The purpose of this quantitative study was to further the understanding on how access to trauma-informed professional learning changed research-based practices in classroom and school-wide settings in K-12 schools. The guiding question for this quantitative study was: How has trauma-informed professional learning influenced changes in…

In this paper, TNTP reveals five interconnected factors of mobility that young people need in order to thrive: a strong academic foundation, career-connected learning, opportunities to build social capital, personal support in their lives, and civic engagement in their community. These five factors do not work in isolation. Instead, they must be…

This dissertation examined the application of Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) in an alternative high school, emphasizing educators' perceptions and experiences. Amid issues created by the COVID-19 pandemic, this study investigated how educators addressed challenges in implementing SEL into their curricula. The study was based on Fullan's…

This study investigated if correlations existed between teachers' perceptions of elements of a safe and supportive school climate/working environment in regards to teachers' intrinsic motivation and self-efficacy beliefs. Additionally, it examined the degree of significance when teachers feel safe and supported versus those that do not. Finally,…

Attempts to scale up instructional interventions confront implementation challenges that mitigate their ultimate impact on teaching and learning. In this article, we argue that learning about adaptation during the design and implementation phases of reform is critical to the development of interventions that can be implemented with integrity at…

The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine middle and high school principal roles prior to and during the COVID-19 pandemic to gain a better understanding about how leadership responsibilities adapted or changed. Data collection strategies included one-on-one interviews with nine middle and high school principals in East Tennessee. To…

Attempts to scale up instructional interventions confront implementation challenges that mitigate their ultimate impact on teaching and learning. In this article, we argue that learning about adaptation during the design and implementation phases of reform is critical to the development of interventions that can be implemented with integrity at…

The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga recently updated their general education curriculum with an eye toward the essential learning outcomes identified by the Association of American Colleges and Universities through its Liberal Education and America's Promise (LEAP) initiative. Like many other campuses across the country, money is tight,…

Despite the myriad of challenges that families, students, teachers and policymakers faced in 2021, the momentum to transform education did not waver. New opportunities for students unfolded in more than a dozen states through expanded private and public school choice. An additional 1.7 million students gained eligibility for private choice alone,…

To innovate for the future and improve equity, while also protecting foundational and proven principles that support high-quality education, ExcelinEd is committing to 5 goals over 5 years to impact 5 million students. Those goals hold the key to impactful and far-reaching changes in education, with the power to transform schools, students' lives,…

In the early summer of 2009 David Dietrich was a tenured faculty member at Lambuth University, a small liberal arts college when a friend from the University of Tennessee (UTM) at Martin called about a job opportunity. Because Lambuth had been struggling financially for many years and there was talk of the school closing its doors, Dietrich was…

The purpose of this quantitative study was to investigate teachers' perceptions of principals' leadership behaviors influencing the schools' climate according to Green's (2010) ideologies of the 13 core competencies within the four dimensions of principal leadership. Data from the "Leadership Behavior Inventory" (Green, 2014) suggest 314…

This study evaluates how welcoming thirty American cities--the twenty-five largest and five smaller "hotspots"--are to "nontraditional" problem-solvers and solutions. It assumes that the balky bureaucracies meant to improve K-12 education and hold leaders accountable are so calcified by policies, programs, contracts, and…

The objective of this paper is to explore the operation of magnet and professional development school (PDS) programs in a real life situation using an ethnographic study of Downtown Elementary School (DES--a pseudonym) that simultaneously operates as a PDS and a magnet school. The author spent almost three years at DES, located in the Southern…

In 1987, a school-university collaborative project, Positive Attitudes in Tennessee Schools (PATS), was established to improve school-learning environments. This paper presents findings of a study that investigated the effect of school participation in PATS on school climate. A secondary focus was to determine which school-climate variables could…