Community colleges have teaching faculty whose primary focus is educating their students and providing service to their institution. Community college teaching research has focused on innovation, students' expectations, and the use of active learning techniques to foster student success. Research on blended courses has focused on instructional…

Learning transfer, the ability to apply learning from one situation to another, is expected of students and underlies the entire structure in higher education. Yet, many instructors in higher education do not know what learning transfer is or how to accomplish it. In an effort to understand how instructors in higher education came to teach for…

Providing effective professional development that improves teaching quality and in turn impacts student performance, has been of key interest to educational leaders. This qualitative phenomenological collective case study explored the use of microteaching as effective professional development and its effect on teacher instructional practices and…

Students are not acquiring grade level reading skills at an alarming rate while research provides the what and how of effective reading instruction. This qualitative descriptive case study was designed to understand and describe the perceptions and practices of general and special educators of reading related to their knowledge and delivery of…

Teachers faced adversity in 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic emerged. This qualitative instrumental case study sought to capture the lived experiences of K-5 teachers in the Guam Department of Education, who endured teaching in three modalities over a span of two years consecutively, between February 2020 to February 2022. The purpose was to…

Joy in education is an underexplored construct that could serve as the key ingredient to cultivate positive learning environments and inspire innovation. The purpose of this study was to determine how joy might flow to students and what teacher efforts, instructional decisions, and administrative supports might influence the level of joy in the…

This study examined the lived experiences of educators who reported a transformation in their pedagogical beliefs and practices as a result of the transition to fully online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. Mezirow's transformative learning theory was used to guide this research study. The transformative learning theory outlines a process of…

This qualitative case study examined the training reading teachers received in preparation for teaching reading to students with emotional behavior disorders (EBD), along with teachers' perceptions of the most beneficial strategies. Children with EBD have some of the lowest reading scores among their peers. This phenomenon is attributed to the…

The achievement of students with disabilities (SWDs) is not fixed. It can be dramatically improved with timely and targeted interventions. In fact, SWDs could improve at rates similar to their typically developing peers. It is no surprise, however, that the school closures from COVID-19 disrupted learning for many SWDs. This study examined the…

Data-driven instruction centers around measuring student learning and determining the actions needed to improve student learning (Bambrick-Santoyo, 2019). This qualitative case study explored teachers' experiences at a single research site surrounding data-driven instruction. Classroom instruction responsive to student performance data is a focus…

Since "Brown v. Board of Education" and the subsequent desegregation of schools, an achievement gap has persisted between students of color and White students, specifically in urban schools. Education has sought to close this gap through a variety of school improvement efforts, yet this gap remains today. The classroom teacher has the…

The purpose of this study was to bring to life the experiences of how the development of a Social, Emotional and Cultural lens prepares teachers to meet their own social and emotional needs in the classroom and consequently be better prepared to meet their students' social and emotional needs in ways that are culturally sustaining. This…

This dissertation describes the impacts that higher education faculty members' epistemological beliefs, pedagogical approaches, and the course delivery mode of what they teach has on their use of learning management systems (LMSs). Specifically, this research reflects on how these constructs impact how often tools within the LMS, Blackboard Learn,…

This study investigates the policy sensemaking of urban educators on the "Read by Grade Three" (RBG3) Law and their sensemaking impacts on English Learners' (ELs') learning experiences. Applying a critical cultural policy sensemaking framework, I conducted an urban district case study to highlight educators' perceptions and behaviors in…

This qualitative case study sought to understand how final round candidates for the honor of "Teacher of the Year" in a Midwestern region of the United States described and exhibited the use of affective behaviors and performance techniques to engage students in learning. Seventeen secondary-level educators who possessed teaching…