This explanatory design was used to develop and implement effective Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) at Target Elementary School (TES). The theoretical framework for this study began with the assumption that there was a direct link between PLCs, student data, and self-efficacy of educator collaboration. It should be the goal of every…

The advising experience of students who start their academic studies at a community college is often critical to their success. Students with an intent to earn an associate degree may find that academic advising helps them define their academic goals, affirms their educational plans, and provides them continual guidance. This study explored the…

Current student success measures have been shown to be necessary, but insufficient, often masking the successes of specific student populations by virtue of their 4-year institutional centricity, aggregate calculation, and reflection of hegemonic definitions of student success. For far too long, academics and policymakers have valued what they…

The rapid spread of COVID-19 during the spring of 2020 warranted an unprecedented change as faculty were required to convert course content and quickly learn to use new instructional technology in order to prepare for emergency remote teaching. The purpose of this qualitative case study is to explore how faculty experienced this sudden disruption…

The role of intrusive advising in the persistence of community college students has not been well-studied even though intrusive advising has been touted as a practice to improve retention in U.S. community colleges. Student retention is important for sustaining community colleges that serve as open admissions institutions because they are…

Data science programming presents many challenges for programmers entering the field. Roughly, data science programming can be broken up into several activities: data wrangling, analysis, modeling, or visualization. Data wrangling is an important first step that involves cleaning and shaping tabular data--or dataframes--into a form amenable for…

Community colleges provide a key point of access to higher education across the United States. These colleges are especially important for underprepared students, especially in mathematics. This is especially true of rural students, who often have lacked the access to educational resources. Research on growth mindset theory has provided promising…

Black and racially minority women are underrepresented in administrative positions of authority in higher education, especially at predominantly white institutions (PWIs). These women are forced to work in environments of articulated boundaries that do not permit their voices or perspectives to be heard and they are overwhelmingly disregarded, in…

While there has been a growing focus on leadership in higher education, an area of recent interest is faculty members' leadership characteristics. This basic qualitative study explored leadership characteristics of faculty members applicable to improving learning in traditional students in community colleges. This study answered the research…

Community college faculty are essential to the success of student learning. As such, active participation through faculty shared governance is key to student and institutional success. This study explored the role communication and collaboration have in community college faculty shared governance. Using a mixed methods study design, with a focus…

In this chapter, I will examine the "recontextualization" of lesson study by comparing the practice in Japan and Java against the respective countries' contextual settings. I examine recontextualization of lesson study specifically focusing on three contextual differences: (1) professional accountabilities, (2) nature of collegiality,…

While nature center's missions often point to connecting people to nature in various ways, their potential to provide a broader array of services to their communities remains largely unexplored. To better understand the values local community members hold for nature centers, we conducted survey research around 16 centers in the United States.…

The University of Louisville guided the development of community engagement plans by its academic and administrative units to strengthen their ability to assess and improve their partnership, outreach, and engaged scholarship with community partners. Using a common template, each unit developed a process for engaging with the community, building…

A key dimension to social justice leadership is building authentic partnerships with families and community-based organizations to confront educational inequities. Authentic partnerships are respectful alliances among educators, families, and community agencies that value building relationships, communicating across difference, and sharing power…

The objective of this study was to describe community-college faculty's experiences teaching in learning communities. Quantitative survey data were collected from 34 faculty who had taught in at least one learning community during fall 2012-spring 2018, at an urban community college in the Northeast. Survey questions examined faculty's evaluation…