Reflection is frequently cited in the literature as integral to the type of learning in which professionals engage. However, throughout the literature the concept of reflection has been ill-defined and shown to be difficult to operationalize in studies. Beginning with a comprehensive review of the literature, this study sought to develop a…

The purpose of this study was to understand the role of non-formal education and training in the organizational change process of Civil society organizations (CSOs) in post war Liberia. CSOs are the local foundation for democracy and development in Liberia, and serve a wide range of roles in local communities. For example, in post-war Liberia,…

This study examined community leadership education programs employed in rural communities and organizations of several states to empower both local leaders and residents. In particular, the study investigated the relationships between community leadership education program design and structure (contact hours and content) and six outcome indices of…

Software has an important role in supporting scientific work. This dissertation studies teams that build scientific software, focusing on the way that they determine what the software should do. These requirements engineering processes are investigated through three case studies of climate science software projects. The Earth System Modeling…

The purposes of this study were to identify how Ivorian HRD professionals in banks perceived their current expertise levels of the HRD competencies, and how these professionals perceived the importance of these competencies needed to be successful in their occupations. In addition, this study determined competencies that are perceived to have the…

How do you dynamically customize the programming language available in a context within an existing system, without changing the underlying system? This dissertation introduces a language design approach that addresses this problem. The basic idea is to structure programs as systems of multiple interacting levels of abstraction, where all of the…

The concepts of professional learning communities and organizational disciplines support staff development and leadership that lead to sustainable systems. Little research has examined the ability of rural schools to achieve sustainable systems. This quantitative design study considered the relationships between predictor variables of…

First-year students experience academic, social, and emotional adjustments as they transition to college. First-year experience courses support students in this transitional phase by helping them integrate into the campus environment and by teaching them college-appropriate learning strategies. This study explored the role that participation in a…

Offering a high-quality education to English language learners (ELLs) is a challenge in schools across the United States. Yet, few studies have been conducted to investigate high school English as a second language (ESL) programs. This study provides insights into how a Kansas urban high school ESL program promotes access to the curriculum for…

The U.S. Department of Education reports that students who are the first in their families to pursue an undergraduate education comprise a minority of the student population at public four-year educational institutions, and comprise an even smaller percentage at elite, private four-year institutions (Engle, Bermeo, and O'Brien 2006). This…

As school districts integrate evidence-based prevention programs into their daily regime, they may struggle with implementing these programs with fidelity. This is a multi-method, multi-source, retrospective explanatory study of the implementation factors associated with program installation and partial implementation of an evidence-based violence…

Over the past several decades, millions of digital objects of significant scientific, economic, cultural, and historic value have been published and distributed to libraries and archives on removable media. Providing long-term access to these documents, media files, and software executables is an increasingly complex task because of dependencies…

The theory of student involvement (Astin, 1984) acknowledges that as students devote sufficient time and energy to educationally purposeful activities, they can expect to make desirable gains throughout the college years. Participation in campus clubs and organizations is one form of involvement found to be associated with a host of learning and…

In the past twenty years, substantial investments have been made in educational technology at the K-12 level. While increased integration of technology in K-12 teaching is more likely to occur when prospective teachers are exposed to a variety of computer uses in the majority of their undergraduate courses prior to their teaching in schools, due…

The purpose of this case study was to explore how low-skilled workers who participated in a health care training program learned to acquire the technical, cognitive, and developmental competencies they needed to gain skilled employment in higher-level positions in the field and thus advance their careers. The data methods used were: (1) in-depth…