In the wake of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the increased and vital attention on Black life mattering, university student protests for ceasefires, increased gun violence, and school shootings, this project seeks to understand an education living in and with the specter of death. Many have begun to focus on this necropolitical landscape's impact…

Classical item analysis (CIA) entails summarizing items based on two key attributes: item difficulty and item discrimination, defined as the proportion of examinees answering correctly and the difference in correctness between high and low scorers. Recent insights reveal a direct link between these measures and aspects of signal detection theory…

Much has been researched and written about mentoring faculty generally in academic medicine, particularly related to research mentoring. Little is known from research about the mentoring practices for early career faculty in academic medicine that will prepare them to flourish in their teaching throughout their careers. My research addressed this…

Set in 2023, this study was deployed at the lowest point of enrollment in the California Community College (CCC) system since 2008, which was the highest point of enrollment in the system's history. The purpose of this qualitative, grounded theory study was twofold: (a) to understand the phenomenon of California community colleges (CCCs)…

Paramount to both academic success and success in life is the ability to read. Faced with the arduous task of teaching this process, teachers must be knowledgeable of reading theories and pedagogies. Although the theory-to-practice gap is a valid concern that has been researched in many professions, more needs to be known about how novice teachers…

The Executive Functions are a collection of higher order brain functions. Nevertheless, there exists much confusion on what they are and how they function. This dissertation explores the history, theory, and application of the Executive Functions as they apply to school psychologists. Topics such as the current leading theories of the Executive…

Serious games research shows that games can increase engagement and improve learning outcomes over traditional instruction, but the impact of specific elements of serious games has yet to be fully explored across many contexts. Additionally, many existing intervention studies omit the details of the game design and development theory that informed…

The role of principal supervisors has changed significantly, moving away from a focus on compliance and towards a greater emphasis on nurturing principals' instructional leadership skills. As a result of this evolution, there is now an increased presence of supervisors in schools, but there are no clear guidelines for their activities. This study…

The debate about the nature and role of teacher professionalism in teacher education contexts has a long history but little research has been conducted in small island states of the Caribbean, especially focused on the understanding of prospective teachers. Therefore, this interpretive descriptive study engaged 16 prospective teachers from a…

In this study, I use theories of poststructuralism, feminist new materialism, posthumanism, and affect to investigate and theorize my experiences as a classroom teacher entangled with dominant discourses related to gender, social class, neoliberalism, and postfeminism. This dissertation is non-traditional in structure, as it addresses teacher…

The assessment of human performance is not a new phenomenon. We have evidence that people have been required to prove their worth dating back at least to the Epic of Gilgamesh. What has changed, at least on a large scale, is the importance given to quantitative evidence in the evaluation process. For example, many employers have begun subjecting…

Dual language bilingual education (DLBE) programs, which teach content knowledge in English and a partner language, have shown promise in attaining academic achievement, bilingualism/biliteracy, and sociocultural competence. Recently, scholars have argued for adding critical consciousness as a foundational goal to challenge the hegemonic…

Community Colleges (CCs) have been particularly impacted by a deluge of "development" and "good" leadership frameworks removed from the very communities in which leading remains paramount. A paradigm shift is needed to support current and aspiring CC leaders in a manner that prioritizes the very essence of learning in the…

The field of adult learning theory, or how adults learn, has exploded in recent years yielding increased knowledge and awareness of how adults learn. While preachers do have a wide variety of ages in their congregations, most of the people they preach to are adults. This dissertation looks at preaching and adult learning theory and what the…

Accredited schools of public health are required to prepare graduate students to competently discuss how racism undermines health equity. A systematic assessment of academic public health norms is needed to clarify how graduate education structures the profession of public health to address racial health inequities. Three aims guided my…