The continuing rise in economic inequality has caused disparities between wealthy and low-income families in academic achievement, parental involvement, and adult occupational attainment. School leaders have created community schools as a strategy to combat the adverse effects of poverty on students and their families and meet the needs of the…

Most researchers and policymakers rely on the share of students eligible for free and reduced-price meals when describing student socioeconomic background in schools. But shares of students receiving free and reduced-price meals, and other measures related to the distribution of school meals, vary by state and across time because of changes in…

The success of many students with disabilities (SWDs) depends on access to high-quality general education teachers. Yet, most measures of teacher value-added measures (VAM) fail to distinguish between a teacher's effectiveness in educating students with and without disabilities. We create two VAM measures: one focusing on teachers' effectiveness…

This study focused on the influence of instructional 3D Model Biological Systems (MBS) in understanding cell diversity. It determined the academic performance of the students according to content knowledge, quality of the artwork, and communication skills; and determined what group of learners benefited most from using 3D instructional models. It…

Research literature provides evidence that new graduate nurses are often deficient in clinical judgment (CJ). One way to increase CJ is by using simulations. However, the literature is replete with descriptions of the high anxiety that simulation triggers. It is not currently known how anxiety in simulation affects clinical judgment for…

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…

A mixed-methods study was conducted to investigate Idaho's elementary school teachers' perceptions of the Idaho Evaluation Model as a motivator for teachers to improve their instructional practice, and to determine if teachers' experience level impacts these perceptions. The quantitative data was obtained from 157 Idaho kindergarten through…

The automatic code generation is the process of generating source code snippets from a program, i.e., code for generating code. Its importance lies in facilitating software development, particularly important is helping in the implementation of software designs such as engineering diagrams, in such a case, automatic code generation copes with the…

This dissertation examined the contribution of higher education to the understanding and practice of women's empowerment, as perceived by adult Afghan men and women living in the city of Kabul who attended universities either in or out of Afghanistan. While studying the concept of women's empowerment, this work defined empowerment through its core…

The lived experiences of both students and teachers impact the classroom environment and there is undoubtedly a cultural influence on these experiences. As role models and leaders of the classroom, teachers have a duty to increase awareness of their own cultures as well as the cultures of their students. This study focuses on teacher perceptions…

Instructional technology continues to become more prevalent in classrooms around the globe. However, it is unclear whether teachers are prepared and have the self-efficacy to incorporate instructional technology into the classroom. This study reviews an instructional technology course for preservice teachers and whether student comfort increased…

Randomized control trials are considered the pinnacle for causal inference. In many cases, however, randomization of participants in social work research studies is not feasible or ethical. This paper introduces the co-twin control design study as an alternative quasi-experimental design to provide evidence of causal mechanisms when randomization…

Education is a moral enterprise, and higher education has the accountability to produce skilled learners with cognitive, psychological, and social-emotional competences. Formal and informal approaches of character education increase in demand. On the one hand, students should be guided to gain character strength and moral compass to confront the…

The three research papers completed and compiled to make up this dissertation explore the relationship between social presence and social construction of knowledge in asynchronous online discussion forums in higher education courses in the instructional technology field. Paper 1 is a literature review of the interaction analysis model (IAM)…

This explanatory-sequential mixed-methods design research aims to describe the steps of an organizational change model made to sustain organizational change during the COVID-19 crisis for school leaders in Local District East, one of the local districts of the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). The overarching research question that…