Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) serves the beautifully diverse city of Oakland in California's East Bay. The city, or "the Town" as Oakland natives might say, is steeped in community members' dedication to fighting for equity, particularly in education. The decades-long history of organizing and activism, especially that of Black…

This action research project explores the current university-community school-based partnerships between Paterson community organizations and WU. This study's research question is, "What current university-community school-based partnerships exist between the Paterson community organizations and WU?" This study uses only the first action…

Choral ensembles often operate as hierarchical institutions where the conductor maintains a position of control over the musical, educational, and social aspects of singing with little or no input from singers. This dissertation reconceptualizes the choral experience as a dialogical process where conventional boundaries between conductor and…

Project-Based Learning has been a heavily debated topic in education for several years. The most recent push from multiple education departments highlights the need for a user-friendly online database. Although the Internet is filled with sites that provide many different instructors' options to develop or implement a Project-Based Lesson, there…

Modern leadership styles such as transformational and transactional leadership are well documented and practiced within the intercollegiate athletic industry. Although the case, inequities and historic scandals have continued to negatively impact the industry. As a result, practitioners and scholars alike have advocated for a reexamination of…

This work investigates a cross-organizational technology-focused Community of Practice, namely Azure for Education, which supports educational organizations as they learn and implement Microsoft Azure platform technologies to solve business challenges in an environment of rapid technology innovation and evolution. While most research on…

While community colleges intend for their students to complete their associate degree before transferring to a university, that is not always the case. Many students transfer when they are only a few course credits short of an associate degree. The study was conducted at a public university in Texas. The option of the reverse transfer process…

Despite numerous available careers and degrees in music, including music education, music performance, and music administration, perspectives of many music educators and students desiring an interdisciplinary music degree program inclusive of music education, music performance, and music administration have yet to be expressed or examined…

Relationships are especially important in the Middle East. I certainly understand and respect this part of the process because it is about establishing trust. I am a contractor who has worked all over the Middle East training aviation protocols. I consider my time here as one of the best experiences in my life. If nothing else comes of this…

The purpose of this qualitative descriptive study was to explore how parents of children diagnosed with DDX3X Syndrome and school professionals serving on special education teams in the United States describe collaboration. The collaborative process was investigated through three sub-questions regarding relationship building, shared values, and…

Rural students deserve a high-quality literacy education comparable to their non-rural counterparts. As rural teachers and leaders face multiple roles and responsibilities, professional learning focused on instructional improvement can lack priority. This study aimed to examine how leaders within a rural, public elementary school setting supported…

Collaboration among music educators is an essential practice in building professional relationships, furthering student achievement, and supporting professional learning (Anderson, 2013; Armstrong, 2010; Battersby, 2019; Harris, 2015; Kastner, 2014; Sinberg, 2016). Unfortunately, music educators are quite frequently left out of the collaborative…

Principals matter a great deal in establishing a culture of excellence in schools. It has been known that an "ineffective" principal can create significant problems that impede teachers from carrying out their tasks and poor leadership may eventually affect academic excellence in students. A leader who does not have the skill sets to…

This qualitative case study explored assistant principals' practices in instructional leadership. This study was conducted in two small school districts in the South Texas Region 1 area. Research questions included (a) What instructional leadership behaviors are assistant principals in Region 1 engaged in? (b) What support is needed for assistant…

As data becomes an integral part of our lives, the general public faces the increasing need to actively engage with data to participate in daily activities, support personal goals, and understand social issues. Formal data science training, however, remains out of reach for most people and does not cater to their diverse needs related to data.…