Over the past twenty years, a shifting demographic in schools has created the need to view and lead them through a culturally proficient and equitable lens. School leaders, however, remain short-changed on the preparation time needed to address important issues that surpass the narrow lens of content and instruction. This study used a qualitative…

Experimental evidence of the effects of teacher characteristics and teacher-student relationships on student performance is limited and even more scarce in education contexts outside of the United States. In this dissertation, I implement quasi-experimental research designs in two separate studies to investigate teacher-characteristic effects and…

This qualitative, phenomenological study examined the experiences of public high school social studies teachers in 11 U.S. states in teaching democratic principles in their classes since the 2016 presidential election. The study utilized semi-structured interview questions and inductive analysis to assess teacher experiences, including instances…

Adjudicated youth face a multitude of barriers when reentering school following incarceration. School administrators and educational personnel know very little about how these students perceive their reentry experiences and what the students identify as needed supports, resources, and barriers throughout the process. This qualitative study used…

The primary purpose of this qualitative study was to examine the Algebra I and Algebra II mathematics course curriculum documents at a local high school to determine alignment to the mathematics section of the Texas Success Initiative Assessment (TSIA) and to identify content necessary for students to demonstrate college readiness in mathematics…

High school students often complain of boredom and are disengaged from learning. This qualitative action research study sought to make improvements in teachers' understanding of Kolb's experiential learning cycle, in particular, opportunities for student reflection, and how to increase usage of both constructs in high school classrooms to engage…

The global market and ever-changing economy have led to a demand for high school students to be college and career ready. One way to assist students in reaching this goal of being college and career ready is through the implementation of dual enrollment programs. Dual enrollment programs allow high school students to earn college credit while…

Literature shows that the Nature of Mathematics Knowledge (NOMK) dates back to the era of Plato and Aristotle (Dossey, 1992). It suggests that mathematics teachers' beliefs, views, conceptions, and preferences about NOM influence the way in which they teach mathematics. It is important to understand how these conceptions are formed, which may…

Career-technical education, introduced to American high school systems in 1917, has experienced a significant increase in participation over the last several years, especially among African American students. However, racial inequity across career-technical programs are evident in those career-technical education programs related to science,…

The purpose of this research was to investigate factors that influence academic achievement in high school. This study gathered data directly from high school students themselves. This research study utilized a mixed-methods design by blending quantitative analysis from survey data and qualitative analysis from in-depth interviews. The data…

The primary purpose of this project was to explore how individual (i.e., gender of the intervener) and contextual (i.e., type of bullying and whether the target is a friend) factors influence the use and type of prosocial bystander intervention. This necessitated the development and validation of a survey that deconstructs prosocial bystander…

Addressing the challenging behavior of students requires evidence-based interventions that can be implemented in school settings; however, there is a relative lack of literature investigating effective strategies for high school students in secondary settings. Behavior contracts have been used to address challenging behavior in elementary and…

This research explores the link between achievement emotions and covariational reasoning, a type of mathematical reasoning involving two variables. The study employs a case study approach, focusing on a high school calculus student named Valeria, and develops a theoretical framework based on the control-value theory and levels of covariational…

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to explore the role skepticism plays among adolescents' online information literacy skills. Design/methodology/approach: The authors provide the conceptual grounding to operationalize and measure the notion of skepticism in an online information literacy context. Inspired by an existing measure known as the…

Survey data from students in Grades 9-12 at L High School (a pseudonym) in an urban district in the southeastern United States suggested that students lack social and emotional learning (SEL) competencies. Efforts to address SEL at the study site have been ineffective. The purpose of this basic qualitative study was to explore secondary teachers'…