Dual Language Immersion (DLI) language education programs are complex spaces that have the potential to support greater educational equity. However, achieving this potential requires DLI teachers who are prepared to disrupt inequitable status quos by engaging with complexity to welcome into their classrooms ways of knowing and being that are…

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia began to enhance and develop the system of Saudi education. Therefore, the Saudi Ministry of Education offered Saudi Arabian teachers the opportunity to travel to the United States to participate in an American university-sponsored professional development program provided by the Midwestern University College of…

This dissertation is a historical case study that focused on the founding and continuation of the GSSch to define the term, academic resilience and to determine how the GSSch had impacted "academic resilience." I examined qualitative data from interviews alongside research published during the founding (i.e. mid-1970s) and continuation…

Graduate student travel continues to reflect the desire for more intentional and immersive ways to engage in travel experiences for the purpose of learning. This basic qualitative study explored how graduate students made meaning of their cultural immersion experiences. The study invited twenty-three graduate students enrolled in three Christian…

This dissertation examined narratives of seven current and former students of a Southwestern university in the United States who participated in short-term study abroad language and culture immersion programs (3 to 4 weeks) in three different locations outside of the United States. The research explored how the short-term study abroad participants…

This dissertation examines how critical thinking skills are addressed in university-level intensive language programs for international students in the United States. The theoretical framework for this study was built upon Vygotsky's sociocultural theory. Three research questions inquired about language instructors' ability to conceptualize…

The urgent call to internationalize teacher education in response to the impact globalization presents in our nation's classrooms, also calls for a fundamental shift in how the field of teacher education provides opportunities of professional learning for teachers. Traditional models of teacher education often fail to develop teachers with the…

With the intent of informing music teacher education practices and developing more culturally responsive and relevant teachers, the purpose of this research was to explore pre-service music teachers' understandings of culture and diversity, and to examine the impact of a short-term cultural immersion field experience on pre-service music teachers'…

Institutions of higher education are seeing an increasingly diverse population of students on campuses. One source of this increase is students who are entering the academy from a wider variety of educational environments. In order to support and serve more diverse students in higher education, educators and student affairs practitioners need…

While American colleges and universities are unparalleled in their ability to produce disciplinary-based knowledge through research and scholarship, their ability to encourage students to use the information and methods about which they are learning to create positive social change has lagged. Aware of the magnitude of today's global issues and…

The purpose of this qualitative research study was to explore and comprehend the role of Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences (MI) in foreign language learning by analyzing the perspectives of college students in a German immersion program at a liberal arts college in the Midwest. Data collection included 10 in-depth student…

The purpose of this research was to explore the ways in which immersion into an international student teaching experience through participation in an international student teaching program can enhance the cultural responsiveness of American pre-service teachers. The population included in this study was eight students, including alumni, who…

This study examines proposals made during planning talk--a speech act that has received little attention in previous literature--to determine the applicability of the stages of second language (L2) pragmatic development posited by Kasper and Rose (2002). Although Kasper and Rose suggest that formulas play a prominent role in L2 pragmatic…

The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between short-term service immersion programs (STSI), such as Alternative Spring Break (ASB), and socially responsible leadership as measured by the Socially Responsible Leadership Scale (SRLS). Participation in STSI programs have been growing exponentially since 2006 (Bohn, 2009; Break…

Due in large part to their open access and affordability, community colleges have long played a central role in providing students with immigrant backgrounds who are English language learners (ELLs) with access to postsecondary education. Researchers have noted that English as a second language (ESL) courses have been the primary form of support…