With close to a million Texas students attending rural schools, research on what influences student achievement is needed to guide policy, practice, and further research. Building on research relating student demographic variables and per student spending in rural schools to student achievement, through this dissertation research I used…

Although online courses have been a part of academia for nearly 30 years, they are still perceived as "different" than face-to-face instruction. Through in-depth interviews with four instructors, we explored how STEM faculty approach teaching asynchronous online undergraduate STEM courses. The faculty interviewed for this study viewed…

The population of English learners (ELs) in K-12 schools continues to grow. Between the 2009-10 and 2014-15 school years, the percentage of English learners increased in over half of the states, and in 2017, English learners made up 10.1% of the total student population. Research suggests that in their transition to English, non-native speakers…

This article reports on a classroom-based experiment that tested the effects of three vocabulary teaching constructs (involvement load, spacing, and intentionality) on the learning of English verb-noun collocations--for example, "shelve a plan." Laufer and Hulstijn's (2001) "involvement load" predicts that the higher the…

The South Carolina Department of Education and the South Carolina Education Oversight Committee developed an accountability system that informs the public of the status of public schools while meeting the mandate of state and federal law (Robinson, 2018). Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) is a U.S. Law that passed in December 2015 that governs the…

This article concerns how teachers of Mother-Tongue Education (MTE) and pupils in Swedish secondary schools look upon and relate to the keyboard and screen and pen and paper, respectively, for writing in the context of MTE. The results showed that both teachers and pupils found that the computer on one side and the pen and paper on the other…

In this exploratory study, a theoretical model proposed by Sriraman (2005) consisting of five theoretical principles for optimizing creativity in a K-12 setting was investigated empirically. This was accomplished in two steps. In the first study, the five principles were operationalized by generating a questionnaire consisting of 45 items intended…

Background: In 2012, the South African government initiated the Integrated School Health Policy (ISHP) to serve as a national guideline on providing school health and support services from key stakeholders such as the Department of Health (DoH), Department of Basic Education (DBE) and Department of Social Development (DSD). However, despite the…

This dissertation examines the school-level impacts on student achievement in the state of Pennsylvania from the economic inputs provided to students and schools. I conduct a comprehensive review of prior literature on Pennsylvania education funding, the issue of equity versus adequacy, academic spending per pupil, and teacher compensation, as…

Apprenticeships are required for many trades and can take different forms. In Sweden, one form can be viewed as a pathway where students complete a three-year-long vocational education in upper secondary school followed by a post-secondary apprenticeship in a particular trade. Another takes the form of vocational training within the framework of…

Changes in working life require development in vocational education and training (VET) to retain industrial currency. VET teachers are key actors in VET, and their continuing professional development (CPD) in vocational subjects is central to the currency of VET. This study is situated in Sweden, with a mainly school-based VET system where VET…

The number of students temporarily studying in another country to receive a post-secondary education has grown significantly since the 1970s. This study aims to learn more about what attracts Swedish outbound students when studying abroad. What are the popular study destinations? Can data reveal touristic preferences? Descriptive statistics from…

In this article, we study the academisation of the teaching profession in Sweden, which follows contemporary trends in other Nordic and European countries. The specific aim was to analyse 14 reports written by researching teachers enrolled in a master's programme to investigate how they perceive, interpret and value academic and professional…

In 2010, the Swedish Education Act introduced new provisions stating that education at all levels should 'rest on scientific grounds and proven experience'. These requirements led to greater policy activities at the state level and enhanced the cooperation emerging between the municipality and higher education as well as between teachers and…

Bidirectional naming (BiN) is the integration of speaker and listener responses, reinforced by social consequences. Unfortunately, these consequences often do not function as reinforcers for behavior in children with autism. Accordingly, the repertoire of BiN is also often limited in these children. Previous research has suggested that so-called…