School principals are responsible for improving low College and Career Ready Performance Index (CCRPI) scores; however, little was understood about how K-12 school principals' leadership practices were perceived to improve CCRPI scores in schools. The purpose of this basic qualitative study was to examine the leadership practices of K-12 school…

Socioscientific issues (SSIs), or controversial scientific issues with social implications, influence members of society regardless of demographic. SSIs are contentious and ill-structured, meaning they do not have a definitive answer. To properly equip students with the tools needed to handle SSIs, undergraduate science curricula emphasize…

This phenomenological case study explored how the lived experiences of three self-identified culturally responsive high school leaders impacted the systemic decisions they made for their school and their students. The study also investigated how these lived experiences informed the leaders' responses to their stakeholders' reactions to the…

Business majors are among the most popular majors in the United States (Hinrichs, 2015), and prior to the economic and health COVID-19 pandemic, Black students received 20% of bachelor's and 30% of master's degrees in business programs in 2015-2016, despite representing only 11% of undergraduate and 14% of master's degree students in total (de…

Prior research in mathematics education confirms the significance of representations as an integral part of curriculum standards. The effective teaching of representations is related to teachers' content and pedagogical knowledge. A teacher must know the salient features of the mathematical concept as well as the attributes of various…

This dissertation demonstrates the interdisciplinary integration of critical appreciative inquiry (a qualitative planning process focused on inclusion in decision-making) and multi-attribute utility theory (a quantitative evaluation process focused on rationality in decision-making). Principles of positive psychology and decision-making underlay…

Not all children enter school with the same skill set. Teachers of young children know this. Despite this, schools prescribe curriculum and pacing guides as well as assessments that may fit only a subset of students' instructional levels. Teachers are left to determine the best way to meet the student and mandated requirements. Teachers from two…

Social emotional learning (SEL) has had a rich history in educating the whole child, yet schools still do not have (SEL) as part of their curriculum. Today's educators have a renewed perspective on what common sense always suggested: when schools attend systematically to students' social and emotional skills, the academic achievement of children…

Dual credit is changing the landscape of education in Idaho and most states in this country. The desire to keep high school students engaged academically throughout the entirety of their high school careers coupled with a desire by parents, state education policy makers, and funders to accelerate degree and certificate attainment makes dual credit…

Educational reform in the United States has been flawed since the first big attempt when "A Nation at Risk" was released under President Ronald Reagan. As our first national educational "shake-up," this document set afire educational reform that continues today. It vilified the educational system, teachers, and teaching, and…

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…

Intercollegiate athletics has become an essential part of America's fabric and is offered at over 3000 institutions of higher education. Athletic directors are essential to successful college athletic programs, and their roles and demands have changed and have become more vital to the overall university administration. The purpose of this…

In the sciences, the laboratory is one of the most impactful spaces for student learning, engagement, and experience. Prior knowledge gleaned during lecture and laboratory discussion (i.e., a course section designed to further emphasize conceptual content underlying experiments and inform students about laboratory procedures or safety precautions)…

Probabilistic machine learning increasingly informs critical decisions in medicine, economics, politics, and beyond. To aid the development of trust in these decisions, we develop a taxonomy delineating where trust in an analysis can break down: (1) in the translation of real-world goals to goals on a particular set of training data, (2) in the…

Higher education institutions world-wide were impacted by the unprecedented novel coronavirus (COVID-19) beginning in early 2020. COVID-19 caused a disruption in services to students and resulted in pivots of teaching, learning, and student support. Community colleges differ from four-year counterparts through varying student demographics, funding…