Individuals with developmental disabilities demonstrate deficits in intellectual and adaptive functioning that can include difficulty describing past events; accurate recall may be improved by learning to engage in precurrent, or problem solving, behavior. Visual imagining is a problem-solving strategy that involves seeing in the absence of the…

This quasi-experimental design study aimed to examine how exposure to supporting productive struggle teaching practice impacts students' conceptual understanding, procedural fluency, and strategic competence when solving high-demanding quadratic functions problem solving tasks. Results suggested that students in the supporting productive struggle…

Recent efforts to help teachers improve have centered on teacher evaluation. This qualitative dissertation explored how eight teachers from one middle school described and understood improving their practice Additionally, this study used purposeful developmental sampling to explore how, if at all, participants' way of knowing (meaning their…

Given the well documented fact students often struggle with proof and proof-related activity for various reasons, more educators have shifted to incorporating pedagogies involving collaborative learning given their benefits to student learning. However, there is still surprisingly little research focused on the nature of students' collaborative…

There exists a gap in the literature that discusses the issue of those who teach STEM degree courses who have not been given appropriate training to effectively integrate and implement analytical problem-solving skills (APSS) within their curriculum. At the center of this research is the need for effective training of implementing analytical…

Individuals with Autism (ASD) and Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (IDD) exhibit poor post-secondary education employment outcomes compared to their disabled and non-disabled peers (Shattuck et al., 2012; Taylor et al., 2015). In addition, due to the COVID-19 pandemic school closures, students with ASD and/or IDD in post-secondary…

The rise in children's media use (Rideout & Robb, 2020) and the prioritization of STEM learning (Fayer et al., 2017) has led to the development of new STEM-related apps, TV shows, and other media for young children. One topic in this area gaining popularity is computational thinking (CT). Researchers refer to CT as an approach to problem…

In an era of educational transformation, teacher leaders play a pivotal role in facilitating systemic change within schools. This dissertation presents a single-case action research study investigating the support structures provided by a Team Lead Communities of Practice (TL CoP) to nurture teacher leaders. The primary aim of this research is to…

Mathematics plays a crucial role in engineering education. Students who are good at math are often advised to consider engineering as a career. In this study, engineers, mathematics teachers, and engineering professors were asked about the type of mathematics representative of engineering, whether the engineering problems created by math…

The study examines the perspectives of using the Desmos calculator of Algebra I students' conceptual understanding and procedural fluency to write, graph, and solve linear equations in Algebra I STAAR. While the students have continuously used technology for mathematics assessment, emergent bilingual students in South Texas still need help passing…

Teenagers are often disengaged in high school. Self-determination theory suggests that support for competence, autonomy, and relatedness may facilitate engagement. Co-creation encourages students to take responsibility for their affective engagement and work with teachers to create a context that supports their basic needs. Youth Participatory…

The purpose of this quantitative correlational study was to examine if, and to what extent, a correlation existed between dimensions of metacognitive reading strategies with the grade point averages (GPAs) of college students with learning disabilities and attention disorders in four-year colleges in the United States. Flavell's theory of the…

Community colleges nationwide continue to face a leadership crisis. Lack of succession planning, the dynamic leadership challenge landscape, stress, and lack of incentives to become an administrator have created leadership voids throughout entire institutions. As leaders retire and new challenges, such as the COVID-19 global pandemic, emerge, the…

The focus on systems has been a part of science education for many decades, and more recently there has been a new emphasis on teaching with a "systems thinking" approach. Integrating systems thinking methods involves enhancing a student's understanding the complexity of systems, particularly the interactions that occur within and…

This study explores how children from two to nine years of age develop Computational Thinking (CT) skills. The term "CT" denotes a set of cognitive processes that are useful for framing and solving problems using computers and other information processing agents. Acquisition of CT skills is traditionally associated with learning to code…