Humans have long sought to understand the forces that shape the diversity of living creatures on our planet. This work is primarily concerned with examining one such force--the historical action of natural selection--from practical, philosophical, and pedagogical perspectives. The first half is concerned with a suite of genetic mechanisms in…

Workforce training is needed throughout the construction industry to create and maintain competent workers; unfortunately, most construction training and education research focuses on university student education. The focus of this dissertation research is the current state of educational-theory embedded construction workforce training, how such…

The paradigm shift from traditional didactic instruction to technology-enriched teaching and learning environments significantly benefits learners. Educational technology can visualize abstract mathematical concepts contextually and graphically and allow learners to actively construct this knowledge. This study aims to ascertain the efficacy of a…

This paper presents a mixed-methods pilot study of English language learner (ELL) educators in a heavily migrant populated area of the United States. In order to determine the usefulness of technology in ELL instruction, the researchers interviewed six primary grade educators, observed the educators' use of technology with their students, and…

The purpose of this paper is to provide background for the vision statement, "An Argument-based Framework for Valid and Actionable Assessment for English Learners in Secondary Grades." We begin by identifying the problem we intended to address in the vision statement for an assessment framework. This is followed by a discussion about the…

Situated in China and under the context of curriculum reform, this project is an effort to combine long-time separate research streams in language teaching and learning studies: the history-in-person perspective (Holland & Lave, 2001) and the discourse analysis perspective (Cazden, 1988). Informed by the concepts of…

While previous research of maker spaces has primarily been focused on public and community spaces, this dissertation looked at maker education in independent schools. Maker education often challenges traditional approaches to teaching and learning, positioning teachers more as facilitators who support students to make meaningful decisions as they…

Mixed methods (MM) research is an emergent methodology that involves collecting, analyzing, and intentionally integrating qualitative and quantitative data in a study. MM is increasingly used by graduate students and scholars across contexts. These researchers? practices of MM research, however, have been found to be limited in the literature, and…

Millennials and Generation Zers make up the majority of the undergraduate population in universities and colleges. These generation cohorts are better educated and more technologically inclined compared to prior generations. Even with these characteristics, undergraduate accounting enrollment has declined. Moreover, employers have seen a skill gap…

Through adventure-based learning (ABL), individuals analyze unique experiences in order to generalize and apply critical skills and dispositions to their homes, schools, workplaces, and communities (Dillon, Tannehill, & O'Sullivan, 2010). However, there is a lack of research documenting the transferability of ABL to other contexts (Kraft,…

Introduction: In early 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic caused a majority of in-person higher education, including physical therapy professional education programs, to shift content delivery formats allowing for social distancing to decrease spread of the virus. The purpose of this investigation was to discover physical therapy student and faculty…

Cultural competence is described as a set of skills, values, and principles that acknowledge, respect, and work toward optimal interactions between the individual and the various cultural and ethnic groups with which an individual might come into contact. Scholars have been critical of cultural competence training because the three-dimensional…

This research study explored the experiences of this teacher-researcher and eight student-participants in a Montessori-inspired, nature-based mathematical environment. I utilized an action research study framework with a critical event narrative analysis to describe mine and my student-participants' experiences throughout this study, using…

It is little wonder that there is national consensus on the necessity for school physical education to facilitate holistic development of all learners. Moreover, given the increased mental health issues that K-12 students are facing, it is important to consider a strengths-based approach to physical education that focuses on the holistic…

In this paper, we explore how a group of 10 and 11-year-old primary school children engage with a picture book about a refugee boy from Somalia. As we examine in some detail a video-recording of the children's discussion, we suggest that the children's emotional engagement with the story was pivotal to not only their making sense of the book, but…