This study investigated the impact that co-curricular programming delivered by the University Honors Program (UHP) at North Carolina State University through the Honors Forum course had on first-year students' self-reported knowledge of civil discourse, their assessment of its importance and impact, and their evaluation of their commitment to the…

Math-talk communities are interactive classrooms where knowledge is constructed socially and discourse with peers is placed at the center of learning experiences. Many preservice elementary teachers find it difficult to implement math-talk communities. Given the documented value of math-talk communities as an effective strategy for engaging…

This qualitative action research case study is focused on better understanding the complex and intricate nature of code-switching among Black students. In today's educational climate, many Black students find themselves speaking one way with their closest friends and family members in front of the swing set and television and another way with…

The purpose of this qualitative study was two-fold: (a) to understand the perceptions and experiences of urban high school disciplinary teachers' specific discourse communities and disciplinary literacy practices in a Midwestern metropolitan city, and (b) to understand these teachers' perceptions related to the literacy initiative at Eastside High…

In this multicase study (Stake, 2005), I studied a semester-long online implementation of the "Mathematics Discourse in Secondary Classrooms" (Herbel-Eisenmann, Cirillo, et al., 2017) (MDISC) teaching professional development (T-PD)--slightly modified for the university context--which I offered to three mathematics-teaching graduate…

Amidst the vast amount of research that measures, evaluates, and suggests best practices for social and emotional learning (SEL), less attention has been given to the underlying cultural values, emotional investments, and relational patterns that shape and uphold SEL at a "root level." The purpose of this dissertation was to create a…

Schools in the United States have produced racialized outcomes for generations, and decades of reform have failed to build true educational equity. Critical Discourse Studies suggest that leader discourse has the power to disrupt ideologies that sustain White supremacy and facilitate antiracist ideologies and actions. Using critical discourse…

Black women have engaged through social media platforms, as a mechanism to uplift their embodiment, despite being relegated to the margins. The hashtag #BlackGirlMagic (BGM) is linked to narratives of Black women in higher education that are empowering and problematic. The development of the popular social media movement during a time when Black…

The Purpose of this dissertation is to explore undergraduate Computer Science (CS) students' writing processes and transfer as they occur in the process of completing a writing assignment in a CS course. In particular, I observe and analyze students' writing processes, and investigate examples of writing knowledge transfer from prior and…

Mindfulness has woven through American education for decades as an enduring concept aimed at reforming teachers, students, and classrooms. Signified as a "quiet revolution" in media and education policy today, our youth have been rebranded and schools remarketed as "A Nation at Hope," with promises of mindfulness and…

Scholars and associations committed to powerful social studies education have long advocated for students to explore controversial issues so they grow into informed, ethical, and participating citizens. Yet, teachers avoid undertaking this work due to a lack of training, confidence, or experience in facilitating courageous conversations about…

This study explores the impact of implementing a peer mediation program in a middle school setting through an action research framework, presented as a series of case studies. The group of students receiving the intervention are on one "team" in the middle school, sharing the same group of teachers. The team is on a lower academic track,…

This study offered insight on the intermingling of discourse communities in the learning environment by examining experiences of composition instructors from a regional Southern university and their reflections of teaching students who struggled to navigate from home discourse to academic discourse. Merriam's basic qualitative research design…

The spread of Islamophobia in the U.S. positioned Muslims as different and inferior to American society and racialized their experiences by subjecting them to narratives of prejudices and stereotypes. This postcolonial interview study examined how Muslim American high school students conceptualized and negotiated their racialized identities within…

In traditional academic instruction, the classroom may be viewed as a kind of speech community composed of an expert (the teacher) and those who are at various stages of socializing into the cultural models and norms of that community (students), although this is an overly simplistic and unilinear view. In executive development programs, students…