Being uncomfortable by choice as a means of personal growth has been touted for hundreds of years among scholars, philosophers, religious leaders, modern pop culture icons, and more. Yet, research pertaining to the benefits of being uncomfortable by choice is sparse. This qualitative, grounded theory study addressed the first step of…

In the wake of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the increased and vital attention on Black life mattering, university student protests for ceasefires, increased gun violence, and school shootings, this project seeks to understand an education living in and with the specter of death. Many have begun to focus on this necropolitical landscape's impact…

Computational learning theory studies the design and analysis of learning algorithms, and it is integral to the foundation of machine learning. In the modern era, classical computational learning theory is growingly unable to catch up with new practical demands. In particular, problems arise in the following aspects: i). "scalability":…

As the 21st century unfolds, the world has become increasingly fast-paced, interconnected and unpredictable compared to previous generations (McChrystal, et al., 2015). As a result, education researchers and practitioners must be prepared for the challenge of helping students better apply their knowledge to respond to the complex and novel…

Classical item analysis (CIA) entails summarizing items based on two key attributes: item difficulty and item discrimination, defined as the proportion of examinees answering correctly and the difference in correctness between high and low scorers. Recent insights reveal a direct link between these measures and aspects of signal detection theory…

In standard models of language production or comprehension, the elements which are retrieved from memory and combined into a syntactic structure are "lemmas" or "lexical items". Such models implicitly take a "lexicalist" approach, which assumes that lexical items store meaning, syntax, and form together, that…

Set in 2023, this study was deployed at the lowest point of enrollment in the California Community College (CCC) system since 2008, which was the highest point of enrollment in the system's history. The purpose of this qualitative, grounded theory study was twofold: (a) to understand the phenomenon of California community colleges (CCCs)…

Recent scholarship has suggested that evaluation is becoming increasingly institutionalized and entrenched in problematic discourses, leading to a narrowing of possibilities for evaluators to contribute to meaningful social change. At the same time, evaluation approaches which are grounded in values of social justice and equity are receiving…

Patriarchal ideologies and structures helped to shape the public school institution at the onset of compulsory education in the United States and continue to circulate within educational discourses today, causing harmful consequences for the workforce made up of mostly women that is tasked with educating our nation's youth (Jones, 2020, Accepted…

Multidimensional Item Response Theory (MIRT) has been widely used in educational and psychological assessments. It estimates multiple constructs simultaneously and models the correlations among latent constructs. While it provides more accurate results, the unidimensional IRT model is still dominant in real applications. One major reason is that…

The capacity of educators to dynamically adjust their thought processes and behaviors in response to the diverse needs and characteristics of students in an unfolding teaching situation is widely acknowledged as a cornerstone of effective teaching. While teachers' instructional adaptations have been documented and studied from various angles, the…

The present study investigates the influence of multidimensionality on linking and equating in a unidimensional IRT. Two hypothetical multidimensional scenarios are explored under a nonequivalent group common-item equating design. The first scenario examines test forms designed to measure multiple constructs, while the second scenario examines a…

The demand for colleges across the world to convert their courses to an online format has increased with the number of learners enrolled in at least one online course increasing each year (Seaman et al., 2018). Unfortunately, a study by Garris & Fleck (2020) found that many students complained that when their courses transitioned to an online…

Serious games research shows that games can increase engagement and improve learning outcomes over traditional instruction, but the impact of specific elements of serious games has yet to be fully explored across many contexts. Additionally, many existing intervention studies omit the details of the game design and development theory that informed…

Improving student motivation and changing students from a negative motivational mindset to a positive one can be a viable way to ensure that students stay in their programs and obtain academic success. While educators and administrators are interested in improving motivation, they may not have the full body of knowledge about motivational theories…