Social-emotional development and well-being are integral to the teaching and learning of literacy practices. This introductory brief focuses on the underlying science of how thinking, feeling, and perceptions along multiple dimensions interact to influence what we do as learners. This brief draws on the work of scholars in the fields of…

Many students with disabilities use accessibility features and accommodations during instruction and when taking assessments. It is important to consider teacher perceptions and experiences when making accessibility decisions. The National Center on Educational Outcomes (NCEO) synthesized and summarized research conducted between 1999 and 2022 on…

The United States continues to face a national shortage of teachers with large numbers of vacancies in districts creating crisis situations for many schools. Novice teachers often quit within five years, with highest attrition in schools serving minority and economically challenged students. Among the reasons teachers cite leaving the profession…

The purpose of this study is to explore how students' prior knowledge, skills, experiences, and networks (including family and community) influence major choice decisions among low-income and working-class students at Arizona's three state universities. Using a funds of knowledge framework, a survey was distributed to students at the three…

This dissertation investigates the complex phenomenon of high school dropouts and the social factors that contributed to them making that decision. The research included interviewing six high school dropouts, whose ages ranged from 35-45, all of whom were interviewed using a semi-structured interview protocol. Each interview was conducted in…

Discrete Choice Experiments (DCEs) are widely used in behavioral sciences to examine how humans value attributes of a technology, how those values drive decisions, and how they make trade-offs. The method has increasingly been used to inform technologies and interventions for addressing critical issues (e.g. disease and hunger). Different formats…

Teacher well-being plays an important role in education reform because it marks teachers' positive evaluation of and healthy functioning in their work environment. However, there has been insufficient research on the relationship between distributed leadership and teacher well-being and on how organisational trust works as a mediator between these…

This phenomenological research examines democracy education and the conditions contributing to young students' democratic agency. The dataset includes interview and observation data from a school and educational decision-makers. The findings from the iterative analysis highlight the contradictions between democracy education as an ideal and…

Most schools operate as hierarchical structures, where adult stakeholders largely dictate what counts as knowledge and how to teach it. While previous scholarship has documented the promise of youth-led initiatives to trouble hierarchical structures, these explorations tend to occur outside of schools and do not typically account for the kinds of…

Learner variability presents an enormous challenge for teachers and schools. Even as early as kindergarten, incredible learner diversity exists in terms of children's early learning experiences, especially in mathematics. Research has shown that this variability begins in the home environment, where parents and caregivers have the biggest impact…

School leaders work tirelessly to ensure a high-quality education for all, and many have implemented a social emotional learning (SEL) structure to support both the academic growth and emotional needs of students. While recent studies show the evidence-based practice of SEL positively impacts students' academic growth, developmental relationships,…

This critical ethnographic study explores a participatory action research group consisting of Latin American immigrant mothers seeking to involve their community in school decision-making. Drawing from "pedagogies of acompañamiento", I describe how the mothers responded to decision-making challenges and leveraged reflections on their…

This study examined college calculus instructors' preferences in solving two calculus tasks to examine college calculus instructors' use of important cognitive roots in understanding derivatives of function. Our results showed that only one instructor consistently uses cognitive roots while other instructors either focus on algebraic methods or…

The purpose of this project is to explore the limitations of federal postsecondary data as data as those data relate to Indigenous students and to Tribal Colleges and Universities. After first establishing some of the statistical limitations we commonly find in postsecondary data with Indigenous students, we provide strategies and practices that…

Background: Communities consist of interconnected sub-systems, such as schools, healthcare organizations, and businesses, each fulfilling specific functions that contribute to the overall well-being of the community. Effective community responses to crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, require collaboration across these sectors. However,…