Background: One of the most influential factors shaping college students' prosocial development--the development of attitudes and behaviors that involve positive engagement within one's community and larger society--is the peer group. Friends have an especially important influence on students' learning and development because of the time and…

The purpose of this descriptive non-experimental mentorship study was to first, examine the correlation between peer mentorship relationships, mentorship effectiveness, peer mentee/student self-efficacy, and mentee/student academic progression. A cross-sectional survey method approach was used to determine the outcomes for 2nd- year and beyond…

It is well known that Pennsylvania's K-12 schools are inadequately and inequitably funded. But the extent of the problem is not fully understood. This paper uses new data and methods to demonstrate just how unfair--and in fact, morally unsustainable--the funding of elementary and secondary education is in the Commonwealth. It shows that the…

The specific purpose of this study was to add to the previous research using The Early Childhood Longitudinal Database to examine if there is a difference in the mathematics achievement growth trajectory of African American students based on racial-ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and kindergarten participation (attendance for the first time or…

Active learning strategies are a popular method in current classrooms and educational research. As diversity in the United States population, and likewise in the post-secondary classroom, continues to increase, educational studies should be reporting results in terms of student diversity. Many studies instead report active learning strategy…

Background: Education teaches children about the world, its people, and their place in it. Much of this happens through the curricular materials we present to children, particularly the books they read in school and at home (Giroux, 1981; Apple and Christian-Smith, 1991; Jansen, 1997; Van Kleeck, Stahl and Bauer, 2003; Steele, 2010). How different…

Multicultural (MC) counseling and social justice (SJ) are foundational parts of counselors' professional identity, and they are fostered through a developmental process that counselor educators facilitate. The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between counselor educators' ethnic/racial identity development (ERI), their social…

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is the fastest-growing neurodevelopmental disorder (Baio et al., 2018), yet little information is available regarding the psychometric properties of the most commonly used ASD identification tools in school settings, particularly within traditionally culturally and linguistically minoritized populations (Boyd et al.,…

This paper presents the experiences of a racially integrated research team -- two Black male scholars and one white female scholar - drawn from a series of recorded conversations and journal entries as part of weekly research meetings while engaging in race research across more than a year's time. While our work inherently centered race by nature…

Racial disparities exist in autism diagnosis, and yet, the development of most diagnostic tools has not explicitly examined measurement equity between racial and ethnic groups. We examined the validity of the Toddler Autism Symptom Inventory (TASI), a semi-structured interview developed for diagnosis of toddlers, in non-Hispanic Black/African…

The current study examined hindering factors of 2-year community college students' vertical transfer to 4-year colleges. Rational choice theory guided the study and provided the scope of the problem, which is community college students' apprehension about vertically transferring to 4-year colleges. A quantitative Likert-scale survey, which…

In her 2022 AESA Presidential Address, Gretchen Givens Generett uses the storytelling process to demonstrate how an in-depth analysis of her individual self-paradigms prepared her to lead through change and uncertainty. Further, she poses questions about the future of AESA with an eye toward how the organization might use the storytelling process…

Longstanding disparities in four-year transfer rates for Black/African American and Latinx/Hispanic community college students, relative to their Asian and white peers, raise important equity questions about the vertical transfer function in the U.S. higher education system. Using data from one of the nation's largest and most racially and…

This dissertation explored the career aspirations of Black and Latinx undergraduates in underrepresented health fields, crucial due to health disparities and social determinants. Using data from the 2015-2019 Higher Education Research Institute, the research analyzed factors impacting students' pursuit of healthcare careers through logistic…

Objective: The current study explored differences in mental health problems, services utilization, and support of graduate students by gender, race/ethnicity, and year in school. Participants: Participants consisted of 734 graduate students from a large, Midwestern university. Methods: Graduate students answered a series of questionnaires in fall…