Education Commons^™

A Case Study Regarding Induction Supports And Activities And Their Impact On Successful Teacher Retention, Alicia Ponds

Doctorate in Education

At the end of every school year, new teachers either stay or leave public classrooms. Multiple challenges drive these new teacher choices. State, district, and local administrators struggle to fill teacher vacancies. New teacher departures challenge schools with the maintenance of an attractive work environment and provision of quality student education. This case study shares how five successful Minnesota educators apply extrinsic activities and intrinsic supports to not only meet these challenges, but effectively respond to the 2019-2020 onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Through research interviews, this qualitative study analyzes intrinsic supports and extrinsic activities in relation to positive teaching …

The Alignment Of Student Support Services In Minnesota Pre-K-12 Public Schools, Jacqueline Trzynka

Doctorate in Education

A significant amount of literature exists on student achievement, social emotional learning, student mental health, and related student developmental needs. There are recommendations and research about best practices and research around successful programs schools can utilize to address and support student needs. However, the author found in her research that there is very little, if any, research about how school districts organize and implement comprehensive systems to support these needs and even less about why they should. The research questions explore student support services structures, policies, processes and roles as they relate to supporting equitable student outcomes. The qualitative study …

Exploring Teacher-Parent Communication: A Qualitative Analysis Of Secondary Early Career Educators' Experiences, Kama J. Konda-Varilek

Doctorate in Education

Teacher-parent communication (TPC) is considered a professional responsibility for all teachers, yet it is most often associated with teachers of elementary-aged students; comparatively less is known about how secondary teachers communicate with parents or how they learn to do so. The qualitative study conducted in May 2020 used semi-structured interviews to examine how South Dakota secondary early career educators (ECEs) learned to communicate with parents and their experiences with TPC. The research questions focused on the definition of effective TPC, experiences from teacher preparation programs (TPPs) with TPC, experiences from in-service years and TPC, recommendations for preparing secondary ECEs for …

Teacher Of Color Retention: Stories Of Staying From Teachers Of Color In A Suburban School District, Andrew Beard

Doctorate in Education

A teaching force which is representative of the student population is critical to creating equitable learning opportunities in the increasingly diverse United States. Both students of color and White students must see themselves represented in their teachers. Additionally, it is important for all students to see people of color as educators as well as in positions of power. Unfortunately, the proportion of teachers of color currently in the field of education does not come close to the proportion of students of color in public schools in the United States.

While there are many aspects which add to the problem of …

Student Perceptions Of Mobile Phones As A Potential Academic Tool, Tyler Brackey

Doctorate in Education

Mobile phones offer many features and functions that could potentially enhance and expand student learning. However, practitioners and scholars have identified several concerning issues commonly associated with extensive student mobile phone use. Those who engage in discussions of the potential role for mobile phones in the learning process face a difficult task in deciding whether the advantages of mobile phone use for students in schools outweigh the disadvantages.

This paper aims to contribute to that discussion by offering the perspectives of 11th and 12th grade students in a rural Minnesota community. This study featured a mixed methods research design. In …

The Language Outcomes Of Hmong Dual-Language Immersion Program, Chao Vang

Doctorate in Education

The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of a K-12 Hmong dual-language immersion program on kindergarten through fifth-grade Hmong students’ academic performance in the category of reading Hmong and English. Moreover, the parents of those students were investigated concerning specific factors they used in choosing a dual-language immersion program for their child. Hmong bilingual students have different perspectives about their cultural identities, retaining the Hmong culture, and learning English when the Hmong language was used as the instructional language. It was also imperative to determine the most prevalent factor that parents consider when selecting a program with …

K-12 Latina Immigrant Leaders’ Experiences Within Minnesota, Gabriela Theis

Doctorate in Education

The purpose of this qualitative study, employing a case study design, from a population of K-12 leaders located in an urban area of the state of Minnesota, was to explore the phenomenon of Latina immigrants, all who were non-native English speakers, in K-12 leadership positions. Latina immigrants have not achieved proportionate representation in K-12 leadership positions in school systems in Minnesota which might be losing the opportunity to add the Hispanic leadership perspective to solve critical educational issues in the 21st-century educational system. Latinas, both immigrants and non-immigrants, are not well represented when compared with other racial groups. The following …

Feeling Like The Only: The Experiences Of Black Parents Navigating The K-12 Educational System, Logan Michael Schultz

Doctorate in Education

As researchers and educators focus on ameliorating racialized disparities in education, the research and media focus has often been on such details as test scores, graduation rates, and exclusive of parental voice (Golden, Koumpilova, & Webster, 2019). Some studies, for example, focus on quantifying the so-called “achievement gap” while other studies use suspension statistics to describe the schooling experience through numbers, instead of words (Maynard & Weinstein, 2019). In contrast, this dissertation focuses on learning from a perspective on which there has been historically less research focus: that of the experiences and perspectives of Black parents navigating the education system, …