This dissertation explores how pre-service teachers conceptualize the relationship between justice and practice, and then navigate the tensions of their student teaching context to enact their beliefs in their teaching practice. Starting from the assumption that all teachers must understand how their practice challenges rather than reproduces…

The purpose of this research is to determine the classroom teachers' sense of efficacy about the drama in education, to examine them in terms of various variables and to reveal their opinions and metaphorical perceptions regarding the concept of drama in education. Convergent parallel design, which is of the mixed method designs, was used in the…

This research set out to enhance instruction for early education and child development majors in a community college setting in a manner that allows them to gain content knowledge while becoming more prepared to practice effective pedagogy in early learning classrooms. This study examined how metacognitive awareness changes throughout a semester…

This dissertation utilizes autoethnography to explore myriad cultural and institutional changes that impacted the author's work as a writing tutor at a Midwestern university over the span of a decade. Utilizing both writing center theories and composition theories, data in this text--presented in the form of narrative nonfiction--chronicles…

According to the American Association of University Women (AAUW) (n.d.), approximately 4 million women, more than ever before, rely on community colleges to prepare them for higher education and the workforce. These community college female students "represent all ages, races, and ethnicities, [and] include more than a million mothers".…

This study explores how a group of Dominican teachers build a professional teaching culture of learner-centered pedagogies by working with a U.S.-Dominican education non-profit organization, CREAR. First, this study uncovers the CREAR cultural logics--the knowledge and know how's characteristic of teaching--that shape CREAR teaching to define…

The Learning Target Rating Scale (LTRS) is a measure designed to evaluate the quality of teacher-developed learning targets for embedded instruction for early learning. In the present study, we examined the measurement dependability of LTRS scores by conducting a generalizability study (G-study). We used a partially nested, three-facet model to…

The current societal pressures regarding religious liberty and institutional sustainability for Christian higher education in America call for rhetorical leadership from presidents of Christian colleges and universities. This study provides a biblically rooted and theoretically sound, multifaceted approach using sociorhetorical criticism and…

The high-stakes nature of portfolio evaluation makes it necessary to perform such assessments in the fairest and most equitable manner possible. Determining whether or not there is a difference between holistically and individualistically derived scores for digital visual art portfolios and how those differences can be explained was the focus of…

This cross-sectional study assessed the relation between spatial skills and mathematics in 854 participants across kindergarten, third grade, and sixth grade. Specifically, the study probed for a threshold for spatial skills when performing mathematics, above which spatial scores and mathematics scores would be significantly less related. This…

Internationalization efforts within higher education have been increasingly prioritized over the past few decades as a response to the growing demands of the changing globalized world. Short-term education abroad has emerged as a common strategy that institutions implement to help internationalize their campuses, students, and faculty. Faculty are…

This dissertation investigates ways of training adults to teach students with communication impairments to use augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) systems across a variety of environments. In addition to three stand-alone papers, it will start with an introduction and conclude with a discussion. Chapter 1 will provide the reader with…

Computer systems tend to be ubiquitous as they become more integrated in our everyday activities, embedded in tables, shoes, watch and plenty of others connected things (CT). In the e-learning field, the transformations induced by the Internet of Things (IoT) allow individuals to learn whenever they want, accessing a quantity of diverse digital…

A new lecture supporting system based on real-time learning analytics is proposed. Our target is on-site classrooms where teachers give their lectures, and a lot of students listen to teachers' explanation, conduct exercises etc. We utilize not only an e-Learning system, but also an e-Book system to collect real-time learning activities during the…

This study explored student agency in an active-learning business calculus course. The lecture-style instructional practices typically used in this course at this institution allow few opportunities for students to interact with their peers, interface with the instructor one-on-one, or do mathematics during class time. Additionally, this course…