Student veterans are a unique population on college/university campuses who may face numerous obstacles associated with transitioning from service member to student. One of the most daunting challenges these student veterans face occurs when they earn a grade for Failure for Nonattendance (FA). The GI Bill ®/Post 9/11 benefits that student…

This ex post facto, causal-comparative, quantitative study examined variations in academic success of Early College High School (ECHS) students who completed a dual credit course in two separate classroom environments, specifically a high school classroom environment and a college classroom environment. The researcher sought to determine if a…

Many states report school performance grades as a way to inform the public about school quality. However, past research has shown that when these grades drew largely on proficiency-based measures, they served to capture variation in school and community demographics rather than school quality. We extend this literature by examining whether a…

Retaining mathematics majors is a pressing concern in many departments. We examined the pass rates of students across our mathematics major and then analyzed student persistence between math courses along with the underlying data collection required to make these analyses. We found that mathematics majors leaving the major after successfully…

Student-Centred Active Learning Environment with Upside-down Pedagogies (SCALE-UP) is a set of collaborative learning techniques that are shown to reduce the continuation and awarding gaps between students of Black, Asian and other Minority Ethnicities (BAME) and White students when SCALE-UP is implemented throughout every module in an…

Background: School belonging has been linked to students' health and well-being. As US schools become more ethnically diverse, it is important to understand how schools can contribute to a sense of belonging for students from all ethnic groups. Methods: The present study examines the association between school interethnic climate, school…

Studies indicate that racial disparities in STEM achievement or equity grade gaps are associated with faculty fixed mindset beliefs; however, whether specific instructional beliefs are linked to student academic achievement remains unclear. We surveyed 216 STEM faculty to assess their mindset and instructional beliefs and linked these to detailed…

Community colleges serve nearly half of all undergraduates, including a disproportionate share of African American and Hispanic students, and are a key point of access to higher education for students who face socioeconomic disadvantages or other obstacles to participation in higher education. Community colleges stand to play a pivotal role in…

This study investigated American college students' reading motivation. A total of 1,437 (533 male and 904 female) college students across interdisciplinary areas voluntarily participated in the study by completing a self-reported survey. Two major research questions were addressed in this study. The first question investigated American college…

Context: The use of educational technology for improving K-12 math education has expanded dramatically recently. ASSISTments (Heffernan & Heffernan, 2014), a widely used digital platform, has seen its use in schools increase significantly from 800 to 20,000 teachers over the past two years. A review of evidence-based online programs by the…

The use of online homework systems that require the purchase of an access code has become widespread. The purpose of this study is to examine student experiences with and perceptions of online homework systems with access codes. Postsecondary students (N = 966) completed a survey about the financial costs, perceptions of quality, engagement with,…

Early childhood education contributes to improved school readiness but impacts on high school remain unclear. This study estimates the effects of Tulsa, Oklahoma's universal pre-K and Head Start programs through the junior year of high school (in 2018/2019; N = 2902; M[subscript age] = 16.52, SD = 0.39; 48% female; 28% white, 34% Black, 27%…

Low persistence and high attrition rates in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) are major challenges in higher education, particularly among underrepresented students. Therefore, it is important to identify barriers and examine strategies aimed at improving persistence, retention, and student completion in STEM courses and…

The COVID-19 pandemic caused worldwide closures of schools resulting in a sudden shift to online instruction for a large population of students. For many students, this shift caused a decrease in academic performance. This four-paper dissertation explores the impact of this shift on newly struggling high school students. These students earned a D…

Background: The motivational climate within a course has been shown to be an important predictor of students' engagement and course ratings. Because little is known about how students' perceptions of the motivational climate in a computer science (CS) course vary by sex, race/ethnicity, and academic major, we investigated these questions: (1) To…