Interdisciplinary design education is becoming more important as design disciplines need various perspectives and solutions. However, only a limited amount of research has been done in regard to interdisciplinary design education. The goal of this study is to begin to answer the question about how designers and researchers develop and improve…

Community colleges in the United States are facing what some researchers are calling a "crisis" (Piland & Wolf, 2003; Shults, 2001). The current generation of community college leaders, those born to the birth cohort known as the Baby Boomers, are eligible to retire early in the 21st century. These retirements will leave a…

English as a Second Language (ESL) students often have problems progressing in their acquisition of the language and frequently do not know how to solve this dilemma. Many of them think of their second language studies as just another school subject that they must pass in order to move on to the next level, so few of them realize the metacognitive…

Here I present my work identifying and addressing student difficulties with several materials science and physics topics. In the first part of this thesis, I present my work identifying student difficulties and misconceptions about the directional relationships between net force, velocity, and acceleration in one dimension. This is accomplished…

The purpose of this mixed-methods study was to describe the perceptions of elementary teachers from an urban school district in Southern California regarding their inquiry-based science instructional practices, assessment methods and professional development. The district's inquiry professional development called the California Mathematics…

Numerous researchers have focused on the importance of parental involvement in education, with a strong consensus among researchers that parental involvement supports student achievement. However, there is a lack of consensus about what constitutes parental involvement and what aspects of parental involvement most benefit the student. The purpose…

In a study of 5285 8th graders from the Gang Resistance and Education Training (G.R.E.A.T.) research, this study applied Travis Hirschi's social bonding theory to examine the curriculum's efficacy in increasing conventional bonding (friends with positive peers, succeeding at education etc.) and decreasing non-conventional bonding (drug…

In California, graduate-level school leadership degrees and credentialing programs prepare primarily K-12 traditional public school principals (California Commission on Teacher Credentialing, 2012). The number and diversity of K-12 nontraditional schools in Los Angeles County, predominantly charter schools, have increased. Therefore, unique skills…

This study explored the traits and leadership tactics of an effective leader that influenced the climate and culture of a school. This study examined changes a principal made to the climate in order to establish leadership and cultivate positive school culture. The purpose of this study was to examine leadership and culture together by observing…

This study examined the impact of two variations of repeated reading on the fluency and comprehension of 173 sixth-grade students at a rural middle school. Students were randomly assigned to one of two repeated reading groups that focused on either improved reading rate or prosody and a comparison group that engaged in an equivalent amount of wide…

Tactical corporate social responsibility (CSR) can play a central role in an organization's strategic management (Hamil & Morrow, 2011) by enhancing the relationship between an organization and its key stakeholders (Babiak & Wolfe, 2009). In the context of sport, these stakeholders can include fans, the media, team employees, and the…

This study examined seventh grade student achievement in math, reading, and language arts relating to the allocation of instructional minutes per subject. The treatment group consisted of students assigned to 90 minute classes in the core content. The control group consisted of students assigned to 55 minute classes in the core content.…

Improving student reading skill and attitudes toward reading creates challenges in the classroom. The purpose of this research was to study the effect of reading partnerships on the reading skills and attitudes of kindergarten and second-grade students. Participants included two kindergarten and two second-grade intact classes in a pretest…

A non-experimental study was conducted to examine the perceived administrative support needs of alternatively certified teachers and determine their impact on teacher retention. The study sought to identify the most valued administrative support needs of alternatively-certified teachers; to compare those needs by gender and tier teaching level;…

The perception of non-native speech sounds is heavily influenced by the acoustic cues that are relevant for differentiating members of a listener's native (L1) phonological contrasts. Many studies of both (naive) non-native and (not naive) second language (L2) speech perception implicitly assume continuity in a listener's habits of…