The role of the teacher continues to evolve with each new school year. In order for teachers to perform at their highest capacity, they need pedagogical and emotional support from colleagues as well as encouragement and reinforcement that they are being effective and successful. The problem is that many elementary teachers primarily plan and teach…

Teachers have endured work-related stressors daily to provide the best educational experience to students. This applied research study addressed teacher stress levels to implement a teacher centered social emotional learning (SEL) program. This study was collaborative and involved teachers, administrators, and district staff who worked together to…

Co-teaching requires collaboration between the general and special education teachers. Researchers such as Murawski and Deiker (2008) stress the importance of co-planning, co-instructing, and co-assessing students. With intentional time to co-plan and training, general education and special education teachers can implement a variety of co-teaching…

The purpose of this qualitative, descriptive, single case study was to explore how K-8 teachers, lead teachers, and school administrators in an Arizona school district experienced shared leadership and described its influence on student and school success. The theoretical foundation that provided a lens for this study was the theory of shared…

A large suburban school system in the mid-Atlantic United States identified the Data Wise Improvement Process (DWIP) as a systemic strategy to achieve the district-wide goal of student achievement for college and career readiness. Elementary science teachers marginally participated in school-based instructional team meetings to analyze student…

This qualitative exploratory case study uses phenomenology to conduct an investigation of teacher collaboration and teacher empowerment within a Professional Learning Community (PLC) at a Title 1 elementary school. This study examined the experiences of five elementary and three administrators to learn about their perspectives on teacher…

School leadership has progressed from a principal-led position to a dual-leader position with assistant principals. Assistant principals have stepped into instructional leadership roles and have been identified as overseeing special education (Best, 2016; Gaston, 2005; Walton, 2008). Despite studies determining that assistant principals are…

Special educators of students with reading disabilities in upper elementary are tasked with remediating large deficits in reading while ensuring attainment of grade-level curriculum. Using a qualitative approach, this study investigated the reading instruction of six teachers in three schools in one district. Through interviews, an investigation…

With the passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) in 2015, as part of the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA), it prioritized schools to include families as collaborative partners in schools' improvement efforts. Minimal family voice existed at two elementary schools. Thus, this mixed-methods action…

This three-manuscript dissertation-in-practice explores the opportunity gap in literacy between multilingual and monolingual English-speaking students in an elementary school located in the Northwestern United States. The first manuscript provides a final diagnosis of the problem based on findings from literature and needs assessments in my…

Providing differentiated learning experiences for every student is one of the goals behind teacher collaboration (Reeves, 2003; Byrd, 2020). The problem examined in this study was that collaborative planning has been used as a solution to improve instructional quality in low-resourced schools, without assessing the effectiveness of that solution…

In this dissertation I explore the collaborative practices of three participants: two paraprofessionals and one music teacher. Using social capital as the theoretical framework, I analyzed the ways in which the participants networked with others to gain resources for expressive action. In order to more fully understand the social structures that…

After years of school improvement efforts to include Georgia's four hundred-million-dollar Race to the Top grant, Georgia's elementary, middle, and high schools have failed to significantly improve schoolwide student achievement. This qualitative portraiture study focused on three successful principals of previously chronically failing Title I…

This study focused on a problem of practice at Mystic River School (MRS), a kindergarten through eighth grade school in an urban district in New England. Schoolwide diagnostic data showed a significant gap between multilingual learners (MLs) and their native English speaking peers in literacy. An analysis of this data, interviews with staff and…

As a result of federal legislation (ESSA, 2015) accreditation ratings of elementary schools are based on the performance of third through fifth grade students on the end of year assessments in the content subjects of reading and math. As a result of these requirements schools that fail to meet these standards are identified as Accreditation Denied…