Student veterans are often viewed in popular culture with a deficit mindset. They are "wounded warriors" who are navigating mental health challenges, academically underprepared, and non-traditional students balancing other responsibilities beyond college. Despite potential lingering effects of military service, student veterans bring…

Phonotactic patterns are generalizations that govern the order of consonants and vowels, within words and syllables. Certain second-order phonotactic patterns--those that relate multiple sounds within a syllable, such as "if the vowel is [near-close near-front unrounded vowel], then [s] can only appear at the end of the…

This dissertation explores Spanish copular verbs, "ser" and "estar" (both 'to be' in English), in pre-adjectival contexts within two Spanish varieties: first-language (L1) Chilean speakers from Santiago (N = 29) and second-language (L2) English-speaking learners studying in Chile (N = 31). Bridging sociolinguistics and second…

This dissertation examines the thesis that implicit learning plays a role in learning about scientific phenomena, and subsequently, in conceptual change. Decades of research in learning science demonstrate that a primary challenge of science education is overcoming prior, naive knowledge of natural phenomena in order to gain scientific…

A common drawback in traditional language education is that all students in the same class use the same content. Since students may have different backgrounds such as prior knowledge and learning speed, one single curriculum may not be able to accommodate every student. Unfortunately, most students cannot afford personalized language learning,…

The vast development of digital technology and the widespread use of social network platforms have reshaped how we live in the world. For L2 learners to maximally utilize their language proficiency to function effectively as members of modern society, they need not only the necessary L2 knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) but also essential…

Cognitive load theory (CLT) (Sweller 1988, 1998, 2010) provides us a guiding framework for designing instructional materials. CLT differentiates three subtypes of cognitive load: intrinsic, extraneous, and germane cognitive load. The three cognitive loads are theorized based on the number of simultaneously processed elements in working memory.…

People learn from prior experiences. We first learn how to use a spoon and then know how to use a different size of spoon. We first learn how to sew and then learn how to embroider. Transferring knowledge from one situation to another related situation often increases the speed of learning. This observation is relevant to human learning, as well…

Using de-identified data, this study investigated the relationship between racial categories with curriculum-based early writing measures (CBM-W), which included word dictation, picture word sentence writing, and story prompt tasks for over 300 participants in Grades 1, 2, and 3. Words written, words spelled correctly, correct letter sequences,…

The field of Instructed Second Language Acquisition (ISLA) has expressed interest in pursuing a research agenda that expands the current heritage language (HL) strand of research to investigate how this heterogeneous population re-learns their family language, and how this experience differs from that of second language (L2) learners. This…

Communities, also called clusters or modules, are groups of nodes which probably share common properties and/or play similar roles within a graph. They widely exist in real networks such as biological, social, and information networks. Allowing users to interactively browse and explore the community structure, which is essential for understanding…

School impact media studies indicate that a well-staffed and funded school library media program with a certified school library media specialist (SLMS) positively correlates with increased student achievement. SLMS must have a shared understanding of their roles and responsibilities to positively impact student success. In an effort to determine…

This dissertation tests a grammatical structure, differential object marking (DOM), which is particularly difficult for L2 learners to acquire. DOM is a phenomenon in which some direct objects are morphologically marked to distinguish them from subjects (Comrie, 1979). In Spanish, animate and specific direct objects are marked with the preposition…