This basic qualitative study explored how community college designers-by-assignment (faculty designers) make design decisions when designing online courses to ensure the course is inclusive to all learners. Although many online course designers are faculty designers, few are trained in instructional design models, inclusive design, instructional…

The purpose of this descriptive qualitative study was to describe general education teachers' Response to Intervention (RTI) experiences, how they construct their knowledge about RTI guidelines, and how they relate their RTI experiences and knowledge as self-confidence for referring a student to special education services. The conceptual framework…

This qualitative descriptive case study investigated the internal and external factors that support or limit teachers' decisions to adopt differentiated instructional approaches in the mathematics classrooms of a Southeastern United States Catholic elementary and middle school. School leaders and teachers face diverse student populations and…

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a tremendous influence on higher education in America. While college presidents have led through multiple crises in the past several decades, this challenge is unique for both the depth of its influence (e.g., revolutionizing course and service delivery methods, financial upheaval and institutional closures, political…

Annually, approximately 500,000 teachers resign or transfer from their positions (Boyd et al., 2009), negatively affecting academic achievement and resulting in substantial costs to school districts for hiring and training new teachers. This exodus is attributed to mental stress, adverse work conditions, and poor professional relationships.…

Students do their best work when they have a sense of agency around science and science learning. Scientific practices like argumentation and critique are areas in which students' agency is especially visible, as they require many points of decision-making and evaluation. While argumentation and critique are fundamental practices in both classroom…

The National Association of Schools of Music (NASM) conducted a national report which indicated a disproportionate percentage of music education and performance graduates according to race, with black students graduating at 6.6% (McKoy, 2012). HBCUs are vital to improving the representation of Blacks, especially in high-need schools and…

A standards-based assessment system provides opportunities to join curriculum intentions to demonstrations of complex learning. In this article we use New Zealand's senior secondary qualifications system--the National Certificates of Educational Achievement (NCEA)--to illustrate how adaptations of existing structures might help to better reflect…

Triennial data collected by districts and reported by states identify students with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) as the subset of students with disabilities (SWD) most negatively affected by the transition from high school to postsecondary school or employment. Unfortunately, the quantitative data collected by the state does not…

This qualitative case study uses comparative case study methodology with discourse analysis to compare Arizona and New Jersey regulations, policies, procedures, and practices influencing high school graduation rates for Hispanic and Native American youth. National and state reports (NCES, 2019) indicated a gap between high school graduation rates…

This study is a mixed method case study using a qualitative and quantitative study structure. The intent of this study was to measure the impact of neuroscience or brain based social-emotional (SEL) skills and strategies on students who have been identified with disruptive behavior and/or trauma. The impact is evaluated through the Collaborative…

There is a nationwide concern among students, parents, and educators regarding high school administrators' inequitable disciplinary practices and students with disabilities (SWD) policies in the U.S. The problem addressed in this study was that high school SWDs in a local Midwestern urban school district have higher rates of suspension from school…

Citizen Science is emerging as an innovative strategy to engage K-12 students in authentic science practices and relevant, real world phenomena. Citizen science is traditionally an informal science experience, with members of the public choosing to participate in the scientific research process through contributing data or other related efforts.…

Collocations are words that have a tendency to co-occur within a few words' spans, e.g., "drink coffee" and "dark chocolate" in English. Growing empirical evidence suggests that both native (L1) speakers and advanced second language (L2) learners process two-word collocations faster than unconnected word pairs, and that…

Data-driven learning uncontroversially plays a role in human language acquisition--how large a role is a matter of much debate. The success of artificial neural networks in NLP in recent years calls for a re-evaluation of our understanding of the possibilities for learning grammar from data alone. This dissertation argues the case for using…