Child care and early education (CCEE) are essential resources for families and children across the country. Yet qualified educators are choosing to leave their positions, and young professionals are choosing not to enter the field. This instability has been a long-lasting issue and is thought to be driven largely by structural and systemic forces…

Utilising a social constructivist lens, this study explores how students from rural areas constitute and negotiate their identities in the context of an urban South African university. Much of the research on rurality in South Africa has focused on rural areas as places, and not on the people occupying them. This qualitative study employed a…

Youth formerly in foster care (YFFC) are one of the most underserved student populations in higher education, yet they remain on the peripheries of national student success discourse. As momentum for improving postsecondary education completion for underserved students grows nationally, the time seems ripe to take stock of what we know (and do not…

Background/Context: As the debate on what content should be included in Ethnic Studies continues, there has also been an exploration of what effective pedagogy in Ethnic Studies looks like. Community responsive pedagogy advances the work of critical pedagogy and culturally responsive pedagogy by centralizing a community's context in the education…

Community-academic partnerships are believed to increase the effectiveness and feasibility of action research. While factors facilitating and hindering community-academic partnerships have been identified, their influence on the collaborative process is unknown, especially during community-academic partnership initiation and development. This…

Experiences of and exposures to violence impact older adolescents and young adults in a myriad of ways. While typically conceptualized as interpersonal, other forms of violence, namely structural and symbolic, can be harmful to development for this population. This study utilized qualitative methodologies, including ethnographic field notes and…

Sharon Nelson-Barber, a sociolinguist, directs Culture & Language in STEM Education within WestEd's Science and Engineering content area. She is co-founder of POLARIS--Pacific/Polar Opportunities to Learn, Advance and Research Indigenous Systems--a research and development network that supports healthy communities by integrating Indigenous…

This study explores how socio-cultural dynamics influence student engagement with Generative AI technology in Nigerian higher education, using activity theory as theoretical underpinning. By examining the roles of community norms, technological accessibility, and educational objectives, the research identifies critical factors that impact the…

This dissertation examined factors affecting the college choice of African American male undergraduate students at two private liberal arts colleges in the South. The study explored African American male undergraduate students experiences, perceptions, and attitudes toward the college selection process, using Hossler and Gallagher (1987) College…

The present dissertation features two studies utilizing secondary data to explore the impact of geography on access to and utilization of early developmental services, including Part C early intervention (EI) and autism diagnosis. Both studies examined the role of geography on a micro-level using geographic information system (GIS) based…

Reading interest serves as an inherent driving force for children's reading. Current research shows that family cultural capital, school reading environment, and community reading culture all influence children's reading interests. According to the "family-school-community" collaborative education model, families, schools and communities…

Purpose: This study examines the local and institutional factors that shape how educators and educational leaders in western Pennsylvania have understood and responded to rapid growth in opioid misuse and drug overdose within their communities. We examine how educational leaders and educators in two rural school districts in western Pennsylvania…

Purpose: Research shows that family is influential to African Americans in college choice (Chapman "et al.," 2018; Chapman "et al.," 2020; Freeman, 2005; Hines "et al.," 2019; Lowry, 2017; Williams, 2018). However, it often overlooks unique, African-rooted characteristics of African American families and culture. This…

This article considers how the experience of community for young people from rural places (inclusive of regional and remote) can be influential in building a legacy of strengths and qualities, much like an inheritance. While there are many studies of rural youth, few consider rurality through complex social-relational dimensions; fewer still…

To promote racial and gender equity in the field of science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and computing (STEM+C), we investigated prominent influences on historically underrepresented minority (HURM) women's persistence in undergraduate education. With the underrepresentation of Black and Hispanic women in the computing workforce, this…