This dissertation examines the dynamics of research-practice partnerships (RPPs) through a qualitative multiple-case study that explores the boundary work between university researchers and K-12 practitioners. It is framed within Wenger's communities of practice theory and focuses on the concept of 'boundary work,' which is pivotal in…

This qualitative study investigated the experiences of learning technology professors with National Science Foundation (NSF) external grant funding focused on education. The study investigated stories related to using NSF grants by learning technology professors across the United States, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. It enumerated the…

This article-format dissertation focuses on how scholars use social media to support their scholarship. The first article is a scoping literature review that outlines current research. While overviewing an emergent field of literature, the article highlights motivations for using social media use, discusses benefits and drawbacks of this use for…

The purpose of this three-article dissertation is to better understand the role emerging technologies are playing in learning. This dissertation explores tools on a spectrum of reality from fully immersive virtual reality (VR), semi-immersive VR, non-immersive VR, augmented reality (AR), mixed reality (MR), and extended reality (XR). Three studies…

In this dissertation, I explore how researchers, teachers, and students can learn together across various contexts in K-12 computing education. These explorations are situated within the development and implementation of the Getting Unstuck curriculum, a set of educative curriculum materials (Davis et al., 2017) designed for upper elementary…

Extramural funding in the form of grants can be both blessings and burdens to faculty members and other principal investigators (PIs) in higher education and their institutions. This investigation explored workload issues related to grant funding, including principal investigator (PI) perceptions of the institutional support received for grants…

Investigating the nature of our conceptualizations of learning is a crucial step towards reducing the research-to-practice gap and developing strategies toward adoption of powerful practices in teaching and learning based on educational and Learning Sciences research. The purpose of this study was to develop robust characterizations of the…

While higher education student populations have become more diverse, the faculty remains predominately white and male. The number of African American faculty receiving tenure is still drastically low. One source indicates that less than 6 percent of full-time faculty are African American at four-year institutions, and at higher ranking and small,…

This is one of the first major empirical studies on research faculty and administrative collaborations in the context of seed grant-based strategic international university partnerships (IUPs), designed as a multiple case study. The partnership at focus is between two large, comprehensive, public research universities in the US and the UK. This…

A pervasive neoliberal doctrine is rapidly changing the landscape of higher education in the United States. Applying free-market ideology to the university sphere has created an environment in which faculty are expected to be expert researchers able to procure external funding as well as excellent teachers who produce students that strengthen the…

This autoethnography uses the researcher's personal journey from professional writer to emergent academic scholar to examine the perceptions of the frequent pursuit of academic scholarly productivity among faculty writing group (FWG) participants. The case study, based at a Southeastern U.S. research-intensive university, adds to extensive…

Sol University has been striving to obtain the high-quality faculty necessary to become a national research tier-one (R1) university. If the university cannot recruit the necessary faculty by the 2020 deadline, then Sol University will not achieve the goal of becoming an R1 university. The problem addressed in this research was the recruitment and…

Two of the most significant changes in higher education over the last decade have been the reconceptualization of faculty scholarship and the increase in the hiring of adjunct faculty, yet these topics rarely merge together in the literature. The purpose of this qualitative narrative inquiry was to understand how adjunct English faculty conceive…

The purpose of this study was to analyze and develop an in-depth understanding of the characteristics of an R3, predominantly undergraduate institution of higher education with a high-performing externally-funded research portfolio. This study used a qualitative single-bounded case study approach and utilized a focus group structure for the…

The study is a comprehensive ethnographic investigation into how a campus children's center and laboratory school site can simultaneously serve six major population groups (i.e., parents, college students, teachers, faculty, administrators, and researchers) while maintaining program operations. The study carefully examines the converging and…