This study examined the relationship of two climate constructs in academic optimism and organizational climate as each relates to school effectiveness. Academic optimism is an academic environment comprised of three dimensions: academic emphasis, collective efficacy, and faculty trust (Hoy, Tarter, & Hoy, 2006). The Organizational Climate Index…

Enrollment management is a major component within the organizational structure of most four-year universities today. However, this is not necessarily the case with community colleges. With the continual decrease in public funding and increased competition with private colleges and universities, public community colleges are now being forced to…

This qualitative study was designed to identify how students from a single high school in the rural Midwest perceive grades and report cards. Stratified purposeful random sampling resulted in the inclusion of 14 students who provided journal entries and participated in one-on-one interviews for the purpose of exploring student understanding of…

Given sources such as autobiography, theory, and research, there is reason to believe that there are emotional consequences to White people's racial outlooks. White racial identity theory (Helms, 1990) describes how various emotions could be related to White people's psychological orientation to their racial group. Yet little empirical evidence…

This teacher research studied second graders' small-group, peer-led discussions about three genres of literature--realistic fiction, biography picture books, and science information books--across one school year (during three units in the fall, winter, and spring). It set out to explore how this peer talk, in general, mediated children's responses…

This dissertation explored how participants' meditation practice and participation in a teacher-training program affected their ability to embody and teach mindfulness. Six participants from the American Vipassana tradition were interviewed. All had at least 10 years of meditative practice, working with both Buddhist and nonBuddhist teachers. …

This study explored faculty members' perceived importance of family-friendly policies in academia, the extent to which faculty perceive academic institutions as having a social responsibility to make the academy more family-friendly, participants' endorsement of gender-biased norms, and whether the faculty members who participated in this study…

The purpose of this sociocultural study was to investigate gesture as a mediational tool for meaning-making in learning and teaching a second language. Gesture was observed between a teacher and her immigrant students in a second grade elementary classroom designed specifically for second language learners of English. This study provides an…

The purpose of this study is to describe the perceptions held by selected community leaders about the role of the community college and the community college president in connecting with and serving the needs of the community. These leaders' perceptions and views are compared to the documented missions of the colleges selected for study. Six rural…

Institutions look to the literature to discern successful practices to facilitate the transition to college and promote institutional commitment and persistence. However, the higher education literature presents little data on a community in which students are already involved, social network sites (SNS). Moreover, the literature is conflicting in…

Schools across the country are implementing professional development initiatives with the intent of improving student outcomes. Over the past twenty years the criterion for measuring professional development has shifted from identifying what schools quantify to how professional development impacts students performance. Teachers are under a…

The purpose of this study was to examine the degree to which academic achievement in U.S. schools could be explained by several indicators of belongingness (i.e., close teacher-student relationships, peer acceptance, school liking, low levels of loneliness in school and positive perceptions of peers) and school engagement. For this study, data…

Scope and Method of Study: The purpose of this study was to examine students' and instructors' perceptions of using ATutor as the learning content management system (LCMS) in e-learning courses at a distance university in Thailand. The population was composed of all 222 graduate students (census) and 10 instructors from an agricultural college at…

This study examined the use of technology by eighth grade students and teachers and perceptions of students and teachers toward technology use in the classroom and home. A mixed design method was selected to collect and analyze the data. Face-to-face interviews, field notes, and national survey results were used to triangulate the data. Three…

Since the 1960s the higher educational system in the United States has steadily lost its single-sex colleges; and as of 2008 only 51 women's and four men's institutions remain (National Center for Educational Statistics, 2008). Many of the previous single-sex schools have admitted members of the opposite sex, giving in to the national trend of…