This qualitative descriptive study investigated the experiences and professional outcomes of novice registered nurses participating in professional development nursing simulations integrating worked examples, a cognitive load instructional design principle. Drawing upon cognitive load theory and the worked examples principle, the study addressed…

In today's complex workplace, organizations have implemented mentoring programs to serve the needs of employees by providing career development and personal support. Mentoring relationships provide a variety of vocational, psychosocial and role modeling functions to proteges. Previous educational psychology research has examined the role of…

This dissertation develops a cognitive model describing when children learn to group distinct sound segments (allophones) into abstract equivalence classes (phonemes). The allophones an individual acquires are arbitrary and determined by their particular input, yet are intricately involved in language cognition once learned. The proposed…

This dissertation presents a qualitative research single case study to describe the state of social-emotional development of educationally-disadvantaged students at SM Elementary School (pseudonym) in the aftermath of remote learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic. To understand the students' state of social-emotional development, students from SM…

This study uses narrative analysis to track undergraduates' proof schemes throughout a transition proofs course at a research 1 university in the Midwest, with a focus on student example use and how it influences their schemes. Assessment data and cognitive interviews were conducted at four points throughout the semester in order to track the…

Current studies on academic coaching programs highlight their positive effects on undergraduate student success, particularly among students with disabilities. However, there remains a gap in understanding how these programs achieve success for students without disabilities. This research seeks to assess the impact of academic coaching on…

This qualitative descriptive study aimed to explore how Latina professionals in supervisory roles described a long-term affiliation with a professional association in Arizona. The fundamental theoretical foundation of the study is the social cognitive career theory, which led to four research questions. The idea was to describe Latina…

This study aimed to investigate the following questions: Does the use of thinking maps and semantic mapping during explicit vocabulary instruction affect content specific science vocabulary knowledge and comprehension in fourth grade students? and What are student perceptions of using thinking maps and semantic maps to learn new vocabulary? To…

Human space exploration is entering a new era through the design of missions that venture further from earth for longer durations, such as missions to the Moon and Mars. Mission success during long duration exploration missions (LDEM) requires astronauts to flawlessly execute exceptionally complex skills across a multitude of tasks, presenting new…

This dissertation aimed to narrow the gap between learning and exercising leadership. It tried to address three main gaps in the field of leadership development assessment as its main research objectives: 1) the measurement gap which concerns the divergence between academic and industry perspectives on leadership development 2) the…

Intro. A full account of speech perception requires explaining how listeners organize the acoustic signal into speech objects (perceptual organization) and how listeners use their memory for language to impart meaning to the speech objects (linguistic memory). Traditionally these mechanisms have been investigated separately, and thus theorized as…

Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) education is essential to the economic growth, health, and progress of the modern world. One cognitive ability that underpins thinking and learning in STEM, as well as other disciplines, is relational ability. This ability to spot common relations shared by different objects, events, ideas, or…

The prevailing view of student retention has been shaped by theories that view student attrition through the lens of institutional action or inaction and less on the student's situation or college experiences. Students seek to persist and graduate, however obstacles get in their way. More than half of all student attrition takes place in the first…

As schools redefine their role to include the social-emotional needs of students, it is imperative that they simultaneously reflect on the adults in the building and the way that they embody and model the traits they are hoping to instill in students. This exploratory qualitative study looks specifically at the way that school leaders perceive and…

Mandarin lexical tone learning has repeatedly been identified as a difficult linguistic feature for non-native speakers of tonal languages like English, even for native English learners of Mandarin at high proficiencies (e.g., Pelzl et al., 2019b). Sound perception training has been shown to help native English speakers perceive lexical tone…