Every year, nearly half a million U.S. teachers either move or leave the profession. It is estimated teacher retention issues cost the United States up to $2.2 billion annually (Alliance for Excellent Education, 2014). This phenomenological study focused on rural superintendent perspectives on the impact principal leadership and teacher mentoring…

The purpose of this study was to explore the ways in which augmented reality (AR) learning materials helped to make case studies with richer media so that preservice educational leaders could prepare for increasing self-efficacy in learning educational ethics. Educational leaders sometimes have to face ethical dilemmas, but preparing preservice…

Teaching and learning require a conducive environment that supports social interactions. With the mandate to include all students in the general classroom setting, challenging behaviors have been a problem in the classroom. Positive Behavior Intervention and Supports (PBIS) has been developed to counter the behaviors. The problem addressed in this…

Historically, girls' education has been problematic in Afghanistan, where girls' education was challenged or even banned by many groups of people and regimes. Recent years have seen significant improvement; starting with one million boys and no girls at school after the fall of the Taliban in 2001, the Afghan education system grew ninefold and now…

Over the years, many special education trends have emerged and faded, each claiming to be the solution to providing students with special needs a greater chance for success. Each year, new requirements for graduation and new educational legislation are introduced to try and correct old problems of ensuring students with special needs are properly…

School districts across the country are responsible for providing a fair and equitable education to all students who enter its doors. The current flows of immigration have created a challenge for educational agencies to meet the needs of newcomer immigrant adolescent students. As unique members of the education system, these students enter not…

School-based occupational therapy practitioners (OTPs) often face challenges impacting their ability to collaborate and communicate consistently with educators, including decreased time, lack of resources, educators' limited knowledge regarding occupational therapy (OT) scope of practice, informal communication and decreased focus on preventive or…

Individuals with disabilities live in higher rates of poverty and are not always able to fully integrate into their communities. Postsecondary education has traditionally been a means to enhance employment opportunities. Currently, students with disabilities are attending community colleges as their primary choice for higher education. Having an…

This study was conducted to compare the impact of technology-centered instructional methods on student performance in literacy to the impact of non-digital instructional practices. Additionally, this research was designed to identify specific program implementation measures used during the implementation of the prevailing instructional method and…

Many educational interventions encourage parents to engage in their child's education as if parental time and attention is limitless. Sadly, though, it is not. Successfully encouraging certain parental investments may crowd out other productive behaviors. A randomized field experiment (N = 2,212) assessed the impact of an intervention in which…

Undergraduate research can be a rewarding experience for both students and mentors. However, when students are from underrepresented and underserved groups, non-inclusive research mentoring may increase stereotype threat and a deflated sense of belonging. To promote inclusive research mentoring, a learning community for STEM faculty was designed…

This project study addressed the problem of low persistence of Black men in community college. A southeast Texas community college study site implemented a mentoring program specific to Black men in 2013 following a data report from The Achieving the Dream program. Although the mentoring program had been implemented with progress, there were no…

This dissertation is guided by my driving research question: what works for whom in education and why? I examine issues of instruction, assessment, and research approaches that begin to answer this question. Study 1 examines a classroom intervention's child x instruction interactions. Study 2 examines underlying cognitive factors, including…

The purpose of this study was to investigate a high school Algebra I program through an examination of potential relationships among teachers' beliefs about teaching and learning mathematics, teachers' instructional styles, students' academic self-concept in mathematics, and students' mathematics achievement in an Algebra I course. While a…

Career academies provide high school students with an opportunity to complete high school coursework while deeply exploring a potential career field concentration. Such academy models aim to improve high graduation rates and college and career readiness of students. However, the implementation of a career academy program can be challenging and may…