Education Commons^™

Staff Members' Perceptions Of General Education Development Programs In Virginia's Correctional System, Andrew Lee Beamon

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The Virginia Department of Corrections mandates that all offenders without a high

school diploma or general equivalency diploma (GED) are required to be enrolled in

GED programs offered in the prison system. However, these programs have shown

varying rates of success. Supported by the constructivist theory, the purpose of this

qualitative case study was to identify how correctional education staff members

perceived the effectiveness of the GED programs. Data from surveys and interviews with

9 educational correctional staff members were collected and analyzed for themes.

Findings indicated that (a) participants use computer software for effective instruction,

(b) offenders who were …

Counselor Educators' Social Justice And Advocacy Beliefs And Relationship To Their Actions, Marcia Colantha Davis

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Using Bandura's social learning theory as a frame, this quantitative survey study examined the relationship between attitudes and beliefs of counselor educators and the importance they placed on taking social justice as well as advocacy action in their personal and professional lives. Two survey instruments, the Social Issues Advocacy Scale and the Social Justice Scale, were given to faculty members of graduate counselor education programs to examine the question of whether a statistically significant relationship exists between faculty attitudes and beliefs regarding the value of social justice and advocacy, and faculty taking action in social justice and advocacy initiatives in …

Employing Persons With Disabilities In Madagascar, Lila Hanitra Ratsifandrihamanana

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

In Madagascar, the barriers to persons with disabilities' employability are multifaceted and relate to accessibility, funding, attitudes, and policies. Managers lack knowledge on disability and still perceive disabled persons as incompetent and associate them with costly accommodation needs. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to examine the management strategies and leadership styles that managers could use to enhance the employability chances of persons with disabilities. The conceptual framework featured the concepts of empowerment, employability, disability identity, and relevant transformational leadership theories. Semistructured interviews were conducted with 28 managers in private companies, institutions, cooperatives, and organizations in 3 regions …

Recent Parolees Participating In An Adult Basic Education And Work Skills Program, Charles Jenkins

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Abstract

The issue addressed in this study was the increasing number of prisoners in U.S. prisons and the related issue of recidivism after release. The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine the experiences of 8 formerly incarcerated adults. The conceptual foundation of this study was based on Bandura's self-efficacy theory and Vygotsky's concept of the zone of proximal development and transformational learning. The research question for this study inquired about how released prisoners perceive their educational experiences in the MTM program. Participants were selected among adults who were incarcerated for at least 12 months and living in the …

Peer Taught Sex Education's Influence On Adolescent Sexual Decisions And Hookups, Sarah Kathleen Smith

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The Teen Prevention Education Program (PEP) utilizes different methods, mainly peer teaching via skits and small groups, to help influence adolescents to make informed sexual decisions. The purpose of this study is to find how Teen PEP can have an effect on an adolescent's decision on whether to or not hookup. This study utilized interviews with participants of the program asking them about their views on hooking up and how they view how Teen PEP aided in their decision-making whether to or not hook up. While transcribing the interviews and looking for keywords related to the research questions, the analysis …

Admission Members' Perceptions Of Predictive Validity Of The Graduate Record Examinations, Janet Thompson

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Disparate student academic outcomes and program access is a problem at Master of Public Administration (MPA) programs in the Northeast United States The current admission committee members at the case university did not know institution leaders' rationale for eliminating the Graduate Records Examination (GRE) criterion. The decision to exclude the GRE as an MPA admission requirement was enacted prior to their respective tenures. The program leadership expressed interest in exploring research-based admission criteria to enhance student access and predictive outcomes. Supported by critical pedagogy and humanist theories, the purpose of this case study was to investigate admission committee members' viewpoints …

Hiring Individuals With Ambulatory Disabilities: An Employer's Perspective, Lindsay Aslan

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Statistics show that approximately 30.6 million individuals in the United States had an ambulatory disability (AD), the most prevalent disability in the country. In 2010, 17.5% of the disabled population was employed, and only 5% of that employed population had an AD. The purpose of this multiple case study was to understand the decision-making process of small businesses owners in New Jersey when deciding on whether to hire those with AD. Ajzen's theory of planned behavior was utilized in this study to make predictions and explain why individuals engage in a behavior. Interviews were conducted with 16 participants and 22 …

Impact Of Charter School Legislation On Public K-12 Education In Pennsylvania, Stuart Whiteleather

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Charter and cyber charter schools were legislatively permitted to operate as publicly funded educational institutions in Pennsylvania with the passage of Act 22 of 1997. Examining the tuition payments from traditional school districts funding charter schools and resulting economic, operational, and programmatic impacts on traditional K-12 education was the purpose of this study. Conflict theory provided the theoretical framework which proposes that inequity and competition for limited resources is the result of powerful groups exerting their influence on the greater society. This study's research questions focused on determining the impact tuition payments to charter schools had on public K-12 student …

Understanding Of Self-Confidence In High School Students, George Ballane

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Students at a private high school in New Jersey exhibited low academic self-confidence as compared to other indicators on the ACT Engage exam. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to gain an understanding of academic self-confidence, academic performance, and learning within a sample of students. This research explored students' and teachers' perceptions of self-confidence and their impact on academic performance. The research was guided by Weiner's attribution and Bandura's self-efficacy theories. The research questions focused on 3 areas: students' and teachers' perceptions of academic self-confidence as factors impacting students' academic performance; and the perceived relationship between academic self-confidence, …

Police Chiefs' Perceptions Of Supervisors' Membership In Subordinate Officers' Unions, Mark P. Derosia

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Police supervisors who enjoy membership in their subordinates' police union may contribute to organizational discord by failing to enforce organizational policy among their subordinates. The purpose of this multiple case study was to examine the perceptions of 9 municipal chiefs from a west coast state in the United States regarding how supervisors' membership in their subordinates' police union affects policy enforcement and how supervisor enforcement of policy may impact police officer discipline. The conceptual framework was based on dual-commitment conflict theory. Data were collected using semi structured interviews and e-mail questionnaires. Data were member checked and cross-interpreted through coded analysis. …

Impact Of A Geography-Literature Collaborative On Secondary School Pedagogy, John Matthew Mccormick

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Geography education has been relegated to a subset of social studies standards in most of the United States and has been overshadowed by a history-centered curriculum. Student achievement in geography has not improved for several decades due to the focus on history content in the social studies curriculum. Rooted in a conceptual framework encompassing elements of self-efficacy and the whole teacher approach, the purpose of this case study was to examine the impact of the West Virginia Geographic Alliance (WVGA) professional development workshop on teachers' practices in delivering cross-disciplinary geography education. The research questions addressed teachers' perceived self-efficacy in delivering …

Perceptions, Lived-Experiences, And Environmental Factors Impacting The Crime-Reporting Practices Of Private College Students, Kelly Lynn Arney

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The purpose of this study was assessing the perceptions of student's on how the campus climate impacts their likelihood of reporting crime. Victimization studies have been conducted at large universities and community colleges; however, there remains a lack of research regarding private colleges. This study was designed to examine the reasoning behind students' crime-reporting behaviors and the influencers that impact their decisions. Cohen and Felson's routine activity theory along with the collective-efficacy theory were used as frameworks to analyze the crimes that occur to college students as well as to explore the reasons for not reporting some crimes to law …

Resiliency Of Students Who Failed The State Of Texas Assessments Of Academic Readiness Exam, Tetaime Sherie Green

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The purpose of this study was to investigate former high school students' resilience following the administration of the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR) exam based on the comparison of male and female students who passed the STAAR exam the first time and those who failed it at least 2 times. This study fills a gap in the literature by offering additional data and increased knowledge about the relationship of resiliency to school performance. A total of 133 adults aged 18-29 years who had been enrolled in 3 high schools in a large metropolitan area in Texas were …

Interprofessional Intentional Empathy Centered Care (Ip-Iecc) In Healthcare Practice, Deepy Sur

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Training interprofessional healthcare teams continues to advance practice for patient-centered care. Empathy research is also advancing and has been explored in social work, psychology, and other healthcare areas. In the absence of understanding empathy in an interprofessional setting, educators are limited in preparing teams to develop empathy as part of core competencies This grounded theory study explored for a theory of how interprofessional healthcare teams conceptualize and operationalize empathy in their practice. Azjen's theory of planned behavior and Barrett-Lennard's cyclical model of empathy framed the study. Data were collected using 6 focus groups and 24 semistructured interviews of varied healthcare …

The Effect Of Early Childhood Abuse On Educational Attainment, Onzie Luke

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The purpose of this study was to fill a gap in the literature regarding survivors of child abuse and their capacity to continue their educational pursuits beyond high school. Thus, this study explored the lived experience of self-identified abuse survivors who were enrolled in higher education. The theoretical bases for this study included Bandura'€™s social cognitive theory, Rotter'€™s theory of locus of control and Heider'€™s and Weiner'€™s theory of attribution. Open-ended interviews were conducted with 15 survivors of child abuse enrolled in an undergraduate or graduate degree program at an online or brick and mortar university. The interviews were then …

Teachers' And Principals' Perceptions Of Antibullying Programs In A U.S. Middle School, Nneka Uzoma

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

School bullying has become a serious issue in U.S. schools, with children being harassed, hurt, and even killed or driven to suicide or homicide as a result of being bullied. Bullying in schools has persisted despite the various intervention measures taken to curtail the phenomenon. The purpose of this phenomenological exploration was to explore how teachers and principals at a U.S. middle school perceive the school's existing bullying programs and elicit recommendations about how to improve the programs. The theoretical basis of this investigation was Bandura's social learning theory. Data were collected through interviews with 4 principles and 6 teachers. …

Caribbean Students' Experience Of Readiness For The Secondary Education Certificate Exam, Cleon Pauline Athill

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

While there is general agreement about its importance, the construct of educational readiness is nebulous with much debate about what constitutes readiness. Readiness has been found to be a multidimensional psychological construct from a psychometric perspective. However, there is a growing awareness that this psychometric focus is lopsided, and that readiness does not only reside in the child. Further, there is an accompanying appreciation that readiness research may need to focus more on the subjective experience of individuals within the context of their environment. This phenomenological study, using Bronfenbrenner's social-ecological model, explored how Antigua and Barbudan students experienced readiness as …

Self-Injurious Behavior And Social Media Use By Adolescents, Victoria Lynn Fye

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

There is a surprising dearth of research related to the phenomenon of self-injurious behavior/nonsuicidal self-injury (SIB/NSSI), such as cutting. Research conducted on SIB has revealed that this maladaptive behavior is more common among adolescents than other populations. The act of posting SIB on social media deserves research attention, as it seems to contradict what had previously been considered a very private behavior. The goal of this qualitative case study was to better understand why adolescents engage in SIB as well as investigate why they post these behaviors on social media. Merton's theory of social strain and anomie, which focuses on …

A Phenomenological Study Of High-Performance Teachers' Happiness At School And Home, Sarah Abuaqel

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

This research study is focused on understanding the phenomenology of happiness of High Performing Teachers (HPT) working in an elementary school located in a Midwest City. The purpose of the study was to understand positive and negative emotions of HPT, through their experiences at work and home. Qualitative methodology through in-depth interviews was employed for this study. Tomkins' affect theory of happiness (ATH), was used to assess and explore positive and negative emotions of participants of the study. In this study a purposeful sample of 11 participants that work in elementary school located in a Midwest City, participated in in-depth, …

Policy Knowledge Communication In Nursing, Curtiss John Vavra

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Evidence-based practices in nursing improve patient outcomes, decrease healthcare costs, and can be implemented with policies and procedures. However, there is limited literature describing how nurses acquire policy knowledge, the dissemination of which may require a significant investment of resources by a hospital. The purpose of this study was to learn more about how nurses obtain policy knowledge. Rogers's diffusion of innovations theory guided the examination of communication channels and how they relate to the formation of policy knowledge. The research questions were designed to gather information on the relationship of policy communication channels, demographic factors, and the frequency of …

The Experiences Of Elementary School Counselors In Bullying Intervention And Prevention, Shannon Matthews

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Bullying has become a focus in American society over the past several decades due to publicized bullying cases and the impact bullying has on victims. Researchers have conducted studies to determine the definitions, causes, and results of bullying. This phenomenological qualitative study examined the experiences of elementary school counselors (Pre-K–5th grade) who have implemented antibullying programs. Using distributive leadership theory as a lens, purposeful sampling was used to recruit 8 elementary school counselors from a targeted East Texas area of similar populations and enrollment numbers. Interview data was analyzed using NVivo software and thematic analysis, which revealed 5 major themes: …

Disadvantaged Preschool Children: Public Policy, Education Models, And Kindergarten Readiness, Virginia H. Byerson

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

There is a high rate of academic failure among disadvantaged preschool and post preschool students in some school districts in Virginia, yet little is understood about the relationship between education models and academic performance among economically disadvantaged students (EDS). The problem explored is the absence of classroom exercises in pre and post preschools that capitalize on cognitive development to improve executive function (EF) and self-regulation (SR) skills. The purpose of this study is to understand if a change in current classroom practices impacts academic performance among low-income students. Narrative policy serves as a theoretical guide in this qualitative case study …

A Thematic Analysis On How Forensic Psychologists Conduct Personal Injury Evaluations, Denise M. Autret

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Psychological evaluations administered by forensic psychologist in personal injury cases are surrounded by complex issues. Although empirically-based research has legitimized that psychological damages do exist in personal injury cases there is a missing link in the way forensic psychologists are conducting these evaluations. Prior researchers suggested that some personal injury evaluations had been dismissed or overlooked due to a lack of a standard of care. Addressing the current literature, this study examined how a diverse group of 14 licensed forensic psychologists, operating in different judicial jurisdictions (Daubert, Frye, and Independent) were conducting personal injury evaluations and their perspectives on the …

Drugs, Alcohol, And The Community College Student-Athlete: A Narrative Study, Kevin A. Berg

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Research shows that student-athletes, whether at the high school or collegiate ranks, experience higher rates of alcohol consumption than their non-athlete student counterparts. However, one population that has not been studied is the community college student-athlete. Traditional community college students have different risk categories and needs than traditional 4-year university students. In this study, community college student-athletes provided their views and perceptions on drugs and alcohol. To obtain data, a qualitative narrative analysis was completed by interviewing 13 community college student-athletes to identify their views and opinions on drugs and alcohol. Once the interviews were completed, transcription and coding were …

Academic Accountability Between Charter And Public-School Principals In New Jersey, Nicole Goodman

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The purpose of this study was to explore school principals' accountability with student academic performance. Charter and public-school principals are responsible for the learning process and academic development. Previously published literature did not reveal a clear understanding of the policies and practices that contributed in obtaining the desired student academic outcomes. Parsons's theory of action served as the foundation for analyzing principals' decisions to achieve accountability and comply with the policies established by the regulating authorities. A snowball sampling of school principals included a public charter school principal and 5 traditional public-school principals in the state of New Jersey. A …

School Counselors' Lived Experiences Supporting Students With Mental Health Concerns, Linda F. Peterson

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Mental health in schools is a growing concern for many school counselors, educators and communities. School counselors are in key roles in the school setting to support students with mental health concerns. This research was done to gain a deeper understanding of the experiences, beliefs, and attitudes of school counselors supporting students with mental health diagnoses. This hermeneutic phenomenology research used n=4 participants school counselors and each has worked in their field for over 6 years. Additionally, each participant worked in the same school building for a minimum of 3 years or more. Semi structured interviews were used to collect …

Intelligence Mindsets, Psychological Needs Satisfaction, And Academic Achievement Among Dominican Secondary School Students, Kethlyn Precelia Africa

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

There is an ongoing need for educational psychologists, researchers, policymakers, educators, and parents to continue to identify and understand the academic and nonacademic factors that influence academic achievement. Recent studies have documented the steady decline in the academic performances of students from Grades 7 to 9. The purpose of this study was to examine the statistical relationship between basic psychological needs satisfaction in relationship with caregivers, mindsets of intelligence, and academic achievement among secondary school students in the Commonwealth of Dominica. This study was grounded in the self-determination theory and mindsets of intelligence theory. A non-experimental correlational design using survey …

Transgender An At-Risk Population During And Following Emergencies And Disasters, Joshua Aaron Fontanez

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The experiences and needs of transgendered individuals immediately following a natural or human-caused disaster are largely ignored in practice and absent from previous academic literature. Using Schneider and Ingram's conceptualization of the social construction of target populations as a theoretical framework, the purpose of this study was to investigate the experiences and perspectives of transgendered people who sought shelter in the aftermath of a natural disaster in 2018. Data were collected through interviews with 12 displaced, transgendered individuals to explore their experiences while staying at shelters in 2018. Interview data were transcribed, inductively coded, and then a thematic analysis procedure …

Accomplished Education Leaders' Perspectives On Competition, Capacity, Trust, And Quality, Robert Lee Williams

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

From 2017 to 2019, the primary strategy to improve public schools in the U.S. was increasing competition through the expansion of charter schools and the promotion of vouchers to send public school students to private schools. The problem this presented was that key education leaders had not provided adequate input and feedback into this strategy. The purpose of this qualitative study was to gather the perspectives of accomplished education leaders on how Tiebout's theory of competition and the concept of the Ontario K-12 School Effectiveness Framework impacted quality, trust, and capacity. Data were collected using semistructured interviews with a purposeful …

High School Students' Perceptions Of Safety Concerns Predicts School Avoidance, Ann Marie Howard

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

School violence is a growing concern and an impending danger for American youth. Students' perceptions of violent school incidents may lead to fear and this fear may lead to school avoidance. Although researchers have found that teenage pregnancy and working to support family are two of the main reasons that students stay home from school, there has been no research conducted on whether students' perceptions of safety concerns, solely focusing on the presence of guns, gangs, student bullying, and fear of victimization, predict their decision to stay home from school. Therefore, based on social disorganization and resilience theories, the purpose …