The rising prevalence of homelessness among students is a real phenomenon at all levels of educational institutions. This study explored the multifaceted champions and challenges faced by students experiencing homelessness and collected data from subject matter experts to mitigate the impact on their educational journey and future students…

European colonization of vast portions of the world has left its mark long after the point when most societies were supposedly freed. The coloniality of power has ensured the continuing dominance of Eurocentric ideologies in the form of racism, sexism, and the marginalization of Black and Indigenous knowledge production. In this dissertation…

Social work students are expected to learn about and demonstrate several professional competencies during their academic and fieldwork studies. This study explored the associations between professionalism, resilience, and reflective thinking in a sample of 212 students enrolled in a Master of Social Work program. The sample was predominantly…

In 2010, Goodwill of Central and Southern Indiana opened its first Excel Center adult high schools aimed at assisting adults in obtaining a high school diploma and transitioning those adults into higher education, industry certifications, and the workforce completely tuition free. MERS Goodwill, the largest Missouri branch of Goodwill (excluding…

Latine students are underrepresented in social work education. This case study focuses on the Online Bilingual MSW (OBMSW) Program, the first bilingual (Spanish and English) and online MSW program in the mainland United States. The purpose of this study was to explore and have a greater understanding of how the OBMSW program is providing an…

Students and the professor of a doctoral-level class, titled Educational Reform, studied eight philosophical traditions in the West that have had great influence on the preparation and development of teachers and administrators in the US. The eight philosophical traditions that we studied included (a) perennialism, (b) essentialism, (c)…

This mixed method sequential explanatory study provided analysis of North Carolina (NC) school leaders' dispositions in eliminating opportunity gaps, outlined in NC's strategic plan. The study's quantitative phase used descriptive and correlation analysis of eight Likert subscales around four tenets of transformative leadership (Shields, 2011) and…

This dissertation presents three separate essays. The first two essays explore the gender wage gap and its dynamics in urban China from 1995 to 2018. The first chapter decomposes the gender wage gap based on the observed wage for workers with a precise measure of the hourly wages. The first chapter examines the observed average gender wage gap in…

Grounded in Vygotskian sociocultural theory, we propose a novel methodology for second language teacher cognition research called "dialogic restorying." We exemplify this methodological innovation by presenting a qualitative longitudinal project in which we prompted L2 teachers to revisit and restory what Veresov (2017) calls…

In occupational therapy practice, critical thinking is a foundational skill for the delivery of effective care; however, there is limited evidence on the development of critical thinking skills in occupational therapy education. The purpose of this study was to explore the effects and student perceptions of concept mapping on critical thinking…

The Remediation report is in response to Ohio Revised Code section 3345.061 (H), which requires the Chancellor of the Ohio Department of Higher Education (ODHE) and the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce (DEW) to issue a report recommending policies and strategies for reducing the need for academic remediation and developmental courses at…

Computer vision (CV) is a subfield of artificial intelligence (AI) that trains computers to understand our visual world based on digital images. There are many successful applications of CV including face and hand gesture detection, weather recording, smart farming, and self-driving cars. Recent advances in computer vision with machine learning…

Higher education focuses on "first-year retention" (measured from fall to fall) as the key metric indicating whether students are on a path toward their degree. This metric appears in federal and state data collections, accreditation reviews, and even accountability and funding frameworks. Although first-year retention is an important…

In the United States, one in five adults are impacted by some form of mental illness in any given year, but only about 40% of individuals seek professional mental health support. While occupational therapists (OT) may work with individuals with mental illness to improve social skills, activities of daily living (ADLs), instrumental ADLs, and…

Occupational therapy fieldwork helps students refine their professional and technical skills to achieve competency required of entry-level occupational therapists. While fieldwork is traditionally completed in an in-person setting, the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in some students completing fieldwork in a virtual format. Yet, minimal research has…