This dissertation critically examines the Colorado Reading to Ensure Academic Development Act (READ Act) through the lens of Critical Discourse Analysis, focusing on the discursive construction of the Act and its impact on educational opportunities for multilingual learners. The study explores the role of power and knowledge in shaping the READ…

Women are underrepresented in a variety of fields, including educational leadership. Upon assuming leadership roles, women often struggle to effectively lead due to a pervasive context of sexism and genderism in the workplace. Schools are not immune to this phenomenon. Since women comprise approximately 50% of the population, it seems logical that…

The onus of this dissertation was to evaluate the educational conditions of Mexican American students forty years after the "Mexican American Education Study" published a six-volume study detailing the findings of the "Mexican American Education Study" (1970-1974). The "MAES" study focused on five southwest states…

In recent years, enrollment and overall student performance in rural schools have declined. Research shows that principals are critical to the success of a school system and that implementing a virtual community of practice (CoP) at the principal level has solved some of the issues associated with rurality in some organizations. Such…

The purpose of this methodological study is to explore how well a process called "concept mapping" (Trochim, 1989) can articulate the theory which underlies a social program. Articulation of a program's theory is a key step in completing a sound theory based evaluation (Weiss, 1997a). In this study, concept mapping is used to…