Participants in this study included 2,421 special education doctoral students across the nation, responding to the "Survey of Doctoral Students in Special Education" in 1999 and 2009 as well as 813 special education graduates across the nation, responding to the "Survey of Earned Doctorates" through the National Opinion Research Center during the…

This dissertation provided an examination of the views and perspectives of special education teachers at the middle school level as they engaged in support and services for students with disabilities in the inclusion classroom. The intention of this study was to examine the concerns of these teachers as they give support to students with…

The disproportionate representation of minority students in special education programs has been a problem for over forty years. Factors contributing to minority overrepresentation include the lack of primary prevention, inappropriate language and educational assessment, over-referral of minority students for suspected learning difficulties,…

Application and project domain specifications are an important aspect of Information Systems (IS) development. Observations of over thirty IS projects suggest dimly perceived structural patterns in specifications that are unaccounted for in research and practice. This investigation utilizes a theory building with case studies methodology to…

This quantitative research study measured self-reported spirituality of student affairs professionals, practices of student affairs professionals in regard to integration of spirituality into their work, and predictors of holistic, spiritually-infused practice of student affairs professionals. The independent variables were demographic and work…

This qualitative study looks at the leadership perceptions and practices of career professionals in the public sector across three countries of sub-Saharan Africa (Ethiopia, Ghana and Madagascar). All participants were alumni of the Humphrey Fellowship program, a year-long mid-career fellowship in the United States for professional development and…

Out-of-field teaching is a national occurrence that has not had extensive examination in relation to teacher retention and attrition. Using a nationally representative sample of secondary public school teachers, (N =770) taken from the 2003-2004 Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) and the 2004-2005 Teacher Follow-up Survey (TFS) datasets, the…

The concepts of professional learning communities and organizational disciplines support staff development and leadership that lead to sustainable systems. Little research has examined the ability of rural schools to achieve sustainable systems. This quantitative design study considered the relationships between predictor variables of…

The Bolman and Deal (2003) Four-Frame Model was adapted in this qualitative phenomenological research study to describe how stakeholders experience student service-learning. The study presents how students perceive the positive benefits and critical challenges encountered in their service-learning experience; how professors perceive the positive…

The literature on teacher retention is abundant, yet the focus on new teachers themselves is limited. This research study provides a detailed description of what beginning teachers reported made them want to stay at one middle school with a 100% teacher retention rate over four consecutive years. This study employed qualitative methodology.…

Science and agriculture professional organizations have argued for agricultural literacy as a goal for K-12 public education. Due to the complexity of our modern agri-food system, with social, economic, and environmental concerns embedded, an agriculturally literate society is needed for informed decision making, democratic participation, and…

This dissertation examines the historical background of federal regulations that have expanded over the past thirty years, and their impact on state legislative resistance to No Child Left Behind (NCLB). The federal government's involvement in public education offers an instructive opportunity for inquiry into cooperative federalism. State…

The Part B-619 and Part C Programs under the "Individuals with Disabilities Education Act" (IDEA) provide preschool special education and early intervention services, respectively, to children with disabilities birth through age 5. Recent requirements in IDEA require states to monitor the implementation of these programs through a series of…

This study focused on the effectiveness of standards-based testing and was designed to determine the relationship of student scores on the locally constructed, standards-based, criterion-referenced test (CRT) for approximately 280 eleventh grade students at a Midwestern, Class III district, operating a Class A high school, and the scores of those…

We have developed statistical techniques to improve the performance of document image search systems where the intermediate step of OCR based transcription is not used. Previous research in this area has largely focused on challenges pertaining to generation of small lexicons for processing handwritten documents and enhancement of poor quality…