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…

This dissertation examines the efficacy of a professional development program in developing data literate and culturally proficient community college instructors. Existing research suggests that there is a need for high-quality professional development in Cultural Proficiency and data literacy for community college instructors to make continuous…

Common planning time is an integral part of the middle school concept, but this time is not always used effectively. When teaching teams do not effectively collaborate, there are missed opportunities to improve instruction and student achievement. The aim of the study was to improve middle school teachers' level of collaboration during common…

The purpose of the current study was to examine the relationship between servant leadership and emotional intelligence among secondary choral directors. A total of 91 surveys were completed by members of the Texas Music Educators Association. The combined survey included demographic questions, the Servant Leadership Questionnaire by Barbuto and…

One approach to teaching game design to students with a wide variety of disciplinary backgrounds is through team game projects that span multiple weeks, up to an entire term. However, open-ended, creative projects introduce a gamut of challenges to novice programmers. My goal is to assist game design students with the planning stage of their…

This qualitative case study explored how a theory could explain how outside contributors could influence a student's decision to return for the second and final year of their academic career program. Using Holland's person-environment fit theory as the theoretical lens, this study contemplates how specific contributors, such as family and friends,…

Understanding the causes of attrition at the undergraduate level has been an increasing concern in efforts to increase student persistence to graduation. Research has identified demographic, academic, and experiential factors influencing students' decisions about withdrawing from university. This narrative enquiry was conducted to identify…

The admission process for many postsecondary institutions was not fundamentally designed to promote equity. It was especially not designed to put students' needs at the center of the process, let alone to give them decision-making power in institutional policies and practices. However, the year 2020--punctuated by a racial reckoning and global…

To ensure that students obtain an effective and appropriate education, quality assurance in higher education is crucial. The primary concepts, structures, and procedures associated with quality assurance in higher education are extensively addressed in this paper. To improve student learning outcomes, institutional reputation, and overall…

The COVID-19 crisis caused the educational system's sudden and drastic upheaval as parents were forced to decide where their children would attend school and how they would get there. These decisions were complicated by the uncertainty surrounding what type of online or hybrid schooling districts would offer, the health risks of different…