This books offers new ways to think about teaching excellence in higher education and presents a definition of the concept of teaching excellence. It offers a fresh interpretation of Boyer's famous account of scholarship as the foundation of university teaching. To fully understand the nature of teaching excellence in higher education, the book…

The Comprehensive Assessment System (CAS) Framework presents a vision for a system of assessments for English Learners in secondary grades that brings assessment closer to the classroom and fully involves teachers in assessment development and validation. The CAS Framework is intended to signal a new and equitable direction and to provoke…

Social media is an emerging teaching strategy encouraging student collaboration while learning. However, the literature is lacking regarding the use of social media for teaching and learning with today's generation of learners. The purpose of this case study, with a quantitative and qualitative component, was to examine the effects of…

This multiple manuscript dissertation offers a cohesive set of research studies curated to address three topics related to how high-quality instructional practice (HQIP) is defined, measured and ultimately connected to student engagement and achievement. Grounded in Benson's (1998) framework of construct validation, this line of inquiry outlines:…

Educational researchers are often interested in phenomena that unfold over time within a person and at the same time, relationships between their characteristics that are stable over time. Since variables in a longitudinal study reflect both within- and between-person effects, researchers need to disaggregate them to understand the phenomenon of…

Structural equation models comprise a large class of popular statistical models, including factor analysis models, certain mixed models, and extensions thereof. Model estimation is complicated by the fact that we typically have multiple interdependent response variables and multiple latent variables (which may also be called random effects or…

Research has shown that modern courses and programs designed to foster critical thinking vary in both content and delivery, in turn leading to differences in their effectiveness. Few studies have investigated critical thinking among nontraditional students at community colleges taking STEM courses, especially within the geosciences. Furthermore,…

Experiencing instructional supportive structures that help teachers to overcome barriers to meeting the diverse needs of their students is vital to the success of novice teachers (Kraft et al., 2018). The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study was to explore the perceptions novice teachers developed while experiencing instructional…

With a motivation to immerse students in engineering design, graphics communication, and computer aided design (CAD) skills early-on in the biomedical engineering curriculum, we launched a new 2-unit laboratory course on "Graphics Design in BME" in the Spring 2020 quarter for UC Davis sophomores. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the course…

Science instruction in elementary schools can be poorly defined, of low status, and taught by teachers with inadequate subject knowledge (Shulman, 2015). This confusion can lead to low teacher confidence, morale, and professional dissatisfaction which may contribute to high attrition rates and diminished value of science teaching and learning…

This qualitative descriptive study investigated the self-efficacy of nurse practitioner (NP) instructors after completion of an online course on simulation pedagogy. Due to minimum standards for NP instructors to have a degree as either a NP or be considered an expert in their content field, most of them do not have formalized education in the…

Well-designed research-based evaluation instruments have been implemented in school districts in a southwest U.S. state; however, it was unclear how elementary teachers were using an evaluation instrument as a formative tool to guide their instructional practices. The purpose of this basic qualitative study was to understand how elementary…

We perform a large-scale randomized controlled trial to evaluate the potential of machine learning-based instruction sequencing to improve memorization while allowing the learners the freedom to choose their review times. After controlling for the length and frequency of study, we find that learners for whom a machine learning algorithm determines…

The purpose of this instrumental case study was to examine how administrators from the Oceanside School District perceived the district's pedagogical shift towards the Six Global Competencies of Deep Learning (6Cs). The researcher's primary motivation was to understand the strategies used to bring about system-wide change. Three theoretical…

Teachers have a tremendous responsibility of educating students on academic skills as well as supporting their social development. Some students do not have the ability to manage their disruptive behavior, ultimately causing more discipline referrals and stress on the classroom teacher. To aid in the implementation of evidence-based practices…