The manner and method used to evaluate teachers has evolved over time. The methods employed often reflect the historical events and politics regarding education. Effective teachers versus a poor performing teacher can have implications on students' lifetime earnings (Hanushek, 2011). In the 2013-2014 academic year, Pennsylvania adopted the Teacher…

Testlets bring several perks in the development and administration of tests, such as 1) the construction of meaningful test items, 2) the avoidance of non-relevant context exposure, 3) the improvement of testing efficiency, and 4) the progression of testlet items requiring higher thinking skills. Thus, the inclusion of testlets in educational…

As assessments move towards computerized testing and making continuous testing available the need for rapid assembly of forms is increasing. The objective of this study was to investigate variability in assembled forms through the lens of first- and second-order equity properties of equating, by examining three factors and their interactions. Two…

Neoliberalism has been described by many as the greatest threat to global democracy. Few studies have attempted to locate the influences of neoliberalism at the interpersonal level on individual educators involved in university-based teacher education. Given this absence, I undertook an exploratory qualitative case study within one…

Transformative learning pedagogy in higher education leads to increased student engagement. The problem with transformative learning in higher education is deficiencies in research on increased student engagement obtained with transformative learning pedagogy. This research study addressed unanswered questions in the literature by exploring…

The purpose of this study was to determine the existence of a relationship between online professional development and English language arts (ELA) teachers' instructional practices. Professional development is commonly utilized to develop teachers' pedagogy, but in-person sessions do not meet all teachers' needs. "Mixed methods" research…

This research argues that to increase information security awareness effectiveness in preventing data incidents, a learning mindset must be in place at the individual and organizational levels. The motivation for this research stems from the continued number of data breaches that are increasing in size and scope at an alarming rate, negatively…

This dissertation explored questions related to teaching graphing skills to graduate students in behavior analysis. In Study 1, a survey of BCBAs asked which graphing conventions behavior analysts are most likely to revise. Only five conventions received high overall agreement and differences in revision ratings were associated with demographic…

A general conception of discussion and its relation to the development of reflective thinking is applied to philosophical inquiry in the classroom. Consideration of what makes a discussion philosophical is used to reveal the kind of thinking involved and then set within a model of discussion for the classroom designed to engage students in it. It…

This article describes two activities that were developed to support experienced faculty members in the transition to online teaching in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. These activities were designed to help faculty work through the first two steps of an informal instructional design process: 1) reflecting on existing course objectives and…

Engagement in learning is crucial for students, having long term effects that extend beyond a student's schooling years. However, many students, particularly at the secondary level, are not actively engaged in their schooling. Deficit mindsets, low self-efficacy, and a system that places excessive demands on teachers all lead to low expectations…

This qualitative study identified and explored the experiences of counselor educators living their Preferred Teaching Narratives (PTN). The methodology used was Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA; Smith et al., 2013) because of the focus on interpreting personal lived experiences (Landscape of Action; Bruner, 1986) and interpreting the…

Since its inception in 1992 at Ball State University, safe zone trainings (SZT) have been conducted at hundreds of institutions of higher education (Poynter, 2017). While previous studies have focused on SZT programs, ally development, and the campus climate for the LGBTQIA community, there is a lack of scholarship on SZT facilitators. This…

The nation is embroiled within intense debate regarding the existence of monuments, markers, and online museums as vestiges of racism and White privilege. Many argue those symbols should be removed from the public square. The essential question of this research is what are social studies methods teachers' perspectives about using monuments,…

Writing in second Chinese writing is viewed as one of the least used skills in classroom practice for educators (Kubler, 1997). While writing research has emphasized the importance of regarding writing as a social activity, mainstream writing instruction and task design remain to decontextualized and monologic (Liu, 2015). This dissertation…