Digital Commons Network^™

Elementary School Teachers’ Perceptions Of Digital Technology Integration Into Instructional Curriculum, Shamma Almaazmi

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Digital technology is used in elementary classrooms; however, there is a gap in practice regarding elementary school teachers’ perceptions of integration of digital technology into the instructional curriculum in the study district. The problem that was addressed through this study was elementary school teachers are reporting challenges with the integration of technology into the instructional curriculum. The purpose of this basic qualitative study was to explore elementary school teachers’ perceptions regarding the integration of digital technology into the instructional curriculum. The analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation (ADDIE model) and Hallinger and Murphy’s instructional leadership model, involving evaluation, supervision, and …

Perceptions Of Leadership Effectiveness: An Exploratory Case Study Of Three Cameroonian School Principals, Prudence Avwontom Kono

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

This study explored the school principal selection process in Cameroon where the political appointment of school principals with no plan for formal training was practiced. The purpose of this exploratory multiple case study was to explore and describe school principal perceptions of leader behaviors in urban Cameroon schools. Goldring’s learner-centered leadership approach was the conceptual framework that guided this study. Research questions were focused on school principals’ perceptions of behaviors, standards, and cultures that they believed are critical to effective leadership in urban Cameroon schools. A multiple case study design was used to capture insights and perceptions of three purposely …

Administrators’ Perceptions Of Their Roles And Challenges In Building A Positive School Culture In Title I Schools, Yvonne Terry Browder

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Elementary school principals in this study struggled to implement and maintain a positive school culture. School culture plays an essential role in schools, and school principals play a significant part in developing that culture. Positive school culture is vital in all schools, especially in high-poverty and low-performing Title I schools. This basic qualitative study involved understanding school principals' challenges in developing and maintaining a positive school culture in high-poverty and low-performing Title I schools. The transformational leadership theory was the framework for this study. Research questions were developed to understand what elementary principals of high-poverty and low-performing Title I schools …

Administrators’ And Teachers’ Perceptions Of Administrators’ Instructional Leadership In The Inclusive Classroom, Tenesia Crook

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The number of students with disabilities educated in the general education classroom has increased over time. As a result, administrators in inclusive settings have more expectations and responsibilities as an instructional leader. Therefore, the research problem addressed is that administrators are struggling to provide instructional leadership for teachers in the inclusive classroom. The purpose of this basic qualitative study was to explore administrators’ and teachers’ experiences and perceptions regarding administrators’ instructional leadership for teachers in the inclusive classroom. The conceptual framework was based on Waters’ theory of balanced leadership. There were two research questions that guided this study. The first …

Differences Between Nurse-Led Intervention Topics, Longevity, Changed Practices, And Sustainability Planning, Robin Anselm

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Though health care providers use evidence-based interventions (EBIs), a knowledge gap exists regarding lasting change associated with doctorate-prepared nurse interventions and sustainability planning. This quantitative cross-sectional descriptive design guided by the five pillars of the United Nations sustainable development goals (SDGs) was used to examine the differences between doctorate-prepared nurses’ sustainable EBI topics, intervention longevity, changed clinical practices, and sustainability planning. The dynamic sustainability framework, the adult learning theory, and the social learning theory framed this study. The design included a survey of 1,365 nurse anesthesiologists using a questionnaire composed of the Program Sustainability Assessment Tool (PSAT) version 2 and …

University Interdisciplinary Linked Block Schedules And Developmental Student Success, Linda S. Reeves-Wymer

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Developmental education is the starting point for many 1st-year college students, especially from underrepresented, low-income, and first-generation populations. One such 1st-year program linked block-scheduled academic skill-development courses with a required interdisciplinary general education science course where instruction was provided simultaneously in a lecture format to college-ready nondevelopmental students and developmental students in three skill-development courses: reading, writing, and combined reading/writing. Although this program had existed for over 20 years, the effectiveness of the program, meaning whether the linked skill-development courses were associated with academic success, had not been assessed. Guided by Tinto’s integration theory, a causal comparative design with the …

Principals’ Perceptions Of Their Role In Novice Teacher Retention In Title 1 Schools, Kassia Sutton

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Current research suggests that retaining novice teachers, teachers with less than 5 years of teaching experience, in Title 1 elementary schools in the Southeastern United States is a problem for principals. Prior research on Title 1 elementary principal’s perceptions of their role in retaining novice teachers is limited. The purpose of this basic qualitative study was to examine six Title 1 elementary school principals’ perceptions of their role in retaining novice teachers in the Southeastern United States. The conceptual framework for this study was the job demands-resources theory, which defined working conditions through job demands and job resources. Purposeful random …

First-Generation College Graduates’ Perceptions Of Participating In Required Academic Advising Sessions For Degree Completion, Frances Paige Fowler

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Many first-generation students enter college underprepared, leading them to face challenges that include failure to persist to degree completion. Empirical literature informs how academic advising programs help students persist to degree completion; however, a literature gap exists related to how regularly required academic advising programs influence students to persist to degree completion. This basic qualitative study provides insight into the perceptions of first-generation college graduates regarding how their regularly required academic advising sessions helped them to persist to degree completion. The conceptual framework is Tinto’s theory of student retention, which addresses students’ academic and social integration. Eight first-generation college graduates …

Competencies Of Ombuds In Higher Education, Alicia Booker

Department of Conflict Resolution Studies Theses and Dissertations

This study aimed to deepen the understanding of ombuds (i.e., ombudsman, ombudsperson) who practice in higher education settings by exploring what ombuds consider the critical competencies to fulfill a variety of professional functions, how ombuds acquired those competencies, and how ombuds are assessed and self-assess. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to make an empirically researched recommendation for an ombuds in higher education competency model. The researcher gathered data from 23 ombuds in the United States working in institutions of higher education. The researcher analyzed the data gathered from semi-structured interviews using descriptive coding in the first coding …

Making The Invisible Visible: A Case Analysis On Institutional Workload And Rewards For Women Faculty, Andrea Carlile

Dissertations and Theses

Women make up the majority of degree earners and a majority of those teaching at higher education institutions. Yet, women are not advancing to the highest ranks. How female faculty receive credit for the work that they do make account for the discrepancy in women advancing to the highest ranks. This single institution convergent mixed methods case study explored institutional practices and policies as it related to workload satisfaction and rewards for female faculty. Following the framework from the Faculty Workload and Rewards, FWRP, project the case analysis leveraged survey instrumentation from the project and used constructs of equity-minded faculty …

Empowering The Nagi (Spirit): A Phenomenological Asset-Based Study Of The Success Stories And Lived Experiences Of Native American College Graduates, Kaylynn Marie Two Bulls

Dissertations and Theses

Helping Native American college students find their purpose and develop their holistic identity will help them be successful in college and in their professional careers. In this study the structural framework of the interview questions are based on Chickering and Reisser’s (1993) student identity development theory which includes seven vectors. Along with Chickering’s student development theory, the Woope Sakowin, seven laws were incorporated into this study. The seven laws align with Chickering’s seven vectors to develop a holistic identity. An interesting component of Chickering’s seven vectors is they do not occur in a step-by-step manner, but rather are seen as …

Identifying Barriers To The Longevity Of Athletic Coaching: A Case Study Of A National Association Of Intercollegiate Athletic Conference, Ross Douma

Dissertations and Theses

Significant research regarding longevity existed for many professions. However, very little research was conducted on longevity for small college athletic coaches. This case study sought to identify barriers that affected athletic coaches who served at small colleges in the Great Plains Athletic Conference (GPAC). Participants in this study were current head athletic coaches in the GPAC with at least 15 years of experience. The research concluded that each of the participants in the study was a transformational leader who desired to impact and influence young people beyond their sport. This study of eight athletic coaches revealed themes pertinent to coaching …

Micro Credentialing For Teachers: A Case Study In Personalized Professional Development, Brad John Berens

Dissertations and Theses

Professional development for teachers must evolve to provide a personalized approach to better meet the needs of the individual. Micro-credentialing is one way to provide teachers with personalized professional development. This case study explores the implementation of a micro-credentialing course in one school district. The district selected a company that provides micro-credential courses nationwide. The theoretical framework for the study is Andragogy, the theory of adult learning (Knowles, 1984). The objective of the study is to determine to what extent micro-credentialing meets the needs of teachers, and to what extent it is effective professional development. Data for this qualitative study …

Information Technology Security Concerns For University Workforce And Supporting Infrastructure During A Pandemic, Garrett Stevens

Dissertations and Theses

Faculty and staff working from home during the COVID pandemic were presented with new challenges in adapting to emergency remote teaching, as well as new and expanded cyber security threats. Changes to course delivery, remote access from public locations, and the potential of faculty and staff storing confidential educational records on university-issued devices, and potentially personally owned devices, made faculty and staff prime targets of malicious attackers. Information technology departments were challenged to support and secure the remote workforce from new cyber threats to protect their faculty, staff, and students from cyber-attacks. The focus of this study was to identify …

Late For Class But Still On The Bus: Women's Persistence At A Community College, Mellisa Flanigan

Dissertations and Theses

The importance of post-traditional women’s persistence in earning credentials at community college cannot be understated. The literature addressed the issue of non-completion within the community college; however, it did not address why or how some students completed, particularly, post-traditional women. Gaps existed in the literature, as it primarily concerned why students did not finish. Therefore, the research conducted for this study was critical for higher education to understand why some post-traditional complete credentials.. Throughout this phenomenological study, five themes emerged: resiliency, respect, economics, support, and integration, as well as subthemes as the women shared stories of how they persisted in …

How Honors Advising Is Different, Philip L. Frana

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Section headings:

How honors advising is different

Institutional motivations

Philosophical approaches

Actual practices

How honors students are different

How honors goals and outcomes are different

Last paragraph:

We must guide students into experiences that enable them to develop their potentialities. The emphasis must be on the new and changing nature of life as lived in the twenty-first century. Advisors are fellow travelers with students in the pursuit of lifelong learning and communities of interest, practice, and commitment. Together we struggle to find meaningful, relevant work; to achieve autonomy and intellectual independence; and to develop empathy, humility, and gratitude. Advising as …

Advising Honors Students: Motivational Interviewing As A Tool For Identity Building And Development, Chelsea Mckeirnan

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Section headings:

Advising needs of the honors population

Motivational interviewing

The spirit of motivational interviewing

The four processes of motivational interviewing

Motivational interviewing within an honors advising model

Honors advising and the spirit of motivational interviewing

Honors advising and the four processes of motivational interviewing

Honors advising and the skills of motivational interviewing

Motivational interviewing resources

Conclusion

Arthur W. Chickering and Linda Reisser (1993) noted that “to be effective in educating the whole student, colleges must hire and reinforce staff members who understand what student development looks like and how to foster it” (p. 44). Advising an honors student requires …

Intellectual Humility, Honors, And Appreciative Advising: Exploring With Students That Changing Their Mind Does Not End The World, Alan Sells

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Section headings:

Honors and the foreclosure student

Major changing and intellectual humility

Intellectual humility and appreciative advising

Conclusion and final thoughts

Honors students who change majors often find themselves faced with an identity crisis. Our job as advisors is to support these students by guiding them through this difficult transition. It is easy to look at these students and to regard them as having all of their plans in order and to believe they do not need extra attention (Robinson, 1997). Nothing could be further from the truth. Honors students are, in many ways, like any other student, and they …

Honors Advising For Large Programs, Art L. Spisak, Holly B. Yoder

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

This study was conducted within the Honors Program at the University of Iowa, which is the flagship public research university of the State of Iowa. Its Carnegie classification is Doctoral University with Highest Research Activity (R1), and it is a member of the Association of American Universities. Its current student population is about 21,600 undergraduates and about 9,600 graduate and professional students.

This study was conducted within the Honors Program at the University of Iowa, which is the flagship public research university of the State of Iowa. Its Carnegie classification is Doctoral University with Highest Research Activity (R1), and it …

Advising To Support Meaning Making And Purpose: Helping Honors Students Focus On Priorities And Evaluate Opportunities Through Intention Setting, Kristy Spear, Ron Cahlon, Katherine Mccall

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Section headings:

What is an intention?

The value of setting an intention

Setting an intention with honors students

Ron’s intention

Katherine’s intention

Final thoughts

The experiences provided are just two examples of how, with the guidance of an advisor, honors students might formulate and incorporate an intention into their lives. This simple yet profound technique is a useful addition to the advisor’s toolbox; it presents the opportunity to help students examine their values, who they are, who they want to be, and how they want to live their lives. This critical reflection can result in a clear focus and systematic …

Exploring The Relationship Between Mindset, Mental Health, And Academic Performance Among College Students, Eileen Makak, Douglas A. Medina, Harmony D. Osei

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

In recent years students’ mental health has been one of the most discussed topics at colleges and universities throughout the United States. Brad Wolverton (2019) notes in The New York Times that students are facing anxiety and depression at alarming rates. More than 60% are suffering from “overwhelming anxiety” and over 40% feel “so depressed they [have] difficulty functioning” (Wolverton, 2019). In this chapter, we explore how mental health impacts one’s academic performance and mindset, and vice versa. It is important to acknowledge that the first drafts of this chapter were written prior to 2020, and therefore it does not …

Oxbridge And Core Curricula: Continuing Conversations With The Past In Honors Colleges, Christopher A. Snyder

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

The American honors college, as it exists in the twenty-first century, is idiosyncratic and an amalgam of centuries old European traditions in higher education with pedagogies and practices that have emerged only since about the 1980s and are particular to America. These disparate influences coexist—sometimes uneasily—in American universities, and yet American honors colleges have continued to have conversations with the past in order to seek wisdom for dealing with contemporary issues such as the democratization of higher education, social justice and diversity, the use of instructional technology, and the controversy between vocational training and liberal learning. Because, unlike departments, an …

Should We Start An Honors College? An Administrative Playbook For Working Through The Decision, Richard Badenhausen

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

The last two decades have seen significant growth in honors colleges, though the transition to that model takes many forms. This essay lays out crucial questions for stakeholders considering such a move. While highlighting material advantages that may accrue from the transition, the chapter also notes reasons for not starting an honors college; and it explores some of the new challenges that recently founded honors colleges will face. Above all, the essay frowns upon the so-called “switch out the sign over the door” approach to institutional change in favor of deliberate, thoughtful, and strategic processes that involve many stakeholders and …

Characteristics Of The 21st-Century Honors College, Andrew J. Cognard-Black, Patricia Joanne Smith

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Today, honors education can be found in almost every corner of U.S. higher education. Since the turn of the twenty-first century, there also has been significant growth in the number of honors colleges in the United States, but there have been limited data to describe with any precision how fast that growth has been. Sederberg (2005, 2008) was among the first to document the emergence and growth of a distinct honors college organizational form and to identify unique characteristics that distinguish honors colleges from honors programs, but further growth within the organizational field of higher education necessitates an updated profile …

The Role Of The Honors College Dean In The Future Of Honors Education, Peter Parolin, Timothy J. Nichols, Donal C. Skinner, Rebecca C. Bott-Knutson

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

In this chapter, four honors deans reflect on the unique aspects of the honors dean's role. The authors argue that by being responsive to the challenges, opportunities, and responsibilities they face daily, honors deans can enable honors to deliver on its promises to students and to serve the whole university community. Attentive to changing dynamics in honors education nationwide, the authors address how deans must confront myths about honors that bear the legacy of past realities while actively tending to justice in the admissions process, to recruiting and serving diverse populations, and to supporting an honors environment that addresses the …

“It Is What You Make It”: Opportunities Arising From The Unique Roles Of Honors College Deans, Jeff Chamberlain, Thomas M. Spencer, Jefford Vahlbusch

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Grounded in the shared experiences of three current honors college deans and in comprehensive interviews with another two dozen honors deans at diverse institutions of higher education across the U.S., this chapter argues that the uniqueness of honors college dean roles and work can—and indeed should—lead to innovative and transformative change and improved student experiences, outcomes, and success, not only in honors colleges and within the scope of honors education, but across entire institutions. Ultimately the chapter contends that, while there can be manifold frustrations in running an honors college, the position of honors dean is one of the best …

Honors Colleges As Levers Of Educational Equity, Teagan Decker, Joshua Kalin Busman, Michele Fazio

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

While higher education is widely imagined as a tool for social mobility, the realities of enrollment, retention, and professional trajectories betray the conservative mechanisms through which higher education too often reproduces the status quo of inequality. Honors colleges can and should strive to act as levers of equity in this scenario of entrenchment, but the nature of this project varies depending on the institution’s own class position vis-à-vis its students. Elite, highly selective institutions may advocate for enrollment strategies that target student populations that do not typically attend those institutions, but other institutions likely already enroll such students in large …

Fostering Student Leadership In Honors Colleges, Jill Nelson Granger

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

The architecture of student leadership in honors colleges is a formative decision that affects students’ experience and development. Through a broad view of student leadership structures across U.S. honors colleges, four common modalities are identified and described: governance, programming, mentorship, and ambassadorship. Relevant models, variations, combinations, and specializations are provided. Student leadership, as a hallmark of honors education, is one way in which honors colleges distinguish themselves both within and outside the university. As intentional learning communities, honors colleges incorporate student leadership into the nature of honors education, as part of mission, and as a defining outcome of the honors …

Promoting The Inclusion Of Lgbtq+ Students: The Role Of The Honors College In Faith-Based Colleges And Universities, Paul E. Prill

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

An estimated 11 percent of students at faith-based colleges and universities, identify as sexual-minority (LGBTQ+). Many of those students come from religious backgrounds and attend universities where they have heard and continue to hear that their sexual identity is in fundamental tension with their faith identity, leading to problems with mental health and, at times, physical health. On many such campuses, sexual minority students have become more vocal, asking that the university acknowledge their presence and provide services to help them succeed and thrive in college. Some of the schools have moved in that direction. Others continue to balk at …

Who Belongs In Honors? Culturally Responsive Advising And Transformative Diversity, Elizabeth Raisanen

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Despite a rich body of scholarship that engages with university honors advising, advising to support diversity in higher education, and the overall need for better attention to diversity within honors, the literature has not fully explored the vital role that advising plays in supporting diversity and fostering belonging within honors programs and colleges. This essay brings together the too-often disparate threads of advising, honors, and diversity to advocate for a practice of culturally responsive advising within the honors environment in order to pursue truly transformative diversity. Holistic academic advising and related programming must play a central role in any honors …