High teacher turnover rates and shortages of quality teachers plague many large, urban U.S. school districts disadvantaging their students who often already come from traditionally underserved populations and communities. Restorative Practices is a quickly growing whole school approach to community building and discipline, but little is known…

The purpose of this pilot study was to examine relationships among aspects of undergraduate music majors' goal setting in applied lessons. Aspects examined included students' perceptions of the difficulty and importance of their chosen musical goals, their commitment to and perceived likelihood of achieving those goals, and the effects of a…

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a negative impact on the retention and persistence rates of college students from historically excluded backgrounds while also introducing new resources for remote learning experiences. This action research study aimed to examine and improve the resources needed for community college students from historically…

Resilience--the ability to persist, bounce back, and achieve, despite setbacks or challenges--is an important predictive and protective factor for university students' personal and academic success. Qualitative research at one large U.S. land-grant university investigated faculty and student perceptions of how and why academic service-learning…

This study highlighted how teachers and students perceive the effects of the influx of Rohingya refugees on the teaching-learning environment of colleges for higher education in Cox's Bazar district of Bangladesh. It revealed the issues of admission, the academic environment of the colleges, the attendance and performance of the students,…

In a Midwestern nonprofit, predominantly White, Catholic university, the problem was low retention of African American students after completing a first-year seminar (FYS) course. The purpose of this instrumental case study was to explore perceptions and challenges of African American college students and faculty about the required FYS course.…

Participation in humanities coursework is vital, both for community college students pursuing credentials considered "academic" and for those in career and technical education fields who may not transfer to four-year colleges. Humanities courses help students develop foundational skills; they may also light students' fire for learning as…

This exploratory mixed-methods case study poses the following research question: How do adjunct instructors fit into the larger ecology of graduate archival education? We draw upon semi-structured interviews with 33 full-time, tenure-track faculty members from North American graduate archival programs to discern how adjunct instructors are…

Higher education institutions (HEIs) are challenged to create more inclusive and accessible content to ensure learner satisfaction in online learning environments due to increasing variability. The problem was the low course completion in online learning at a HEI in Jamaica. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to explore the perceptions…

Background and context: We address the question of what computer science students take the discipline to be. How students conceive the discipline can influence whether a student pursues computer science, what particular area within computer science they focus on and whether they persist in the discipline. In this paper, we examine the epistemic…

Kindness signifies a way of behaving towards other individuals. Kindness is a desirable and admired conduct of schoolteachers but is less expected in higher education. During the Covid-19 pandemic, on-campus learning shifted completely to online learning settings, requiring lecturers to adopt behaviours that may not have been part of their…

Students in graduate education have a desire to hold a degree because of contributions of graduate education such as opportunity to become faculty member, professional development, and promotion. Despite these benefits of graduate education, there are students who do not persist on gaining a graduate degree. This study aims to develop and test a…

This qualitative case study examines connections between student writing and student success, specifically among first-generation college students, a growing student population who are less likely to graduate college than their multigenerational peers. First-generation college students are more likely to come from working-class, low-income…

Success in science and mathematics courses, and later in careers, requires more than disciplinary knowledge and general academic competencies. Students also need proficiency in certain key dispositions and life skills. This article is a systematic review of literature that examines what teachers believe about the non-academic skills necessary for…

The purpose of this qualitative evaluation was to understand how the Ascent program, a bridge initiative at Plymouth State University, programmatically addressed institutional concerns regarding student retention and persistence during its three-year pilot phase, according to the perceptions of past participants, faculty, and administrators. The…