This study examined overall success and creativity in students taking STEM courses at a Midwestern community college. There were four hypotheses in this study. The first was that STEM majors who had taken one or more fine arts courses would report a higher GPA than STEM majors who have not taken fine arts courses. The second was that there would…

The NSF-funded Envisioning and Enacting an Inclusive and Diverse STEM Professoriate (EEIDSP; NSF# 2041007) Framing the Dialogue for Systemic Equity Reform in STEM Faculty Careers report advances three big ideas we believe are essential for a national dialogue on systemic reform for equity in STEM faculty careers: 1) Tracing, Addressing, and…

Roles such as principal and superintendent are politically positioned to affect policy and are seen as a steppingstone to the school district administration. In the United States of America, Black women are few in leadership positions. In the 2019-2020 school year there were approximately 1,662 public high school principals in the State of Texas…

Higher education continually faces scrutiny regarding the value of a degree and the investment of money and time. Is a college degree worth the cost of attendance? Do graduates face a burden of financial debt that is crippling them and/or society? Should the government limit funding to educational institutions that are unable to establish that…

The implementation of edTPA, a portfolio assessment that preservice teachers must pass in order to gain certification in 41 states, has added standardization to the certification process. Those who go through the process develop very specific skills in the three focus areas of planning, instructing and assessing. The way that teachers are hired,…

The population of marginalized Christian Black contingent or adjunct faculty was the focus of this study. The purpose of the study was to understand the lived experiences of Black contingent (adjunct faculty) at member institutions of the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities (CCCU) to help explain high turnover, pay disparities, and…

Librarianship as a profession in America is 88% white, according to the Diversity Counts survey conducted by the American Library Association in 2009 (ALA, 2012). The United States' White and not Hispanic/Latinx population is 60.7% according to 2017 Census estimates (United States Census Bureau). The fundamental unfairness of this power dynamic…

Increasing the racial and gender diversity of the teacher and school leader workforce in public schools has been the focus of policy efforts in dozens of states. Using administrative longitudinal data for all Texas public schools over a 20-year period, this dissertation consists of three chapters examining the role of relational demography and…

A growing number of studies have reported that using open educational resources benefits students, but few studies have investigated academic impacts of adopting library-sourced eBooks as the course textbook. This mixed-methods study utilizes the Open Education Group's COUP Framework (Cost, Outcomes, Usage, Perceptions), which has previously been…

Taking advanced courses in high school predicts many positive outcomes, yet low-income students and students who identify as Black and Hispanic are underrepresented. Policies such as "algebra for all" that accelerate middle school students into advanced courses are well-studied, but little is known about newer academic acceleration…

This article reports findings from an email survey of 748 U.S. PreK-8 teachers. The survey invited teachers' reflections on their autonomy in selecting children's literature for classroom instruction and classroom libraries. In this descriptive study, researchers used frequency counts, cross-tabulations, and examination of text-based responses.…

This article discusses the current Missouri (U.S.) socio-political landscape of literacies and language education pedagogies across PreK-12 settings. Specifically, our research focus explores the binaries that educators in schools experience which a/effects material-discursive relations of literacy teaching and learning. We understand how literacy…

Censorship and book banning have become contentious but increasingly prevalent issues in the United States. In this study, we examine the tensions preservice literacy teachers encounter when transitioning from a critically oriented teacher preparation program into the complex and frequently politicized environment of public schools. We employed…

For d/Deaf and hard-of-hearing prereaders who communicate predominately in spoken and/or signed English (DHH-English), Teachers of the d/Deaf (TODs) read books aloud to increase English skills, auditory-verbal comprehension, sequencing skills, verbal reasoning, background knowledge, and sight word recognition. Teachers struggle to select…

This paper will outline the process and discussions undertaken at the University of Denver's University Libraries to implement a lending service providing video game consoles. Faculty and staff at the University Libraries decided to pursue the new lending service, though not a traditional library offering, to support the needs of a video game…