The purpose of this qualitative study is to better understand how children identify with superheroes to allow counselors to have a basis of understanding to inform their use of superheroes in therapeutic settings. The research questions are: (1) How do children ages 3-6 identify with their favorite superhero? and (2) how is children's self-concept…

Fanfiction is a valid form of literacy expression often overlooked in academic settings. This study used a mixed-methods approach to understand the facets of fanfiction reading and writing in adults. Survey data was first collected to understand who are the adults choosing to read and write fanfiction. Based on survey results, individual cases…

This post-qualitative study explores work-life balance as a sustaining fantasy produced by neoliberal, patriarchal, productivity-driven systems and how this fantasy manifests affectively for mothers who work in community colleges. The study began by contextualizing the work-life balance fantasy within higher education as a gendered workscape.…

Picturebooks are defined by the interaction of words and pictures to convey narrative (Bader, 1976; Kiefer, 1995; Sipe, 2011), referred to in this study as the word-picture relationship. This dissertation study extends on the work of others who investigated young children's responses to picturebooks (e.g., Arizpe & Styles, 2016; Sipe, 2008a;…

Language comprehension is remarkable in that we adapt easily to different forms of language use, from adapting to speakers' dialects, meanings of new slang words, and fictional worlds described in novels. While there is growing evidence comprehenders adapt their expectations for text during reading, the nature of these adaptation mechanisms…

The purpose of this case study was to investigate if teacher morale increased, as measured on the Staff Morale Questionnaire (Smith, 1976), after the implementation of a fantasy football league on a secondary campus in southeast Texas. Teaching is an occupation with a high turnover rate (Briggs & Richardson, 1992; Ingersol, 2003; Rafferty,…

Two children, Dan and Una, sit in the woods and listen to a story of Britain's early history told to them by Sir Richard, a spirit conjured from the past for this instructive purpose. In this tale, Sir Richard gains treasure by defeating the "devils" that terrorize a village of African people. In many ways, this framed narrative sets up…

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to describe four children's lived spiritual experiences of literary texts as generated through their responses to two toy fantasy novels for children, "The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane" by Kate DiCamillo (2006) and "The Mouse and his Child" by Russell Hoban (1967). The…

The purpose of this study was to examine Connecticut teachers' reports of the sex education content taught to high school students as well as teachers' reports of the degree of importance for Connecticut high school students to understand according to the SIECUS Guidelines. The data revealed that participants (N=125) reported teaching 72% of the…

Over the course of the last several decades, K-12 educational systems have begun to adopt digital technologies to support teaching and learning. These tools have enabled the rise of online schools as well as fundamentally changing practices of school leadership. However little attention has been given to how instructional leadership is changed…

The goals of higher education often entail the development of students' character. Rarely, however, are these character development goals connected to the unique design and delivery of distance education programs. Additionally, the research literature that explores the character development aspects of distance education is sparse. Thus the purpose…

This doctoral study concerns itself with the emergent identity formation of art student teachers: the knowledge and cultural systems [including TV and movies] through which art teaching identity conceives itself, and the ontological consequences [affects on art student teachers' collective and self (dis)identifications] that evolve from those…

This study investigates an elective English class, in which students in grades 10-12 collectively read and collaboratively wrote fantasy fiction in four groups. The purpose of the class was to have students consider the choices fantasy and science fictions writers, directors, and video game designers make when creating a fictional world. The…

Bullying is a prelude to murder. Victims of bullying have resorted to extreme acts of violence in order to escape the torment that bullies have created in victims' lives. Research on empathy supports the idea that teacher empathy could ameliorate bullying in schools. This study investigated whether or not teacher empathy had an impact on…

This study is based on 72 children's and young adult books that met the criteria of being about Muslims and published and circulated here in the U.S. They can be divided into the varied genres as 49 contemporary realistic fiction, 6 historical fiction, and 17 autobiographies, biographies, and memoirs. In-depth reading and coding were used to…