The migrant student population in the United States has significantly increased in the last few decades. While these students are enrolled in K-12 institutions, the challenges they face as migrant children and the educational systemic barriers they encounter continue to present obstacles for their college completion. Educational agencies must seek…

Solid and resilient democracies rest upon an informed citizenry capable of critiquing societal issues and reimagining alternative scenarios. Traditional school-based civic and social justice education, however, often falls short of addressing the diverse needs of today's youth, often relying on instructionist pedagogies focused on factual…

Complexities in African international students' adaptation and experiences impact their success in their new social and academic environment as these complexities go beyond the diversity of socio-cultural background to the collective classification of identification, resulting in less provision of assistance by institutional structures of support.…

This dissertation examined the issue of teacher shortages in the U.S. education system, with a specific focus on immigrant Filipino teachers as a solution. The research aimed to investigate the complex challenges and experiences faced by Filipino immigrant educators in American public schools, using a theoretical framework synthesized from…

Today, about 350 languages are spoken and signed in the United States, many of which are heritage languages (HL). A HL is a language to which a speaker has an ethnic, historical, or sentimental connection. This dissertation reports on an ethnographic case study on the language and literacy socialization practices of one trilingual family (English,…

The advent of the internet began a slow and halting movement toward online teaching and learning. As more universities and schools adopted electronic-learning (e-learning) as a formal mode of instruction, several instructional models emerged in undergraduate and graduate programs. The unexpected spread of the COVID-19 pandemic led to an…

The United States and Germany are two predominantly monolingual countries with a significant number of multilingual speakers. Previous research on multilingualism in children on the autism spectrum has found no adverse effects on children's language and communication development but often excluded children with complex communication needs or…

International higher education graduates may experience challenges related to reentry to their home countries as their expectations upon returning home may not match their reality (Alandejani, 2013; Butcher, 2002, Gaw, 2000). This study utilizes a transcendental phenomenological approach to understand the lived experiences of seven…

Chinese international undergraduate student experiences at U.S. higher education institutions are often hidden within the larger monolithic narrative of "international students" as a whole. The existing research on the on-campus involvement experiences of Chinese undergraduate international students is relatively minimal particularly in…

Purpose and Method of Study: The study used Berry's (1997) theory of acculturation and adaptation as the theoretical framework and a qualitative descriptive research design to investigate the experiences of 11 Chinese international students who have studied at least one year of high school at one of two private Christian schools in Oklahoma.…

There has been substantial scholarly attention given to teachers' functioning over the past two decades. Much of this attention has been precipitated by accounts of increasing teacher burnout and attrition from the profession. Central to this scholarly focus has been the construct of teacher self-efficacy, which has been shown to be a predictor of…

This study was guided by two key questions: First, what dimensions of continuous improvement do school leaders believe are most important to foster student performance in urban K-12 schools? Second, how does Alabama compare to national leaders regarding their approach to continuous improvement? Initially developed by Meehan et al. (2002), the…

This study investigated the understanding of the effects of online self-directed learning readiness (OSDLR) on academic achievement and course satisfaction for online learning statistics through the mediating variables of self-efficacy to learn statistics (SELS) and 2x2 achievement goal orientation. The current study sought to create awareness and…

Due to the propensity of individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) to seek predictability, socially assistive robots (SARs) can serve as an efficient medium during ASD treatment (or as a treatment modality itself). Furthermore, a SAR can be an efficient tool for bridging the social gap between the therapist and a client. Because SARs need to…

The Lead Teacher Program (LTP) is organized by Beyond Benign, an institution that promotes green chemistry principles and sustainability in education. LTP trains K-12 teachers to run workshops in their own communities across the US and Canada. This research project aimed to study the culture among K-12 science teachers in LTP and how they share…