Doctoral students face unique challenges that require dedicated support services to help them successfully complete their studies and graduate. With the proper resources to help lessen these challenges, doctoral students take a shorter time to complete their degree and are less likely to drop out before completing. The purpose of this study was to…

Black women in higher education are situated in a hegemonic, white, patriarchal context of academia. Despite staff and faculty attempts to support students utilizing foundational theories of student development, these efforts still reinforce controlling stereotypes of Black women and (re)subjugate them to a tumultuous existence in the academy as…

The purpose of this qualitative study was to use an Appreciative Inquiry (AI) approach to discover generative instructional and assessment practices of teachers in the language arts classroom at a 5th and 6th grade low socioeconomic public school campus in Texas that earned five distinctions or three consecutive years. The study sought to design a…

By participating within the educational setting in making decisions about their lives that reach beyond choice-making, students with disabilities who acquire the skills of self-determination may express interests and goals through their own authentic voice. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to describe the experiences and…

This study involved examination of the processes employed in tailoring fourth-grade reading instruction to increase levels of student motivation. A participatory action research approach was utilized to design and conduct reading instruction that fourth-grade students perceived to be motivating. The reading instructional program was designed using…

College student persistence has been a concern of researchers and practitioners since the early 1960s. Traditional models have addressed the need for students to be integrated into the academic and social domains of the college campus. Recently, critical theorists and researchers have been questioning the relevance of the traditional models for…

The aim of this dissertation project was to explore and extrapolate the work of the left-libertarian social theorist, Murray Bookchin (1921-2006), paying particular attention to his theory of social ecology and to examine its implications for and use as a comprehensive philosophical/theoretical framework for alternative secondary education that…

This dissertation research adds to the literature base by exploring the attitudes of regular education teachers about the inclusion of students with disabilities in the general education classroom. Consistent with the framework of Pierre Bourdieu, the school was conceptualized as a field of struggle. The investigation focused on fifth grade…