Indianapolis, Indiana is a sprawling city making it an exceptional locale to pursue environmental learning and stewardship research, particularly in the urban context. To achieve improved understanding of people's attitudes and behaviors towards their natural environment and resources, research was conducted on different local populations of…

Young people identifying as Black, Latino/a/x, Hispanic, Asian, and other races and ethnicities that are minoritized and marginalized have constrained opportunities for positive development in the United States due to oppression grounded in white supremacy (NASEM, 2019). Importantly, youth of color engage in critical consciousness: interrogating…

When looking at today's Community College graduation rates, dropout rates and time to completion of degrees, it is abundantly clear that a problem exists. This study examined the characteristics of community colleges in New Jersey and student experiences that contribute to the dismal statistics. Mathematics curriculum in P-12 falls short on…

Technology professional development for teachers typically relies on formal training or courses, but the forced, sudden transition to technology-based instruction in the spring of 2020 meant many instructors had to engage in self-directed professional development in a high-stakes, sink or swim environment. This qualitative narrative oral history…

The number of English Language Learners in the United States continues to increase, yet the number of teachers trained to support ELLs does not. The lack of expertise in this area could have a negative impact on academic achievement. Teachers across the nation, including those at Driscoll Middle, a mid-size suburban middle school in the…

This dissertation in practice created a new form of educator development called the Virtual Educator Network (VEN) and examined its impact on educators' attitudes towards inclusion, feelings of support, and incorporation of new strategies to solve problems of practice they find important. The VEN is a form of professional development that pulls…

This dissertation takes up the topic of simulations in social studies education. Though simulations are taken up widely by social studies educators, and though they are described as best practice in social studies standards documents and teacher evaluation rubrics, the term lacks specificity. Additionally, design, research, and implementation…

As a result of various academic, behavioral, and social-emotional challenges that adolescents may experience during high school, an alarming rate of students are not acquiring their high school credentials. To address this concern, researchers have suggested dropout prevention efforts should focus on using a comprehensive, preventative, tiered…

Unnecessary antibiotics are often ordered for positive urine cultures in long-term care (LTC) residents despite a lack of symptoms, indicating asymptomatic bacteriuria (ASB). Treating ASB with antibiotics can result in antibiotic-resistant organisms, allergic reactions to antibiotics, and secondary infections such as clostridium difficile. The…

Student mental health is a concern across all sectors of postsecondary education as today's college students are presenting to campus with higher amounts of psychopathology than ever before. In 2019, the NASPA Vice President for Student Affairs Census found that student mental health was ranked the number one issue by 750 chief student affairs…

This Dissertation in Practice (DIP) was a group dissertation as required by the Doctorate in Educational Leadership program and created a new form of educator development called the Virtual Educator Network (VEN). This DIP examined the VENs' impact on educators' attitudes towards inclusion, feelings of support, and incorporation of new strategies…

Today's students spend an unprecedented amount of time using technology in comparison to any other generation. With increased access to technology, music-making has changed for the 21st-century music student. How are music teachers then keeping up with the needs of today's technology-hungry music students, and how are they leveraging music…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the merits of lesson study (LS) as a research approach for research in (science) education. A lesson was developed to introduce students to model-based reasoning: a higher order thinking skill that is seen as one of the major reasoning strategies in science. Design/methodology/approach: Participants…

Purpose: The number of students with disabilities pursuing a college education has increased dramatically in recent years (Hall and Belch, 2000; Hitchings et al., 2011; Horn et al., 2006; Retish and Horvath, 2005; Snyder et al., 2016; Stodden et al., 2001), yet, evidence suggests that these students continue to encounter significant challenges and…

Throughout the United States as well as in California, relatively few Asian American and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) serve in leadership positions in four-year universities. This research uses a qualitative phenomenological approach that examines the lived experiences of AAPI administrators in four-year public and private higher education…