This study serves to collate and evaluate measures of self-directed learning (SDL), with the goal of guiding the measurement and discussion of SDL. Used in a variety of settings, many applications of SDL have been proposed, but a consistent definition has yet to be formulated. Despite the lack of a cohesive definition, several tools exist to…

Experiences of belonging are a basic human need (Baumeister & Leary, 1995), and the accessibility of belonging might look different for individuals labeled with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (IDD) due to historic and ongoing exclusion. This qualitative, participatory study explored how adults with intellectual and developmental…

Mediation analyses are crucial for understanding the mechanisms through which interventions or theoretical constructs influence outcomes within nested structures, commonly found in education, psychology, and sociology. Recognizing the importance of these effects, designing and analyzing robust studies to detect them is essential. This dissertation…

Moving Beyond the Ordinal Methodological Controversy: A Systematic Review (Manuscript 1): Ordinal outcome data is a common byproduct of education research. Yet more than seventy-five years after the development of Stevens' original measurement framework, the permissibility of select analytic techniques to ordinal outcome data remains a topic of…

The main part of this dissertation study consists of a survey of the types of articles (e.g., articles based on qualitative research, articles based on quantitative research, theoretical articles, etc.) that appear between 2016 and 2021 in five of the leading mathematics education journals (N = 1,317). In addition, for the articles that carry out…

Globalization's in-depth development is profoundly affecting the real world with its penetrating power and wide scope. As the main means of global participation in higher education, internationalization is bound to be affected by today's global challenges. This dissertation reports the research designed to investigate the impact of current global…

Authors of the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) intended for the policy to serve a strategic role in improving California public schools' capacity to engage with education stakeholders. Early criticism of the policy's implementation highlighted districts' pro-forma approach to soliciting and responding to stakeholder feedback during the Local…

In 2016, over 40,000 pages of new research were printed across only 86 of the hundreds of higher education specific journals (Tight, 2018). Perhaps that means this field of study knows a lot, but maybe it means we know very little. Journal publishing is integral to the construction of academic fields, job markets, and policy making. However, not…

In today's era of large-scale data, academic institutions, businesses, and government agencies are increasingly faced with heterogeneous datasets. Consequently, there is a growing need to develop effective methods for extracting meaningful insights from this type of data. Quantile, expectile, and expected shortfall regression methods offer useful…

In the United States, accreditation was a mandatory requirement that placed stress, financial burden, and alignment to various standards on universities. The changes that had occurred in educator preparation over the past decade left many institutions confused and untrusting in the process (Burnett, 2020). Due to these changes, the relationship…

Social validity of interventions is often conceptualized as a triad of the social significance of goals, the acceptability of procedures, and the importance of intervention outcomes (Wolf, 1978). Social validity measurement is considered an essential part of quality single-case design studies. Yet, the practice has been inconsistently reflected in…

Many children are attending after-school programs for various reasons, such as academic support, recreational play, and social interaction. Accompanied by high parental demands for affordable child-care, after-school program participation has increased significantly. The issue of quality care becomes important as the number of children enrolled in…

Over the last decade, STEM education research has reflected a turn towards framing disciplinary development in STEM as the repetition and stabilization of situated practices. In this dissertation, I turn further: towards "disciplinary relationships" as a potential focus of analysis. To centralize disciplinary relationships, I use a…

The purpose of this study was to assess and describe the status of program evaluation within the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) sites. The National Science Foundation's REU program supports thousands of undergraduates annually in hands-on, immersive research experiences under the mentorship of…

This study examines public-private partnerships (P3s) as represented in the Association of College and University Housing Officers -- International (ACUHO-I) publications from 1951-2023 and shares themes and patterns found. P3s have been used for on-campus student housing since the 1960s, yet the method is not well represented in the discourse of…