Every year children are unintentionally injured or killed due to finding an unattended firearm. Although research evaluating various approaches to teach safety skills shows that behavioral skills training and in situ training are effective, limited research exists evaluating small-scale simulation training in teaching safety skills to children.…

Music therapy degree programs originated in the 1940s and while programs have come and gone, not much was known about the profession's trends. The current education policy was adopted in 2000, two years after the National Association for Music Therapy and the American Association for Music Therapy unified to form one governing organization called…

Public investment in pre-K programs across the US has expanded over the past two decades, primarily to increase access to pre-K programs, especially among low-income children and children of color. However, program quality varies across states. One key question policymakers and practitioners have posed is how to create high-quality early childhood…

Few studies have examined how professional learning communities (PLCs) engage in collaborative inquiry over multiple years. This dissertation describes how a PLC with high school science teachers, district-based coaches, and university researchers conducted collective inquiries over five years to improve science instruction. The PLC was situated…

As early career elementary teachers (ECETs) teachers have a direct impact on student achievement, it is necessary for universities and school districts to implement programs that support the first years of teaching. ECETs express frustration with the significant demands of teaching. Further, ECETs are severely disadvantaged by the lack of…

By offering practical steps for adults who work with young children to build inclusive and intentional spaces where all children receive positive messages about their unique gender selves, this book increases awareness about gender diversity in learning environments such as child care centres, family child care homes and preschools. The book is…

This dissertation investigates the "Competence Model for Environmental Education" (Kaiser, Roczen, & Bogner, 2008), a theoretical environmental-behavior change model, for use in the United States with elementary-aged students. Paper #1 tests two new instruments developed for use with the "Competence Model," the Expanded…

The Voices of Youth Count initiative's systematic evidence review is the most comprehensive synthesis of evaluation evidence on programs and practices related to youth homelessness to date. This document is one in a series of seven topical evidence summaries derived from the longer evidence review brief. Herein, evaluations of economic and…

Millions of working Californians are unable to fulfill their families' basic needs. Higher-paying jobs that require specialized skills are beyond their reach, and many entry-level jobs are likely to be automated by 2022, so there is an urgent need to redesign the state's education and training systems to help people get the skills they need to…

The second objective of the '2nd Survey of Schools: ICT in Education' designs a conceptual model for a 'highly equipped and connected classroom' (HECC), defines three scenarios of a HECC and estimates the costs to equip and connect an average EU classroom with advanced components of the HECC model. The entry level scenario outlines the minimum and…

This purpose of this mixed methods study was to examine the human activity of attendance at a mathematics teachers' conference, TMathC 2017, which was mediated through Twitter and blogging. Tweets containing the hashtag #TMC17 were downloaded over a 53-day time period and were analyzed through social networking analysis software to understand the…

School leaders invest time and money in the professional development (PD) of their teachers. A characteristic of PD found to improve teacher practice and student learning is teacher self-directedness. Self-directed learning (SDL) is a process in which learners take the initiative, with or without the assistance of others, to diagnose the need to…

The rapidly evolving workplace has created a shortage of skilled and educated workers in many fields, leaving essential jobs unfilled and millions of adults unqualified for them. This policy brief summarizes statewide strategies to support financial assistance for students in programs designed to address workforce needs. It includes suggestions…

Technology-mediated simulations of teaching practice are becoming a more common way to introduce teachers to the dilemmas of teaching during professional development. In this paper, we show that the inclusion of markers of student emotions in cartoon-based scenarios of teaching changes teachers' appropriateness rating of the actions that the…

Rule-governed behavior (RGB) is behavior that is controlled by verbal descriptions of contingencies rather than by direct contact or a history of direct contact with the contingencies. Humans rely on RGB to navigate a multitude of life experiences, and in doing so, we avoid direct contact with destructive or harmful contingencies or contingencies…