Field experiences during teacher preparation are fundamental to helping teacher candidates understand their future roles and responsibilities and can effectively prepare them to meet diverse student needs across a variety of contexts. This multiple case study examined the perspectives of three special education dual certification teacher…

A systematically disproportionate amount of Black and Brown students have struggled in their high school (HS) math courses, particularly with inclusion, identity, and academic success. This study came from a humbling journey of what it meant for a math educator to shift toward student-centered pedagogies within a deficit-oriented system of…

Responding to the claim that teacher engagement in professional development is a waste of time, this study employed phenomenology as the approach to explore teachers' perceptions of the role of continuous professional development (CPD) in improving their instructional practices and student learning. A purposive sample of elementary teachers…

This qualitative case study was created to explore with experienced online adjunct faculty in higher education their perceptions of the ways they learned to stay competent within their discipline to continue to be proficient in their online instruction. Their experience teaching online ranged from five to 17 years and all participants taught…

The purpose of the study is to examine how professional growth is sustained over time through exploring a teacher's narrative of personal and professional growth. The central question of this dissertation is: What creates sustainable and continuous positive professional change and growth in a teacher's professional life? In this study, I discuss…

The dissertation study is a mixed method sequential explanatory study which focuses on the use of a digital tool to assess argumentation as a mediator of teacher argumentation professional vision. The study is driven by an experimental randomized control trial to determine the relationship between the professional vision components and the use of…

This dissertation is about social studies teachers' perceptions of professional and personal preparedness to facilitate social justice discussions. Due to a focus on high-stakes standardized testing in Math and English Language Arts (ELA), there has been a lack of emphasis on the content of social studies. This phenomenological study explores the…

This study examined to what extent educators were able to find opportunities/experiences for personal and/or professional learning though their participation in Twitter Chats. This study also examined what drove educators to participate in Twitter Chats as a means to grow personally and/or professionally. Lastly, this study examined how…

Due to high rates of teacher shortages, there is a serious problem emerging in our national education system, which will continue to affect teachers, students, and society in general. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to explore veteran teachers' reasons for remaining in the field of education and their perceptions of best practices…

The process of racial identity development (RID) is widely agreed to be the process by which an individual comes to understand the role race plays in their sense of self, how it influences their ability to acquire information and reach goals, how it affects their interpersonal interactions with others, and the manner in which it assigns group…

In schools today, many elementary school teachers have inadequate training and understanding of foundational mathematics. This lack of mathematical understanding could impact the lessons and activities in their classrooms. This study aims to showcase journeys of teachers' mathematical journeys, their experiences as students, as pre-service…

Professional development (hereafter: PD) has been regarded as one of the keys to improving teacher quality in the US, and a growing number of empirical studies have investigated how PD is operated in education field. However, the problem is, most literature focuses on the operation of PD investigated in specific cases, single subjects, and…

Spring of 2020 ushered in an unprecedented change for classrooms across the country. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, traditional school settings were unsafe and all classes went to an online format. This study explored the teacher response to online teaching and teacher efficacy in the face of the pandemic. Recognizing professional development needs…

The growing and aging population has created an increased demand for health care, resulting in a need for hundreds of thousands more nurses across the United States. As a result, additional nurse faculty are needed to teach the next generation of nurses. However, nurses who enter the faculty role in academia often come from various professional…

This study has been conducted to explore and understand whether the social nature of the mentoring experience impacts the novice teachers' and mentors' decisions to remain in the teaching profession. Large school districts often deal with teacher attrition since novice teachers are not secure in their position or confident in the role of educator.…