Context: Almost 4 million elementary school students were chronically absent, missing 10 percent of more of school days, during the 2015-2016 school year. Missing this much school in early grades is linked with lower reading and math achievement by Grade 3 and higher absenteeism in middle and high school. In addition, chronically absent students…

The purpose of this study was to explore how students described their social and emotional experiences with teacher effectiveness (TE) in the classroom setting. The researcher sought to address a gap in the research regarding the ways that students discerned and appropriated meaning in the context of determining what constituted teaching…

Limited empirical research exists regarding the modern-day responsibilities of central office administrators. The purpose of the current case study was to provide further insight into perceptions of central office administrators and campus stakeholders regarding the collaboration that occurs to implement districtwide initiatives. The researcher…

This capstone is an exploration of an online learning environment for teachers to receive professional learning at any time, anywhere. The focus of this capstone was to design a series of self-paced, asynchronous learning courses to help teachers implement one-to-one Chromebooks in the Fayette County Public School District. Additionally, the…

Developing and sustaining positive partnerships between parents and educators is a collaborative process whose primary focus should be directed towards student achievement. Due to ongoing educational reform, more researchers and practitioners are concerned about the quality of communication between parents and teachers. The importance of this…

The purpose of this research is to quantify differences in key performance indicators between paid and organic (not paid) website traffic over a one year period of time at a regional comprehensive university in Kentucky, which is located in the southeastern United States. Two distinct sources of website traffic can be measured: paid traffic and…

The purpose of this quantitative correlational study was to determine if there was a relationship between faculty intercultural sensitivity and organizational culture in higher education settings using two validated survey instruments. One survey tool intended for the study is the Intercultural Sensitivity Scale (ISS). Chen and Starosta developed…

The purpose of this qualitative descriptive study was to understand how online undergraduate students enrolled in a 300-level business course and online faculty members in the College of Business describe presence components in online courses that support students' persistence at one higher education institution in Colorado. This study's sample…

This dissertation investigates when and how children figure out the force of modals, that is, when and how they learn that "can/might" express possibility, whereas must/have to express necessity. Learning modal force raises a logical "Subset Problem": given that necessity entails possibility, what prevents learners from…

Variability is intrinsic to human speech production. One approach to understand variability in speech is to decompose it into task-irrelevant ("good") and task-relevant ("bad") parts with respect to speech tasks. Based on the uncontrolled manifold (UCM) approach, this dissertation investigates how vowel token-to-token…

A longstanding challenge for adult education (AE) program staff is how to motivate learners to persist in their studies and connect them to resources that can help mediate their barriers to participation in AE. A promising approach to addressing U.S. high school learners' access to financial aid and enrollment in higher education is…

Teachers have aligned their instruction to the Common Core Standards and have developed several essential questions to help drive their instruction. However, grading and reporting practices remain the same. Teachers are still communicating student achievement the traditional way. Traditional grading practices do not communicate what a student is…

The experience of Deaf tenure track or tenured faculty in post-secondary education is largely unknown. This qualitative phenomenological examination afforded six Deaf tenure track or tenured faculty to share their experiences. The purpose of this study is to share the day-to-day lived experience of Deaf tenure track or tenured faculty in…

This case describes the move to emergency remote delivery of classroom instruction at Northwest Lineman College (NLC), a private trade school focusing on educating the utility industry workforce. In particular, this case will describe the artifacts developed and critical design decisions the ad-hoc project team made to continue educating students…

Background: Low adolescent HPV vaccination initiation due to parents declining vaccination remains a challenge for providers. In 2018, 65% of adolescent girls and 56% of adolescent boys in Texas initiated HPV vaccination. Gaps between HPV vaccination rates and those for Tdap (83%) and meningococcal vaccines (87%) among 13-17 year olds highlights…