With over 44% of new teachers leaving the profession in the first five years, it is important for teacher education programs to consider how to prepare preservice teachers (PSTs) with the knowledge, skills, and self-efficacy to take on the challenges they will face in the K-12 school system (Ingersoll et al., 2018). Clinically rich methods courses…

This dissertation examines students' social-emotional experience with knowledge building pedagogy from the lenses of grit and growth mindset. The goal of this dissertation is to understand how interest, perseverance of effort and growth mindset oriented feedback engage students social emotionally in knowledge building to sustain and deepen their…

This study utilizes action research to examine the design and implementation of inquiry-based teaching in a middle school social studies classroom. As a practitioner, fulfilling the role of teacher and researcher, I sought to better understand my teaching practices. To do so, I collected multiple forms of data that would help me understand…

The rapid shift to online teaching due to the COVID-19 pandemic impacted Institutions of Higher Education (IHE) across the globe. Educators faced an unprecedented shift from traditional to online classrooms. This basic interpretive study aimed to understand the experiences and perspectives of community college faculty in a public university system…

Children with developmental disabilities and complex communication needs who use augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) have limited opportunities to communicate and few trained conversation partners to interact with. Research literature on interventions utilizing AAC devices and systems to increase communication skills overwhelmingly…

Information literacy has long been concerned with how individuals evaluate information credibility. Credibility, or the believability of information as evaluated by a user, is often a part of information evaluation and contextualized within information literacy. Yet, as the online environment becomes more complex and online information…

Although the "Next Generation Science Standards" (NGSS) present a detailed set of "Science and Engineering Practices", a finer grained representation of the underlying skills is lacking in the standards document. Therefore, it has been reported that teachers are facing challenges deciphering and effectively implementing the…

The research presented in chapters 2, 3, and 4 in this dissertation uses a sociocultural and sociohistorical lens, particularly around power, authority of knowledge and identity formation, to investigate the complexity of engaging in, supporting, and evaluating high-quality argumentation within a college biochemistry inquiry-oriented classroom.…

A leadership program was created for students to gain skills and/or change their behavior using Appreciative Inquiry and Video Self Modeling, VSM. In 2011a youth that experiences a disability had been unable to achieve a skill utilizing traditional methods of skill acquisition. He employed the Appreciative Inquiry and VSM leadership program and…

I will examine the literature and present the reasons teachers, especially novice teachers, leave the profession and or schools at an alarming rate. Though the educational literature touts viable ways to combat turnover and increase retention there are still deficits to be addressed. School psychologists have the skill set to address these…

Online education has grown into a part of the educational market answering the demand for learning at the learner's choice of time and place. Inquiry skills such as observing, questioning, collecting data, and devising fair experiments are an essential element of 21st-century online science coursework. Virtual immersive worlds such as Second Life…

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) are a key piece of current reform efforts to reshape the U.S. educational system. Critics contend that the related Revised Publishers' Criteria (RPC), coupled with the authoritative power of the CCSS, will de-professionalize teachers, directing their practice from a distance. The purpose of this qualitative…

Early childhood is a ripe time for students to begin learning science, but due to certain constraints, this instruction is not happening as frequently as it should. This mixed-methods, multiple case study examined how two teachers implemented an early childhood science curriculum, the "Young Scientist Series." The teacher participants…

This study explored the lived experiences of community college students who successfully completed developmental reading courses. The purpose of the study was to identify common experiences of successful students. A narrative inquiry was used and data were collected through individual interviews. The researcher concluded that successful students…