There are ambitious institutional and national goals that aspire to improve the six year graduation rate for undergraduate students. An important element of increasing the overall rate lies in decreasing the educational attainment gaps for low-income, first generation, and other historically underserved students. Comprehensive theoretical…

Despite years of educational reform, secondary students have demonstrated only modest increases in achievement. Career and technical education students have not demonstrated the same level of performance as non-career and technical education students. Except for teachers, principals have the greatest influence over student achievement. What should…

This study is of professional development of secondary teachers seeking an English as Second Language (ESL) endorsement. Participants are secondary teachers of a major urban metropolitan school district with over 70% student population that is identified as speakers of a language other than English (LOTE). The study analyzes teachers'…

Post-structuralism, a theory of signs for written texts, would seem an obvious resource for a field like Composition Studies that has "writing" at its center. Yet the post-structuralist turn in Composition Studies is hamstrung by the deep division between camps in the field that are committed to political critique on the one hand or to…

Beginning in 1996, a rash of rampage school shootings occurred in the United States. "Rampage school shootings occur when students or former students attack their own school" (Langman, 2009, p. 2). Numerous studies have been conducted to determine the psychological and sociological aspects and to provide insight into the question of how…

This dissertation details the use of the Program Evaluations Metaevaluation Checklist (PEMC), Stufflebeam, 1999, which is for performing final, summative metaevaluations. It is organized according to the Joint Committee Program Evaluation Standards. For each of the 30 standards the checklist includes 6 checkpoints drawn from the substance of the…

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between National Board Certification and student achievement in mathematics and reading as measured by an achievement test used in South Carolina. Using the Northwest Evaluation Association's Measures of Academic Progress (MAP), the study examined the RIT (Rasch Unit) scores of third…

Reading is a process that requires the enactment of many cognitive processes. Each of these processes uses a certain amount of working memory resources, which are severely constrained by biology. More efficiency in the function of working memory may mediate the biological limits of same. Reading relevancy instructions may be one such method to…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the attitudes of both general and special education teachers toward the inclusion of students with disabilities in the general education setting and determine if there is a significant difference between both groups. The study also investigated a possible correlation between the number of years of…

Financial aid officers play a vital role in assisting prospective and current college students in enrolling and graduating from college. This study explores the competencies that financial aid officers need to be successful in their jobs. A survey of thirty competencies was distributed to 508 practicing financial aid officers in the Western United…

The stories of students and teacher candidates of Color hold powerful lessons and tremendous insight for educational reform efforts. Yet, rarely do educators and policymakers solicit or critically engage the educational narratives of students of Color. Indeed, despite resurgence in a four-decade long conversation regarding the shortage of teachers…

The purpose of this study was to examine the exhibition developer role in the context of United States (U.S.) science centers, and more specifically, to investigate the way science center exhibition developers build their professional expertise. This research investigated how successfully practicing exhibition developers described their current…

This dissertation studies three incentive issues in information security management. The first essay studies contract issues between a firm that outsources security functions and a managed security service provider (MSSP) that provides security functions to the firm. Since MSSP and firms cannot observe each other's actions, both can suffer…

An emerging trend today is the increased enrollment of international students at community colleges. International students look to American community colleges as a stepping stone to achieving an education that might otherwise be beyond their reach. They are attracted to the community college by the lower tuition costs, opportunities for…

This action research case study explored undergraduate social work students' perceived learning of interviewing skills in a hybrid environment course delivery. The single case study consisted of 19 students enrolled in a practice course blending web-based and face-to-face (f2f) meetings (4 of 15 f2f) within a large urban college. As part of…