Research has shown that identifying mental health concerns among students and providing support to those students can have a positive impact on the students' lives, including emotionally, academically, and socially. Teachers are seen as the front-line workers for students and must be able to identify any mental health concerns. The purpose of this…

Teaching is a profession with an extremely high level of turnover, especially among new teachers (See et al., 2020). Research supports that there is a correlation between job satisfaction and teachers choosing to stay or leave (Lane et al., 2019; Shibiti, 2020a). This qualitative case study sought to understand the experiences of teachers and…

Understandings of teacher expertise in the US have transformed over the past 40 years, arguably being "narrowed" and "numericized" due to high-stakes accountability and neoliberal education reform movements. While this trend has been thoroughly studied under the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) and Race to the Top regimes, less…

This study was designed to explore the lived experiences of elementary educators who utilized choice instruction in the classroom. This study utilized teacher interviews to determine the educational impact of student-choice-driven instructional strategies. To accomplish this objective, a qualitative phenomenological approach was chosen. The…

Community colleges provide students with a lower cost educational foundation, which provides more job opportunities. Retention rates of students in rural Missouri community colleges are low (MDHE, 2016). This research study focused in on faculty perceptions of student retention in Missouri rural community colleges. With a push for identifying…

The purpose of this qualitative study is to examine the effects of standards-based Individualized Education Programs (SB IEPs) on student achievement. Educators are required to develop IEPs for students with educational disabilities. The purpose of an IEP is to outline the goals and services to be provided to the student in order for the student…

Effective school leadership directly and indirectly influences the school setting and teacher and student outcomes (Eliophotou-Menon & Ioannou, 2016). The research of this study examined perceptions of active school teacher's perceptions of their rural superintendent's leadership to be effective in southwest Missouri schools. Kent's (2004)…

Teacher self-efficacy has been linked to student achievement. This quantitative study was conducted in order to compare teacher self-efficacy of homegrown teachers to other teachers in small rural schools in Missouri. The study used the Teacher Sense of Efficacy Survey (TSES) developed by Tschannen-Moran and Hoy (2001) to gauge a teacher's…

This qualitative study explores teachers' perceptions on the implementation of brain breaks in upper elementary classrooms located in rural regions of southwest Missouri. The Researcher analyzed qualitative interview data to answer the following research questions: 1) To what extent are brain breaks built into the elementary classroom routine? 2)…

The four-day school week is a concept that has been utilized in rural schools for decades to respond to budgetary shortfalls. There has been little peer-reviewed research on the four-day school week that has focused on the perception of staff that work in school districts that have recently switched to the four-day model. This study collects data…

The purpose of this study was to identify the processes School Based Agricultural Education (SBAE) teachers utilize to support students' psychological needs and motivation. SBAE teachers were sampled who taught for five or more years and displayed a range of SBAE successes. Within the five participating schools, all FFA members were recruited to…

This research essay examined a growing trend in a rural area of the Midwest where PK-12 school districts are partnering with a local university to hire teacher candidates (TCs) as the Teachers of Record (TORs). Many rural school districts are challenged to address the teacher shortage. As a result, many school districts are hiring TCs as the TOR…

The purpose of this bounded case study (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016) was to add to the existing research literature on early childhood trauma in addition to understanding teacher and administrator perceptions on students' adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) in rural, Northwest Missouri elementary schools from 2009 through 2019. Survey…

The purpose of this study was to examine the perceptions of first-year teachers regarding the use of Evidence-Based Practices (EBPs) within their teacher training programs. Participants in this study included 35 teachers from one of the 46 rural public-school districts in south-central Missouri. The 43 EBPs outlined in Robert Marzano's (2017)…

While many factors have been identified as influencing student academic performance, previous studies consistently determined effective teaching as the most significant factor, within the control of educators, leading to improved student achievement. Nonetheless, educational experts, statisticians, and policy-makers alike acknowledged the…