The primary goal of the Intensified Algebra I (IA) program is to enable mathematically underprepared students to successfully complete Algebra I in 9th grade and stay on track to meet increasingly rigorous high school mathematics graduation requirements. The program was designed to bring a range of both cognitive and non-cognitive supports to bear…

Understanding methods for effectively instructing STEM education concepts is essential in the current climate of education (Freeman, Marginson, & Tyler 2014). Kolb's experiential learning theory (ELT) outlines four specific modes of learning, based on preferences for grasping and transforming information. This quasi-experimental study was…

This study explored the mental health influence on resident assistants associated with their training in suicide prevention and their subsequent role as campus mental health gatekeepers. Despite considerable prior personal experience with their own suicidal thinking as well as with others who have thoughts of suicide, a multiple regression…

The Families of Merit Program was designed as an adult education course that could build individual self-efficacy and parental self-efficacy to effect outcomes that would benefit their child and the school. Building this self-efficacy in a community where those children served are predominately in poverty presents a compounded challenge. The…

Purpose: The purpose of this mixed-methods study was to: (a) evaluate the effectiveness of a required Health-Related Fitness (HRF) course in changing dietary behaviors among community college (CC) students, and (b) explore student perceptions about the effectiveness of HRF curriculum activities in changing behaviors. Methods: Pre- and…

The Comparative Short Interrupted Time Series (C-SITS) design is a frequently employed quasi-experimental method, in which the pre- and post-intervention changes observed in the outcome levels of a treatment group is compared with those of a comparison group where the difference between the former and the latter is attributed to the treatment. The…

This study is purposed to measure the efficacy of implementing College and Career Readiness Standards (CCRS) math standards into math methods courses for early childhood and elementary education teacher candidates at an urban university located in the Dallas and Fort Worth metroplex area. A total of 161 college seniors (teacher candidates)…

An emphasis on higher-order thinking within the curriculum has been a subject of interest in the chemical and STEM literature due to its ability to promote meaningful, transferable learning in students. The systematic use of learning taxonomies could be a practical way to scaffold student learning in order to achieve this goal. This work proposes…

The purpose of this case study was to investigate if teacher morale increased, as measured on the Staff Morale Questionnaire (Smith, 1976), after the implementation of a fantasy football league on a secondary campus in southeast Texas. Teaching is an occupation with a high turnover rate (Briggs & Richardson, 1992; Ingersol, 2003; Rafferty,…

Antoine de Saint-Exupery said, "If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea." This article presents a pedagogical approach for framing a digital-identity-enhancing ePortfolio that maximizes student engagement and…

Drawing on assets-oriented, sociocultural theories of imagination and learning, the authors argue that the improvisational qualities and expanded resources of dramatic approaches to teaching make a positive difference in the quality of and persistence in students' story writing. The authors describe findings from a controlled quasi-experimental…

This study examined the predictive validity of formative assessments embedded in a Tier 2 intervention curriculum for kindergarten students identified as at risk for reading difficulty. We examined when (i.e., months during the school year) measures could predict reading outcomes gathered at the end of kindergarten and whether the predictive…

Educators by definition are now required to utilize a variety of student data to shape the decisions they make and design the lessons they teach. As accountability standards become more stringent and as teachers face increasingly diverse student populations within their classrooms, they often struggle to adequately meet the needs of all learners.…

Multiple representations, multiple modalities, and technology can be helpful in the understanding of mathematical concepts when used in an appropriate manner (Shah & Freedman, 2003; Goldman, 2003), but this alone does not account for the student benefits of creating and using dynamic models over teacher generated graphs to construct…

This study investigates the impact of using an adaptive computer-assisted instruction (CAI) program in early childhood education. The Waterford Early Reading Program (ERP) is a CAI program that was assigned to kindergarten and first grade students in a school district in Texas for the 2015-2016 school year. The Texas Primary Reading Inventory…