Teacher absenteeism is expensive, disrupts the continuity of educational activities, and results in students attending classes with less qualified substitute teachers. The purpose of this study was to analyze the relationships among teacher variables, teacher absenteeism, student achievement, and school district policy governing teacher…

Departmental and programmatic eliminations represent a new paradigm in the history of American higher education. Hastened by a national economic recession and competing state funding priorities, public post-secondary institutions have turned to academic attrition as a solution to continuous budgetary shortfalls. As a means of addressing the lived…

Recent trends toward globalization have engendered interest in comparative educational systems, pointing toward more fundamental change beyond the current focus upon accountability measures. This phenomenological study considered the effect of extrinsic motivators on the intrinsic motivation of academically gifted students in Germany and the…

This study explores the concepts and behaviors, otherwise referred to as "orientations", of six Indian science teachers and the alignment of these orientations to the 2005 India National Curriculum Framework (NCF-2005). Differences in teachers' orientations across grade bands (elementary, middle, and secondary) and school types…

With four generations in today's workforce, roles are being redefined to include a growing number of younger supervisor/older subordinate relationships, referred to as the intergenerational dyad. What current and limited literature exists about the intergenerational dyad exclusively addresses the issues of generational workplace differences…

This dissertation includes two studies: a pilot study on native-English-speaking preservice teachers' perceptions of learning a foreign language online and a follow-up study on inservice teachers' perceptions of transferring teacher linguistic, cultural and technological awareness into teaching practice. Conducted in 2010, the pilot…

As a part of growing and strengthening response to environmental and sustainability education initiatives, schoolyard gardens have emerged across the nation and globe. Though the concept of schoolyard gardens has received widespread support and ignited the public imagination, it is increasingly evident that there is an emergent need for…

This study explored learning and teaching of online classes. Examining the relationship between undergraduate students' participation and their final grades in five selected courses in an online learning environment and exploring differences between the demographics characteristics of age, race, and gender to students' participation…

The three structural possibilities marking a noun with an English article are "a," "the," and "Ø" (the absence of an article). Although these structural possibilities are simple, they encode a multitude of semantic and pragmatic functions, and it is these complex form-function interactions that this study explores and…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of "MathFacts in a Flash" software in helping students learn math standards. In each of their classes, the third-, fourth-, and fifth-grade students in a small private Roman Catholic school from the Pacific Northwest were randomly assigned either to a control group that used…

Habitus, a concept advanced by Bourdieu, has been of particular interest in consumer research as it captures the habituated dispositional aspects of status consumption. Once thought to determine the consumption tastes and practices of consumers based on one's social class, there is growing evidence that consumers are able to break free of…

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to provide insight into Liberal Arts and Sciences (LAS) graduates' reflections on their cooperative education (co-op) experiences and resulting career self-efficacy. Wichita State University houses a cooperative education program, the only one of its kind in the state of Kansas. This program…

Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) have played a significant role in development and have contributed to radical changes in some parts of the world in the past three decades or longer. At the same time, there are parts of the world where ICTs have not reached and there has been little or no development arising from the applications of…

The characteristics and needs of college students across the United States are ever-changing. As Millennial generation students, born between 1982 and 2003 (Howe & Strauss, 2000), attend college, unique characteristics are present. Commonalities within the Millennial generation have been identified; however, socioeconomic status can impact a…

Equipment to store foods at proper temperatures is critical to serving safe and nutritious meals in schools yet little is known about the amount or the adequacy of refrigerated storage in school nutrition programs. The purposes of this study were to identify the types and capacity of refrigeration equipment used in schools, determine the perceived…