For students to become powerful learners, their teachers must engage in powerful learning themselves. Yet the professional learning many teachers experience is often disconnected from the curriculum, disconnected from specific students and their learning needs, and disconnected from their daily work. What is needed is a tightly connected…

This report presents the number of child care providers and children enrolled in northeastern Minnesota in 2018, the economic impact of the child care industry, estimates of the unmet need for child care and costs to add capacity to meet demand, the economic impact of the child care shortage, and examples of best-practice business involvement in…

My dissertation is situated in the field of computer science education research, specifically, the learning and teaching of programming. This is a critical area to be studied, since, primarily, learning to program is difficult, but also, the need for programming knowledge and skills is growing, now more than ever. This research is particularly…

The University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture Cooperative Extension Service has been developing and refining webinar delivery practices since 2012. On the basis of a review of existing literature and our own experiences, we have established methods for necessary planning, organization of content and people, and effective delivery of…

Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) is a data reduction technique used to condense data into smaller sets of summary variables by identifying underlying factors potentially accounting for patterns of collinearity among said variables. Using an illustrative example, the 5 general steps of EFA are described with best practices for decision making…

Despite widespread calls for evidence-based research in education, this strategy has heretofore generated a surprisingly small return on the related financial investment. Some scholars have suggested that the situation follows from a mismatch between education as an assumed field of study and applied empirical research methods. This article's…

Field experiments, which are a powerful research technique, are common in some fields, but they have not been widely used in studying the effect of financial and counseling planning interventions. Financial services can benefit from the expanded use of field experiments to explore potential causal mechanisms for the effects of financial planning…

Throughout continuing education focusing on the adult learner, standardized and sometimes even effective measures of instructor performance have remained elusive. As Smith (2012) stated, "Teaching practice cannot be measured according to lists of competencies or techniques, it cannot be safeguarded by a collection of prescriptions for good…

Access to career and technical education (CTE) programs may play a significant role in Hispanic students' academic success; however, little research had been conducted on the best practices employed by CTE teachers to meet the academic needs of Hispanic learners. The purpose of this quantitative survey study was to investigate best practices used…

Purpose: Primary and secondary education (P&SE) is fundamentally important for achieving a high-quality education system. P&SE delivers more extensive social returns than higher education and is perhaps the most important locus where core values are established and the foundation for educational super-systems. The purpose of this paper is…

This study investigates management strategies for improving the functionality of tertiary education in Nigeria. One research question was asked and answered and three hypotheses were formulated and tested at 0.05 alpha level. The sample of the study comprised 900 respondents selected through the simple random sampling technique from six tertiary…

Online synchronous collaborative writing (SCW) is ubiquitous among youths and has found its way into many secondary English language arts classrooms. Yet, to maximize the affordances of online SCW, teachers need a synthesis of contemporary, evidence-based practices for how to support students during this form of writing. The purpose of this…

Over the last three years, 724,116 online courses were attempted within the Virginia Community College System (VCCS). From these attempts, 206,533 resulted in a grade of D or F or a withdrawal, accounting for 29% of all attempted online courses (Virginia Community College System, 2015). This does not account for the students who may have dropped…

This research compared the economics curriculum of the economics undergraduate programs of the best universities in the world, and those of universities within a developing country (Ecuador), in order to show the basic formal differences and the common characteristics (intra-rankings and inter-rankings). The proposed comparison criteria were…

This study examined teacher beliefs regarding research-based practices in gifted education and how these beliefs or other barriers influenced the implementation of practices in their classroom. An online survey was sent to gifted education teachers in a large suburban district. The teacher belief statements were developed based on the National…