The wellbeing of early care educators is essential for lessening burnout and increasing teachers' intentions of staying in the field. Protective factors related to the wellbeing of early care educators in the field have been given little attention in research and practice but have such a profound impact on programs, classrooms, children, and…

College readiness has been a primary focus of U.S. secondary education for over 40 years. Despite the continued focus on college readiness at the national, state, and local levels, researchers have claimed that educational reforms have resulted in little gains in students' college readiness, warranting continued emphasis and research. To advance…

Culturally responsive teaching (CRT) is a pedagogy that promotes social justice by improving the educational experiences of students of color. This study aims to explore factors that influence teachers' agency to implement CRT. Semistructured interviews were conducted with sixteen teachers who had adopted CRT practices in the South-Central…

Despite a growing attention on Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) in Physical Education (PE), there has been limited literature on how PE can provide SEL experiences in continuity with other subjects within a specific school context. This study aimed to investigate perspectives and experiences of teachers in PE and classroom for a school-wide SEL…

The purpose of this study was to explore school-based agricultural education (SBAE) teacher beliefs about personalized instruction and blended teaching and their experiences with implementing personalized learning within their blended teaching practice. The specific research questions that guided our study were 1) What are SBAE teachers' beliefs…

Although School based agricultural education (SBAE) teachers have a variety of responsibilities within a comprehensive program, supervised agricultural experience (SAE) programs are considered an intracurricular component. Unfortunately, the ability for teachers to plan for and facilitate SAEs has been reported as lacking. The purpose of this…

As an epistemological, axiological, and methodological paradigm, Critical Race Theory (CRT; Crenshaw et al., 2000; Harris, 1993) is a scholarly tool to identify and disrupt inequities, possible via CRT's core tenets towards troubling systemic racism. We argue that political movements in North Carolina (NC) exhibit attempts to delegitimize critical…

This paper compares the findings from three studies--2015, 2018, and 2022--on the perceptions of preservice teachers to the integration of mobile phones in the classroom. Participants include 545 students (2015, n = 245; 2018, n = 157, 2022, n = 142) enrolled in teacher preparation programs in Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, and…

Kindergarten Entry Assessments (KEAs) have grown in popularity over the past decade due to the Race to the Top -- Early Learning Challenge Grant offered by the U.S. Department of Education in 2015. This study addresses kindergarten teachers' perceptions of data from North Carolina's school readiness assessment and their perceptions of what…

Teachers today feel pressure to maximize student engagement and learning. With an increased focus on student scores on end of grade test measures and their association with school performance grades, educators are forced to consider how to yield results. Limiting the disruptions and distractions throughout the school day shifts the focus to…

With the recent increase in the number of available options for families to consider when selecting a school, diverse publicly funded public schools are now competing for both students and funding. This study intended to contribute to the available research on the changes at inner-city schools during increased school choice options. The purpose of…

The purpose of this qualitative descriptive study was to explore how health and relationship education teachers describe their teaching experiences with students learned cultural narratives and personal experiences while teaching health and relationship education in the public school classroom. The two main research questions were: RQ1: How do…

The purpose of this mixed methods study was to examine the implementation of training and practices of formative assessment for new North Carolina Career and Technical Education (CTE) teachers. The study investigated new CTE teacher levels of knowledge, the strategies they use, and the challenges they face. This study aimed to improve the quality…

This study used a modified mixed-method sequential explanatory design to explore how preschool teachers perceive and use complex talk within different activity settings and content areas to facilitate language and literacy skills. The combination of large-scale, quantitative data (455 children, 63 teachers) from a pre-K study and in-depth,…

The United States along with the rest of the world has experienced an unprecedented disruption in daily life due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Almost everyone has experienced some sort of stay at home order resulting in an economic catastrophe greater than the Great Recession of 2008 and on par with the Great Depression almost a century ago.…