Reading fluency is a crucial skill to learn to be successful in school and in life. Research indicates that the most effective and widely used group interventions to increase children's reading fluency such as repeated reading have been used with minimal to no modifications since their development. Although there are many reading fluency…

Universities are struggling to support college students' mental health and well-being. With finite counseling services available, it is imperative to explore upstream, strengths-based approaches that may benefit students holistically. This quantitative, quasi-experimental study was conducted to evaluate whether a four-week program, using validated…

This qualitative case study investigates teachers' perceptions of the Good Behavior Game (GBG) intervention within the context of a special education school. The primary research question guiding this study is: What are school staff's perceptions of the Good Behavior Game in a special education school? The study employs a qualitative approach,…

Therapy dogs are a valuable tool for students in the school system. The literature indicates therapy dogs are a supportive tool, from the perspective of teachers, students, parents, counselors, and the community, for mental health, social and emotional and academic needs. Research has provided evidence that principals and superintendents have the…

Developmental research confirms the importance of early parental language input for building children's vocabulary and language skills (Hart & Risley, 1995). While reading with a caregiver is a common way for language input to occur, the approaches parents utilize often fail to capitalize on techniques for improving language and pre-literacy…

Reading is a complex, uniquely human invention for communication through print. It is a critical ability for making progress in education. Students with reading difficulties, the most common learning disability, struggle with reading fluency and accuracy. Skilled reading is enabled by the coordination of a network of brain regions interconnected…

Methods to estimate the causal effects of interventions are increasingly used in clinical medicine, public policy and social science. Using observational data, researchers can obtain causal treatment effect estimates without the ethical risks and time constraints that typically burden randomized experiments. The three studies in this dissertation…

The escalating challenges faced by educators highlight the urgent need to understand factors influencing their wellbeing. Teachers in the United States education system are stressed, burnt out, and leaving the field in unprecedented numbers (Sparks, 2022; Camera, 2022; Zamarro et al., 2021; Dabrowski, 2021; Hill-Jackson et al., 2022). It is…

Possessing sufficient social skills is a crucial aspect of child development. The level of social skill that a child has is a strong predictor of their future behavioral functioning and academic achievement. Due to the impact social skills have on a child's later life, having a better understanding of how to enhance social development is…

Concerns about low mathematics achievement have created a push to increase national mathematics proficiency levels through research and policy. Efforts have largely focused on early mathematics interventions for students with or at risk for mathematics learning difficulties implemented within multi-tiered response to intervention (RTI) frameworks.…

Registered nurses need to identify the teachable moment to provide client education to maximize clinical outcomes. Patient safety is a national concern and regulatory agencies have imposed restrictions based on substandard clinical outcomes. Healthcare services are unnecessarily consumed when clients lack information. A universal definition and…

According to the 2019 American College Health Association-National College Health Assessment, 65.7% of college students experienced "overwhelming anxiety" within the last 12 months, up from 49.1% in 2008. In an attempt to address this critical increase in student anxiety with viable and cost-effective interventions, many college mental…

Educators have limited knowledge of youth mental health disorders, treatment, and school-based supportive strategies. Mental health literacy (MHL) interventions are designed to promote educator understanding of youth mental health. The Go-To Educator Training is a MHL intervention developed for educators. The current study extended research on the…

In January 2000, the Alternative and Safe Schools Instructional and Support Division (ASSIS) of the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction (NC DPI) was charged with developing guidelines that determined how districts could establish and maintain effective Alternative Learning Programs (NC DPI, 2014). In 2003, ASSIS produced the first…

Effective classroom management (CM) is critical to promoting student success, as there is a clear connection between teacher CM practices and student academic, social, and behavioral outcomes. Research demonstrates that children spend more time academically engaged, progress more rapidly, and have higher levels of academic achievement when they…