Hidden structure refers to the units of organization that a child cannot directly observe when they are learning language (e.g. phonemes, morpheme boundaries, URs, phrases). In this dissertation, I propose a novel computational model that learns hidden structures in-tandem with the grammar. My model consists of two Maximum Entropy sub-models that…

The purpose of this study is to determine if personality traits can predict the coaching intervention style preferences of teachers in the United States of America. The rationale for this study is to gain a better understanding of whether there are personality traits that are better suited to particular coaching techniques/methods. To address this…

The purpose of this qualitative, descriptive study is to explore how assistant principals describe their choices regarding survival, love and belonging, power, freedom, and fun regarding whether to seek promotion to principal in southern Arizona. A principal shortage exists in the United States in part because assistant principals qualified to be…

Virtual reality training has evolved from aviation warfighting usage, such as aircraft pilot training, to aviation maintenance. Aviation maintenance training should be an essential aspect of continuous maintenance personnel. The problem addressed in this study was the lack of training and understanding of virtual reality technology by senior…

Public K-12 education is a one-size-fits-all system that cannot meet the diverse needs of students. When parents choose a school, they look at several criteria unique to their situation and make trade-offs between their preferences based on their needs. The purpose of this study was to explore the factors influencing parents to enroll their…

Counterfactual conditional sentences (e.g., "If giraffes had fins, they would swim") involve an antecedent (e.g., "If giraffes had fins") which is false in the actual world. They also involve a consequent (e.g., "they would swim"), expressing a possibility given the antecedent. Reasoning about counterfactual…

The purpose of this study is to investigate the reactions students with low interest in mathematics have to multiple mathematics tasks. Interest has been shown to influence students' engagement, motivation, and achievement (Renninger & Bachrach, 2015; Hidi & Harackiewicz, 2000; Kang & Keinonen, 2018). Therefore, understanding what…

This study focused on the allocation decisions that college and university leaders make with potentially transformational donations and their associated decision-making processes. A gift was defined as potentially transformational if it was: 1) unrestricted and 2) exceeded 25% of an organization's annual revenues or existing endowment. These types…

Generation Z members are our future leaders. They are eventually going to run the world and are starting to make their unique characteristics known. Due to the current generational transitions, they will assume leadership roles earlier than previous generations, mainly owing to the increased migration of Baby Boomers out of the workforce.…

The semantics and pragmatics of polar questions remain undertheorized. Standard proposition-set accounts (Hamblin, 1976; Groenendijk and Stokhof, 1984), which take question meanings to be identifiable with the (appropriately defined) set of their answers, have been developed mostly for wh-questions; when applied to polar questions, they predict…

Identifying which active shooter training method, the students prefer to receive was the central focus of the research. Active shooter situations are on the rise and do occur on college and university campuses. Having a trained campus population, primarily a trained student body, can help save lives from such an active shooter event. However,…

The role of school principal, often deemed crucial for school success, is under strain due to high stress levels, isolation, and demanding responsibilities, especially in high-poverty districts, leading to a significant turnover rate. This study employed a mixed methods approach, involving an electronic questionnaire completed by 156 principals,…

This explanatory sequential mixed-methods study aimed to investigate how undergraduate students' everyday texting experiences related to their social connectedness. This research was conducted through a quantitative survey and qualitative interviews. The quantitative phase involved a survey distributed to a sample of undergraduate students,…

With the growth of digital media, learners are presented with multiple options to choose from when looking for resources to learn from. Learning that happens during searching for items to learn from is called Search-as-Learning (SaL). Recommender Systems (RS) can aid in SaL by reducing information overload and providing item suggestions. An…

This autoethnography traces the ten-year journey of one teacher's interest in and exploration of the experiences in English classes of high-achieving quiet students. Named Quiet Intellects (QIs), these students rarely or do not speak during the many district- and curricula-mandated evaluative tasks in my district that demand their oral…