This qualitative, action research study was guided by two primary research questions. First, how do students negotiate aesthetic, efferent, and critical stances when reading a novel set in Afghanistan? Second, how do aesthetic and efferent stances contribute to or hinder the adoption of a critical stance? A large body of research exists that…

This study provided an analysis of Hispanic 10th grade student academic achievement in the areas of mathematics, reading and writing as measured by the Arizona's Instrument to Measure Standards. The study is based on data of 163 school districts and 25,103 (95%) students in the state of Arizona as published by the Arizona Department of…

The expansion of the Internet and online learning around the globe makes it more important to understand the differences in website design among cultures. Furthermore, the members of educational institutions around the world rely on the Internet more than ever before in a variety of aspects. Also, web design differs from culture to culture. Saudi…

People who earn college degrees are more likely positioned socially, occupationally, and economically for consideration of leadership roles and salary increases. Research conducted by Adams (2008) revealed that regardless of a students' gender, race, social, or economic status, the impact of a college education on lifetime earnings is 20%…

The purpose of this quantitative research study was to investigate the use of rote learning in basic skills of mathematics and spelling of 12 high school students, from a career and technical high school, in an effort to learn if the pedagogy of rote fits in the frameworks of today's education. The study compared the accuracy of…

This qualitative phenomenological research study focused on eight deans of students at the high school level and three administrators who were instrumental in creating or reestablishing and supervising the position of dean of students within their high schools. The purpose of the study was to define the roles and responsibilities of the high…

This study examined the perception of parents and teachers toward the transition process of students who are deaf/hard-of-hearing from an auditory-oral school to the general education setting. The study was mixed methods in nature, using a phenomenological case study design coupled with descriptive statistics. In-depth interviews of a…

This study examined the collective success and "Best in the Nation" status of Ohio public libraries as indicated in by various statistical rankings, like the HAPLR and "Library Journal" Star Libraries, as well as anecdotal reports in the trade literature. The study was qualitative in nature and utilized a single-subject case…

The purpose of this study was to design, implement, and evaluate the effectiveness of incorporating an online learning community as part of a comprehensive new teacher induction program. First, the researcher created an online learning community model based on the results of a comprehensive review of literature and from the previous year's…

Since sub-sentential alignment is critically important to the translation quality of an Example-Based Machine Translation (EBMT) system, which operates by finding and combining phrase-level matches against the training examples, we developed a new alignment algorithm for the purpose of improving the EBMT system's performance. This new…

There has been growing interest in building and optimizing retrieval systems with respect to relevance and novelty of information, which together more realistically reflect the usefulness of a system as perceived by the user. How to combine these criteria into a single metric that can be used to measure as well as optimize retrieval systems is an…

Social media collections are becoming increasingly important in the everyday life of Internet users. Recent statistics show that sites hosting social media and community-generated content account for five of the top ten most visited websites in the United States [4] are visited regularly by a broad cross-section of Internet users [61, 67, 115] and…

Economic development through technological advancement is a phenomenon that for many decades brought economic prosperity, increased wealth, and (by extension) social change to citizens of the world. However, economists and development specialists have consistently challenged the inequitable distribution of this wealth between the countries of the…

This study examines the literacy practices of Mormon missionaries and articulates the way in which these practices are then incorporated into the literacy practices outside of missionary work. This study also seeks to situate the study of the literacy practices and sponsorship of Mormon missionaries within the broader field of Literacy Studies,…

The components of a successful Response to Intervention (RtI) process are the following: monitored student growth, reviewed assessment tools used in screening students, and assessed data collection methods. RtI is well documented in the literature and has been the topic of many early intervention studies predominantly in the elementary setting.…