Despite California community college counseling faculty having unique roles on their campuses due to their faculty status and their proximity to students, there is a lack of research related to the experiences of counseling faculty and how they can be supported by local and statewide leaders to best meet the needs of the diverse student…

Over the past 50 years physics education research (PER) has grown into a thriving subdiscipline of physics. PER grew out of a desire to approach education research and development from a disciplinary perspective, operating under the assumption that good physics education is deeply rooted in the disciplinary knowledge and practices of physicists.…

This phenomenological study examined the experiences of Black teachers in predominately White P-12 schools, and focused on examining the external and internal challenges that Black teachers face who work in predominately White schools. Voices are sometimes ignored or muted in a society dominated by the majority White culture. This study will allow…

This study explored professional identity formation among non-clinical professionals in the field of continuing medical education. Specifically, two research questions examined how these professionals both define and perceive the development of their professional identities. The theoretical framework of professional identity formation was used to…

This Dissertation in Practice (DIP) explores the experiences of Black male faculty at Kent State University, a predominantly White institution, employing counter-narrative, a tenet of Critical Race Theory (CRT). Using qualitative narrative inquiry and autoethnography, the study investigates how race, gender, access to resources, and preparedness…

This critical hermeneutic phenomenological study investigates the lived experiences of Asian American women leaders in higher music education, in order to address their historic and ongoing underrepresentation in leadership roles. Asian Americans comprise a large percentage of students in schools of music and are represented at higher numbers…

The purpose of this exploratory sequential mixed methods study was to understand the impact the COVID-19 pandemic had on job burnout for elementary school principals, as it relates to Maslach's Multidimensional Theory of Burnout, and how to increase the stability of principals in their roles, post-COVID-19, to avoid an exodus of principals from…

Guided by family/work border theory, this phenomenological study explored the effects of stress while attempting to balance work and home through the lens of six high school female principals from the Central and Northern parts of California. This qualitative study used a phenomenological approach to examine the effects stress had on the physical…

The focus of professional development for teachers is to increase teaching skills and student academic success. Challenges in retaining and hiring teachers are causing local, state, and national organizations that represent teachers to rethink ways to support teachers within the profession. The professional and psychological needs of teachers have…

Teaching can be an isolating profession. One way for teachers to learn from one another and develop collaborative professional relationships is through peer observations. One of the high schools in central New Jersey implemented a peer observation program called Professional Learning Visits, or "PLVs". This study sought to determine the…

Growing educational research shows that teachers of color are finding themselves working in racially hostile schools, experiencing racism from their white colleagues in explicit and inexplicit ways. There is a need to further categorize how North Carolina teachers of color are experiencing racism in the workplace and identify how they are affected…

This case study sought to examine the experiences of teachers on an effective diverse teaching team to discover if a team-based approach could be used to help mitigate racial disconnections, teacher isolation, and feelings of inferiority reported by teachers of color across the United States. Using extant literature on the experiences of teachers…

Almost seven decades after the Supreme Court's "1954 Brown v Board of Education" decision, African American/Black men are still vastly underrepresented in the K-12 public education profession. For this qualitative, phenomenological research study, a small sample of this demographic of educators, who chose to enter and remain in the…

This action research project occurred to assess the effectiveness of the continual learning process, a philosophy described by W. Edwards Deming. The study took place at a small, U.S. Midwest Lutheran school, conducted as a positive response to a teacher survey indicating the study's need. Five of the central concepts of this philosophy were that…

The purpose of this study was to investigate how principal workload, job isolation, mentoring, autonomy, and compensation impact the perceived job satisfaction of rural elementary (K-8) principals in Illinois. Principal job satisfaction is strongly driven by one's working conditions. Principals who find more satisfaction with their working…