In California, Filipina/x/os continue to be overrepresented in the nursing workforce, with the percentage of nurses identifying as Filipino increasing from 13.4% in 1993 to 20.6% in 2018 (Spetz et al., 2018). While a particular ethnic group being overrepresented in a certain industry is not problematic on its own, certain careers come with greater…

This study delves into the intricate academic journeys of three former Black teen mothers who surmounted significant socio-cultural and economic barriers to attain higher education degrees, encompassing bachelor's, master's, and doctoral levels. The study involved a qualitative narrative inquiry analysis approach using in-depth interviews to…

The Q-matrix played a key role in implementations of diagnostic classification models (DCMs) or cognitive diagnostic models (CDMs) -- a family of psychometric models that are gaining attention in providing diagnostic information on students' mastery of cognitive attributes or skills. Using two Monte Carlo simulation studies, this dissertation…

This dissertation reports on three studies about students' conceptions and learning of the idea of instantaneous rate of change. The first study investigated 25 students' conceptions of the idea of instantaneous rate of change. The second study proposes a hypothetical learning trajectory, based on the literature and results from the first study,…

Internships are considered "high-impact practices" offering students transformative opportunities to develop new skills and professional identities while immersed in workplace culture. They have also been pinpointed as key to improving student success and employment within science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields.…

Over the past two decades, there has been a notable increase in the number of transnational students enrolled in K12 and higher education institutions in Mexico and the United States. These students, who often engage in circular migration, bring unique and enriching experiences to their schools as they navigate the educational systems of both…

The purpose of this research was to understand the influence of family on the educational trajectories of Sikh American college students. I conducted a qualitative study at various research sites and interviewed 30 self-identifying Sikh college students. The theoretical framework and data analysis of this research were guided by Funds of…

This dissertation explored the perspectives of stakeholders within a university-level Spanish Heritage Language (SHL) program in Arizona, focusing on their language ideologies and critical language education efforts. The study, rooted in Critical Language Awareness (CLA) and Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy (CSP) frameworks, challenges deficit-based…

The evolution of U.S. secondary school mathematics requirements throughout the 20th century included a significant shift towards more rigorous standards by the end of the century. Initially, many states required minimal or no mathematics for high school graduation. However, reforms led most states to adopt a 3-year mathematics requirement, with…

This study introduces a longitudinal diagnostic classification model, called the LTA+HDCM, which is a fusion of latent transition analysis (LTA; Collins & Flaherty, 2002; Collins & Wugalter, 1992) and the hierarchical diagnostic classification model (HDCM; Templin & Bradshaw, 2014). The primary goals in this study are (1) to evaluate…

This qualitative study explores the intricate relationship between intergenerational postsecondary education and economic mobility by focusing on the nuanced themes of environment and exposure, encouragement and expectation, and experience and equal opportunity. Drawing from the Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT), this research seeks to…

Decades of psycholinguistics research have shown that human sentence processing is highly incremental and predictive. This has provided evidence for expectation-based theories of sentence processing, which posit that the processing difficulty of linguistic material is modulated by its probability in context. However, these theories do not make…

Informal Learning Spaces (ILSs) are increasing in popularity in many educational and community settings (Berman, 2020). One such ILS is a makerspace, where people participate in general activities of creating, building, designing, and tinkering (Oxman Ryan, Clapp, Ross, & Tishman, 2016). Makerspaces have been touted as spaces that provide…

This dissertation examines the prevalence of school-induced literacy shaming in first-year college writers while examining how these experiences have shaped the students' attitudes towards writing in ways that impacted their academic trajectories. Using a qualitative approach, data was collected through surveys, narrative prompts, and…

Algebraic thinking is an essential component of the K-12 mathematics curriculum. Early algebra focuses on the overall numeric structure (Kaput, 2008; Kieran,2018; Kieran et al., 2016) which focuses on the noticing of arithmetic patterns leading to generalizations supported by justification, reasoning and justifications (Blanton, 2008; Blanton et…