This dissertation focused on sustainable development (SD), curricular development, and practices in the health professions, specifically in occupational therapy practice. It is divided into five chapters. The first chapter provides background information, the second chapter uses the [C]STAUNCH tool to analyze the degree of sustainable development…

In the wake of the 2016 and 2020 U.S. presidential elections and the COVID-19 pandemic, increasing public attention has been paid to the ability of citizens to use and understand news media, information, and digital technology. Conversations about media literacy--the ability to critically engage with media--are ongoing in the press, schools, and…

Cultural perceptions are widely accepted to play vital roles in meaning-making among learners themselves and between instructors and learners as they interact in educational settings (An, 2018; Egalite & Kisida, 2018). However, the role cultural perceptions play for members of course development teams during the creation of online courses,…

The objective of this study is to survey existing and emerging post-secondary computing and technology programs and employment trends in Pennsylvania to determine if college graduates are being prepared for careers in artificial intelligence. Due to low enrollment, colleges and universities are continually revising or restructuring their existing…

Globalization and rapid changes in technology have led to a shift in the skills employers need. These changes have resulted in a gap between the skills people have and those required by industry. This exploratory case study sought to better understand the uniquely human skills employers desire and technical educators should teach in order to…

The George Floyd Protests of the Summer of 2020 initiated public conversations around the need for antiracist teaching. Yet, over time the discussion evolved into policy debates around the use of Critical Race Theory in civics courses. The rapid transition masked the fact that we know little about Americans' policy preferences. Do Americans…

Producing change in higher education is not always easy or quick (Kennedy, et al., 2018; Perry, 2014a; Schuster & Finkelstein, 2006; Tierney, 1998). Conferences provide faculty with exposure to new ideas, but that exposure is often not enough to produce programmatic and structural change. In addition to new ideas, faculty must also have the…

Various computing subdisciplines, such as computer science and software engineering, each have their own curricular guidelines. They can be very difficult to understand and compare for people such as prospective students, industry personnel, and even faculty members. This is compounded by a lack of information surrounding undergraduate computing…

Within the educational system, heritage-related curriculum design and contents constitute a key factor in the sustainable preservation of heritage since only what is known and valued can be protected and preserved. Whether heritage education involves the inclusion of new materials in the curriculum, or the use of innovative approaches in handling…

The aim of this paper is to contribute to the debate about the phenomenon known in Aotearoa New Zealand as "twenty-first Century Learning." In recent additions to the local literature Hirschman and Wood (2018) have noted a lack of critical engagement with this narrative which is fast becoming normalised in New Zealand, and Lourie (2020)…

The excess of curriculum content is a well-known problem in high school biology. Some strategies to adjust the amount of content to the available classroom time have been proposed, but none has been widely accepted and applied. Furthermore, biology is frequently presented in high school not as an integrated science, but as a collection of…

Teachers introduced to the Inquiry Design Model (IDM) are often relieved to learn that inquiry isn't a fuzzy ideal, but rather is a curricular approach with a defined vernacular--questions, tasks, and sources. The inquiry blueprint is a one-page visual representation of the questions, tasks, and sources that define an inquiry. In the blueprint,…

The distressing events of 2020 challenged the United States to reimagine how our social institutions can and should respond to demands for racial justice. These demands impacted higher education and debates arose about whether the classroom is an appropriate place for teaching abolition. I address this debate by introducing a senior-level elective…

This mixed methods study examines the relationship between different components and characteristics of individualized lesson plans and children's social-emotional outcomes to develop a profile of effective planning. Sixty-one individualized SEL lesson plans written and implemented by 20 experienced early childhood educators from a large city in…

Introduction: Although the development of graduate psychology trainees' multicultural competence is established to be a necessity, current training implicitly and explicitly centers White clinicians. Statement of the Problem: This orientation leads to inadequate opportunities for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) trainees to access…