Colleges and universities have spent significant financial and human resources deploying and promoting educational technologies, including Learning Management Systems (LMS). A large body of research now exists on the impact of technology on student learning, including the roles of blended learning, hybrid classes, and distance learning. Yet,…

A survey of Advanced Placement and National Writing Project teachers shows that digital tools are widely used in their classrooms and professional lives. Yet, many of these high school and middle school teachers worry about digital divides when it comes to their students' access to technology, and those who teach low-income students face obstacles…

Americans like to believe that theirs is the land of opportunity, but the hard facts are that children born into poor families in the United States tend to stay poor and children born into wealthy families generally stay rich. Other countries have shown more success at lessening the effects of inequality on mobility--possibly by making public…

This dissertation evaluates the relationship between African American English and White Vernacular English as spoken in a small rural town in western North Carolina for consistencies in vowel production by group membership and for participation in the Southern Vowel Shift (SVS), a vowel rotation currently occurring in the Southern United States. A…

Contemporary young people are engaged in a variety of information behaviors, such as information seeking, using, sharing, and creating. The ways youth interact with information have transformed in the shifting digital information environment; however, relatively little empirical research exists and no theoretical framework adequately explains…

Policy reforms and rising income inequality transformed educational and economic opportunities for Americans approaching midlife in the 1990s. Rising income inequality may have reduced mobility, as income gaps increased between rich and poor children. Against the effects of rising inequality, Civil Rights reforms may have increased mobility, as…

This study investigated the informal learning experiences expressed by Taiwanese adults (aged from 16 to 97) and examined their involvement related to selected socio-demographic characteristics. Data of the 2008 Adult Education Participation Survey in Taiwan and Fujian Area were used to look at different variables of adults' demographic…

This paper examines opportunities to improve student achievement by examining teaching effectiveness. It suggests practices that instructors use in their course delivery to encourage interest in the subject and create a connection between the subject and global competitiveness. This paper examines the challenges that post-secondary instructors…

Interviews with seven female immigrant Armenian high school students explore their modes of incorporation through examining how their interactions with the Internet shape their conceptions of home, ideas about citizenship, differences from their parents and each other, and gender identity role development. Differences emerged between 1.5 and 2nd…

This dissertation advances research in sociolinguistics by analyzing phonetic variation in a majority Asian American community in San Francisco, California. As one of the first community studies focusing on Asian Americans in an urban US context, this work speaks to ongoing discussions about speaker ethnicity, phonetic variation, and regional…

The digital native has been the darling of market research and a major focus of education consternation throughout the first decade of the 2000s. These are the children and young adults the literature describes as those born after 1980 and who exhibit high technical savvy, particularly as it pertains to information and communication technology…

Research concerning Latinos and their educational attainment has posited several reasons for Latino underrepresentation and underachievement. This study sought to counter such deficiency models and examine certain predictors of academic success among college Latinos. Specifically, this study predicted a negative correlation between generational…

This paper explores the philosophical background of one of the most widespread Web based sources used in contemporary education--Wikipedia. Theoretical part consists of the basic notions of anarchist philosophy of education such as human nature, work and society. Through Chomsky's prism of visions and goals, it provides the frame for further…

This article examines the significance of place and location at a time when mobile and networked technologies allow students access from a diversity of contexts. The article reports a cultural probe exercise. Over a 24-hour period, undergraduate students received SMS text messages and recorded answers to a fixed set of prompt questions using a…

Recruiting and retaining African American students is an ongoing challenge for many post-secondary institutions. This dissertation examined the contributing factors to this increasing dilemma and review strategies that may be helpful in the retention of African American male college students. This study also examined the instructional leadership…