The aspiration of achieving equitable outcomes for all students is a focus of schools, districts, and communities but has largely remained unattainable with the top-down implementation of change ideas and directives that come and go as quickly as they are implemented. Too often the direct users, students and classroom staff, are left out of the…

Community Colleges (CCs) have been particularly impacted by a deluge of "development" and "good" leadership frameworks removed from the very communities in which leading remains paramount. A paradigm shift is needed to support current and aspiring CC leaders in a manner that prioritizes the very essence of learning in the…

Whereas it is generally accepted that theory of mind and language are related constructs, the nature of the relation remains unclear. Past research has suggested that two related, but distinct, components of theory of mind are differentially related to language. The present study attempted to clarify the relation between theory of mind and…

The interpretation of numerals has been traditionally debated across disciplines including, but not limited to, Linguistics, Developmental Psychology, and Philosophy. A big portion of the debate concentrates on the ontology of numerals, i.e., their basic meaning, and the mechanisms by which (non) exact interpretations (e.g., at least) are derived.…

Critical pedagogy surrounding Spanish as a heritage language (SHL) has focused on the student's attitudes regarding their language and culture, specifically as it relates to Spanish and Latinxs in the United States. These heritage language (HL) learners, who were exposed to Spanish in the home, enroll in Spanish classes to further a sense of…

Workforce training is needed throughout the construction industry to create and maintain competent workers; unfortunately, most construction training and education research focuses on university student education. The focus of this dissertation research is the current state of educational-theory embedded construction workforce training, how such…

The United States is experiencing a tremendous shift in the composition of its population. For the first time in history, the overall number of Asian, Latino, and African American students in K-12 public education classrooms is projected to surpass the population of Non-Hispanic whites. The number of Latinos in educational leadership positions in…

This dissertation applied an extended version of Cropanzano et al.'s (2017) theoretical framework, integrating affective events theory with leader-member exchange theory, incorporating leadership self-efficacy and workplace satisfaction. It investigated challenges of peer supervisory relationships among eight head resident advisors at a small…

This dissertation discusses the relationship between teacher sensemaking, attributions, and instructional adjustments prompted in response to student performance data. Through this qualitative observation study, this paper explores the varying perspectives of teachers, including their level of assessment literacy, and the dynamics of their…

This dissertation discusses the gestures produced by students as they learn about the inorganic chemistry topic of symmetry and group theory. Also included is an overview of the development and implementation of a symmetry and group theory laboratory activity, as well as an investigation seeking to promote gestural mimicry and uncover design…

Care is something we expect educators to demonstrate towards their students, but are they themselves being taught the importance of care in education and prepared to enact it in their classrooms? The existing literature on care and care theory in education is limited, but shows a link between care and student success; many educators also point to…

Test score comparability in international large-scale assessments (LSA) is of utmost importance in measuring the effectiveness of education systems and understanding the impact of education on economic growth. To effectively compare test scores on an international scale, score linking is widely used to convert raw scores from different linguistic…

This study assesses the role a teacher-led social studies group played in the evolution of three teachers' professional biographies over the course of seven years. It uses a conceptual framework based on Priestley, Biesta and Robinson's (2015) theory of teacher agency to explore the ecological relationships between professional biography, the…

In conducting confirmatory factor analysis with ordered response items, the literature suggests that when the number of responses is five and item skewness (IS) is approximately normal, researchers can employ maximum likelihood with robust standard errors (MLR). However, MLR can yield biased factor loadings (FL) and FL standard errors (FLSE) when…

Peer education programs in higher education conduct peer educator training; however, there is minimal empirical evidence supporting the structure and evaluation of peer educator training. The problem addressed by the present study was the inconsistencies in and scant assessment of university peer educator training and implementation. Ineffective…