The purpose of this interpretivist qualitative study is to discover what factors influence first-year college students as they construct their text messages. Using grounded theory methodology, 11 first-year college students at a university in the Southeast were interviewed one-on-one and through text messaging in order to gain insight into…

The purpose of this study was to explore the nature of relationships within the context of a new college presidency. The college presidency is unique given the societal importance of higher education and the organizational complexity of academia. To remain relevant in addressing society's needs a president must successfully create an…

In order to address some of the challenges facing engineering education, namely the demand that students be better prepared to practice professional as well as technical skills, we have developed an intervention consisting of equipment, assessments and a novel pedagogy. The equipment consists of desktop-scale replicas of common industrial…

Diverse learning needs are students' learning needs in areas such as language, learning styles, background, disabilities, technology skills, motivation, engagement, and access. Teacher candidates must be aware of and plan to meet these needs. The Universal Design for Learning (UDL) provides guidelines that can increase the level of student…

This study explores the experiences of 4th grade students in an inquiry-based space science classroom. At the heart of the study lies the essential question: What is the lived experience of children engaged in the process of space science inquiry? Through the methodology of phenomenological inquiry, the author investigates the essence of the lived…

The purpose of this dissertation is to reconsider reflexives in Japanese through the following three steps: (a) separation of genuine reflexive elements from elements that are confounded as reflexives, (b) classification of reflexive anaphors into subtypes based on their semantic difference, and (c) classification of predicates that occur with…

The purpose of this research was to identify special education teachers' perceptions of their principals' support in a rural district. The research examined the principal as a supporter, a believer in special education programming, and an advocate for special education teachers and students. The study is guided by the following research…

Keeping schools safe and productive is an increasing concern for educators everywhere. This research focused on how one elementary school in West Fargo, North Dakota, implemented a school wide discipline approach to help decrease negative student behaviors. The researcher compared and contrasted three different discipline models. The researcher…

Report cards are the primary way that teachers, students, and parents communicate about student achievement in the classroom. Although many school districts develop rubrics to guide teacher grading practices, most research finds that in reality, grades represent a hodgepodge of factors that vary across teachers and across school systems. The…

Earlier research has shown that cultural schemata affect readers' comprehension from an expository text (e.g., Carrell, 1984, 1987; Swales, 1990). Previous research also suggested that there are shared features of well-designed text across cultures (Chambliss & Calfee, 1998) and that reader characteristics like background knowledge affect…

Latent interaction models and mixture models have received considerable attention in social science research recently, but little is known about how to handle if unobserved population heterogeneity exists in the endogenous latent variables of the nonlinear structural equation models. The current study estimates a mixture of latent interaction…

When a student is not successful in mathematics, teachers frequently assume the difficulty lies within the student's mathematical ability or negative disposition towards mathematics, but the difficulty may lie with the student's reading comprehension (Draper, Smith, Hall, & Siebert, 2005; Kane, Byrne, & Hater, 1974). Many…

A principal's major role is that of an instructional leader, which, according to research, if done in isolation inhibits his or her effectiveness. Current literature reveals a paucity of research that examines how high school principals balance the demands and constraints of their jobs, while cultivating instructional leadership among their…

This exploratory study contributes to the research on athlete leadership and team effectiveness in college sports. Athletic departments and sports coaches could benefit from a study about athlete leadership and team effectiveness in order to assist their student-leaders with leadership development and explore additional means to help improve team…

This mixed methods outcomes study investigated a summer school mathematics program for all incoming 9th grade students at a suburban New England vocational technical high school. Qualitative data was gathered via survey and interview from administration, faculty, and students involved with the newly introduced online learning program.…