Computational thinking (CT) has been an increasing focus of research and practice since the seminal paper by Wing in 2006, especially in pre-college (K-12) education. Barr and Stephenson defined CT as a problem-solving methodology that can be automated, transferred, and applied across disciplines. With the challenges of fitting CT into already…

At an unrivaled and enduring pace, computing has transformed the world, resulting in demand for a universal fourth foundation beyond reading, writing, and arithmetic: computational thinking (CT). Despite increasingly widespread acceptance of CT as a crucial competency for all, transforming education systems accordingly has proven complex. The…

In this dissertation, I argue that web development can play a pivotal role in developing computational thinking as well as provide a stepping stone to an advanced mastery of computation. The preceding literature has extensively examined not only how learners practice computational thinking with a wide array of programming languages, but also how…

As a response to accountability and pressure from the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002, the South Dakota Department of Education informed school administrators of a state-wide transformation of the way districts measure teacher effectiveness in their schools. In 2011, "The Framework for Teaching Evaluation Instrument" (Danielson, 2002)…

Evaluation of instruction has typically occurred during development, before implementation, and after course completion. The problem is that evaluation is typically post delivery; courses are not traditionally updated in real time with feedback from students in the classroom. However the potential to evaluate and modify instruction during delivery…

Research on school leadership speaks to the importance of evaluating school administrators. Evidence suggests that involving school leaders in the design of the evaluation process as well as including feedback from stakeholders in the school community as part of the evaluation process can positively impact administrators' professional…

The context for this work is two-agent team decision systems. An "agent" is an intelligent entity that can measure some aspect of its environment, process information and possibly influence the environment through its action. In a collaborative two-agent team decision system, the agents can be coupled by noisy or noiseless interactions…

High achievement in mathematics is a critical part of the portfolios of students seeking admission to the best high schools and colleges; it is essential to a school's success at district, state, and national levels and to America's future as a global competitor. Elementary school leaders need to provide their students with a balanced,…

Although 95% of the approximately six million students with disabilities aged 6 to 21 years of age are being served in regular schools, a substantial achievement gap continues to exist between these students and their peers in the general K-12 population. Recent studies indicate that an effective teacher is the single most important school-based…

The purpose of this study is to determine the degree to which activities within an undergraduate teacher education course in classroom assessment prepared preservice teachers for engaging parents in their children's education. Research indicates that few preservice teachers enter their first classrooms prepared, specifically in the areas of…

This single case study examined how one inner city high school math teacher used e-portfolio assessment in an inclusive classroom setting. Specifically, it describes the teacher's perceptions and use of e-portfolio assessment, and its relationships to curricular content, as well as how the relationships among e-portfolio assessment,…

With the focus on how a sample of 25 Arab ESL learners respond to the TOEFL-iBT reading tasks, this study aimed to find out what strategies respondents tend to use, investigate if there are differences between high- and low-scorers in strategy use, and determine aspects of effective strategy use among respondents. Data were collected using a…

School systems must undertake change to facilitate student achievement. Teachers who serve as resources for teachers and administrators, the teacher specialists, are being used by some school systems to implement change despite a deficit of professional studies exploring their effectiveness for this purpose. This mixed methods case study utilized…

Eighty-seven 4th, 5th and 6th grade students were administered the "Derivational Relatedness Interview" (DRI) (Templeton, Smith, Moloney, Van Pelt, & Ives, 2009). The purpose of this instrument is to explore students' understanding of derivational morphology. During the same week, the subjects were also administered an Upper…

A longitudinal study was conducted to examine variations in caregiver input and infant attention in association with children's later lexical and syntactic skills. Fifteen infant-caregiver dyads were videotaped during naturalistic interactions when infants were 9 and 12 months old. Videotapes were coded for caregiver style and modality, and infant…