Jeffrey Duncan-Andrade (2009) wrote that if failure to provide quality education continues, it will not be because we lack the know-how to effectively educate all children, it is because we lack the resolve to do it. As a steadfast leader of teaching and collaborating with children, Duncan-Andrade mentors hope in students and teachers alike. This…

U.S. News annually ranks universities' academic quality based on indicators claimed by U.S. News as the most prominent academic quality indicators (AQIs). In today's competitive higher education market, universities are concerned about their positions in U.S. News World Report (USNWR) rankings. On one hand, among all AQIs, undergraduate academic…

This research addressed the challenges that colleges and universities face in implementing adequate accounting and financial reporting training of International Accounting Standards. The research questions of the study were: Do college students and faculty similarly believe that undergraduate students are receiving adequate accounting coursework…

Special education administrators in the state of California are responsible to ensure that high-quality education is delivered to 17,000 deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) learners each year. While all administrators must obtain specific types of credentials to prepare them for their role, it is unknown how much knowledge they have pertaining to DHH…

A foundational piece to achieving the American dream is a quality education. All children do not receive the same quality of education. Factors such as race/ethnicity, SES, teacher qualifications and expectations and others play a major role in student achievement. Children who participate in afterschool programs show increases in test scores,…

The increased demand for a skilled workforce has placed new challenges on rural school districts. Students are provided the opportunity to obtain the skills required to fill the workforce needs through exemplary career and technical education programs. The purpose of this study was to identify key characteristics of exemplary career and technical…

A common theme of school reform efforts over the past many decades is the difficulty of spurring substantive improvements in teachers' underlying practice in spite of structural or organizational changes (Mehta, 2013; Tyack & Tobin, 1994). But organizational theorists have noted that this quality of schools--though frustrating for reformers…

This study provides much needed insights from faculty regarding the strengthening of teaching-for-learning in Pakistan's colleges and universities. The research explores the perspectives of Pakistani faculty teaching at a public university with respect to the practices they use--both formal and informal--to enhance their teaching skills for…

Quality physical education, pivotal for the development of physical, social, and emotional skills for an active and healthy lifestyle (Society of Health and Physical Educators [SHAPE] America, 2014; United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization [UNESCO], 2021), has been globally marginalized, necessitating a heightened focus on…

This dissertation investigates the inequitable distribution and causal impacts of mathematics teachers' content knowledge for teaching (CKT) on instructional quality and student learning outcomes. Using the rich information in the Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) project longitudinal database, the study addresses three core research questions:…

Recent policy efforts in early care and education (ECE) have aimed to ensure that all children have access to high-quality ECE programming. However, there is debate about how to most effectively improve ECE quality at scale. The three papers in this dissertation provide new insights into the impacts of two widely-used policies aimed at improving…

As enrollment in K-12 online courses continues to grow, there is a need to ensure students are enrolled in quality online courses and that online courses provide an educational experience comparable to their face-to-face equivalents. Thus, this study investigated teachers' views of the quality of online courses at state virtual schools. In…

COVID-19 ushered in a new era in education. Overnight, schools were forced into online learning, dependent entirely upon digital learning tools to educate students. Dubbed by some as a great online learning experiment, teachers experimented with various tools to provide students with the same quality of education they had delivered in the…

Americans are increasingly concerned about academic quality (Hauptman & Kim, 2009). This concern about academic quality is a product of the relative decline of the American economy, American Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) test scores, American baccalaureate attainment rates, and various other indicators of national…

Situated at the intersection of education policy, teacher professional learning, and K-5 literacy teaching and learning, this dissertation study examined how a group of educators working in one of the largest school districts in the U.S. Mountain West sought to improve the quality and coherence of their schoolwide approach to literacy instruction.…