The purpose of this qualitative descriptive study was to explore how teacher leaders describe principal behaviors on their organizational empowerment. The sample was composed of 12 teacher leaders from a school district in Southwest Texas. Volunteers were selected using purposive and snowball sampling. Guided by the path-goal theory of leadership,…

Professional learning should be designed in a way that is responsive to the needs of teachers and intentionally planned with adult learning principles in mind. This article outlines one practitioner's professional journey to redefine how professional learning is designed with best practices in adult learning in mind. Strategies utilized during…

This dissertation explores how environmental engineering can utilize STEM education as a strategic tool, enhancing social sustainability and thereby empowering underserved Hispanic communities in West Texas. Responding to significant educational and resource disparities, this research introduces an innovative interdisciplinary framework that…

Given the critical role of mentoring in the success of African American males in college, it is essential to gain a deeper understanding of how mentoring programs can best support African American male students and what elements contribute to their success (Henry, 2021). Recognizing that mentoring significantly influences the retention, academic…

This qualitative study examined the lived experiences of Latinx student parents in postsecondary institutions at universities in Colorado and Texas. Using narrative inquiry, this study is anchored in Yosso's (2005) community cultural wealth framework and centers the voices of participants. This research is informed by the scholarship on student…

The purpose of this study was to determine how students in an educational leadership preservice program perceived the effectiveness of solution-focused supervision (SFS) taught in an instructional supervision class. Interviews, observations, and artifacts, and a case study design, were applied to address two primary research questions. Findings…

The purpose of this qualitative study was to use an Appreciative Inquiry (AI) approach to discover generative instructional and assessment practices of teachers in the language arts classroom at a 5th and 6th grade low socioeconomic public school campus in Texas that earned five distinctions or three consecutive years. The study sought to design a…

Summer Youth Programs continue to grow as a way to provide alternative educational spaces for Youth of Color who are often framed in deficit ways and that position them as being "at-risk" or in need of assistance (Weiner, 2006; Brown, 2016). To address these perceived deficits, after school and summer programs have been created and…

In 1940s America, along the Texas-Mexico border, las escuelitas -- or little schools -- were places Mexican American parents sent their young children to begin their academic learning. These escuelitas, however, were no ordinary schools. They did not teach students to read, write, and speak in English. Rather, they sought to develop, maintain and…

A relatively recent phenomenon of interest within the field of twice-exceptionality involves gifted children with autism. A literature search reveals a lack of published works about these individuals and empirical studies exploring the distinctive special educational needs of these children remain scarce (Nicpon et al., 2011; Rubenstein et al.,…

Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia, is accessed by over 1.5 billion users each month, yet remains stigmatized in the academic world. Many faculty demonstrate reluctance in allowing students to use Wikipedia as part of their research and writing projects due to the open access nature of the site and have all but banned its use in their…

Formal schooling in the U.S. has a long and violent history towards Indigenous peoples, today morphing into exclusion and erasure. Using a novel longitudinal dataset of U.S. textbooks (n = 193) from California and Texas, published from 1850 to 2019, we seek to shine light on the issue through a comprehensive analysis of depictions of Indigenous…

There was a lack of empirical narratives from principals, and in particular, secondary principals in Texas, about the critical conditions and leadership modes within the 2019 Effective School Framework (ESF) designed by the Texas Education Agency. The purpose of this narrative inquiry was to understand how secondary principals seeking to improve…

This study explores the transformative nature of the National Writing Project (NWP). It employs an interpretive phenomenological analysis approach and self-efficacy theory in order to understand the perceptions of K-12 teachers who attended the NWP in Southeast Texas in the last five years. Using interviews, reflexive journals, and a reflective…

In 2018, the Texas Education Agency (TEA) introduced a competitive grant program designed to assist Local Education Agencies (LEA) in attaining Math Innovation Zone (MIZ) designation through a four-year process which ensures program fidelity. The primary objective of this initiative is to enhance math proficiency levels for PreK - 8th grade…