The goal of the research was to learn about the opinions of Texas college students on the death penalty and to determine the impact that prior interaction with the criminal justice system through incarceration or employment had on their opinions. A sequential, explanatory mixed methodology was implemented during the data collection, analysis, and…

The public often makes judgements about schools and what happens within them, despite rarely setting foot inside of one. Prior research finds that the public relies on word-of-mouth, news media, and online resources that rate and rank schools in order to make decisions. Notably though, much of the existing literature predates the widespread usage…

The goal of this study is to contribute to the field of Japanese pedagogy by examining how Japanese native speakers and learners of Japanese as a foreign language with American cultural backgrounds take stances in discussions in Japanese. As stancetaking is a fundamental human behavior (Du Bois & Karkkainen, 2012; Iwasaki, 2015; Kiesling,…

The peer assessment scores published annually by "U.S. News & World Report" ("USNWR") have fast become the de facto measure of institutional reputation in higher education. While higher education policymakers often use this score for benchmarking and performance-based funding purposes, relatively little is known about this…

Poverty is a pressing yet overlooked sociopolitical issue in the United States. Poverty experiences include social and economic barriers limiting access and increasing mental health illnesses (Hodgkinson et al., 2017). Poverty is problematic due to the impact on society-at-large, including physical and social implications, such as lack of…

An ultimate goal of American universities is to provide a safe and secure environment for all who attend and operate there, but what safety looks and feels like to the individual can vary to a great degree. There are many factors that campus safety departments consider when designing their campus safety policies and regulations. One way…

While professional development is a requirement for all educators, many teachers have a negative opinion of PD. Districts have attempted to use professional learning communities and the presence of instructional coaches as an answer to the concerns of irrelevant professional development. This study examined educators' opinions of an opt-in…

Statistics on the success of transformational change efforts within and across organizations consistently indicate a high level of failure, something we can little afford in today's complex world. Transformative learning offers potential for improvement through the practice of intentional dialogue. The purpose of this research study was to develop…

Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) are a significant and necessary component of American higher education and should be treated and perceived as such. However, this has not been the case. Despite their lengthy track record of making significant contributions toward the advancement of Black people, HBCUs have faced discrimination.…

As the accuracy of evaluations is important to teachers, it is essential to examine their perceptions about accuracy (Cho & Schunn, 2018; Plunkett & Dyson, 2018). Understanding teachers' perceptions of accuracy are significant because an evaluation system's effectiveness depends on the teachers' belief that it is accurate (Lewis, 2018;…

This study sought to analyze the role of education administrators and how the hours worked by administrators correlated to student literacy outcomes and teacher satisfaction. This study used a correlational design using ex post facto survey data for 24 school districts over three years. To analyze the administrator's opinions of their jobs,…

The purpose of this study was to examine the beliefs and perceptions of teachers and their view of social-emotional programs, specifically Second Step®, and its effect on students from low-income households. Given the current state of specific students who battle language barriers and poverty levels, some children are not taught critical thinking…

Students admitted late to college, also known as late-admits, are postsecondary students who apply to, get accepted by, and enroll in classes at colleges and universities two weeks prior to the start of a semester through the end of the add/drop period. This population has been studied extensively at the community college level, with findings…

An East Texas Independent School District has a historically high teacher turnover rate that has been consistently higher than the state's and the regional service center's rates for the past ten years. The school district serves a rural community in northeast Texas with a low socioeconomic and predominantly white student body population. This…

This ethnographic study interrogates the process of becoming a teacher at a large state university teacher education program, comparing its soaring rhetoric of social justice with the perceptions, experiences, actions and ideas of student teachers themselves as they proceed toward certification and professionalization. Focusing on one specific…