Beginning with the No Child Left Behind federal legislation, states were required to use data to monitor and improve student achievement. For high schools, the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education chose End of Course Exams (EOC) to demonstrate levels of student achievement. The policy changed from school choice of paper-pencil…

The purpose of this study was to explore the codependencies of the social and technical structures that yield Wikipedia the website and Wikipedia the community. In doing so, the research investigated the implications of such a sociotechnical system for the maintenance of the project and the emergence of collective intelligence. Using a theoretical…

In order for simulations and games to be effective for learning, instructional designers must verify that the underlying computational models being used have an appropriate degree of fidelity to the conceptual models of their real-world counterparts. A simulation/game that provides incorrect feedback is likely to promote misunderstanding and…

Colleges and universities graduate many qualified teachers each year who are eager to enter their own classrooms, yet over one third of teachers leave the profession within the first 5 years of teaching. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to examine teachers' perceptions of their first teaching positions to determine whether they…

Improving college performance and retention is a daunting task for colleges and universities. Many institutions are taking action to increase retention rates by exploring their academic programs. Regression analysis was used to compare the effectiveness of ACT mathematics scores, high school grade point averages (HSGPA), and demographic factors…

This research study examines the role of digital media, more specifically online forums, in the development of academic literacy and language learning in English as a Second Language (ESL) college writing. Studies in Second Language Acquisition suggest that participation in online forum discussions can potentially foster collaboration,…

Nursing educators have been encouraged to engage in the scholarship of teaching as a form of best practice in education. Despite professional documents and encouragement by leaders in the field of nursing, there is very little known about nursing educators' perceptions and engagement in the scholarship of teaching. The purpose of this…

Many researchers have documented the challenges of working with culturally different elementary and high school students and have provided evidence of pedagogical practices that increase student engagement and academic success. However, a gap still exists in the understanding of student engagement and academic success of adult refugee students in…

There is very little evidence regarding the specifics of how teacher candidates in preservice teacher education programs employing a cohort system interact and support one another. Similarly, there have been calls for more evidence of the specifics of the socialization process of teacher candidates, especially as it relates to the relationship…

A state selected at random from the Hilbert space of a many-body system is overwhelmingly likely to exhibit highly non-classical correlations. For these typical states, half of the environment must be measured by an observer to determine the state of a given subsystem. The objectivity of classical reality--the fact that multiple observers can each…

Research suggests that the pedagogical thoughts of postsecondary teachers exist on a continuum from student-centered to teaching-centered orientations, the latter of which are more pedagogically effective than the former. However, this body of literature has been critiqued for insufficient conceptualization of psychological constructs and the lack…

Leadership development and employee engagement are two elements critical to the success of organizations. In response to growth opportunities, our Distribution and Logistics company set on a course to implement High Performance Work Place to meet the leadership and employee engagement needs, and to find methods for improving work processes. This…

The changing educational needs of undergraduate students have not been addressed with a corresponding development of instructional methods in higher education classrooms. This study used a phenomenological approach to investigate a classroom-based instructional model called the "inverted" or "flipped" classroom. The flipped…

With the recent addition of engineering to most K-12 testable state standards, efficient and comprehensive instruments are needed to assess changes in student knowledge and perceptions of engineering. In this study, I developed the Students' Awareness and Perceptions of Learning Engineering (STAPLE) instrument to quantitatively measure fourth…

This dissertation thesis describes a research inquiry that took place at a large Midwestern University, in the Fall semester of 2009, is comprised of three case studies, and attempts to respond to the question: "How do prospective teachers perceive, think about, and respond to the instructionally relevant variation of their students".…