Heightened concerns about the health of the teaching profession highlight the importance of studying the early teacher pipeline. This exploratory, descriptive article examines preservice teachers' expressed motivation for pursuing a teaching career. Using data from a large teacher education program in Texas, we use a natural language processing…

The construct of science identity has been gaining attention across various domains in the educational arena. To date, however, no studies have used a person-centered quantitative approach within science identity research that is based upon traditional identity theory. Hence, there is an absence of a theoretical underpinning of the number of…

Heightened concerns about the health of the teaching profession highlight the importance of studying the early teacher pipeline. This exploratory, descriptive article examines preservice teachers' expressed motivation for pursuing a teaching career. Using data from a large teacher education program in Texas, we use a natural language processing…

An emphasis on higher-order thinking within the curriculum has been a subject of interest in the chemical and STEM literature due to its ability to promote meaningful, transferable learning in students. The systematic use of learning taxonomies could be a practical way to scaffold student learning in order to achieve this goal. This work proposes…

Students enrolled in a Corps of Cadets program at Texas A&M University [N = 336] were surveyed to examine their leadership mindsets and whether their participation in a formal academic leadership program simultaneously influenced their hierarchical and systemic-thinking preferences. No significant differences were found between students…

Background: Undergraduate research experiences (UREs) have been proposed as means to increase the retention and engagement of minority--and more specifically Hispanic--college students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) majors. This study explores the impact of student characteristics such as gender, classification,…

The purpose of this dissertation was to compare the perceived impact of federal financial aid on the decisions of college-aged African American and Hispanic males to attend college. Participants in the study were delimited to XYZ University, a regional university in Northeast Texas. A modified version of the College Experience Survey, originally…

This case study analyzes how and why student engagement differs across 581 classes in one diverse high school. Factor analyses of surveys with 1,132 students suggest three types of engaging teaching practices--connective instruction, academic rigor, and lively teaching. Multilevel regression analyses reveal that connective instruction predicts…

Introduction: Postsecondary remedial education is a major problem for Higher Education affecting retention rates, degree completion rates and cost of enrollment. Identification of students who are underprepared for managing the rigors of college and who would benefit from early intervention is necessary to reduce the need for postsecondary…