This study looks at how a mentorship relationship between myself and thirteen graduates of an all-girls public academy developed over the course of six years. The study looked at how gender and race affected this mentorship, and finally, it looked at what alternative literacies were developed to help create and maintain this mentorship. The study…

This dissertation examined the term legal literacy as it applies to education, the state of legal literacy in educators today, and how that might be improved through lens self-efficacy. This dissertation is organized into four separate papers. Paper 1 is a review of the literature about legal literacy in both the field of education and in the…

With the increasing academic gap in public schools, it is important that students are exposed to education at an early age if possible. This causal-comparative research study sought to explore the impact of Pre-K attendance and foundational literacy on academic achievement at the end of the third-grade year. Student achievement was measured using…

An inequality in literacy rates exists between deaf children and their hearing peers. Research indicates that visual phonic interventions such as Visual Phonics used alongside a phonics program enhances grapheme-phoneme correspondence. That practice in turn improves overall literacy achievement. However, as rates deaf literacy continue to lag…

As colleges and universities adapt to an evolving workforce and changing sociopolitical landscape, the need for campuses to be responsive to the needs of students is imperative. For divisions of student affairs, the ability to clearly articulate the impact of their services on student learning and development will ensure future resources and a…

While text selection is indeed a crucial choice that transmits explicit and implicit messages to students about what literature is and why it matters, it remains one element that needs to be put into conversation with a broader set of considerations in order for educators to fully grapple with the nature and purpose of rigorous and transformative…

Water is a meaningful context for children to engage in inquiry, and to acquire and use science and engineering practices, such as developing spatial thinking and early concepts of water dynamics. This book shows teachers how to provide children with opportunities to engineer water movement through pouring and filling containers of various kinds…

Physical literacy (PL) is highlighted as a construct that can positively impact physical activity (PA). Measurement methods and definitions for PL exist, but vary between research groups. This variation affects the ability to compare research findings. The purpose of this study was to assess the construct validity of PL in children. PL was…

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound impact on adult education programs globally, transforming in-person operations to distance, online enterprises often overnight. Many administrators, instructors, and program staff have been inordinately burdened physically, economically, and socially by the pandemic in ways that could be considered…

In this review, we evaluate the claim that translanguaging in the classroom supports the development of the bilingual lexicon by enhancing cross-linguistic transfer. To address this issue, we integrate findings from psycholinguistics and educational sciences in order to identify how effective pedagogical practices for monolingual children can be…

Today's youth will inherit the brunt of climate change. Science literacy plays a critical role in raising future adults who commit to climate change mitigation by reducing daily household energy use. The objective of this study was to examine the mediating role of climate change knowledge efficacy on the positive influence of science literacy on…

Middle and high school students are part of Generation Z (birth years 1997-2012), a group that is emerging as very different from their parents and teachers. This article considers ways that generational research about Generation Z learners and NCTM's Effective Mathematics Teaching Practices can be used to inform and innovate practice in the…

The purpose of the study was to investigate the relationship between high school students' understandings of aspects about nature of science (NOS) and their argumentation skills, particularly whether informed conceptions of NOS contribute to better argumentation skills. Participants, a total of 125 Grade 10 students, responded to an open-ended…

As technologically gifted students apply their abilities to computer science, they naturally flow through the talent development stages of potential, competency, and expertise. Processes that have always been important for gifted students to learn as they develop potential are embedded in learning code, which engages the beginning programmer in…

Although isolating, lockdown also created unexpected opportunities for connection and inspiration. This article describes the lockdown literacies of a sibling pair, Marco and Mara, as they wrote digital texts/books for Literacy-Cast, a virtual, interactive literacy space offered by Appalachian State University from March 2020-present. Since…