Successful completion of the Living Environment, one state's high school biology course, is a state graduation requirement. The academically at-risk students enrolled in one suburban public high school had been disproportionately unsuccessful at achieving a passing grade in this course. In response, a constructivist biology curriculum was created…

The purpose of this study is to find out what students in the first chemistry course at the undergraduate level (general chemistry for science majors) know about the affordances of instrumentation used in the general chemistry laboratory and how their knowledge develops over time. Overall, students see the PASCO(TM) system as a useful and accurate…

This qualitative study examines the perspectives of adjunct faculty regarding the use of technology in the traditional (brick and mortar) classroom. Thirty-two semi-structured interviews were utilized to gain the perspective of the adjunct faculty members from a two year and a four year institution. Over the last thirty years the number of adjunct…

The purpose of this study was to examine Alabama community college presidents' perceptions regarding distance education. Further, this study was intended to determine the adequacy of the training opportunities and support for faculty that teach distance education courses and what services are available for distance education students. This study…

The purpose of this study was to examine the characteristics of the "Lost Generation" alumni who ended their attendance or graduated from Arkansas Tech University (Tech) between January 1973 and December 1995 relating to their demographic characteristics, perceptions of college experiences, involvement with Tech after graduation, and attitudes…

The use of user-centered design (UCD) principles has a positive impact on the use of web-based interactive systems in customer-centric organizations. User-centered design methodologies are not widely adopted in organizations due to intraorganizational factors. A qualitative study using a modified Delphi technique was used to identify the factors…

The increasing complexity of technical work, the demand for highly skilled workers, and the vital challenges facing the world at large have combined to create a need for better ways to transfer knowledge, especially expert knowledge. In this dissertation, I attempted to see if an approach to this process that is more holistic than is typical in…

This study examined the experiences of the incarcerated, school dropout population. With an ever increasing number of high school dropouts, it is imperative that educational administrators attempt to slow the regression. Jail facility educational administrators especially need to have information on ways to increase participation in GED…

The accountability movement of the early 1990s, along with the No Child Left Behind legislation of 2001, required a change in the role of the school district superintendent. The long-used model of superintendent-manager was no longer appropriate to lead school districts in this new era of accountability. A new model of the superintendency emerged…

The United States has a long history of searching for utopian possibilities of public school, amidst a steady stream of population mobility. Horace Mann proclaimed that schools would be able to assimilate the millions of immigrants arriving during the late 1700s. He promised that schools could end poverty, crime and social injustice. Today, public…

According to Glanz's early research, school principals have been depicted as autocrats, bureaucrats, buffoons, and/or villains in movies from 1950 to 1996. The purpose of this study was to determine if these stereotypical characterizations of school principals have continued in films from 1997-2009, or if more favorable images have emerged that…

The research was guided by the research question: How do full-time single Turkish international graduate students conceptualize their experiences as international students? Participants in the study included three doctoral students and three master's students who participated in a series of semi-structured interviews. The data was transcribed and…

Recitations and discussions are two types of interactions which have long been of interest to researchers who study classroom discourse in secondary English and Social Studies. According to research, teachers control the discourse during recitations through "inauthentic" questions requiring pre-specified answers. In contrast, discussions involve…

This case study examined the intersection of collegiate-level student learning outcomes assessment with regional accreditation to understand how regional accreditation policies and practices leverage student learning outcomes efforts on US college campuses. To that end, the standards of each of the regional accreditation agencies were carefully…

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the relationship between the amount of preschoolers' contact with persons with disabilities and their perceptions of and friendship behaviors toward children with physically identifiable disabilities. Specifically, this study extended the research literature on contact by assessing attitudes and…