This professional practice dissertation examined how social-emotional learning may be leveraged for high school dropout prevention. High school assistant principals' and school counselors' survey results were analyzed to answer this study's questions for analysis and develop the social-emotional learning-based recommendations for practice. Three…

This action research study emerged in response to students' struggle to understand what critical thinking is and teachers' corresponding struggle to develop students' critical thinking skills. In my role as an instructional designer, I studied student and teacher reactions to interdisciplinary course design that used disciplinary inquiry,…

This qualitative study examines how and why special education teachers use mindfulness in their classrooms. Through decades of research with adult populations, mindfulness has been found to be an effective strategy supporting mental health, physical health, and overall well-being. However, there is a gap in the research on mindfulness with youth…

In this transcendental phenomenological study, the researcher highlights the lived experiences of Black women in rehabilitation counselor education. The purpose of this study was to provide detailed descriptions of the lived experiences impacting the career development of Black women in rehabilitation counseling education, to provide a more…

Children in schools are experiencing high levels of anxiety and stress (Muris et al., 1998), which has a critical impact on a child's ability to learn (Hammond, 2015).According to MindfulSchools.org, there is a clear link between an emotionally positive classroom climate and academic achievement. As a school leader, during an unprecedented time of…

Social media is ubiquitous among today's adolescents. With constant access, social media use can become dysregulated or problematic. Concepts, such as fear of missing out (FOMO), point to the negative effects of social media use. FOMO is a pervading unease that others are having rewarding experiences from which one is absent. For adolescents,…

Leveraging racial sensemaking and constructive-developmental frameworks, this study investigates how school leaders implementing culturally responsive-sustaining education make sense of racism, and how their racial beliefs change over time. Given New York State's mandate that educators implement culturally responsive-sustaining education, it made…

This descriptive qualitative study was designed to understand the experiences of former Community Psychology (CP) undergraduate students who participated in a degree program at a California university. The purpose of this qualitative study is to explore how former Community Psychology undergraduate students describe their experiences using…

This study seeks to illuminate and describe the experience of students engaging in mathematical portfolios. In particular, this study reveals key insights into how students demonstrate their mathematical identity and metacognition. Portfolio assessment has been described as an intentional collection of evidence that captures student…

This study investigates the impact of mindfulness meditation practices on the mental health and well-being of a specific community college population. Inspired by studies on Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT), the focus of this research is on participants who attended the free "Just…

This qualitative descriptive study explored how undergraduate dance students describe somatic experiences in dance technique classes and their influence on their critical thinking, feelings of empowerment, and dance technique at a private southwest university. The theoretical foundation for the study was critical pedagogy. Using critical pedagogy,…

This study investigated the impact of training in self-regulated learning on community college, geoscience students' achievement, metacognition, time management, and science motivation scales. The study also investigated the impact of SRL training on these outcomes as a function of gender and ethnicity. During the Fall of 2022, 70 community…

The quality of teacher-student interactions has important implications for students' learning and development. The high demands placed on teachers can contribute to teacher stress and burnout, which have negative consequences on teacher well-being, retention, classroom climate, and instruction, impacting student outcomes. Research suggests that…

One accreditation-mandated outcome of social work education is to increase students' understanding of social injustice and prepare them to work to reduce such injustices. This has been called critical consciousness (CC). This study explored the relationship between mindfulness as a pedagogical tool to support CC development in social work…

As schools continue to focus on outcome-based instructional practices, less emphasis is placed on the creativity and reasoning necessary for students to become effective critical thinkers. As a result, students struggle to demonstrate creative problem-solving skills in the classroom. This study examines how the facilitation of an instructional…