National statistics show increasing turnover in the superintendency. Additionally, neither practicing nor former superintendents record experiences within that public role. Given a two-century historical gap in the literature of few accounts from superintendents' perspectives, my study described my journey through three superintendencies from 1993…

This study explored teachers' perceptions of the servant leadership behaviors of instructional coaches. Additionally, the study examined teacher well-being measured as teachers' feelings of school connectedness and teaching efficacy. The participants were teachers (N = 72) from three public school districts in the southern United States.…

Utilizing Iloh's Model of College Going Decisions and Trajectories (Iloh, 2018) and guided by the three-dimensional narrative inquiry framework, this study explored how Black women recounted their decisions to attend for-profit higher education institutions for graduate education. The researcher interviewed eight participants for this study. The…

Reflective teaching plays a crucial role in the field of education though its intricacies in particular cultural contexts like Vietnam are still little understood. This study aims to investigate reflective teaching practices in more detail within the context of Vietnamese education. This study used a qualitative methodology and semi-structured…

For decades, important early childhood scholars who critiqued normative ideas about early childhood frameworks, guidelines, and assessments have been silenced in highly ranked child development and early childhood journals. The qualitative methods needed to prioritize the perspectives of marginalized communities (i.e., ethnography, interview and…

The teaching profession has become increasingly complex in the last decades. The changing role of teachers has called for a new paradigm of the teaching profession that recognises the potential of teachers to lead for supporting school development and change. The influence teachers have on the school community and their commitment to school change…

In this paper, I argue that if we want to further strengthen the current direction towards more innovative and critical methodological research designs in research with international students, we must engage more deeply and meaningfully with our own positionalities as researchers. In order to build a more accurate portrayal of our participants --…

There are ramifications for the educational loss that comes with student disengagement. Contemporary use of alternative high schools focuses on Tier III responses to intervention for disengaged students at comprehensive high schools. Alternative schools are affiliated with students disenfranchised by traditional educational institutions and are…

This dissertation presents the first known Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) investigation of how marginalized students are included in syllabi. This study fills a gap in the literature due to the changing demographic of college students, the absence of faculty who share these marginalized identities, the syllabus being the first…

This study examines survivors' perceptions of sexual harassment experienced as members of higher education (e.g., faculty, staff, students, and administrators). Individually, an examination of the survivors' perceptions of perpetrator consequences and how institutional responses occurred. This study aims to provide insight into the survivors'…

I present a comprehensive view of mentoring experiences of undergraduate students and faculty members in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). In CHAPTER 1 I describe a brief outline of this dissertation. In CHAPTER 2, I present an interpretative phenomenological analysis of the lived experiences of former STEM undergraduate…

U.S. educational institutions are rooted in classist, privileged, and sexist ideologies, leaving women, especially women of color, inadequately supported in their pursuit of higher education. Higher education has been influenced heavily by and primarily created for Anglo males, creating systemic barriers for women and people of color. The purpose…

The purpose of this mixed-methods study was to understand the relationship between teachers' self-efficacy and teachers' attitudes and perceptions towards cooperative learning strategies in an online setting. This study also intended to understand the relationship between teachers' attitudes and perceptions towards cooperative learning strategies…

The interior lives of teachers have come into focus during the last three years of school in a global pandemic. The ways that teachers' lived experience impacts the choice to become a teacher, the way they approach their training, the choices they make in the classroom and ultimately who they are as a professional are defined by who they are and…

School security is an issue faced by all school districts. Some school districts in the state of Missouri made the decision to arm members of their staff to provide an additional layer of defense. This qualitative study looks at the lived experiences of PK-12 school staff members who carry a concealed weapon for Shield Solutions. The participants…