With the exponential growth in international students pursing postsecondary degrees in the U.S., an increasing number of faculty members and staff have raised questions and concerns about supporting international students' academic engagement. Although prior studies have explored the educational experiences of international students in the United…

This research provides new insight into stereotype threat by examining a real-world intervention in community college classrooms. Practitioners need information about which interventions work in authentic school settings to implement them and begin to bring educational equity to historically marginalized students. The experimental study examined…

The dissertation examines how Japanese university scientists in the biosciences responded to legal and institutional changes in academic entrepreneurship. Beginning in the 1990s, the Japanese government initiated a series of policy initiatives that attempted to imitate the U.S. academic environment's approach to promoting entrepreneurship. Using…

Global student mobility has become a dynamic force in American higher education. Integrating international students into diverse campus environments provides domestic as well as foreign students with enriched learning opportunities. However, a diverse campus climate itself will not make college students interculturally competent. Intentional…

Study abroad is an under-researched domain of language learning. Moreover, most investigations of this phenomenon adopt traditional structuralist approaches, wherein outcomes of study abroad are assessed solely in terms of proficiency gains as measured through conventional exams. The present study builds upon an emerging body of poststructuralist…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the college-readiness rates of Black, Hispanic, White, and Asian graduates of public secondary schools in Texas using archival data from the Texas Education Agency Academic Excellence Indicator System. Data examined were the average ACT and SAT scores for the past 10 school years (i.e., 2001-2002…

The purpose of this study is to examine participant's perception of the usefulness of the visual elements in 3D Virtual Learning Environments, which represent co-presence, in developing interpersonal emotional connections with their partners in the initial stage of telecollaboration. To fulfill the purpose, two Japanese students and two American…

The foreign/world language (FL/WL) profession has become more concerned with intercultural dimensions of language teaching and learning. Various models and theories have been suggested from both inside and outside the language education field to help teachers understand the intercultural dimensions in teaching and improve their practices regarding…

Traditionally, English reading has been thought of as an approach used to acquire language proficiency rather than as a way to understand information and elicit thoughtfulness. Although a positive correlation has been found between motivation and engagement, no study has yet been undertaken to discover the relationship between motivation and…

The objective of the current study is to compare how Thai EFL writers develop and express their oppositional ideas in arguments and to compare their use of oppositional connectors in arguments to those of published scholars in the field of health science. An investigation of thematic progression pattern was conducted to examine whether a certain…

At UCSB the number of degree seeking undergraduate Chinese international students increased from 6 to 163 between 2010 and 2012. With such a controversial and much discussed topic of international student enrollment at U.S universities, this was the perfect time for me to interview Chinese international students. With the help of Kathy Charmaz'…

The purpose of this mixed methods study was to examine the alignment of the written, enacted, and tested Algebra I curricula in the Cherry Hill (NJ) Public School District. Furthermore, this QUAN-QUAL study sought to determine the impact of course selection (Algebra I, Enriched Algebra) on achievement as measured by the Algebra I End of Course…

This study attempts to identify the specific professional needs of pre-service English immersion teachers in Korea in order to establish key components of English immersion teacher preparation programs. As an alternative approach of English language education, immersion instruction has been employed by a number of private and public schools in…

The purpose of this study was to: 1) analyze the relationship of preprogram and nursing program variables on National Council Licensure Examination for Registered Nurses (NCLEX-RN) success and failure, and 2) develop a model to predict success and failure on the NCLEX-RN. The convenience sample was comprised of 245 spring, summer, and fall midterm…

This dissertation adds to work exploring where language stands in the shaping of adolescent speakers' social identities, since identities emerge through discursive and social practices, and social selves are produced through interaction (Bucholtz 1999), but much of the literature studying the role of language in defining the adolescent's identity…