Conversations on authentic leadership development all too often are devoid of contextual considerations. Little attention is placed on how authentic leadership is actualized by individuals who hold marginalized and minoritized social identities and/or whose lived experiences diverge from the privileged majority; and therefore, must strategically…

As students of color find belonging in their campus community, they not only desire to persist to graduation, but they to seek to thrive and cultivate a sense of place for their peers to do the same. Utilizing Black placemaking framework, this study explored the lived experiences and the interpretation of that experience for Black students at…

The present study is an attempt to give a holistic and bigger picture of the relations between family contextual factors and academic achievement by employing second-order meta-analysis to synthesize results from first-order meta-analyses. Thirteen first-order meta-analyses included in this study represent more than one thousand culturally diverse…

Transdisciplinary research (TDR) is conceptualized as not only providing societal effects but also benefiting academia. However, recent literature on the evaluation of TDR has focused almost entirely on the societal effects of TDR. A discussion of the scientific effects of TDR is needed to do justice to the potential of this research mode. To…

First-generation Latina/o/x students have some of the lowest college attainment rates in the nation. College attainment is influenced by the access students have to different college systems. The college choices students access can reflect individual, community, and school-level factors that impact how much college knowledge and resources students…

The purpose of this qualitative descriptive study was to explore how educators and students described the socio-cognitive aspects of collaborative learning in community colleges of Midwestern US. The theoretical framework of this study included the social cognitive theory which speculated three main elements of learning such as behavior,…

The vision of this doctoral project was to document Native educational leaders who center their school leadership in ancestral knowledge and the cultural practices of their communities as they lead from the middle. Leading from the middle acknowledges a cultural lens to compare that approach to the indigenous. Leading from the middle acknowledges…

The purpose of this qualitative, phenomenological study was to gain insight into the factors that influence male elementary teachers' decisions to remain in the classroom. Eight current male elementary classroom teachers with at least 5 years of experience were interviewed regarding their lived experiences as male elementary school teachers. The…

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…

This qualitative multi-case study explored the experiences, motivation, and persistence factors for African American college students with basic needs issues while attending a four-year public, urban, predominantly white institution (PWI) in the Mid-Atlantic region. The study addressed two primary research questions: 1) What motivates Black…

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…

Students' voices are all too often missing in classrooms today. Research over the past 50 years has identified a number of problems associated with these missing voices. There are ingrained habits of "initiation-response-evaluation" (I-R-E) during which teachers assume responsibility for guiding classroom conversation and a tendency for…

Whereas 'Web 2.0 technology' has pushed the learning agenda towards connectivity and boundary crossing, in the current 'new new media ontology' the fear that algorithms might block our avenues to knowledge and connections prevails. In response to this, media scholars have argued that knowledge based on the algorithmic experiences of users is key…

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…

Peer support is effective in improving self-management behaviors and health outcomes among individuals with Type 2 diabetes. Volunteer peer support programs offer a cost-effective resource for diabetes self-management support; however, factors affecting the retention of volunteer peer leaders remain understudied. Herein, we examined factors…