Objective: Traditional-age students attending a rural community college in Kentucky's Appalachian region were interviewed, along with faculty members and administrators, to identify phenomena serving as sources of encouragement or as barriers to retention from the point of entry to the point of transfer. Method: Students' perspectives were…

Many layers of education governance press upon U.S. schools, so we separated state actors into those internal to and those external to the system. In the process, we unpacked the traditional state-local dichotomy. Using interview data (n = 45) from six case-study states, we analyzed local leaders', state-internal actors', and state-external…

Interactive whiteboards (IWBs) are increasingly prevalent in U.S. classrooms. Yet, little is known about how this tool is being used to teach social studies. This case study through classroom observations, interviews, and student focus groups examines how two fifth-grade teachers use the IWB to teach U.S. history. The data indicate that when the…

This study is an examination of the state of the liberal arts curriculum in community colleges in three geographic regions of the United States. From a constructivist paradigm and using globalization theory as a theoretical framework, this multiple case study examined faculty work life and administrative processes related to curriculum change in…

Combination classes are often created out of financial necessity rather than a desire to engage students in multiage learning. Teachers assigned to these classrooms come from the general teaching pool and may not have specialized training around the intricacies of multiage teaching. A review of the literature indicates that the United States has a…

Environmental Education (EE) refers to a broad array of approaches in which an instructor uses the environment as a means to integrate various subjects and real world learning. Research supported the idea that EE instruction had a positive correlation to academic achievement. Under the Kentucky Education Cabinet of the Department of Education, the…

This study supports the work of Black and Wiliam (1998), who demonstrated that when teachers effectively utilize formative assessment strategies, student learning increases significantly. However, the researchers also found a "poverty of practice" among teachers, in that few fully understood how to implement classroom formative…

This study examined the extent to which the college choice process of four students from one high school in rural Appalachian Kentucky aligned with Perna's (2006; 2010) nested process model of college choice. I used qualitative case study methodology and inductive analysis to describe how four high-academic achieving students of varying family…

First generation Appalachian female students are exposed to gender differences in roles and career choices that are modeled in the family. A case study approach was used to obtain qualitative data from five students at Eastern Kentucky University and their mothers regarding why these students chose to major in child development and early childhood…

Students not having the positive opportunities of an education, often experience negative effects throughout their lives. Educators need to do more to meet the needs of elementary students at risk, and if this can be accomplished the students will receive a 21st Century education that will help students with a global education, which is necessary…

This qualitative comparative case study identified factors that distinguish between high and low-performance on reading achievement in elementary rural Appalachian schools. This study determined the most effective instructional reading strategies, as well as other influential factors, implemented by school districts in the rural Appalachia area…

The decision in the 1989 landmark Kentucky case, "Rose v. Council for Better Education," initiated many reforms to ensure that children have access to an adequate education, including funding new construction and renovations for school facilities. The purpose of this instrumental, qualitative case study is to describe how the additional…

Recent work has demonstrated that many offenders will choose to serve prison rather than any amount of a community-based sanction. This primarily quantitative research has found that offender-generated exchange rates are influenced by a wide variety of experiences and characteristics. Missing from this literature is a qualitative evaluation of…

Traditional histories of American college composition instruction in the 19th and 20th centuries examine primarily the textbooks used in those courses, then draw conclusions based on the content of those textbooks about the activities and attitudes expressed in the classroom. The canon of composition historiography is lacking in several ways: the…

As part of an 8-year study of education reform in rural Kentucky, this report examines the primary program that has evolved in six rural elementary schools as a result of the Kentucky Education Reform Act (KERA), which requires that grades K-3 be replaced by a nongraded program. This change aimed to eliminate failure in the first 2 years of…