Elementary school principals today are expected to be instructional leaders of their schools all day, every day. As the instructional leader, they provide direction and exercise influence on teachers and other professional staff members in their buildings at all times. This qualitative study focused on the perceptions of teachers and principals on…

Investigating students' perceptions of their classroom environment is one of the ways researchers and educators can effectively determine what factors may benefit students' learning. Student Perceptions of Classroom Quality (SPOCQ; Gentry & Owen, 2004) was used with a group of Chinese gifted and general secondary students in the…

As the proportion of children from culturally diverse backgrounds in the nation's schools increases, the teacher workforce is projected to remain overwhelmingly White, monolingual, and female. These differences are believed to have fostered a cultural mismatch, where teachers are challenged in their ability to meaningfully connect with their…

An epidemic such as diabetes is an extremely complex public health, economic and social problem that is difficult to solve through medical expertise alone. Evidence-based models for improving healthcare delivery systems advocate educating patients to become more active participants in their own care. This shift demands preparing chronically ill…

This study provides an overview of the impact of school technology on elementary students in grades three through five attending public schools in Indiana. The investigation focused on the impact of various technologies on student achievement as measured on Indiana Statewide Testing for Educational Progress-Plus (ISTEP+). Various comparisons were…

This study examined the process teachers used to change their pedagogy to deliver effective instruction using Web 2.0 tools. A phenomenological approach examined the "lived experiences" of seven secondary teachers through in-depth interviews giving this study an in-depth qualitative analysis of teachers and technology. The widening…

Many educators believe that the act of building relationships is the core of learning. When technology is integrated into every classroom, do relationships improve or disintegrate among the key stakeholders in an educational environment? The purpose of this study is to determine the extent to which technology in a 1:1 school district can alter…

The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation of 2001 increased the stakes for all schools to increase student achievement by mandating all students meet or exceed state standards by 2014. A small rural school responded 5 years ago to their failure to make adequate yearly progress (AYP) by implementing professional learning communities (PLC) as a…

Implementation of state and federal high-stakes accountability measures such as end-of-course tests (EoCTs) has contributed to increased teacher stress in the classroom, decreased teacher creativity and autonomy, and reduced effectiveness. Prior research focused primarily on the elementary and middle school levels, so this study sought to examine…

This text performs reading for teaching in an audit culture. Two teachers, myself and Steven, read the memoir "Hole in My Life" by Jack Gantos and, while reading, recorded our experiences as readers and planned to teach the book to Steven's English class. This study is an inquiry into the phenomenon of "reading to teach,"…

Music teachers occupy a conflicted and contested position in many secondary schools, and music teacher education programs have been given the task of preparing students to enter this challenging environment. This qualitative dissertation study examined the explicit, implicit, and null curricula of music teacher preparation programs in…

Current CAT applications consist of predominantly dichotomous items, and CATs with polytomously scored items are limited. To ascertain the best approach to polytomous CAT, a significant amount of research has been conducted on item selection, ability estimation, and impact of termination rules based on polytomous IRT models. Few studies…

Lexical access is the process in which basic components of meaning in language, the lexical entries (words) are activated. This activation is based on the organization and representational structure of the lexical entries. Semantic features of words, which are the prominent semantic characteristics of a word concept, provide important information…

Student success in online learning is strongly affected by the learner's social presence. There is evidence that not all students benefit from the online learning environment, as it limits social interaction between the students. The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of Twitter, a social network application, on online class…

The purpose of this study was to explore how Namibian high school teachers experienced the ICT policy for education in their schools. This mixed methods sequential explanatory design consists of two distinct phases: quantitative followed by qualitative (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2011). Quantitative data collection involved the distribution and…