There is a crucial need for social justice-oriented educators in today's classrooms given the growing population of America's multicultural student population. Social justice-oriented teacher preparation programs (TPPs) have contributed significantly to shaping the pedagogies of teacher candidates, better equipping them to serve all students. The…

The purpose of this study is to investigate the challenges students face in academic writing as well as explore the possible causes of their writing challenges which could be based on their socio-cultural background. The primary research design is a hermeneutical phenomenological study which describes and interprets lived experience. There are…

Body image dissatisfaction and biases on weight as well as body size and shape, cultivated by a stance of privilege, often excluding many individuals, pervade societal norms. Due to the multivariant nature and connectedness of body image concerns, counselors working with clients who present with these issues could struggle with their own biases.…

African American adolescent suicidality has become more prevalent, and urban school counselors are positioned uniquely to intervene. This research studied the overarching societal factors in the sociocultural, economic, and political spheres that influence increased suicidality behaviors in African American adolescents from the perspective of…

Addressing the STEM underrepresentation problem has implications for improving quality of life and, thus, is an issue of social justice. This mixed-methods research study investigates the potential of certain pre-collegiate educational experiences, conceptualized as Sociocritical and Agency Building Educational Experiences in STEM (SABEES), as a…

This qualitative phenomenological inquiry aimed to explore the experiential dimensions of first-year, first-semester college students' perceptions of their college readiness from high school to a junior college in Belize. Employing Leedy and Ormrod's (2016) methodology for data analysis, the researcher engaged a purposeful sample of 30 first-year,…

The purpose of this qualitative descriptive study was to explore how non-traditional college graduates describe how their motivation, self-efficacy, and engagement influenced their academic success while attending a 4-year college within the United States. The theoretical foundations used to better understand how motivation, self-efficacy, and…

This dissertation study called Young Adults Acting On the World (YAAOW), addresses the injustices of withheld opportunities for critical literacy engagement and the marginalization of refugee-background students through a qualitative experiment of a critical, collaborative project, patterned after social design-based experimentation (Gutierrez,…

This dissertation examines the discourses surrounding remote learning during the initial stages of the COVID-19 pandemic through Twitter conversations. Employing a Critical Discourse Analysis informed by Michel Foucault's theories of discourse and power, this study explores how the pandemic has transformed educational interactions over social…

The existing gap between females in the field of education and those in the highest levels of leadership persists, with women only making up 27% of the superintendency nationally. This study, informed by Tallerico's (2000a) conceptual framework, sought to determine how one's own individual agency, educational structures (like sponsorship), and the…

Several decades of effort have improved the participation of women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), but the gender gap remains. Researchers have found diverse reasons for women's underrepresentation in STEM, but less is understood about factors supporting persistence. This study's purpose was to understand how women…

Student support programs and services in the California Community Colleges lack historical context and documentation. This study provides historical context through document analysis as to the socio-cultural, educational, and financial influences that supported the implementation of student support services, EOPS, and Veteran services. Through a…

"'English is Unavoidable': The Implementation of Multilingual Writing in Foundations Writing, General Education, and Writing Across the Curriculum" reports on a longitudinal, qualitative study of six administrators and one multilingual student who were involved in three institutional writing initiatives during a time of major…

This project seeks to chronicle the history of Hindu students at American colleges and universities. When did these students, identified as Hindu, begin to appear on campuses? How did they navigate their faith identities while in this context? How did they see themselves and how were they perceived by others? What was their relationship with…

Although decades of research attest to the importance of vocabulary teaching and learning, and recent research points to principles of effective vocabulary instruction, the small number of studies on actual classroom practice suggest that teachers continue to use the least effective approaches, often focusing on memorization of definitions.…