A growing subset of the United States community college student population are students who are parents. Parenting students contend with dividing their time and attention between the demands of parenting responsibilities, other life tasks, while being a student -- forming an intricate web of external factors that create barriers to their…

School districts throughout the Commonwealth have engaged in initiatives to increase educators of color. Ingersoll et al. (2019) argue that while "many believe that the small number of minority teachers is caused by a lack of recruitment or intake" they concur with Pearson and Fuglei (2019) that recruitment is not the only problem. The…

The transformation of higher education through legislation geared to improve outcomes focused on student persistence and college completion rather than student enrollment has forced colleges and universities to re-evaluate the success of all its students, particularly underserved students who have historically faced challenges in completing…

Upon the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, hundreds of higher education institutions in the United States temporarily or permanently adopted test- optional admissions policies. Growth in the number of test- optional institutions and the longstanding criticism of standardized admissions tests as limited and unreliable predictors of college success…

A school's performance over time is shaped by its ability to retain strong teachers. Research has identified multiple predictors associated with teacher retention; however, few studies have investigated the association between person-organization and person-group fit and teacher retention. The purpose of this study is to investigate the…

Having an adequate supply of nurses is critical to maintaining the health care system. The problem for this study was that undergraduate nursing students were leaving a local Midwest community college's nursing program before obtaining a degree. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the perceptions of the program's recent graduates,…

This narrative inquiry explores a beginning teacher's counter story experiences in a high-needs secondary school in rural China. The study examines storied data culled from interviews, observations, and digital photos and videos of the participant's daily life. The research intent was to discover how the participant teacher lived counter stories…

Recent world events and the ever-changing nature of higher education mean that colleges and universities exist in a state of near-constant flux. This qualitative study explored the experiences of seven college seniors who persisted to graduation after beginning their college careers when their university was admitting lower-division students for…

Background: COVID-19 has spurred a global crisis that has disrupted everyday lives and impacted the traditional methods, experiences, and abilities of higher education institutions' students, faculty, and staff, especially at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). Purpose/Hypothesis: Given the pressing need demonstrated by the…

The German Physics Olympiad is an extracurricular science contest for students. Here, they have the opportunity to compete against other talented students, can do physics outside of school, and take a first step to more engagement in the domain. Yet, female students participate in the competition in fewer numbers and are disproportionally more…

At a time when there is an increase in prevalence of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), creating a high demand for professionals who have knowledge and skills in the use of evidence-based practices identified for students with ASD, there is also a severe shortage of special educators in our schools. Teacher attrition is a significant contributor to…

Background: COVID-19 is a life-threatening virus which has circulated the globe resulting in unprecedented effects on the daily lives of people across the world. Countries across the globe have advocated measures, including self-isolation and maintaining social distance to reduce the spread of COVID-19. The pandemic has seen an increase in the use…

Objective: This study investigated the role of cognitive flexibility and temperament as predictors of academic performance, in children in care and children from a community sample, longitudinally. Also, it examined the mediating role of child's temperament in the relationship between cognitive flexibility and academic performance, as well as…

This study adopted an item response theory to evaluate the Grit-S scale and its dimensions (i.e., Consistency of interest [G-CI] and Perseverance of effort [G-PE]) among university students (N = 450) using two unidimensional Graded Response (GR), multidimensional GR, and bifactor GR models. Differential item functioning (DIF) across two countries…

"Re:Tension" is a short 20 minute film that follows Thapelo, a bright and capable university student, on a day where he is unwittingly forced to question the judgements of his tutors and peers, and delve deeper into his own actions, choices and beliefs. "Re:Tension" addresses the topic of institutional racism and the gap in…