The demand for colleges across the world to convert their courses to an online format has increased with the number of learners enrolled in at least one online course increasing each year (Seaman et al., 2018). Unfortunately, a study by Garris & Fleck (2020) found that many students complained that when their courses transitioned to an online…

At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, students were required to transition into a broken online educational experience. However, this unfortunate shift, proved to be an opportune escape route to distance Black girls from traditional anti-Black STEM experiences. This was an opportunity to create educational STEM experiences and…

A number of social and ecological justice educators have long recognized the need for educational institutions to foster the development of a critical interest in civic engagement. They also have recognized the lack of appropriate education for students who are already civically engaged. One popular way to address this context in higher education…

The Mind-on-Breathing (MOB) intervention is a mindfulness-breathing exercise that aims to help promote student academic engagement (AE) and reduce off-task behaviors (OFT). MOB is designed from simple, shared technical features common to meditation, mindfulness, and breathing-related exercises that can be implemented in one-on-one settings with…

This dissertation investigates the linguistic features of engagement in spoken academic online and face-to-face instruction in mathematics on two platforms: Khan Academy and MIT OpenCourseWare. In particular, the study analyses involvement features (personal pronouns and deixis) and interactional features (response elicitors, direct hypothetical…

This study examines and utilizes Critical Race Theory to understand how pedagogical training fails to train educators in recognizing and countering racism in standardized testing and General Equivalency Diploma (GED) preparatory courses. Black students continue to have the lowest pass rates in GED test performance based on a study of race and…

This dissertation study explores the implementation of Project-Based Learning (PBL) in first-grade classrooms and its impact on student engagement. The study emphasizes the importance of collaborative grade-level teams and teacher support in successfully implementing PBL. The study adopts a mixed-methods approach and takes place in a small rural…

Collectively understanding the diligence and perseverance necessary for teachers to fully support student learning and not accept "give-up-itis" from students is essential for success in mathematics, especially for African American students. In the participatory action research (PAR), I examined the extent to which upper elementary…

Technology advances have changed the way faculty teach and students learn. The classroom has evolved from students listening to their faculty lecture to convey their knowledge to students utilizing interactive electronic resources that can take students worldwide in milliseconds. Tools in the classroom have also allowed faculty to quiz students…

Research literature identifies that students with more positive student-teacher relationships attain more desirable student outcomes than their counterparts with less positive relationships (Roorda, Koomen, Split, & Oort, 2011). How student-teacher relationships impact students are studied developmentally. The effect of positive relationships…

Disruptive classroom behavior is a frequent topic of concern for teachers who are emotionally exhausted by the profession. The discrepancies in the treatment of students from different demographic groups create the need to research the factors that affect decisions teachers make when managing disruptive behavior. Sending students out of the…

Despite high scores and abilities, girls lose interest in science and math throughout middle school. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, jobs in the computer science research field will grow 19% by 2026; however, only 18% of the bachelor's degrees in computer science are earned by women in the United States (ComputerScience.org, 2021).…

Classroom management strategies are techniques that are meant to be effective in preventing problem behavior for the majority of the students in classroom settings. One such strategy, opportunities to respond, is considered an evidence-based strategy to increase engagement, improve academic achievement, and decrease disruptive behavior in the…

Via two studies, this dissertation examined the way in which ethnic-racial experiences and social class experiences work in tandem to shape academic adjustment among Latinx college students attending an HSI (Hispanic-Serving Institutions) and various PWIs (Predominantly White Institutions). In Study 1, I answered two research questions: 1) What is…

Despite an extensive amount of research examining students' perceptions of alternative laboratory experiences, little focus has been aimed at the perceptions of adult learners. This two-phase mixed-methods study investigated the preferred at-home laboratory experience, and the factors that played a significant role in the user experiences, of…