To promote racial and gender equity in the field of science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and computing (STEM+C), we investigated prominent influences on historically underrepresented minority (HURM) women's persistence in undergraduate education. With the underrepresentation of Black and Hispanic women in the computing workforce, this…

This dissertation was an investigation of how students in two-way bilingual immersion (TWBI) programs construct their bilingual identities inside and outside the school setting, highlighting the unique and multifaceted nature of their language development and cultural identity formation. TWBI programs aim to cultivate bilingualism and biliteracy,…

This qualitative study aimed to investigate the influences on 32 rural Iranian high school students' adoption of achievement goals. To this end, the high school students took part in individual semi-structured interviews. The outcomes indicated the high school students' goal orientation adoption was impacted by a host of significant individuals in…

Rural communities in forested regions across the United States are in the midst of a transformation driven by a complex mixture of economic, policy, and demographic dynamics. This research examines, through survey results, rural youth educational aspirations in two forest- dependent regions and the role that perceptions of the local school,…

This qualitative study investigated the experiences of first- and second-year migrant undergraduate students and staff in the College Assistance Migrant Program (CAMP) at Arizona State University (ASU). ASU CAMP, which started in 2016, is the first program of its kind at an Arizona public university. Using an ethnographic monitoring approach, a…

Teacher retention has become a major challenge for schools over the past several years. Rural school districts have become increasingly short on staff and are struggling to retain the staffs they have. The study had four purposes: (a) to determine teachers' perceptions of the factors leading to their retention, (b) to determine administrators'…

Black women in higher education are situated in a hegemonic, white, patriarchal context of academia. Despite staff and faculty attempts to support students utilizing foundational theories of student development, these efforts still reinforce controlling stereotypes of Black women and (re)subjugate them to a tumultuous existence in the academy as…

The persistent deficit positioning of Indigenous students has meant that the combined terms 'Indigenous education' and 'excellence in education' have been kept separate in mainstream discourse. Excellence in education is an under-theorised concept that must consider intercultural and diverse perspectives. Consequently, this paper aims to…

Educational challenges in rural places are compounded when discussions include race and ethnicity. In this chapter we explore how family, school, and community factors influence rural African American students' educational aspirations. Based on this review of literature, we make recommendations for student affairs practice.

Background: Adults with intellectual and/or developmental disabilities (IDD) experience health inequities, and those who also identify as a member of an ethnic minority group face additional health inequities. In the United States, a majority of adults with IDD continue to be supported by family caregivers making their health equity also…

The purpose of this study was to examine preservice music educators' perceptions of how the culture of a music teacher education programme and its embedded communities of practice influenced their occupational identity development. Research questions were (1) What specific cultural influences and communities of practice, if any, did the…

In this study, we aimed to explore early childhood educators' conceptualisations of physical literacy and how these are integrated in their teaching practice. To this end, we used a mixed-methods embedded design, with a primarily qualitative component that is supported by quantitative data (QUAL + quan). Participants consisted of class teachers (n…

The purpose of this pilot study was to investigate how African American male students persist through or depart before the end of the second year of their college journey. African American male students tend to drop out of college after their first year and sometimes after their first semester of college. There were several variables and themes…

Despite progress in enrolment in most countries, preschoolers still face challenges before joining grade one prompting a critical understanding of child experiences during the preschool-to-school transition. This paper compares preschool-to-school transition characteristics in Kenya and Hungary based on six recurrent concepts in the theories of…

Any undergraduate student lacking the knowledge and skills for digital technology will find it challenging to succeed academically and thrive in the 21st-century higher education setting. This study employed a novel conceptual framework built from ecological theory to investigate the attributions of the knowledge and skill gap in digital literacy…