The study's goal was to understand what contributes to the formation of teachers' perspectives regarding the education of culturally and linguistically diverse students. Its focus was to portray through teachers' stories the experiences in their lives that may have contributed to constructing who they are as people and as educators. Four…

Today, more than 139,294 (43%) small businesses registered in the CCR and DSBS databases offer IT services to the federal government. Providing IT services to the federal government is an affordable and feasible low risk approach for emerging and seasoned small IT businesses in the federal arena. This dissertation captures how successful small…

This study examines the development of nanoscience/nanotechnology over a 35 year period (1970-2004) by mapping its social and cognitive structures using social network analysis, bibliometrics and document analysis, and following their changes in time. Mapping is performed based on 580,000 journal articles, 240,000 patents and 53,000 research…

The purpose of this study was to examine to what extent community college trustees understand student success and the processes they used to prioritize student success practices at their institutions. This study used qualitative and quantitative methods that included several analyses. [The dissertation citations contained here are published…

Despite educational reforms to increase standards, many American children fail to read at levels that will enable them to compete in higher education and in the global economy. Standardized testing has reported a gradual decline in the reading scores of local second grade elementary students. The purpose of this project study was to create a…

An interactive Web site was developed and investigated to determine whether interaction on the site among college and high school teachers of writing could result in the formation of an interpretative community. An interpretative community is one in which meanings are stable (Fish, 1980), and which adjudicates student writing with a high degree of…

The purpose of this qualitative, heuristic inquiry was two-fold: First, the study explored the lived experiences of four teacher leaders working in one comprehensive high school in a district where the researcher is superintendent. The second purpose was to learn from the experiences of the teacher leaders to inform district level actions that…

An analysis of human errors in complex work settings can lead to important insights into the workspace design. This type of analysis is particularly relevant to safety-critical, socio-technical systems that are highly dynamic, stressful and time-constrained, and where failures can result in catastrophic societal, economic or environmental…

The purpose of this study was to analyze the spring 2008 Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE) results from a community college located in Southeast Texas to determine what relationship student engagement had to student persistence and academic performance and if that relationship differed by race, ethnicity, or academic program.…

Working under an activity theory framework, the present study was designed to determine how the activity settings, individual and contextual, contributed to the instructional practices and understandings of test-only beginning special education teachers. Specifically, the focus of this study was to examine how teachers with no formal teacher…

The study uses qualitative methodology to understand the "nature" of spiritual experiences that resemble self-realization or oneness, and the linguistic structures and representational knowledge used to comprehend and communicate such an experience. It draws upon Habermas' theory of communicative action to explain the nuances of communication as…

According to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), nearly half of the enrolled college students in the United States of America (USA) are 24 years of age or older. Over one-third are at least 35 years old, which translates into over four million students being a part of growing mature and/or non-traditional student population. Women…

A social navigation system collects data from its users--its community--about what they are doing, their opinions, and their decisions, aggregates this data, and provides the aggregated data--community data--back to individuals so that they can use it to guide behavior and decisions. Social navigation systems empower users with the ability to…

Digital games and simulations are receiving considerable notice within the library and information science (LIS) community. This study adds to the depth of knowledge in this area by providing research on the likelihood a hypothetical digital game delivery method for library instruction achieves sufficient adoption to justify its development.…

Existing research on context and context awareness has broadly focused on the technical aspects of context acquisition and interpretation of users' surroundings, also called physical or sensor-based context. Such an approach has lacked from reconciling the perception of real-world context exhibited by humans, also known as user context, and…