Children and youth are available to learn when they are ready to engage with people, absorb information, and pay attention to what is occurring around them. They are alert, attentive, and interested but not overstimulated. Optimizing availability for learning involves a systematic analysis and understanding of the internal and external factors…

Despite the widespread commitment of many colleges of education to advance equity and social justice using critical theories, many students exit teacher preparation programs without a tangible idea of how to enact critical theories within their classrooms. The dominant approach to fostering critical practices among preservice…

The importance of technology in education has never been more evident since the COVID-19 pandemic. Seemingly overnight teachers throughout the world had to adapt their pedagogy by incorporating technology in every aspect of learning. Schools must continue to prepare students to thrive in our digital society. This preparation requires tech savvy…

Student underperformance in the sciences is a problem experienced throughout the Isles of the Sea, a pseudonym for the country where this study took place. As schools are sometimes said to be a microcosm of communities, the issue of underperformance in science was evident in the school system studied, particularly in biology. This system…

Today's students will face issues and problems that are global scale and require a collaborative global effort to resolve effectively. To help prepare students to resolve these global issues, students must learn to participate in the global democratic process as part of their citizenship education. In particular, scholars argue students need to…

This dissertation is motivated by the urgent uncertainty of teacher education pedagogy. The work is urgent because students and schools need teachers to be proficient, equitable, and self-sufficient from the moment they take the helm of the classroom, and it is uncertain because teacher education research has struggled to definitively articulate…

This qualitative case study explored how an alternative education high school in an upper-class suburban town supported the needs of at-risk students. Using Differentiated Instruction as the theoretical lens, this study contemplates how a teacher and principal used various methods of instruction to meet student needs. Finding suggest that teachers…

The need for culturally responsive mathematics professional learning (PL) has increased; however, there is not a clearly defined process for the design and facilitation of culturally responsive mathematics PL, especially as it relates to outside consultants. Each school district is unique in its cultural, racial, and ethnic diversity, which adds…

Sources of information are growing as a result of the changing technology landscape in our learning environments. This presents an opportunity to leverage information in new ways to benefit students and faculty by illuminating different aspects of the practice of teaching. For this information to have an impact, it is first necessary to understand…

There are many reasons students fail to achieve in STEM related fields post high school. For example, students may spend too much time receiving teacher centered lessons that focus primarily on vocabulary building and concept recognition. These lessons may not necessarily promote understanding or encourage students to learn other skills than…

The purpose of this study was to test the efficacy of teaching sight-singing to novice, vocal music readers using a structured instructional model through an asynchronous format. Sight-singing literature is inconclusive on definitively best systems, resulting in educators using a variety of methods in the classroom. Research has shown however that…

Despite longstanding efforts in the K-12 STEM education community to create meaningful mathematical experiences across disciplines, mathematics continues to be a siloed subject which is tracked based on ability. With an increasing number of high-achieving students enrolling in Algebra I in Grade 7 or earlier, there is a need for research on the…

Australia's national curriculum includes explicit learning of the diverse countries, cultures, and peoples of Asia as a cross-curriculum priority. Despite this and previous initiatives to develop what has been called 'Asia literacy', recent evidence suggests that progress in the teaching and learning of this priority has been marginal and patchy.…

With the implementation of policies, such as: Opinions of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council on Deepening the Reform of Institutional Mechanisms and Accelerating the Implementation of Innovation-Driven Development Strategies," "Opinions of the General Office of the State Council on Deepening the Reform of Innovation and…

Ongoing inequitable educational outcomes for marginalized students drive this study. Data show that our current educational system is not meeting the needs of all our students. Our Black and Brown students continue to be underserved by the system. With over thirty years of research and data supporting the inclusion of racial topics and infusion of…