The purpose of this phenomenological study was to discover the college graduate experience of a junior officer who decided to finish their bachelor's degree despite any temptation to drop out of school; participants were selected from a midwestern military installation. The guiding theory of this study was Duckworth's grit theory; the study…

The present study examined the acquisition of Spanish grammatical gender in 22 bilingual children (aged 5;0 to 13;5 years; Med=9;4 years; STD=2.3) who were born and raised in the United States and acquired Spanish as heritage speakers--that is, they learned Spanish, the minority language, in a home setting (Valdes, 2001). Each of the child…

This dissertation examines the possibilities and anxieties that attend a notion haunting Western thought since at least Kant--that reality itself is a revisable construct, a kind of collective game with social and physical rules that simultaneously delimit and solicit radical interactivity. Investigating experiments in the gamification of reality…

The purpose of this qualitative descriptive study is to explore how novice elementary teachers in the southern United States describe the role of spontaneous and conscious decision-making to influence their instructional practice. Two research questions were developed using the cognitive experiential self-theory and decision-making theory which…

Given the imbalance in the ratio of male to female ADHD diagnosis, there is a dearth of information on the profile for women with ADHD, especially in adulthood and with those of higher intelligence levels (Rommelse et al., 2016). Each, if not all, diagnoses of ADHD or giftedness come from a parent, teacher, or outside observer's scale of symptoms…

The following inquiry asks the question: "What is the experience of transformation using imaginal knowing in counseling education?" Inspired by personal experience of transformation through education, the author engages this question by exploring others' experience of imaginal knowing in the context of a core-curriculum graduate-level…

Structural reasoning is a combined ability to "look for structures, recognize structures, probe into structures, act upon structures, reason in terms of general structures, and see how a piece of knowledge acquired resolves a perturbation experienced" (Harel and Soto, 2017). The purpose of this study was to explore the cognitive…

This scholarly personal narrative explores the use of contemplative practices by teachers to support the development of authentic relationships with their students. The narrative demonstrates the value of contemplative practices in education by telling the story of the author's first seven years as a Waldorf teacher and the contemplative practices…

Physics education research over the past few decades has made significant advances toward improving instructional practices and developing effective instructional materials for physics classrooms. In some contexts, however, after multiple instructional refinements difficulties can remain persistent. Recent findings in PER suggest that many of…

There has been limited research on interventions with young children encompassing "interoceptive awareness," the awareness and perception of sensations from inside the body. The information in this phenomenological study examines how participants experienced a bidirectional, reflective, online intervention program on interoceptive…

Purpose: The purpose of this retrospective quantitative correlational study was to determine the relationship of student temperament (as measured by the online Jung Typology Test) and learning styles (as measured by the Felder-Soloman Index of Learning Styles) to academic performance of first-semester physics students while enrolled in a Sierra…

Higher Education is facing an increasingly competitive marketplace with high tuition prices, consumers are pushing back on rising tuition prices and choosing community and state colleges. A shortage in the traditional college age student population, has compounded the enrollment problem at small, private colleges. Most private colleges are…

Mounting evidence suggests the pervasiveness of stress and insidiousness of burnout in the teaching profession (Blase, 1986; Chubbuck & Zembylas, 2008; Eskridge & Coker, 1985; Larrivee, 2012; Spilt, Koomen, & Thijs, 2011; Vandenberghe & Huberman, 1999). Exposure to chronic stressors can have a negative cascading effect on a…

In this dissertation study, the researcher explored how pedagogy affects the creative process of visual artists who are also higher education art teachers. In order to understand and conceptualize the relationship between pedagogy and art making through the artist-teacher lens, the method and the methodology of Portraiture (Lawrence-Lightfoot…

Students often fail to develop a sophisticated understanding of scientific topics despite years of formal education designed to help them do so. Through studying how students learn the physical sciences, conceptual change researchers have amassed a large body of evidence that people, rather than being empty vessels who passively accept scientific…