This mixed methods study investigates the factors influencing job satisfaction and retention among early intervention (EI) providers in Washington State. The research aims to provide insights into the challenges faced by EI providers and identify strategies to improve workforce stability within the state's EI system. The quantitative phase of the…

Wyoming's construction sector faces a growing number of job openings yet contends with a decreasing number of skilled workers. This study explored the Wyoming Construction Workforce Training Program (CWTP) from an inclusivity perspective, investigating the accessible, usable, and relevant instructional design and delivery conditions. Through…

The purpose of this dissertation in practice was to understand how participation in a career exploration/introduction to career and technical education (CTE) course with embedded digital tools certification implemented for fifth-grade students influenced how students thought about and articulated their career aspirations. The setting for this…

The problem to be addressed by this study is that Maine's workforce is facing a significant shortage of skilled labor which is impacting the sustainability and growth of Maine's economy. The shortage of skilled workers extends from trades to medical professionals and is worsened by Maine's unique demographical and geographical factors. In response…

Career technical education and skilled trades have been the subject of a social stigma that continues to make it a habit of mind that career technical education is inferior to a 4-year college education. This stigma is partially responsible for a shortage of skilled labor. This study aimed to explore how educators describe and understand the…

The purpose of this study was to understand the relationship between the social structure that Automotive Technology teachers work in and how they learn to teach. The study used Latour's Circulatory System of Scientific Facts framework to surface how this learning happens through empirically tracing actors and things and the knowledge they move…

This correlational research design analyzes the identity development of career and technical education high school students. Adolescents have a choice to make: enter a traditional high school or pursue a high school education in a career and technical education setting. The focus of getting an education in a career and technical education setting…

This dissertation is a study of policy stakeholders (N = 24) in four countries within the regional Caribbean Community and Common Market (CARICOM) policy environment. The scope was to identify how they navigated and interpreted conceptualizations of TVET and general education, which have been explicitly tied to national and regional…

I explain changes in the wage structure favoring more skilled workers since 1980 using job task data from the Occupational Information Network and wage data from the March CPS. Using recently developed partialling out estimators including debiased machine learning, I obtain wage effects for a suite of tasks, including a novel computer task…

The purpose of this study was to explore automotive technician and automotive technician educator's obstacles and expectations they faced during their educational and occupational endeavors. Constructivism and social constructivism were used as theoretical frameworks. Autoethnography was the selected qualitative research method. Using an…

This study examined the phenomenon known as Brain Drain and how it affects the identities of educated Balkan immigrants who have emigrated to the United States to study in a university and willingly accept their transformational process as a hybrid identity. Hybrid identities (Smith & Leavy, 2008) of skilled immigrants contribute to the…

The purpose of this qualitative descriptive study was to explore how HR professionals describe the summative and formative evaluation process experience during a higher education-based noncredit training program(s) that provided manufacturing employees with the skills needed today and in the future in the United States. The theoretical foundation…

Communities strive to grow economically to improve the quality of life of their citizens. Community colleges have long been a key driver of local economic development through education and workforce development programs. Over the past few decades, community colleges have increased their involvement in economic development activities beyond their…

As the global need for unfilled cybersecurity positions is projected to reach nearly 3.5 million by 2021, cybercrime proliferates. Talent shortage in cybersecurity continues to reach widespread magnitudes and individuals are inadequately prepared to assume positions requiring significant responsibilities. The challenge of filling the cybersecurity…

This dissertation studies the effects of China's higher education expansion reform on workers' labor market outcomes. In Chapter 1, I investigate how China's higher education expansion reform affects young workers' labor market outcomes. Using data from the 2005 China Population Survey, I estimate the effects of the reform using a diff-in-diff…