There are five developmental areas: gross motor, fine motor, communication, adaptive behavior, and social-emotional. If social-emotional skills are delayed, all other developmental areas are negatively impacted. Preschool-aged students are incapable of kindergarten readiness if they have a delay in social-emotional development as it impacts their…

Our PreK-12 schools face increasing complexities such as accountability, diversity, closing the achievement gap, and working in an era of standards-based reform (Drago-Severson, 2009). The purpose of this inquiry was to understand teachers' experiences with one type of learning experience, "action research," and to investigate the impact…

The specific focus of this action research study was to improve the institutional process for preservice teacher candidates in diversity awareness. A diversity workshop intervention was designed to help prepare nonminority teacher candidates to work with demographically diverse populations in P-12 classrooms. The study was conducted at a private,…

The purpose of this quantitative action research study was to examine intervention specialists' self-reported knowledge about certain evidence-based practices, implementation of practices, and how intervention specialists are learning about these practices in educating students with autism. The population of this study included 49 intervention…

The main goal of this study was to expand understanding of a Korean-American community's cultural identities through storytelling and artmaking, which was conceptualized as "Visual Storying" in this study. Ethnic minority students in the United States often experience confusion or conflict between American and their heritage cultures.…

As an insider-action research project, there are really two projects at work in this study (Coghlan & Brannick, 2010)--the core project and the dissertation project. The aim of the core project is to promote organizational change for my organization, the Women's Center, by facilitating the first iteration of a participatory evaluation with our…

This ex post facto, participatory action research study investigated the relationship between a criterion-referenced, inventory-based reading assessment and the standardized Third Grade Reading Ohio Achievement Assessment (OAA). The study, conducted in a suburban Ohio district where the Developmental Reading Assessment (DRA) has been used since…

This qualitative action research study examined teachers' perceptions about co-teaching and its effectiveness as an instructional model for students with disabilities. One-on-one interviews were conducted with eight elementary and secondary teachers from a medium sized school district located in Southwest Ohio that has a students' with…

This dissertation is the result of research which examined the implementation of professional learning communities in a primary school. Professional learning communities or PLCs are groups of educators coming together collaboratively in a process of inquiry and action research to achieve better results for the students they serve. While there were…

The purpose of the study was to understand transformative learning in teachers' critical colleague relationships while participating in online, collaborative action research. This included generation of theory by teacher action-researchers relevant to their own practice, with a view to teacher transformation over time. The study addressed the…

The literature on competency-based human resource (HR) management provides a strong case for moving from a jobs-based to a competency-based approach to human resources. There is agreement in the literature (Dubois, Rothwell, Stern, & Kemp, 2004; Lucia & Lepsinger, 1999) on the benefits of using competencies throughout HR systems and impact…