Purpose: What are the best strategies for teaching Generation 1.5 community college students in transfer-level English courses? Why are some students successful and others not? The purpose of this study was to determine through a phenomenological design how Generation 1.5 students describe the experience of receiving validation or invalidation…

Northern Virginia Community College (NOVA), like other community colleges, does not require Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT) scores or similar entrance examinations for admission. However, new college applicants must demonstrate their levels of reading, writing, and mathematics skills to determine whether they need developmental courses to prepare…

This dissertation study explores the relationship between Ladson-Billings' (1992, 1994, 2006) early scholarship and work with Culturally Relevant Pedagogy (CRP) frameworks and the literacy practices of the multilingual students in my community college classroom. This qualitative, interpretive case study draws upon CRP and sociocultural frameworks…

Curricula related to sustainability and climate science are being integrated into academic science courses and programs. We set out to assess the knowledge of some of these environmental concepts among a group of Deaf/Hard-of-Hearing (D/d/HH) postsecondary students. A survey that attempted to gauge student understanding and perceptions of climate…

One way to ensure a high quality, personalized literacy program for English language learners is to use the learners' own lives and experiences as curriculum. Creating spaces for students to compose and share stories results in a strong sense of community facilitates the development of authentic literacy skills and increases student motivation and…

Junior / community college students who have learning disabilities (LD), such as dyslexia, often do not maximize their use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) for school work. They do not use many of these technologies nor do they know as much about them as other students. These are the results of an Adaptech Research Network…

Tennessee's public community college system implemented corequisite remediation for underprepared students during the Fall 2015 semester. As a result of the Tennessee Board of Regents corequisite remediation initiative, students with academic placement scores determined to be below college level on an instrument such as the ACT often work in the…

Every year, California's community colleges identify hundreds of thousands of students as not ready for transfer-level courses in math and English. Since these courses are required to transfer to a four-year college, students deemed underprepared are placed in developmental (also known as remedial or basic-skills) courses to prepare for college…

Due to consistent growth in eLearning in the United States, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, a great amount of emphasis has been placed on what is required to ensure that students find success in online education. With an estimated $13 billion invested in online education as of 2019, institutions of higher education must work to ensure…

Post-secondary education enrollment and completion disparities exist for Minnesota's Black, Indigenous, and Persons of Color (BIPOC) and lower-income students. One outcome measure demonstrating the impact of system-fed disparities in K-12 education is a student's level of readiness for college-level courses following high school graduation. Given…

While the number of Latino students taking advantage of higher education opportunities has steadily increased, the completion of degree programs does not mirror this increase (Radford, Berkner, Wheeless, & Shepard, 2010). Prior research has focused on the barriers faced by Latino college students (Garza, 2011; Hernandez, 2002; Radovic, 2012).…

Researchers have confirmed that male students at all academic levels often struggle while engaging in self-reflection, reading, and writing activities for reasons such as incompatible pedagogical strategy, poor choice of reading materials, and lack of belief in success for students. In conjunction with the growing popularity of online learning, an…

In the fall of 2009, the National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE) initiated a series of research programs designed to support the high school reform program, "Excellence for All," based on more than 20 years of research on the school reform programs of the countries with the most successful education programs worldwide. A…

This dissertation studies the organization of adjunct instruction within Departments of English and Mathematics at three colleges--a public research university, a private masters granting teaching college, and a public community college. Four questions lie at the core of this project. First, what higher principles and standards of evaluation (i.e.…

Contrastive rhetoric studies the writing of second language learners to understand how it is affected by their first language and culture. The field of contrastive rhetoric is as multidimensional as second language writing is complex. It draws on the work of contrastive analysis, anthropology, linguistics, pedagogy, culture studies, translation…