The purpose of this mixed methods study was to examine and explore the institutional policy levers that facilitate successful educational outcomes in a TRiO funded Student Success Program at a large, urban research university in the Mid-South. Three research questions guided the study: (1) how do the educational outcomes of the university's TRiO…

The purpose of this study is to describe and examine the structures and policies a public, comprehensive high school put in place to implement problem-based learning (PBL) across content areas. Starting in 2010, the school implemented PBL in the hopes of increasing students' career and college readiness skills. The research took place at a…

African American and Latino students attending Title I schools in the metropolitan Atlanta area were not reading on grade level. The majority of students are low performing readers and minimally met the reading comprehension requirements. The 2015 average 8th grade reading score for these students was 246 out of 500. This applied dissertation was…

For almost 20 years the Community College Futures Assembly (CCFA) has met annually in Orlando, Florida to serve as a showcase of best practices in community college administration and to serve as a think-tank for research and policy. Through the years the research methodology has evolved. The 2011 CCFA used a mixed-methods approach: qualitative…

The purpose of this study was to better understand the practices associated with building a culture of evidence and to identify the factors influencing the success of such an endeavor. By definition, a culture of evidence is based upon practices employing data and research to inform decision making at all levels of the institution, with the…

This project is an interdisciplinary empirical study that explores the emotional experiences resulting from the use of the assistive technology closed captioning. More specifically, this study focuses on documenting the user experiences of both the D/deaf and Hearing multimedia user in an effort to better identify and understand those variables…

Since the essential role of counseling supervision for counselor growth and effectiveness was emphasized in several seminal articles in the 1980s (Blocher, 1983; Loganbill, Hardy, & Delworth, 1982), many researchers have investigated the complex factors involved in effective counseling supervision. However, within this large body of work, very…

Understanding students' perceptions of the assessment tasks in their secondary English classes is vital to the improvement of teaching and learning. This study took a mixed-methods approach, using a student survey and a teacher questionnaire to conjoin students' perceptions and their teachers' reflections. A modified form of the…

Increasingly, education reform advocates have pointed to the growing community school movement as a partial answer to the myriad challenges facing urban public education. Rooted in the ideas of John Dewey, community schools are generally defined as localized community hubs of partnerships--often serving as sources of service distribution and…

The purpose of this mixed-methods study was to examine the perceptions, interpretations, and reactions of K-12 superintendents in Washington in response to the rapid growth of K-12 online learning. A survey instrument with 43 Likert-type items and five open-ended items was sent electronically to all superintendents in Washington during the 2010-11…

Mentoring is an essential component of the student teaching experience. The support provided by highly prepared and effective mentors contributes to the success of student teachers during this high stakes period of professional development. Findings from this mixed-methods study support five mentoring factors as valid and a useful framework for…

This study examined L2 (German) awareness in intermediate American college learners of German through their judgments of 15 texts that had been authored by either native speakers (NS) or non-native speakers (NNS) or had been created through Web-Based Machine Translation (WBMT). The specific objectives sought to investigate: (a) how learners…

Many policymakers, administrators, and other K-12 stakeholders have long advocated the use of computers and information technology in schools. Even in settings where such technologies have been introduced, however, evidence suggests that the impact on student outcomes has been mixed. In some cases, teachers simply do not adopt the new…

"Brown v. Board of Education" (1954) was a significant court case fought to provide equal educational opportunities for African-American students. Though the case was fought with good intentions, there may have been unintended consequences that occurred due to the policy implementation. The purpose of this research was to explore the…

Factors that contribute to college student success are multiple. Career exploration as a student success strategy was explored in this study. The purpose of this exploratory mixed-methods study was to explore whether there was a relationship between career exploration and the success of underrepresented students in higher education. Quantitative…