Employers currently struggle to find workers who possess the necessary skills to fill job openings, and this skills gap is projected to grow. By 2025, 30 percent of all job openings in California--or a total of 1.9 million jobs--will require some form of postsecondary education short of a four-year degree. California's education pipeline is not…

The purpose of this study was to measure decision-making influences within RtI teams. The study examined the factors that influence school personnel involved in three areas of RtI: determining which RtI measures and tools teams select and implement (i.e. Measures and Tools), evaluating the data-driven decisions that are made based on the…

Every community has strong teachers who help their students learn to high levels. But far too often low-income students and students of color are short-changed when it comes to teacher quality. Federal law requires states to end these disparities. But states, recognizing that most hiring, compensation, and promotional decisions, not to mention…

High School graduation rates are key indicators of accountability for high schools and school districts in Oregon. Beginning with the 2008-09 school year, the Oregon Department of Education (ODE) implemented the cohort method of calculating graduation rates. The cohort method identifies the year the student entered high school for the first time…

My PhD research asks why UK high school mathematics teachers who probably love mathematics do not always fully share this with their students. Currently, I am completing my data collection at the end of my second PhD year. I think that researching this might inform new teachers and classroom practice. There is research in mathematics education…

In this dissertation, I investigate the linguistic and technological challenges involved in creating a cross-linguistic data set to undertake phonological typology. I then address the question of whether more sophisticated, knowledge-based approaches to data modeling, coupled with a broad cross-linguistic data set, can extend previous typological…

Previous studies have rarely examined the impact of outliers on the decisions about the number of factors to extract in an exploratory factor analysis. The few studies that have investigated this issue have arrived at contradictory conclusions regarding whether outliers inflated or deflated the number of factors extracted. By systematically…

A variety of joint space multidimensional scaling (MDS) methods have been utilized for the spatial analysis of two- or three-way dominance data involving subjects' preferences, choices, considerations, intentions, etc. so as to provide a parsimonious spatial depiction of the underlying relevant dimensions, attributes, stimuli, and/or subjects'…

Vanpaemel and Lee (2012) argued, and we agree, that the comparison of formal models can be facilitated by Bayesian methods. However, Bayesian methods neither precede nor supplant our proposals (Wills & Pothos, 2012), as Bayesian methods can be applied both to our proposals and to their polar opposites. Furthermore, the use of Bayesian methods to…

Despite Civil Rights legislation, racial inequality persists, especially in the context of poverty. This study advances the literature on racial inequality and the Southern legacy of slavery by examining slavery's relationship with inequality in poverty. I analyze county-level U.S. Census data using regression and spatial data analysis techniques.…

We propose functional multiple-set canonical correlation analysis for exploring associations among multiple sets of functions. The proposed method includes functional canonical correlation analysis as a special case when only two sets of functions are considered. As in classical multiple-set canonical correlation analysis, computationally, the…

The current discourse in Australian languages education is that if children study languages in the early years, then languages uptake in secondary schools will increase. There has been little coherent data collection and analysis, however, to support or challenge this discourse. This article draws on findings from an ARC Linkage study in NSW…

This study sought to find out the relationship between students perception of their teacher effectiveness and academic achievement in Basic Technology. Teacher's personality, teaching techniques/classroom management strategy and appearance, all integrate to make for teacher effectiveness. To carry out this research, two research questions and one…

Purpose: Underrepresented groups have fought for equal access to higher education, which spurred the development of "minority" initiatives. However, the assault on affirmative action and race-based initiatives have led many universities to retreat toward more all-encompassing "diversity" initiatives.…

Objective: This study examines the psychometric properties of the revised Perceived Social Competence Scale (PSCS), a brief, user-friendly tool used to assess social competence among youth. Method: Confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs) examined the factor structure and invariance of an enhanced scale (PSCS-II), among a sample of 420 youth.…