It is essential for educators to be able to navigate educational standards and incorporate social- emotional learning (SEL) frameworks which align with teaching practices that support students' education. Teachers may possess knowledge of SEL components, but there is currently a lack of standards, especially at the upper grade levels, in…

Educators use an increasingly wide range of data to inform decision-making, performance management, and accountability at various levels of the education system. Studies emphasize the impact of data-use cultures in schools, a data-rich environment, although little is known about how educators use data. Therefore, this exploratory study examined…

The presented challenge in education revolves around the effective utilization of differentiated and individualized instruction by special education teachers, aiming to address the unique needs of students with learning disabilities. This study's purpose was to identify ways to use these instructional methods to develop methods that create better…

The purpose of this quantitative, quasi-experimental study was to assess differences between US K-12 teachers who participated in digital game-based learning (DGBL) and those who participated in digital learning (DL), in terms of pre-/posttest gains in computational thinking (CT) and pre-/posttest changes in perceived usefulness (PU) and perceived…

The model in which the interactions of administrators, teachers, and other school personnel contribute to school improvement is identified as distributed leadership in the literature. Distributed leadership can lead to transformational change within the school that indirectly leads to instructional improvements in academic capacity. Additionally,…

The purpose of this action research study was to gain an understanding of the learning experiences and outcomes of 12 undergraduates enrolled in Creative Dance, a general education choreography course, in Fall 2019 and the teaching strategies and practices that guided their learning. Research questions that guided this study were: what does…

This dissertation examined the impact of the CREST-MECIS community of practice on K-12 STEM teachers and undergraduate and graduate students, addressing the urgent need for innovative approaches in science education to meet the challenges of the 21st century. The study was grounded in response to three primary problem statements: 1) the…

A lack of horizontal and vertical alignment of the English language arts (ELA) curriculum exists at Lakeside High School (LHS) (pseudonym). This problem was revealed by the diverse interpretations of the ELA state standards by teachers, driven by the wide-range of teachers' beliefs about ELA instruction. Failure to establish an effective culture…

Teachers' instructional planning is observed as part of their yearly evaluations of standards of competency (FLDOE, n.d.). Teacher pre-service and in-service training instruct teachers in lesson-planning, but the changing makeup of students and legislative amendments leave teachers poorly equipped to design relevant literacy instruction, as…

Simply defined, effective English Language Arts (ELA) instruction is cohesive, integrated, and requires students to think deeply. Creating such instruction is difficult, however, because of insufficient training in instructional planning and the numerous types of curricula teachers must navigate that may not align well. Therefore, new secondary…

This study is concerned with how teachers use data about students' ideas in science, elicited from embedded formative assessment probes, to make decisions about next steps in instruction. Since Black and Wiliam's (1998) seminal work on formative assessment, researchers and practitioners alike concerned themselves with formative assessment and its…

Reading, as a foundational skill for adolescents to have in order to compete in the labor market, has received great attention in the K-12 and postsecondary education research. The T-TIP (The Tier Three Instructional Planning Tool) is designed in alignment with the critical components of reading content and pedagogy for adolescents with reading…

The purpose of this study was to begin development of a method to better describe the instructional planning processes of post-secondary teachers. Long term, it is hoped this work might have constructive implications for faculty development by providing a few case studies demonstrating how instructors with a strong interest in teaching think about…

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of diagnostic formative assessment feedback on early literacy skills. The participants were 12 first-grade general education teachers and 51 of their students who were assigned to the following treatments, diagnostic feedback and skills feedback (control) which lasted for 10 weeks. During the…

The acquisition of vocabulary is an important aspect of young children's development that may impact their later literacy skills (National Reading Panel, 2000; Cunningham & Stanovitch, 1997). Deaf children who are American Sign Language users, however, often have smaller vocabularies and lower literacy levels than their hearing peers…