The Center for Disease Control (CDC) did not allow elementary aged students to receive the vaccination for COVID-19 (which will be referred to as the pandemic) until the Spring of 2021. This created two environments: the face-to-face learning environment and the virtual learning environment. Teachers were thrown into a situation in which they had…

The purpose of this quantitative, quasi-experimental nonequivalent control group design study was to measure the effects of both types of manipulatives on student mathematical understanding of 1st and 4th grade, Title I students. This data is needed for teachers to make informed decisions regarding their instructional choices. 270 participants…

The purpose of this ex-post facto quantitative study was to compare English Language Arts (ELA) and math Tennessee Compressive Assessment Program (TCAP) scores of students in grades four through eight who attended school virtually or in-person during the 2020-2021 school year. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the school district in this study allowed…

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, schools were forced to close their doors and alternative learning environments had to be established (Wyse et al., 2020). Most districts addressed this issue by creating virtual learning environments (Kaffenberger, 2021). The creation, adoption, and navigation of this new virtual environment created a plethora of…

Blended learning allows students to have some control over the time, path, pace, and place by blending their instructional opportunities in both online and face-to-face learning environments. The problem of how students' negative perceptions of the blended learning environment negatively impacted their academic achievement is linked to the purpose…

The purpose of this study is to examine how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the learning of students in public education through the analysis of standardized assessment performance before and during COVID-19. The study also compares virtual learning and face-to-face students' change in performance on the standardized assessments. To answer the…

This explanatory mixed-methods study explored if there was a change in student progress as measured by STAR percentile rank due to the multiple instructional modalities caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Educational institutions had to shift to distance learning in March of 2020 due to the outbreak of COVID-19. The return to school for the 2020-2021…

The purpose of this research study was to evaluate the impact of Leader in Me, a transformational process, on academic achievement for students in virtual and in-person learning environments. Educators have explored different ways to help keep students motivated and eager to learn during the national Coronavirus Pandemic. Leader in Me is the…

This generic qualitative inquiry explored general education middle school teachers' perceptions and experiences delivering social and emotional (SEL) and/or college and career readiness advisory lessons in addition to their daily content curriculum in their post-COVID-19 in-person learning classrooms. Research has indicated the importance of SEL…

This study explored diverse students' literacy development in Grades 3-5 in a literacy club. It also served as a self-study to examine how I developed and facilitated this literacy club. This study focused on a group of diverse students engaged in a literacy club across two study phases. The first phase consisted of an after-school literacy club…

Michael Simonson's equivalency theory provided support for this study. Simonson's equivalency theory is built around the idea that while there should be different learning experiences for online and seated students, those learning experiences should be equivalent. Equivalency theory includes equivalency, learning experiences, appropriate…

The purpose of this comparative, quantitative study was to explore the relationship of interim test scores among remote and in-person learners, low-income students, and students with disabilities. In March 2020, a portion of students enrolled in a K-12 school in Northeast Tennessee was moved into remote learning until the end of the school year in…

This dissertation consists of three papers. In each paper, I leverage a different quantitative method to study a downstream effect of technology on educational outcomes. In the first paper, I study the impact of an online math learning program on 3rd through 5th grade math achievement in Louisiana. Employing Zearn Math usage metrics and…

In this study, a comparative analysis was conducted to explore how students' learning outcomes were potentially influenced by student engagement during different modes of instruction. The study compared the final mean grade point averages (GPAs) of a sample (N = 600) of middle school students during in-person, online, and hybrid modes of…

The purpose of this study was to examine how growth mindset strategies enhance academic achievement for English learners in 5th grade from low socio-economic areas. Secondary data was available through (MAP) Measures of Academic Progress and surveys (Panorama and PACE/CORE) to analyze students' use of strategies from Fall to Winter of 2019 and…