How can syntactic and learnability analyses inform each other, and thus deepen our understanding of syntax and its acquisition? This dissertation illuminates this question through three case studies in Korean syntax. I examine cases in which two structures that display distinct syntactic properties share extremely similar surface forms, thus…

Humans excel at detecting patterns in information, abstracting rules, and making inferences. Underlying these skills is relational reasoning: the cognitive ability to identify and map abstract, generalizable relations between pieces of information. Though this powerful ability supports higher-order cognition, it can also be a processing bottleneck…

The human brain's ability to adapt and change in response to environmental inputs drives nearly all forms of learning throughout the lifespan. The unique plasticity of the human brain allows for the uptake of sociocultural inventions, such as reading and mathematics, through widespread changes across a range of cortical areas and white matter…

During language acquisition, children are tasked with the challenge of determining which words can appear in which syntactic constructions. This has been long recognized as a learnability paradox. On one hand, there are generalizations that children must learn. On the other hand, language is known for its arbitrariness, so children also need to…

Being uncomfortable by choice as a means of personal growth has been touted for hundreds of years among scholars, philosophers, religious leaders, modern pop culture icons, and more. Yet, research pertaining to the benefits of being uncomfortable by choice is sparse. This qualitative, grounded theory study addressed the first step of…

Continuous improvement is the process of making incremental changes to systems or processes to improve outcomes. The purpose of this dissertation was to conduct a study to learn how continuous improvement might serve as a vehicle for further conceptualizing profound learning theory at the individual learner level. The research began with a…

The rise of Artificial Intelligence technology has raised concerns about the potential compromise of privacy due to the handling of personal data. Private AI prevents cybercrimes and falsehoods and protects human freedom and trust. While Federated Learning offers a solution by model training across decentralized devices or servers, thereby…

This dissertation is about a particular style of research. The philosophy of this style is that in order to scientifically understand deep learning, it is fruitful to investigate what happens when neural networks are trained on simple, mathematically well-defined tasks. Even though the training data is simple, the training algorithm can end up…

The debate about the nature and role of teacher professionalism in teacher education contexts has a long history but little research has been conducted in small island states of the Caribbean, especially focused on the understanding of prospective teachers. Therefore, this interpretive descriptive study engaged 16 prospective teachers from a…

Collaborative learning provides learners with significant opportunities to collaborate on solving problems and creating better products. There has been a growing utilization of adaptive and intelligent systems to support productive learning while promoting collaborative practices. One of the core capabilities of these adaptive and intelligent…

Deep learning techniques are being unified for decision support in various applications. However, it remains challenging to train robust deep learning models, due to the inherent insufficient labeled data that is usually time-consuming and labor-intensive. Self-supervised learning is a feature representation learning paradigm to learn robust…

Play is an important dimension of learning for all students. When students are allowed to play, amazing things happen. Students start to tell stories, explore new concepts, and learn in authentic ways. Some of these experiences are constructed with peers, while others are created individually. Discoveries are made by connecting one student's ideas…

Maria Montessori established her first school almost 120 years ago. She prepared teachers herself through lectures as well as practice with Montessori manipulatives, and observation of classrooms. That method of preparing teachers had not changed significantly until recent years. Adult learners needed to attend class full-time in person, making it…

Modern Information Technology (IT) infrastructure and open-source software (OSS) have revolutionized our ability to access and process data, enabling us to tackle increasingly complex problems and challenges. While these technologies provide substantial benefits, they often expose users to vulnerabilities that can severely damage individuals and…

The Climate Crisis is an urgent and inescapable reality students are thrust into. Learners must be prepared adequately for their futures, not only for their sakes but also because collective and transformative change is required. Transformative sustainability education provides one pathway to this transformation and focuses on radically altering…