific interaction. Teachers manage what they notice about students in instructional interactions to both make key teaching decisions and adjust their interactions…

Social media with diverse functionalities enables people to communicate, make connections, exchange information, and transfer knowledge without time and location restrictions. The number of informal learning communities based on social media is growing, but the knowledge about how these communities work is still limited. Three main issues for…

During the clinical semester, the post-observation conference is a pivotal interaction that occurs between the pre-service teacher and the cooperating teacher. However, there is often limited participation by the pre-service teacher as the mentor dominates the conversation and is primarily engaged in the analysis of the observed lesson based on…

Positive, proactive classroom management strategies support academic and behavioral student outcomes while fostering positive teacher-student relationships. However, teachers often cite struggles with classroom management and challenging student behavior as key reasons they ultimately leave the field. Additionally, pre-service teachers often fail…

The 2007 mass shooting at Virginia Tech is one part of a decades-long increase in the frequency of gun violence on U.S. college and university campuses (Drysdale, Modzeleski, & Simons, 2010; Ferraro, 2015). The events at Virginia Tech also served as a catalyst for the spread of so-called "campus-carry" laws, or acts of state policy…

Numerous studies have examined mentoring relationships and their consequences for youth development (Rhodes and DuBois, 2008). DuBois and Silverthorn (2005) found that those who reported having had a mentoring relationship during adolescence exhibited significantly better outcomes within the domains of education and work (high-school completion,…

Quality early childhood programs have come into focus as public policy and research have suggested that school readiness is directly associated with quality early education. With this focus, the early care and education workforce is gradually transforming from a field with low education requirement for teachers to one that requires them to hold an…

With the proliferation of standards and accountability systems in education, questions about how they function and intersect with broader patterns of institutional relations await investigation. The existing literature in social studies education is replete with studies that frame teachers' expertise for managing how instruction unfolds in the…

The purpose of this study was to discover how three person teams use game templates (trivia, role-play, or scavenger hunt) to socially construct knowledge. The researcher designed an experimental Internet-based database to facilitate teams creating each game. Teams consisted of teachers, students, hobbyist, and business owners who shared similar…

Children with complex communication needs (CCN) face many challenges in their daily life. They can struggle academically and socially if their communicative needs are not supported consistently by those who provide care for them. They frequently use Augmentative or Alternative Communication (AAC) systems or devices to communicate. The purposes of…

The purpose of this study is to investigate the new media ecologies of urban, low-income youth and youth of color, and how they develop literacies and competencies around technology in the particular spaces of Community Technology Centers (CTCs), while placing them within their broader technological experiences and raced, classed, and gendered…

Creating opportunities for students to engage in positive peer interactions is important because these interactions benefit students' motivation to learn, and their social, linguistic, and cognitive development. Peer interactions are particularly important for supporting English language learners' (ELL) because they are often at risk for academic…

This study examined the effects of the instruction of four youth cultural border crossing behaviors: flexibility, being at ease, playfulness, and citizenship as an intervention aimed at helping students to transition across three borders, student to student, student to science, and student to teacher. The research involved 12 ninth- and 10th-grade…