The purpose of this basic qualitative study was to explore and discover the transition practices of special education leaders who work with students with disabilities (SWD) during the elementary to middle school transitional period. The transitional year between elementary and middle school has been described as difficult due to many reasons. The…

All higher education institutions are required to be accountable to their accrediting body and various stakeholders through a process known as Institutional Effectiveness (IE). Each institution has its own culture for how the organization as a whole is governed and how it meets its regulations for compliance. This dissertation addresses the…

Public schools in the 21st century face many challenges, from recruiting and retaining high-quality staff in an era high teacher attrition, meeting the needs of students in a rapidly changing world, and adapting to ever changing demands from local, state and federal stakeholders. School are challenged to be more nimble and innovative, but they are…

The purpose of this study was to examine whether teachers' trust in their principal would positively affect their implementation of skills they learned in professional development. Four questions guided my research: To what extent is teachers' positive engagement in professional development related to teacher trust in their principal? To what…

Learning and participation are inseparable in the online learning environment. Much effort has been invested in encouraging online participation, but the effort tends to view online participation as a numerically aggregated variable, overlooking time issues of participation. Learning is a series of cumulative events, so participation at different…

This study explores the characteristics of highly active participants, also known as super-posters (Huang, Dasgupta, Ghosh, Manning, & Sanders, 2014), alongside their contributions in a MOOC designed for teaches' professional development. Connectivism is used to characterize super-posters' activities in this MOOC. Results are aligned with the…

In this paper we introduce the term "task science" to encompass the range of activities involved in designing tasks for school mathematics. We argue that task science is enriched by the participation of teachers, but more particularly that participating in task science is a powerful form of professional learning. We describe the role and…

Student trustees have been members of local community college governing boards since 1977. Local governing boards determine their privileges and establish procedures to elect student trustees. Boards, as well as college administrators, establish the environment and expectations for student trustees. This paper explores the roles and…

This dissertation was designed to identify factors that might explain teacher resistance versus teacher support for participation in education research. To that end, predictor variables suggested by both diffusion of innovations theory, as well as personality trait theories were examined as unique predictors of variability in attitudes toward…

Youth participation in meaningful and purposive civic organizations and activities not only impacts the participants' development, but also influences their involvement in their communities both today and in the future. The combination of the two studies included in this dissertation examine just that. Both studies were conducted utilizing…

This article reports a long-term ethnographic study on jamming and learning from an entwined artistic and educational perspective. The study investigates aspects of learning during a professional band's jamming and recording eight groove-jazz frameworks and a series of subsequent concerts with pre-academy students "sitting in." Fieldwork…

Evaluating informal learning spaces in higher education institutions needs to respond to the complex conceptual orientation underpinning their intention and design. This article outlines a model of participatory analysis that accounts for the conceptual complexity, lived experience and broad intentions of informal learning space. Further, the…

Teacher expertise and insights are valuable resources untapped by most districts and states. That's why as new federal education laws with the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) begin to be implemented, teachers need to seek and create opportunities to use their teacher agency in advocating for relevant and effective professional learning. And as…

Instructional leadership is conventionally viewed as a principal's responsibility, practiced within a school distributed leadership configuration or other framework of school leadership. However, principals deliberately and visibly support teacher efforts in exerting leadership as teacher leadership practices are implemented for the improvement of…

The primary purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between selected social network characteristics and engagement among faculty at a research university (RU/VH). In 2013, a restructuring initiative targeted seven departments from different colleges at a public research university (RU/VH) located in the Gulf Coast region of the…