Spatial reasoning skills are a great predictor of students' Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) achievement and attainment. However, researchers have mainly viewed spatial reasoning skills as an internal cognitive process that is measured through the administration of psychometric testing and laboratory experiments. Further,…

As schools redefine their role to include the social-emotional needs of students, it is imperative that they simultaneously reflect on the adults in the building and the way that they embody and model the traits they are hoping to instill in students. This exploratory qualitative study looks specifically at the way that school leaders perceive and…

As higher education institutions go online to reap the benefits of technology and align their programs with a world economy that is increasingly becoming digital, the multimedia learning theory warns of possible challenges. Large device screens have been used to present related information elements of a learning task simultaneously to facilitate…

Over the last several centuries, mathematicians have developed sophisticated symbol systems to represent ideas often imperceptible to their five senses. Although conventional definitions exist for these notations, individuals attribute their personalized meanings to these symbols during their mathematical activities. In some instances, students…

This dissertation investigates the problem of how variations in the intensity of three selected constructs--multimedia signaling, speed and pacing, and cognitive engagement prompts--affect attention and learning outcomes in online learning environments. The study explores the intersecting cognitive theories of cognitive load, higher order thinking…

This qualitative descriptive study investigated the experiences and professional outcomes of novice registered nurses participating in professional development nursing simulations integrating worked examples, a cognitive load instructional design principle. Drawing upon cognitive load theory and the worked examples principle, the study addressed…

This study assesses the impact of cognitive and noncognitive pre-characteristics on college graduation in Tennessee. The State of Tennessee has applied multiple campus-based interventions at the Tennessee Board of Regents and the University System of Tennessee to increase graduation rates. This study is driven by three concepts and investigated by…

This study quantitatively and qualitatively measured gender and age differences in cognitive, affective, and behavioral engagement while playing video games among the University of North Texas (UNT) undergraduate students. Also, it examined the relationship between time spent playing video games and the three engagement states. For the…

This dissertation reports on three studies about students' conceptions and learning of the idea of instantaneous rate of change. The first study investigated 25 students' conceptions of the idea of instantaneous rate of change. The second study proposes a hypothetical learning trajectory, based on the literature and results from the first study,…

News sharing has become a common user behavior in social networking services (SNS) and has been extensively studied as an emerging community practice. This dissertation presents four studies extending current news sharing knowledge. It also provides promising new directions for future investigation. Study 1: suggests that news sharing is a complex…

Conceptual representations can be altered to align with the current context given learning and task goals. One cognitive process, known as conceptual combination, allows for a unique perspective for exploring how complex conceptual processing occurs and how this processing influences the underlying representations of concepts. During novel nominal…

The current set of studies examined whether two common appraisals that students make during learning (whether they have control over their learning and whether they place value into learning the material) give rise to common types of thoughts students also experience (mind wandering, personal connections, and freely-moving thought). Study One…

Children in the United States live in a highly racialized society and, as a result, acquire an awareness of race at an early age, eventually developing an understanding of racism (Quintana, 2008). Understanding race and racism is especially relevant for Black children, given their marginalized status in the U.S. and the likelihood that they will…

The concentration in K-12 education on higher-order thinking has diminished the importance of math fact automaticity, which is the ability to deliver a correct answer immediately from long-term memory without impeding the working memory. This quantitative study investigated the influence of automaticity of high school students on their Missouri…

People segment their continuous stream of experience into events, or temporal segments that have a beginning and an endpoint. But how are such event boundaries defined? Linguistic theories of event encoding draw a distinction between bounded events that are non-homogeneous, structured temporal developments leading to an inherent endpoint (e.g.,…