For infants and young children who are identified as deaf or hard of hearing (DHH), best practice principles indicate the provision of family-centered early intervention (FCEI). However, factors such as geographical inaccessibility and workforce shortages can limit families' access to FCEI in their local area. One strategy for overcoming these…

In South African high schools, many learners have limited support in making career related decisions to prepare them for the world of work after school. An important early transition for career-related decision-making is at the end of Grade 9 when learners are expected to decide which subjects they will select for the last phase of high school.…

Background and aims: Narrative-based language intervention provides a naturalistic context for targeting overall story structure and specific syntactic goals in children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD). Given the cognitive demands of narratives, narrative-based language intervention also has the potential to positively impact related…

Though emerging research supports the effectiveness of school-based coaching models utilizing motivational interviewing (MI), an examination of the specific drivers behind these effects is notably lacking in the prevention field. This study leveraged sequential analysis to examine how teachers' verbalization of change talk (i.e., language in…

We assess whether a light-touch intervention can increase socioeconomic and racial diversity in undergraduate Economics. We randomly assigned over 2,200 students a message with basic information about the Economics major; the basic message combined with an emphasis on the rewarding careers or financial returns associated with the major; or no…

Disruptive behavior problems develop along multiple causal pathways and are associated with a wide variety of co-occurring problems, including mood disorders. In usual care, effective treatment practices for youth disruptive behavior might differ from what the efficacy research suggests, given treatment setting and population demographic…

Promoting healthy development for youth requires understanding the factors that predict positive outcomes. Although cognitive skills are important for student development, research has also identified social-emotional and behavioral growth as key developmental contributors. Social-emotional and behavioral skills, such as adaptability, emotional…

Student behavior within our school system has been and still is an area of concern. There are many different approaches to maintaining a healthy and safe culture for learning. Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (PBIS) programs can have a powerful impact on schools. No matter the goal of the PBIS program, a school's climate and culture…

This study had two research questions: how do special educators describe their experiences implementing mindfulness and their perceptions of its usefulness for students with autism spectrum disorder. Multiple data sources were used, including interviews, document analysis, and analytical memoing. A qualitative multiple-case descriptive case study…

The local problem under study was that a non-Title I school implemented a 25-minute response-to-intervention (RTI) remediation block to address the fact that students were scoring below proficiency on literacy assessments; however, teachers were unsure of how to best use this time to improve literacy instruction and were unsure which RTI…

Intervention research in education investigates whether and how particular educational programs help students learn. Treatment effect heterogeneity, or variation in a program's impact, makes this effort more complicated, because it means more work must be done to understand what works, for whom, and in what contexts. This dissertation consists of…

Food insecurity among students is a problem on college campuses. The most comprehensive study to date, conducted by the HOPE Foundation, found that 42% of community college students experience food insecurity (Goldrick-Rab et al., 2018). Despite the awareness that food insecurity exists and awareness that food insecurity can cause physical,…

This study was intended to evaluate the impact of socioeconomically disadvantaged children's participation in the Texas home instruction for parents of preschool youngsters (TXHIPPY) program on their school readiness and academic achievement for grades K to eight. The study used a quasi-experimental design and applied optimal full propensity score…

The aim of this pre-experimental study is to evaluate the acquisition level of counting skills of a 3-year-old classroom made up of 14 children through a specific instructional design. To this end, an instructional proposal to improve these mathematical skills was designed. Before and after the intervention, we measured the students' level…

The ability to narrate past personal events is important for classroom participation and socio-emotional wellbeing. Although school-age children with Down syndrome show significant challenges producing personal event narratives, there is little research to guide personal narrative intervention. This study used a single subject experimental design…