The purpose of this intrinsic qualitative case study was to understand the meaning-making experiences and experienced-based decision making that occur among middle school girls while playing the tabletop role playing game Dungeons & Dragons through the online videoconferencing platform zoom. table-top games have been played in some form for…

Educators today face challenges beyond the scope of College Preparation Programs, with problems never before experienced. To study an opportunity for reducing burnout and support teachers will be beneficial for our educational community and student achievement. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of…

This study focused on automaticity, or the choices we make without conscious thought. Specifically, the study examined how math teachers improved their understanding of the practice and evolution of culturally responsive teaching by analyzing the lived experiences and metacognition of practicing middle school teachers as they assess student work…

This study investigated how a self-regulated learning intervention, implemented within a personalized learning environment, affected students' self-regulation, self-efficacy, and academic achievement at a middle school. The personalized learning environment in this study was two self-paced units within middle school seventh grade math classrooms.…

Self-regulated learning (SRL), which involves the regulation of cognitive, affective, metacognitive, and motivational processes, is an important construct for analyzing effective student learning in open-ended learning environments (OELEs). Novice K-12 students working on complex learning tasks in OELEs often engage in sub-optimal use of SRL…

Many questions have been asked about how to teach math, how to get students to like math, how to engage students in math and how to increase math scores. Metacognition and Self-Regulated Learning (SRL) have an impact on mathematics achievement in middle school students. In this quantitative study, the Self-Reflection Questionnaire, MKMQ was used…

The purpose of this action research was to evaluate the effects of the implementation of blended learning combined with a self-monitoring achievement system on students' self-regulated learning (SRL) skills and academic performance in an eighth-grade English language arts classroom. SRL has been linked to higher academic achievement and success in…

During the COVID-19 global pandemic students have been exposed to a multitude of stressors and disruptions to their every-day life. Mindfulness has been described in research as one tool to address anxiety and increase attention in young adolescent students (Goldin et al., 2008). This study's purpose was to understand the ways my seventh-grade…

This dissertation examines students' social-emotional experience with knowledge building pedagogy from the lenses of grit and growth mindset. The goal of this dissertation is to understand how interest, perseverance of effort and growth mindset oriented feedback engage students social emotionally in knowledge building to sustain and deepen their…

This qualitative action research study examines how middle and high school STEM teachers create and implement lessons that connect concepts to the real-world and develop student metacognition. The researcher collected data through interviews, focus groups, document analysis, and survey questions. Participants from vocational, private, and…

This study seeks to illuminate and describe the experience of students engaging in mathematical portfolios. In particular, this study reveals key insights into how students demonstrate their mathematical identity and metacognition. Portfolio assessment has been described as an intentional collection of evidence that captures student…

As schools continue to focus on outcome-based instructional practices, less emphasis is placed on the creativity and reasoning necessary for students to become effective critical thinkers. As a result, students struggle to demonstrate creative problem-solving skills in the classroom. This study examines how the facilitation of an instructional…

Purpose: The purpose of this quantitative causal-comparative research study was twofold. First was to examine the impact of the use of the mindfulness computer program, Inner Explorer, on math success as measured by the cumulative CAASPP scores in sixth-grade tests. The second was to determine how the use of Inner Explorer affected students'…

Teaching is globally recognized as one of the most stressful professions. Teachers are known to struggle with varying degrees of job stress (McCarthy et al., 2010; Skaalvik & Skaalvik, 2017). A performance gap analysis at the organization within this dissertation in practice--a Caribbean junior high school--revealed that the teaching staff was…

The current study aimed to contribute to the literature by implementing an intervention that examines the effects of explicit metacognitive strategy training and prompts embedded within a Game-Based Learning Environment (GBLE), "Missions with Monty," on metacognitive monitoring accuracy, game performance, and science knowledge of…