The role of the teacher continues to evolve with each new school year. In order for teachers to perform at their highest capacity, they need pedagogical and emotional support from colleagues as well as encouragement and reinforcement that they are being effective and successful. The problem is that many elementary teachers primarily plan and teach…

The purpose of study was to examine how frontline employees make sense of a planned organizational change. The voices of frontline employees, the group of employees responsible for making the product or delivering the service, have frequently been ignored or neglected during planned change efforts. In this study, attention was focused on the…

College choice models have been used since the 1980s to try and explain the processes and influences high school students use to decide if and which college to attend after graduation. These models focused solely on college attendance and lacked attention to the nuanced needs and resources found in rural communities. In this three-paper…

During declining revenue, community college leaders may be unable to balance their budgets effectively. Community college managers who fail to balance budgets negatively impact a college's financial sustainability. Grounded in Burn's transactional leadership theory, the purpose of this qualitative single case study was to explore strategies…

This study leveraged the knowledge and experiences of youth with disabilities, their families, and transition stakeholders to model how the frequency of family engagement activities and services and employment preparation activities and services predict the frequency of youth development activities and services. This information was obtained…

School leaders need to understand how to implement change through leadership as shifts in grading reform support student learning. The problem was educational leaders and school districts face many challenges transitioning from traditional report cards and grading systems to standards-based grading and reporting at the middle school level. A gap…

The purpose of this qualitative descriptive study is to explore how African American alumni describe the contributions of African American faculty and peers on goal setting, self-motivation, and ongoing persistence at Predominately White Institutions. Using a qualitative descriptive design, data was gathered through interviews and questionnaires…

Modern-day educators often share a sense they lack voice and agency with school administration. A classic example is curriculum development, where third-party designers develop uncontextualized curricula, and teachers then must implement the design even if inefficient and ineffective. What happens if this identical situation occurs at the program…

This thesis studies four independent resource allocation problems with different assumptions on information available to the central planner, and strategic considerations of the agents present in the system. We start off with an online, non-strategic agents setting in Chapter 1, where we study the dynamic pricing and learning problem under the…

This quantitative study examines the correlation between measures of subjective career success using an independent samples t test with the possession of or lack thereof of a boundaryless career attitude with a sample of secondary educators. The shift from traditional, organizational careers has grown tremendously over the last decade. Research…

The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the landscape of Competency-Based Education in institutions of higher education, and how these institutions have successfully implemented a new model into their existing structures. Interviews were conducted to explore the rationale, implementation strategies, and challenges at institutions…

Community college leaders face unprecedented change, and some have begun reexamining their institutional strategic planning processes. Yet, studies in higher education strategic planning spend little time examining how community colleges formulate their strategic plans. This mixed-method qualitative study used an expert sampling method to identify…

This study was designed to examine the lack of ongoing evidence-based preparation models used by co-teachers to plan lessons and assessments for students with special needs within inclusive classroom environments. Co-planning is especially important when general and special education teachers are working together to support students with…

The United States Federal Government believes that "technology can be a powerful tool for transforming learning" (U.S. Department of Education, 2017, p. 1). The purpose of this qualitative study is to explore the beliefs and actions of high school principals regarding technology integration using Bolman and Deal's 4 Frames (Structural,…

This qualitative study analyzes the effects that RENEW, a person-centered goal planning model, has on students with disabilities that are in an alternative school setting. Students in sixth through twelfth grade participated in this study to determine if RENEW can affect students' awareness of post-secondary options and assist with post-high…