This qualitative study examines how playing levels of a fraction-themed videogame impacts students' thinking. The research question answered is: What do students' gestures reveal about the degree to which their thinking is embodied as they play a videogame that is constructed via a grounded metaphor for mathematical knowledge. Four soon-to-be…

Latinx working adults without bachelor's degrees face significant barriers to economic stability and upward mobility, thereby reducing generational wealth. There are significant benefits of degree completion to individuals, such as increased earnings and employment, and benefits to society through greater economic contribution, increased…

Librarians insist that one of the ways they can contribute to the fight against mis-and disinformation is by teaching information literacy. Yet the demands they place on individuals-- whether through lengthy checklists or expectations that individuals interrogate every piece of information encountered--are unrealistic in view of information…

It has been widely recognized that a visual impairment can limit an individual's ability to learn through visual observations. This decreased limited visual access which could impact how the skills to access and recognize the world around them develop. However, when the visual impairment was brain-based, such as in Cortical/Cerebral Visual…

Mandarin lexical tone learning has repeatedly been identified as a difficult linguistic feature for non-native speakers of tonal languages like English, even for native English learners of Mandarin at high proficiencies (e.g., Pelzl et al., 2019b). Sound perception training has been shown to help native English speakers perceive lexical tone…

In current news media environments where the separation between fact and opinion is blurred, it is important to understand college students' media literacy practices and variables that may affect how they discern fake news. The purpose of this study was to investigate variables that may be related to college students' fake news discernment,…

The purpose of this qualitative descriptive study was to explore how non-traditional online undergraduate students describe the influence of support communities on their academic engagement while attending four-year universities in the United States. This study included 46 non-traditional online undergraduate students from a university in the…

Latinx is the fastest growing ethnic group in the United States. As a result, the demographic landscape of colleges across the nation is also changing to reflect this new reality. However, many Latinx students are still not finishing college at the same rate as other ethnic groups. One area of research that is lacking regarding Latinx students is…

Recent research shows that deaf signers show increased behavioral and neural sensitivity to certain types of movement, such as biological motion, human actions, and signing avatars. However, other work suggests that in deaf signers exposed to signed language before age five, the mirror mechanism has minimal involvement during the perception of…

This dissertation presents a novel theory of event memory along with an associated computational model that embodies the claims of view which is integrated within a cognitive architecture. Event memory is a general-purpose storage for personal past experience. Literature on event memory reveals that people can remember events by both the…

The current study aims to contribute to the literature supporting better understanding cognitive functions, namely working memory and verbal fluency, in undergraduate pre-lingual deaf sign language users. It is important to understand the specific nuances of cognition in deaf sign language users, as the interplay between working memory and verbal…

This study examined the engagement of preservice elementary teachers (PSTs) with mathematics tasks that were open in various ways and to varying extents. In K-12 settings, practitioners who have implemented recently popular open tasks report increased engagement and from a wider variety of students. While these anecdotal reports and related…

This study examines the impact of gamification elements, in particular leaderboards, badges, and eBucks, on the cognitive engagement (CE), intrinsic motivation (IM), and self-efficacy (SE) of English Language Learners (ELLs) at a high school in the Southeastern United States. The investigation, conducted during optional weekly readings, utilizes a…

The aim of this qualitative descriptive study was to explore the cognitive, noncognitive, and sociodemographic barriers affecting the enrollment of General Educational Development (GED) holders in higher education in Alabama. The researcher sought to understand these barriers, focusing on poor academic performance, negative emotions,…

In K-12 education, student voice is not often considered when establishing curriculum, addressing school policy, or creating a climate that reflects culturally inclusive teaching practices. Across education systems serving Indigenous communities within the United States, the voices of youth as a form of contribution are silenced, which echoes…