Digital Commons Network^™

When “No Referral” Does Not Mean “No Need”: Rethinking Mtss, Benchmark Data, And Early Literacy Support, Tevia Q. Strand

Essays in Education

This article examines what one school’s literacy data suggest about MTSS referral practices, benchmark interpretation, and early literacy support. Drawing on a local analysis of current third-grade students, the article reflects on a significant difference in Grade 3 reading outcomes between students who were referred to MTSS and those who were not referred for Tier 2 or Tier 3 support. At the same time, both groups demonstrated average reading performance below the Grade 3 40th-percentile benchmark, suggesting that literacy concerns extended beyond the students formally identified for intervention. Rather than presenting the study as a traditional research report, this essay …

Hope In The Shadow Of Impasse: Analytic Logic Vs The Rhetoric Of Optimism In Ian Shapiro’S After The Fall, Albena Azmanova

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

No abstract provided.

“Don’T Tell Me To Keep Doing What I’M Doing, When I’M Risking My Life Trying To Get You To Do Your Job”: Thoughts On The Politics Of Distance, Alice Chapman

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

No abstract provided.

From Monopoly To Orchestration: The Hilltop And Farm Youth And The Changing Organization Of State Coercion - The Israeli Case, Idan Yaron

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

Drawing on more than a decade of ethnographic fieldwork – as a social anthropologist, studying the Far Right in Israel, on the ground, and through intimate and prolonged relationships with opinion leaders and rank-and-file activists – this essay examines the Hilltop and Farm Youth in the West Bank to reconsider Charles Tilly's influential account of state formation and the organization of coercion. It asks a simple but troubling question: why would a powerful modern state, fully capable of suppressing autonomous violent actors, sometimes allow them to persist? I argue that Tilly's theory should be confirmed, adapted, and amended. His fundamental …

Uneven And Combined Fascism: A Postapocalyptic Perspective, Daniel Loick

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

This essay develops the concept of “uneven and combined fascism” as an alternative to dominant liberal approaches that understand fascism primarily as a future rupture or return of the European past. Analogizing the crisis of democracy with environmental crisis, it argues that fascism, like ecological catastrophe, should be understood as an ongoing and differentially distributed condition: already present for some while remaining latent or emergent for others. The essay develops this claim by consulting approaches of "postapocalyptic environmentalism" as well as thinkers and activists from the Black Radical Tradition, particularly the analyses of Aimé Césaire and the Civil Rights Congress’s …

The Current - Volume 37 Issue 02, Nova Southeastern University

Student Newspapers

No abstract provided.

Starting To Feel Like A Clinician: Graduate Student Experiences Of Communication Partner Training For People With Aphasia, Katie A. Strong, Esther S. Kim, Aura Kagan, Nina Simmons-Mackie

Teaching and Learning in Communication Sciences & Disorders

Communication partner training (CPT) is among the most evidence-based interventions for supporting people with aphasia, yet many speech-language pathologists report not implementing it in practice, and graduate students frequently report low confidence communicating with people with aphasia prior to targeted training. This qualitative descriptive study examined graduate students' experiences learning CPT through a course-embedded, multi-modal experiential approach with structured reflection. Written reflections from 79 first-year graduate students across two university programs served as the data source. Reflections were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis. Three themes emerged: Learning by Design, reflecting students' metacognitive awareness of the pedagogical elements most meaningful …

When Students Use Ai Before They Learn To Think Clinically: Cognitive Offloading In Communication Sciences And Disorders Education, Salim Alani

Teaching and Learning in Communication Sciences & Disorders

Generative artificial intelligence is becoming part of how students study, write, summarize, and prepare for coursework in communication sciences and disorders (CSD). Much of the current discussion in higher education has focused on plagiarism, academic integrity, and responsible technology use. Those concerns matter, but they do not fully address what may be a larger educational issue in professional preparation programs. Students can now generate polished explanations, study materials, treatment rationales, and clinical summaries quickly, sometimes before independently developing the reasoning skills those tasks are intended to build. This paper examines cognitive offloading in CSD education, defined here as the shifting …

Cultivating A Culture Of Belonging: Elementary Principal Practices, Sara Macneil

Educational Studies Dissertations

A sense of belonging is a fundamental human need that influences students’ experiences, relationships, and engagement within their school context. It is shaped through intentional actions and everyday experiences. Understanding how school leaders intentionally shape conditions that foster students’ sense of belonging requires further exploration. This study focused on an elementary school principal and sought to identify specific leadership practices that strengthen the sense of belonging for elementary students. Using a mixed-methods approach, data were collected through a sense of belonging survey and small group interviews. The survey data provided a measure of students’ sense of belonging and were used …

The Implementation Of Sel-Based Interactive E-Modules To Enhance Mental Health Literacy, Muhammad Arif Budiman Sucipto, Mulyani Mulyani

Jurnal Kajian Bimbingan dan Konseling

The mental health crisis among Generation Alpha students is concerning, marked by stagnating life purpose and digital academic pressure. This study aims to examine the effectiveness of an interactive SEL-based E-Module in enhancing students' mental health literacy, offering an innovative solution responsive to the digital era. Employing a Classroom Action Research design integrated with ADDIE. Thirty-two tenth-grade students with low initial literacy scores (mean pre-test = 42.3) participated through purposive sampling. The two-cycle intervention utilized a digital module featuring Private Mode (encrypted emotional journal) and Emergency Button (direct link to counselors). Data were collected through literacy scales, observations, interviews, and …

Creating Collaborative Strategies: The Influence Of Principal Leadership In Teacher Retention In Rural Secondary Schools In Dhalai District, Tripura, Northeast India., Valerian Castelino

Educational Studies Dissertations

Teacher retention has become a growing concern across India and the world. In rural, tribal, and multilingual contexts, the challenge is even greater. This research, Creating Collaborative Strategies: The Influence of Principal Leadership in Teacher Retention in Rural Secondary Schools in Dhalai District, Tripura, Northeast India, explores how school leadership influences teachers’ decisions to remain in rural schools. The research focuses on Tripura, a small state in Northeast India known for its tribal diversity, geographic isolation, multilingual classrooms, and limited educational resources. The research is informed by a multi-theoretical framework: Herzberg’s Two-Factor Theory, Non-Economic Capital Theory, and Transformational Leadership …

The Perceptions Of K-5 Teachers Regarding Their Preparedness To Implement Trauma-Informed Practices, Matthew P. Londo

Educational Studies Dissertations

Childhood trauma significantly impairs students' cognitive, emotional, and behavioral functioning, yet teachers frequently lack the preparation necessary to address its effects in classroom settings. This mixed-methods study examined the perceptions of K-5 teachers regarding their preparedness to implement trauma-informed practices (TIPs) at a public elementary school in a mid-sized urban district in central Massachusetts. A convergent mixed-methods design was employed to gather data from 20 selected K-5 educators via a structured Likert-scale questionnaire and semi-structured Zoom interviews. Quantitative data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, while qualitative data were analyzed through inductive thematic analysis. Findings revealed that participants employed four primary …

Effects Of A Filial Therapy Program On Gifted Children’S Self-Regulation And Academic Perseverance, Helin Yarcel, Fuat Tanhan

Journal of Educational Research and Practice

The aim of this study was to examine the effects of a 10-session filial therapy program delivered to mothers on gifted children’s self-regulation and academic perseverance. Participants were 45 gifted students attending a Science and Art Center (Bilim ve Sanat Merkezi [BİLSEM]) in Eastern Türkiye and their mothers, who were randomly assigned to an experimental, placebo, or control group. Self-regulation and academic perseverance scales were administered as pre-test, post-test, and 6-week follow-up measures. Given the sample size, data were analyzed with non-parametric tests, including the Kruskal–Wallis H, Friedman, Wilcoxon signed-rank, and Mann–Whitney U tests. Results showed improvements in self-regulation …

Eliciting Information About Teacher Applicants Using Open-Ended Questions, Joseph Aguilar-Bohorquez, Dan Goldhaber, Cyrus Grout, Elton Mykerezi, Prayash Pathak, Aaron Sojourner

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

Employers commonly use open-ended questions in hiring, but usually responses aren’t recorded, and knowledge about the usefulness of such responses is limited. This study investigates properties of written responses to open-ended questions collected over many years via an application tracking platform that school districts use to hire teachers. We develop a scalable process to discover topics within the corpus of responses to each question and then to classify each response with respect to the topics while preserving interpretability and transparency. It adapts a traditional qualitative topic modeling approach, Inductive Thematic Analysis, to best combine the strengths of researcher judgment and …

Interrupting The First Story: A Lonerganian Claim Audit For Visual Analytics, Ajaya K. Swain

San Jose - Lonergan Chair in Catholic Philosophy

Visualizations can create an impression of immediacy: a pattern appears, an explanation follows, and managerial action can seem warranted before the transitions among observation, interpretation, judgment, and decision have been examined. This conceptual and pedagogical paper develops a Lonerganian Claim Audit for visual analytics, a discipline-specific adaptation of Bernard Lonergan's account of experience, understanding, judgment, and decision. It conceptualizes visual inferential compression as diminished differentiation among these operations, such that confidence generated by a visible pattern transfers to an explanation, an evidential claim, and an action without the distinct warrant required at each transition. The Claim Audit interrupts that movement …

Mentorship As A Catalyst For Change Readiness: A Qualitative Study Of How Effective Mentoring Mitigates Burnout And Turnover During Organizational Transformation, Jeffery M. Camp

Journal of Online Mentoring

This qualitative study examined how effective mentorship mitigates burnout and attenuates turnover intention during organizational change, foregrounding the perspectives of experienced mentors. Drawing on Biggs’s presage–process–product (PPP) model, data were collected through semi-structured interviews (n = 12) and two focus group discussions (n = 6 each), engaging 18 unique mentors employed in organizations with 1,000 or more employees. Thematic analysis following Braun and Clarke’s six-phase protocol yielded four themes: (1) mentorship as strategic facilitation of organizational change; (2) mentorship as provision of emotional and psychological support; (3) empowering mentees through relationship-building; and (4) applying adaptive and reflective strategies. …

Analysis Of Needs For Web-Based Mobile Learning Development Based On Universal Design For Learning For Students With Special Needs, Murni Winarsih, Mayasari Manar, Rohmah Ageng Mursita, Mita Septiani

Jurnal Pendidikan: Teori, Penelitian, dan Pengembangan

Higher education institutions still have substantial challenges when it comes to accommodating students with special needs, especially those who are visually or aurally impaired. Access to learning resources is still an issue, as are the limitations of adaptive learning media and the dominance of more conventional verbal and visual methods of information transmission. Hence, not all pupils are given the same chances throughout the learning process. With its emphasis on providing a variety of representational, interactive, and expressive tools, Universal Design for Learning (UDL) aims to meet the requirements of students with a wide range of learning styles. In order …

Digital Mindset Efficacy For Human-Ai Career Readiness, Frank Lin, Conrad Shayo

Communications of the IIMA

This article develops digital mindset efficacy as a key capability for human-AI career readiness. It argues that success in AI-shaped workplaces requires not only technical tool use but also the confidence and capacity to learn with, evaluate, collaborate with, and responsibly govern digital and AI systems. Drawing on digital mindset, digital intelligence, AI proficiency, self-efficacy, and life-skills literature, the article proposes a theory-based model linking digital mindset efficacy to AI proficiency and life skills through mastery experience, vicarious learning, social persuasion, and affective regulation. It illustrates the model through a General Education course, Leadership for Global Challenges: Exploring the Digital …

Beyond Ai Literacy: Developing And Validating A Reflective Human–Ai Learning Scale In Higher Education, Alison Munsch Phd

Communications of the IIMA

Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) is transforming higher education, yet current AI literacy frameworks primarily assess what students know about AI and how they use it rather than how they think while learning with AI. This paper introduces Reflective Human–AI Learning (RHAL), a complementary construct that captures the quality of students' reflective cognition while collaborating with AI. Drawing upon AI literacy, metacognition, significant learning, critical thinking, and self-regulated learning, the study proposes a multidimensional instrument and outlines a rigorous psychometric validation process. The resulting scale is intended to complement—not replace—existing AI literacy measures by assessing reflective judgment, intentional inquiry, and ethical …

People Orientation And Thing Orientation In Business Majors: Implications For Assessing The Impacts Of Cross-Functional Business Program Curricula, Todd J. Hostager, David A. Christopher, Kristy J. Lauver, Christopher Knowles

International Journal for Business Education

Background/Introduction/Purpose:  Prior research documented significant differences in people orientation and thing orientation (PTO) based on type of major and sex.  This study examines a set of measures for helping business programs to assess whether they are producing graduates equipped to consider both people and things when making decisions, regardless of their major or sex.

Methods/Design:  Students in a strategic management capstone course spent a single 75-minute session responding to a brief new venture pitch by identifying what types of additional information they would need to decide whether to invest in the business.  Three Likert-scaled options gauged the extent to participant …

Teaching Communication And Teamwork Under Pressure: An Experiential Activity Using Keep Talking And Nobody Explodes, Bryan L. Rogers, Cody Logan Chullen, Brian Waterwall

International Journal for Business Education

Background/Introduction/Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to present an experiential classroom activity designed to help students develop communication and teamwork skills under conditions of time pressure and information asymmetry.

Methods/Design: This paper presents a teaching activity rather than an empirical study; no research design, sample, instruments, or analytic procedures are reported. The paper describes and contextualizes an experiential learning activity using the cooperative video game Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes. Drawing on research in experiential learning, cooperative learning, and simulation-based instruction, the paper outlines learning objectives, materials, implementation procedures, observer roles, and structured debriefing strategies suitable for undergraduate and …

Hospitality And Tourism Students’ Perceptions Of Well-Being, Belonging, And Engagement In Their Academic Endeavors And Extracurricular Activities, Cynthia S. Deale, Seung Hyun Lee

International Journal for Business Education

Background/Introduction/Purpose: This study examined hospitality and tourism college/university students’ views of their engagement, well-being, and sense of belonging in academic and extracurricular activities, based on 130 responses from students in the United States.

Methods: Descriptive analysis, analysis of variance, confirmatory factor analysis, and structural equation modeling were used to analyze the responses. Qualitative comments were also obtained.

Results:  Respondents felt positive overall about their engagement, and many participated in extracurricular activities. The relationships between class engagement and sense of belonging, and between campus engagement and sense of belonging were significant, and the sense of belonging significantly influenced student subjective …

Wmu Board Of Trustee Board Meeting, Thursday, September 10, 2026, Wmu Board Of Trustees

WMU Board of Trustees Meetings

Acceptance of the Agenda

Approval of the Minutes (June 25, 2026)

Remarks by the Chair of the Board

Remarks by the President

Updates by the Faculty Senate President

Updates by the Western Student Association President

Updates by the Graduate Student Association President

AFSCME Adopt-A-Highway Project and Food Drive

WMU Particle Accelerator Lab, Physics Department

Western Michigan University Employee Graduates

Public Comments Regarding Action Items

Action Items

American Association of University Professors (AAUP) Labor Agreement

Honorary Degree Recommendation for David Dombrowski

Consent Items

• Donation of Real Estate to the City of Kalamazoo
• Personnel Report
• Curriculum Proposals
• Annuity and Life Income Funds …

Reclaiming Instructional Leadership: Using Evidence-Based Tools And Conversations To Change Classroom Practice, Lyndsay Britt, Matthew Militello

Journal of Organizational & Educational Leadership

Instructional leadership is the most influential lever principals and supervisors have to improve teaching and learning, yet managerial demands often limit sustained classroom engagement. This qualitative participatory action research study explores how leaders can reclaim instructional leadership by embedding focused observation tools and instructional conversations into routine supervision without adding time burdens. 

Using Community Learning Exchange methodology, four teachers and a principal engaged in a 14-month community of practice at a rural Title I early college high school. Through three inquiry cycles, the study examined how evidence-based tools and data-informed dialogue shaped teaching and leadership practices.

Findings revealed two outcomes …

Becoming: Adult Learners In Graduate Education And The Pursuit Of A Meaningful Life, Tara Shollenberger

Journal of Organizational & Educational Leadership

Adult learners in graduate education represent a population defined by deliberate, purposeful choice. Unlike traditional-age students, these individuals advance within higher education while managing careers, families, and complex life responsibilities. This conceptual paper explores the espoused and enacted vision for a meaningful life held by adult learners in graduate education, with particular attention to doctoral students in professional education programs. Evidence is drawn from national enrollment and attrition data, relevant scholarship, and nearly two decades of direct practitioner observation. The paper argues that adult graduate learners are animated by a vision of becoming: a generational, relational, and deeply purposeful understanding …

Seeing The Line Move Up: Educator Perceptions Of Mastery Experiences As Drivers Of Student Engagement And Persistence In Rural Intervention Programs, Carter J. Baran

Journal of Organizational & Educational Leadership

This study examined how educators in a rural secondary school district describe the influence of mastery experiences on student engagement and persistence within academic intervention programs. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with 18 certified educators (six core content teachers, six elective teachers, and six administrators) and a subsequent focus group conducted in a single rural South Carolina school district, this qualitative analysis extends a larger dissertation study on teacher perceptions of dropout-prevention interventions. Using Bandura's (1986, 1997) social cognitive theory and Astin's (1984, 1999) theory of student involvement as a dual conceptual lens, findings indicate that educators consistently identified visible, incremental …

Teacher Mentoring As A National Imperative: A Multi-Paper Dissertation, Ramiro Pesina

Human Resource Development Theses and Dissertations

This multi-paper dissertation investigates teacher mentoring as a critical intervention in human resource development designed to address the complex challenges facing the teaching profession, including high attrition rates and the need for sustained professional support. The study is organized into three connected studies: an integrative literature review on technology enhanced mentoring, a longitudinal qualitative study that devises a comprehensive mentoring model covering cognitive, emotional, and behavioral aspects, and a phenomenological case study in which a formally structured mentoring program in a North Texas school district is analyzed in terms of execution and outcome. Critically important findings indicate that well-crafted mentoring …

More Than Just Blocks: Supporting Development Through Block Play In Early Childhood, Stephanie Szanter, Carrie L. Ota

Spark! Innovations in Early Childhood Education: A Research-to-Practice Journal for Educators

Block play is much more than a classroom center; it is a place where children explore ideas, solve problems, communicate, and work together in meaningful ways. This article examines how block play supports children’s social-emotional, cognitive, physical, and language development through hands-on experiences that feel natural and engaging. Using classroom examples and current research, the article highlights how block play changes over time, how teachers can thoughtfully support and extend children’s thinking, and how simple adjustments to materials and setup can deepen learning. Rather than requiring elaborate activities, strong block play environments grow from careful observation, responsiveness, and an understanding …

Diving Deeper Into Serve-And-Return Interactions: Joint Attention & Cognitive And Social Development In Infancy, Derrick Toups

Spark! Innovations in Early Childhood Education: A Research-to-Practice Journal for Educators

This article provides practical ways to support responsive and initiating joint attention in infancy which are fundamental to cognitive and social development.

Getting A Special Education: Parents, Lawyers, And The Politics Of Disability In Postwar Pennsylvania, Emma Gabriel

Swarthmore Undergraduate History Journal

This paper explores the relationship between white parent advocates in Pennsylvania and public interest lawyers, whose litigation efforts legitimized the construction of an implicitly white disabled class in the mid-twentieth century. This analysis sheds light on the ways in which school reform became a key element in the simultaneous construction and renegotiation of intellectual disability and race in the postwar era, and foregrounded the adoption of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) in 1975.