Education delivers concepts and principles to students over their course of study and positively impacts their personal development. This research explores student perceptions of the influence of a Total Quality Management (TQM) course on their attitudes toward various aspects of everyday life. The critical contribution of this paper is that it…

This qualitative study sought to understand the lived experiences of middle school teachers in a public middle school and their perspectives on social-emotional learning within their classrooms. Teacher perspectives are rarely accounted for when districts discuss and use social-emotional learning practices. Most research is focused on student…

Gender-transformative pre-primary education requires a coherent system that integrates gender considerations across all its core components for a quality service delivery. This brief presents a set of tools to support policymakers and/or practitioners to progress towards gender-transformative pre-primary education policy and programming, organized…

Economic downturns, like a global pandemic, magnify the need for timely, accurate, and complete data that policymakers need to make data-informed decisions that will help workers, businesses, and their communities recover. Good data helps to better understand what's working and what's not in terms of creating greater access to workforce…

With the 'data deluge' leading to an institutionalized research environment for data management, U.S. academic faculty have increasingly faced pressure to deposit research data into open online data repositories, which, in turn, is engendering a new set of practices to adapt formal mandates to local circumstances. When these practices involve…

Historically, research has focused on academic underperformance for students of color and those living in poverty, with less attention given to protective factors that promote academic achievement. Students' perceptions of their school environment (i.e., school climate) and their social-emotional competence have emerged as protective factors for…

This qualitative case study explored the perspectives of teachers towards their professional development (PD) in a school with a high population of low-income students. The study focus was driven by critical theory with a unique application of attribution theory as a part of the data analysis. This moved the data analysis beyond simply a…

The purpose of this qualitative descriptive study was to explore how teachers describe their experiences and perceptions of professional development. Experiential learning theory drove two research questions: (1) How do elementary public school teachers in northwest New Mexico describe their experiences with professional development? (2) How do…

Given the labor shortage of highly skilled technical professionals in the United States and the influx of English Language Learners (ELLs) to address this, and predictions for this trend to continue and accelerate, organizations must provide equity to harness the full potential of ELLs. Equity focused on ELLs will deliver increased profitability,…

Dissertations are considered an important part of the grey space of academic literature given that they are controlled by university faculty, not by commercial publishers. Study of doctoral dissertations provides an indication of the latest innovations and research interests of the newest generation of researchers and practitioners. Examination of…

In 2017, the National 4-H professional research, knowledge, and competencies (PRKC) taxonomy was updated reflecting the current needs of 4-H youth development professionals. Knowledge and skill gaps of 4-H professionals need to be identified to optimize resource allocation for professional development on the state and regional level. We developed…

In this article I wish to defend hope by arguing that it is a child-like predisposition and that its strength and uniqueness stem exactly from its naïve, infantilizing character. To discuss the concepts of hope and of childhood and the relationship between them, I read in Kazuo Ishiguro's latest book -- "Klara and the Sun" (2021), using…

Reduced eye contact early in life may play a role in the developmental pathways that culminate in a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder. However, there are contradictory theories regarding the neural mechanisms involved. According to the amygdala theory of autism, reduced eye contact results from a hypoactive amygdala that fails to flag eyes as…

The mysterious and unspoken secrets of life can be a source of fascination for young people. The bildungsroman quest for identity is often coupled with a protagonist's attempts to decode a range of secrets. Jamaica Kincaid's work of fiction, "Annie John" (1985), illustrates this journey. In this novel, the female protagonist's maturity…

The notion of the human person, together with the importance that the Catholic community has, since its inception, given to the educational enterprise, has led various authors, including Augustine, Abelard, and Aquinas, among others, to reflect on the meaning of intellect and talents and their effects on education. Yet such reflections were never…