Background: It is well known that earning a bachelor's degree in engineering is a demanding task, but ripe with opportunity. For students from historically excluded demographic groups, this task is exacerbated by oppressive circumstances. Although considerable research has documented how student outcomes differ across demographic groups, much less…

The importance of experienced teachers cannot be underestimated. They can help raise the performance of students and improve the overall quality of schooling by supporting less-experienced colleagues. This "Teaching in Focus: Where to find experienced teachers?" analyses the distribution of teachers across schools from two different but…

In this chapter, I introduce the critical campus ecology model (CCEM) to account for systems of oppression in an individual's ecosystem. Drawing insights from queer geographies and critical whiteness studies, I add "oppressive systems" as the fifth contextual system to the Process-Person-Context-Time model. Forces in the oppressive…

Rural critical policy analysis (RCPA) goes beyond questions about whether a policy will "work" in a particular place, to examine the impact of policies on rural places. RCPA recognizes that policies represent the allocation of values--and that policy analysis cannot be separated from views of right and wrong. RCPA asks us to consider…

Employment is a defining aspect of adult life as well as a protective factor for youth involved in the juvenile justice system, but employment rates for juvenile-justice-involved youth are substantially lower than for their noninvolved peers. Interventions have been developed to increase employment for juvenile-justice-involved youth, yet few…

This dissertation explored school principals' perspectives on optimal leadership practices and their impact on student achievement in Title I schools. Title I schools with high percentages of children from low-income families often face unique challenges, making the study of leadership practices within these institutions especially significant.…

Employment is a defining aspect of adult life as well as a protective factor for youth involved in the juvenile justice system, but employment rates for juvenile-justice-involved youth are substantially lower than for their noninvolved peers. Interventions have been developed to increase employment for juvenile-justice-involved youth, yet few…

The unprecedented challenges of teaching during COVID-19 prompted fears of a mass exodus from the profession. We examine the extent to which these fears were realized using administrative records of Massachusetts teachers between 2015-2016 and 2021-2022. Relative to prepandemic levels, average turnover rates were similar going into the fall of…

The current study investigated the ways that school districts in Missouri identified homeless and highly mobile students. A mixed methods data strategy was employed. A survey was sent to a sample of Missouri school districts to determine if identification practices were related to district demographics. Logistic regressions showed that district…

This qualitative phenomenological research study used interviews of Title I Secondary School principals regarding their leadership styles and how they get buy-in from their teams. The data collected was analyzed by transcribing the interviews and reading to find common trends in the information. The data collected was compared to each school's…

More than 1.6 million children and youth in the United States attend 21st Century Community Learning Centers (21st CCLCs), which are federally funded after-school programs available in each state, particularly for students who attend high poverty and low-performing schools (US Department of Education, 2020). These 10,125 centers are intended to do…

Group awareness tools have garnered significant interest within the realm of computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL), as they foster collaborative learning behaviors. However, in the context of a CSCL environment devoid of rich technologies, supporting group awareness is challenging. Contextualized in a teacher professional development…

Home-based parenting interventions foster positive parent-child relationships and parenting skills that reduce risks to child outcomes associated with social disadvantage. This article extends evidence about the value of one such program -- the Home Interaction Program for Parents and Youngsters (HIPPY) -- through qualitative examination of a new…

Background: Population studies confirm mothers with intellectual disability have poorer antenatal outcomes than other mothers but less is known about any differences in sociodemographic characteristics between these groups. Method: A systematic review of population-level studies on parents with intellectual disability was undertaken from January…

Entrepreneurship at the base of the pyramid has profound implications for economic development in impoverished regions. Building upon Timmons' three-factor theory of entrepreneurship and the resource conservation theory, this study adopts the transition-persistence strategy of entrepreneurs from lower social classes as the focal point, with…