Current research indicates that inclusive classrooms with students with disabilities are rising, and schools are challenged with shifting their structures and curriculums towards inclusion. This doctoral dissertation aims to understand pre-service program models and how they prepare teachers for inclusive environments, including their knowledge…

Careful lesson planning is essential in elementary STEM education because the crucial role of STEM education at the elementary level is to help students develop fundamental skills employed in real life as a foundation for future learning. This study examined how elementary STEM teachers curate digital resources for lesson planning and the relevant…

Technology is utilized in everyday life. As such, teachers can employ educational robots and technology to assist in growing skills in collaboration, communication, computational thinking, and problem-solving. Educational robots also appear to increase engagement and motivation in students to participate in lessons. This study employed…

The present study explored strategies teachers use to help people with ASD develop sociosexual skills for empathy expression. Previous research found the curriculum for people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) does not always include strategies to teach the socio-sexual skills required for empathy expression. This qualitative descriptive study…

The problem for this qualitative study was how educators experience professional development using podcast listening combined with independent jot journals and collegial discussions. The research questions aimed to discover whether teachers would accept or reject this professional development as well as potential lesson plan designs or…

This study aimed to understand how and why social media and other online platforms are used as curricular resources by preservice teachers during their semester of student teaching. Furthermore, the study examined how preservice art teachers critically analyzed and transformed their approach to using online sources through the use of a curricular…

In 2014 the White House held a Maker Faire and began a new obsession for American public schools: makerspaces. This capstone begins with an in-depth discussion about the history of American makerspaces and discusses many of the predominant makerspace best practices and the groups that have researched them. The capstone seeks to create a…

This autoethnography explored my experiences in designing a nature-based literacy unit in Hawai'i. Whereas a small body of research highlights a positive relationship between nature-based experiences and literacy outcomes, there is minimal research on the planning process. I wanted to understand the experience of planning for nature-based literacy…

Despite the long-time call for change in mathematics instruction, there are several barriers to change, and instruction has remained stagnant overall, taking the form of traditional lecture. Instructional coaching has many of the attributes of effective professional development from the literature and could be a major support for instructional…

Standardized testing has elementary schools transitioning into departmentalization, where a teacher is assigned to teach a particular subject matter. Elementary education programs tend to provide a holistic approach to education that includes training in all subject matters and learner psychology. The national trend of teacher shortages as…

Mathematicians teaching at the university level have a deep understanding and appreciation for the mathematics that they teach. However, they rarely receive much formal training in teaching. Thus, university mathematicians must rely on their mathematical understandings and personally developed ideas of teaching to guide their decision-making.…

This study was an action research self-study that examined my role as a teacher educator supporting a resident teacher in learning how to design inquiry-based culturally responsive science lessons. I explored my own growth in understanding how to act as a teacher educator to provide appropriately scaffolded support to promote learning for a…

My dissertation is structured as follows: introduction, background, methods, findings in the form of a PowerPoint presentation designed for teachers at my school and "Reading Teacher" article, and implications. Introduction: In response to my students underperforming in language arts I developed my research question; How can I use…

Negative beliefs about the use of educational technology, along with the lack of specific knowledge about how to incorporate technology, are preventing teacher integration of technology into daily instruction. The lack of solid teacher technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge skills (TPACK), that results in skillful and purposeful…

Efforts to improve technology integration for K-12 teaching and learning focus on professional development for teachers. This research study, however, implemented a professional development course in technology integration for educational content writers at a publisher in the Southeastern United States. This research is strategic because most…