The Southwest Florida region experienced COVID-19 and a major hurricane between 2020 and 2022. The increase in major emergencies, which are often unpredictable, can be highly distressing for those affected. This phenomenological study describes the lived experiences of academics through these two significant traumatic events and explores the…

Transfer students are a growing population at four-year higher education institutions, especially in STEM degree programs. Though much work has explored the broad transfer student experience, the experience of these students within specific courses is understudied. Furthermore, knowledge of how transfer students approach STEM courses and their…

Secondary teacher preparation programs lacking in coursework in social--emotional learning (SEL) fail to acknowledge changing learner demographics, leaving educators underprepared to meet their students' needs. The purpose of this qualitative interpretive phenomenological study was to explore the perceived experiences of select secondary teachers…

Professional literature in human development, social foundations, and academic subject area courses function as a major but understudied tool of teacher preparation programs. Through the overlapping lenses of sociocultural and critical theories of child development, this study employs descriptive content analysis to investigate the potential of…

Effective communication about science is a core skill undergraduates should learn, but little research has explored how students communicate about culturally controversial science topics. In this study, we explored how Black undergraduate science students took on the role of science communicators in their communities during the COVID-19 pandemic.…

This dissertation responds to the dearth of research in responding practice of instructors teaching in college composition online writing classrooms, especially addressing both how they do it and how "care-fully." More specifically, the dissertation investigates the responding thoughts and behaviors of instructors teaching writing within…

Florida's College and Career Readiness Initiative (FCCRI) required schools to administer a community college placement test to 11th-grade students and enroll students who did not pass in a college readiness course. Christine Mokher, James Rosenbaum, Alexis Gable, Caitlin Ahearn, and Louis Jacobson surveyed teachers of the course and found that,…

By 1982, the queer student group at the University of Florida (UF) had gained official recognition and space on campus. However, in 1987 they decided to remove themselves from university life. The group reemerged in 1991 with the assistance of a new, quietly radical entity--The UF Committee on Sexism and Homophobia. Anchored by the oral histories…

States and districts across the country have experimented with various college and career readiness initiatives designed to help students complete the postsecondary education they need to succeed in the labor market. Yet how do teachers view their students' likely college capabilities following these efforts? Can the reforms help work-bound…

The following report summarizes critical lessons learned from case studies conducted by ATD examining how adaptive courseware is implemented at public community colleges as well as how courseware is used in particular disciplines to better serve students. The lessons learned represent the work of hundreds of faculty and staff, and administrators…

Self-regulated learning assumes learners are active agents who can establish and make progress toward learning goals. Classroom activities can facilitate the emergence of self-regulated learning. One strategy to encourage self-regulated learning is to ask students to develop questions for a quiz or examination. The process of developing questions…

A barrier that students and mid-career professionals often face in attempts to advance their education level is that the coursework completed and credits earned in one institution of higher education (IHE) may not transfer to another. To address this issue, states have developed a variety of articulation policies and agreements to facilitate the…

This volume contains the technical appendices for "Higher Education Articulation Agreements: A Study of State Policies Covering the Early Care and Education Workforce." The study provides an in-depth examination of how six states and their institution of higher educations (IHEs) have implemented articulation policies that include…

A barrier that students and mid-career professionals often face in attempts to advance their education level is that the coursework completed and credits earned in one institution of higher education (IHE) may not transfer to another. To address this issue, states have developed a variety of articulation policies and agreements to facilitate the…

Children's mental health can be a barrier to school success. School-based mental health services exist and research has shown positive results with the implementation of them. However, students spend the majority of their school time with a teacher and very little research exists on the role of a teacher in regards to students with mental health…