The role of a school district superintendent demands a balance of professional leadership and political astuteness. Individuals in this role possess distinct skills, values, and beliefs essential for navigating its complexities. This mixed-method phenomenological study employs self-reported values, decision-making styles, and interviews to explore…

Identifying high-quality educators at the point of hire can reduce future recruitment costs and minimize the impact of attrition on school organizations and student learning. One low-cost way to screen applicants and learn about their beliefs, values, and pedagogy is through their short-essay writing samples. However, there is limited research…

How do people determine whether a conversation is good or bad? Do conversational phenomena (reaching common ground, striving to contribute equally, successful conversational closings) influence judgments of conversation quality and recall of conversations? We tested whether individuals reading previously transcribed conversations considered…

This study aimed to understand why and how community college practitioners act for institutional change in support of undocumented students--drawing on concepts from the tempered radicals framework. I used qualitative inquiry and exploratory interviews to understand how community college practitioners make meaning of the changes they have been…

According to Brenan (2021), 77% of Americans are concerned about the morals and values in America. Morality is embedded in the foundation of the United States and its educational system, with ethical dilemmas requiring leaders to be intentional and cognizant (Dahl, 2015; Johnson, 2021; Lickona, 1993; Smith, 2020). The California public educational…

The purpose of this qualitative research study was to examine the decision-making skills of senior management leaders in the higher education sector and how those leaders drew on their moral and ethical skills when making decisions that presented ethical dilemmas. This examination was conducted among several public universities within the…

The present study advances a model of critical civic motivation grounded in expectancy-value theory and highlights diverse manifestations of motivation among marginalized adolescents. The participants were 447 high school youth (85.0% Latinx; 62.9% low-income). Two complementary methodological approaches were employed to examine civic motivation,…

The purpose of this study was to determine if there is a predictive relationship between the number of years a student is enrolled in an elementary school with a campus-wide character education program (CWCEP) and their academic achievement, attendance, and behavior during their high school years. This study examined whether students enrolled in…

Discrimination, as a psychosocial stressor functions as one pathway in reduced mental health among Hispanic/Latinx undergraduates. Intrinsic value orientation is associated with adaptive functioning and may protect from mental health symptoms. From a strengths-based perspective, this study examined intrinsic value orientation as a buffer against…

Despite the warnings given to young Christian students about hedonistic college campuses, many of these students arrive at Stanford to instead find a plethora of lively Christian organizations and their nonreligious classmates often more curious than hostile. While Stanford by no means espouses Christian values, hedonism does not rule campus…

The purpose of this study was to identify secondary school leaders' preferred responses to gossip (RTG) and to examine the relationship between their attitudes towards gossip (ATG) and preferred RTG in public secondary schools in Southern California. This exploratory study used 2 rounds of online surveys. In Part I, 29 school leaders identified…

This study addresses how high school band directors operationalize their values for music education in their band programs. High school band directors described that their values developed from a variety of influences, namely their educator identity, and the experience of their own participation in high school and collegiate music. I employed a…

The current study examined the Five Cs model of positive youth development (PYD; Lerner et al., 2005) in U.S. Mexican-origin youth (N = 674, 50% female) and tested the extent to which ethnic pride, familismo, and respeto, as an index of cultural orientation, predicted PYD across midadolescence. PYD was modeled using a bifactor structure, which…

Education by Experience (Educación por la Experiencia, E × E) is a programme that offers an innovative model of teaching values to children, youth, and adults. Its materials include different grade-level student textbooks as well as educator and parent guidebooks. Since its establishment in 2010, the programme has achieved broad dissemination and…

California is one of just two states (with Kansas) that does not use a student-level growth model to measure school performance. This brief lays out a number of common beliefs about growth models and provides evidence that these beliefs are inaccurate or unsupported. In so doing, the brief makes a positive case that the state should adopt such a…