Teacher engagement in evidence-based practice has been a concern of the K-5 educational community for many years, with studies finding teachers' engagement with research may be growing, but is still not consistent. Epistemic beliefs are becoming a popular topic in the study of the learning process with a limited number of qualitative studies…

College students are asked to make critical decisions about which academic major to choose and subsequently to make specific career decisions. Students come to college with a myriad of different skill sets, backgrounds, developmental levels, cognitive processes, familial support, and levels of self-efficacy that may influence how they make these…

This study examined the lived experiences of K-12 DACAmented Latine educators in Northern California through a Chicana/Latina feminist epistemological lens and utilized "testimonios" as a methodological qualitative tool. Grounded in LatCrit and UndocuCrit, the purpose of this study was to center the voices and lived experiences of Latine…

Socioscientific issues (SSIs), or controversial scientific issues with social implications, influence members of society regardless of demographic. SSIs are contentious and ill-structured, meaning they do not have a definitive answer. To properly equip students with the tools needed to handle SSIs, undergraduate science curricula emphasize…

Individuals rely on accurate information to make important decisions, but in the current environment the vast amount of misinformation present in society is complicating people's thinking. Many people fall prey to a cognitive bias called the continued influence effect, which occurs when they continue to use misinformation even when they have seen…

"Citizen science" popularly refers to a participatory approach in which lay persons voluntarily contribute data toward scientific enterprise. Although citizen science may provide unique opportunities for pre-college students to engage in data-intensive science practices, little is known about whether or how citizen science interacts with…

Disproportionate representation of culturally-linguistically diverse (CLD) students in special education has been well documented. Existing research has largely focused on the attitudes and beliefs of classroom teachers and the processes that lead to these placements. Few studies have examined how the perspectives of child study team (CST) members…

This dissertation consists of three chapters exploring the role that information plays in strategic situations. The first two chapters are devoted to modeling a decision maker's reasoning (knowledge, beliefs, and unawareness) about those of other decision makers in strategic environments. The third chapter, in turn, studies how information and…

Over the last decade, researchers have identified complex epistemic practices in online gaming communities. Such research invites the question: Can games engender these attitudes and behaviors, or do they merely provide an outlet for players already predisposed to these forms of knowledge production? This question poses both theoretical and design…

Gulf-War-era-II combat veterans have made professional contributions to the civilian workforce since returning from Iraq and Afghanistan combat operations. Service members in California encounter transition issues related to employment and adjusting their self-identity in the civilian employment culture. These complexities have led to career…

One understudied barrier to science education reform concerns teachers' cognitive processes and how they relate to instructional decision-making. Epistemic cognition--teachers' beliefs about knowledge and knowledge acquisition and goals for their students' knowledge acquisition--could provide important insights into the choices science teachers…

Community colleges have played an important role in providing access to higher education via the transfer process to 4-year institutions. However, the varying results associated with the academic success and degree attainment of transfer students cast doubts on how effective institutions are in facilitating these particular outcomes. The…

Reliance on online media in providing educational opportunities has gained tremendous momentum in mathematics education. Genre of studies that explore pedagogical practices of mathematics teacher educators in the online environment is still in infancy. Using survey method and three in-depth case studies in this work I examined pedagogical…

This study examined the motivations pre-service teachers possess as they progress though a teacher education program. Using Watt and Richardson's (2007) Factors Influencing Teaching Choice (FIT-Choice) model as the theoretical underpinnings, the following research questions set the foundation for this study: 1) Do pre-service teachers' motivation…

Dealing with uncertainty is a critical part of human decision-making and confidence reflects one's belief about the relative likelihood that various outcomes occur when making decision under uncertainty. Unfortunately, confidence often deviates from the actual quality of the decision, leading to under- or over-confidence. Calibration, the…