Education Commons^™

Exploring The Transformational Leadership Program That Enhances Students’ Academic Achievement At A Public High School In California In 2023–2024: An Instrumental Case Study, Raouf Fouad Srafen

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this qualitative, single instrumental case study was to explore the transformational leadership program that enhances students' academic achievement (grades 9–12) at a public high school, the Institute of Future Leaders (IFL), in California, in the academic year of 2023–2024. The theory guiding this study is transformational leadership theory because it is based on the relationship between the leader and follower, with a focus on inspiring and encouraging. This qualitative study allowed me to focus on a specific case to improve understanding and gain insights into the research topic. Purposeful sampling of people and site was conducted to …

Stoic Wisdom For The Contemplative Teacher: Prosochê And Praemeditatio Malorum As Alternative Approaches To Mindfulness, Anna Rumjahn

Journal of Contemplative and Holistic Education

In K-12 environments where teacher burnout and attrition are increasingly prevalent, where can educational professionals seek sustainable approaches to reduce exhaustion, emotional demands, and uncertainty? In this paper, I extend Christopher McCaw’s research on the direct and dynamic relationship between contemplative practices and who teachers are and are becoming. By examining the current debates around defining reflective and contemplative practitioners, I call for alternative definitions of mindfulness when considering teacher professional becoming and submit for consideration the perspectives of Greco-Roman philosophy which has hitherto been less explored apropos education. Using prosochê (attention) and the Stoic exercise of praemeditatio malorum to …

Evaluating The Self-Efficacy Of Novice Educators In Nursing And Allied Health Care Programs As It Pertains To Faculty Development, Amanda Doneski, Martin S. Rice

Internet Journal of Allied Health Sciences and Practice

Purpose: Career choices in nursing and allied health include but are not limited to nursing, radiologic technology, dental hygiene, respiratory therapy, and occupational therapy.¹The majority of health care professions require the practitioner to hold certain required credentials. These credentials are obtained upon successful graduation from an accredited curriculum, passing some sort of board exam, and applying for and obtaining a state license to practice in their designated area of expertise.² Advancement opportunities in management, sales, and education are attainable for many healthcare professionals.³ Individuals who transition from the role of a health care provider to educator …

Knowledge And Perceived Barriers About Hand Hygiene Among Interns In A Tertiary Care Teaching Hospital, Riddhi Soni, Pradeep Jadhav (Corresponding Author), Rekha Mane

Internet Journal of Allied Health Sciences and Practice

Purpose

Good hand hygiene is a significant factor in preventing hospital-acquired infections (HAI) and antibiotic resistance. The concepts of hand hygiene need to be evaluated among healthcare interns who are in the training stage.

Aim

To determine the knowledge of hand hygiene and associated barriers among dental, medical, and physiotherapy Interns.

Methods

A prospective, cross-sectional study was conducted among 150 healthcare interns (50 each from Dentistry, Medicine, and Physiotherapy) selected using a 4-block randomization method. Participants who did not provide consent, undergraduate students, postgraduate residents, and faculty members were excluded. Data were collected using a structured survey comprising two sections: …

Printing The Future: A Collaborative Approach To Integrating 3d Printing In Physical Therapy Education, Amanda L. Thomas, Teresa Munecas, Andreina Lander, Amber Sivalls, Abigail Tong, Tyler Turner, Lauren Butler

Internet Journal of Allied Health Sciences and Practice

Integrating 3D printing into healthcare education presents an opportunity to enhance learning, foster innovation, and address challenges in patient care. This study explores a collaborative approach to incorporating 3D printing into a Doctor of Physical Therapy (DPT) program through interdisciplinary partnerships with biomedical engineering, architecture, and immersive studio technologies. The study's primary aim was to provide DPT students with hands-on experience in designing and creating 3D printed adaptive devices for individuals with unique healthcare needs while encouraging cross-disciplinary collaboration to enhance innovation and problem-solving. The initiative was structured around a series of pilot projects embedded in the DPT curriculum, focusing …

Introduction: Facing The Challenge Of Ai With Feminist Pedagogy, Margaret A. Murray

Feminist Pedagogy

This special issue truly faces the challenge of AI with feminist pedagogy. The introduction briefly summarizes the five critical commentaries, five original teaching activities and three book reviews that make up this issue on AI.

Book Review Of Baron, Naomi S.. Who Wrote This?: How Ai And The Lure Of Efficiency Threaten Human Writing, Vanessa G. Osborne

Feminist Pedagogy

No abstract provided.

Prompting For Refusal: Teaching Against And Without Ai, Kate Maddalena, Aline Zara, Dan Guadagnolo

Feminist Pedagogy

This Original Teaching Activity describes two modules that enact feminist pedagogy to teach AI refusal, a set of lectures and associated activities which we developed for first-year courses during the 2023-2024 academic year. These activities invite students to refuse AI while also understanding its function and deployment. They explore the consolidations of power which make generative AI technologies both possible and harmful. Instead of presuming the inevitability of AI to replace working and learning or change the world, these activities offer students a materialist framework to refuse the hype, grounding their understanding of generative AI in its techno-political origins and …

Viewing Ai From The Bottom: A Feminist Political Economic Critique Of A Technocentric Pedagogy, Micky Lee, Benita Dederichs

Feminist Pedagogy

A feminist political economic (FPE) perspective has a more profound concern than cheating: it argues that AI is not a neutral tool. AI constitutes social relations that prevent certain populations from fully participating in political, economic, and civic lives while obscuring unbalanced power relations produced and reproduced in a capitalistic society. This commentary first points out how AI may reinforce gender- and race-biased job stratification in the high-tech industry; and how AI disempowers women of color by locking them in a passive position. It offers some advice of what feminist educators could do to empower students.

Towards An Ecofeminist Pedagogy: The Environmental Ethics Of Ai, Jessica K. Crowell

Feminist Pedagogy

Previous scholarship has outlined some of the ethical considerations regarding the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the classroom and beyond, such as the potentials for plagiarism, information bias, disinformation, or even violations of user privacy. Though research suggests that machine learning is a major and ever-increasing contributor to carbon emissions, there has been little discussion of how we teach about the ethics of AI from an environmental perspective. Therefore, this critical commentary first outlines how an ecofeminist pedagogy can help students consider the environmental and ecological effects of new technologies, including AI. At its core, an ecofeminist pedagogy argues …

Solidaristic Perspectives On School Choice And Public Partitioning. A Review Of Unsettling Choice: Race, Rights, And The Partitioning Of Public Education, Tatiana Geron

Democracy & Education

This review of Ujju Aggarwal’s Unsettling Choice: Race, Rights, and the Partitioning of Public Education (University of Minnesota Press, 2024) overviews the author’s focus on the critical geography, history, and ethnography of school choice in the Manhattan Valley neighborhood of New York City. The review focuses on the author’s solidaristic approach and perspective as a community organizer in the neighborhood, as well as the book’s conception of “partitioned publics” as a mechanism for racial and class segregation in post-Recession school politics.

Rethinking Civic Education. A Review Of Education For Liberal Democracy: Using Classroom Discussion To Build Knowledge And Voice, Jordan Garner, Colton Morton, Palak Shah

Democracy & Education

In his book Education for Liberal Democracy: Using Classroom Discussion to Build Knowledge and Voice, Walter Parker (2023) takes a centrist approach to redesigning civic education. Throughout the book, Parker provides valuable strategies teachers can implement into the K–12 social studies classroom to teach for democracy. While we believe Parker's instructional strategies lay the groundwork for reshaping civic education, we contend that the book does not adequately address issues of inequality and inequity. We would also challenge Parker to think about how teachers can educate for democracy outside of the social studies curriculum in the United States and globally. …

Democratic Education In The Literature Classroom: Integrating Political Literacy And Political Emotions Into Agonistic Literary Discussions. A Response To “Agonism In A Classroom Discussion On Strindberg’S Miss Julie”, Baptiste Roucau

Democracy & Education

In an era of rising polarization and populism, how can we transform the literature classroom into a site of democratic education? Drawing on agonistic scholarship, Tysklind et al. (2024) offer the agonistic literary discussion, a novel pedagogical approach aiming to prepare students for the complexities of democracy by forming collective identities and navigating conflictual consensus. To build on the authors’ work, this response article proposes two additions—political literacy and political emotions—and cautions against the risk of antagonism. Agonistic literary discussions can integrate political literacy through teaching relevant knowledge and careful questioning, enabling students to situate characters’ experiences in political contexts …

Orientation Toward Consensus—The “Safest” Path For Teachers To Choose? A Response To “Agreement And Disagreement In Teachers Talk”, Stine Johansen Utler

Democracy & Education

In “Agreement and Disagreement in Teachers Talk” the author shows how Norwegian initial education teachers (Grades 1–4) are consensus-oriented in their facilitations of classroom deliberations. The author emphasizes what teachers say and do when they guide their pupils toward consensus, but reflections on why teachers are consensus-oriented are less prominent. In this response to “Agreement and Disagreement in Techers Talk,” I point to conditions and factors in the Norwegian society and the Norwegian educational context that might explain why a consensus orientation is prevalent among the teachers.

Action Civics As A Powerful Tool—Not A Panacea—In The Provision Of High-Quality Civic Education. A Response To “The Domino Effect”: How Early Adolescence Describe Their Capacity For Civic Engagement", Daniela Kruel Digiacomo

Democracy & Education

Action civics happens when young people do research, action, and reflection on social or political issues they care about. In this third decade of the 21st century, action civics is often found in after-school and/or out-of-school contexts, and substantive research now shows its power and potential for providing transformative learning experiences for young people, as is evidenced again in "The Domino Effect: How Early Adolescents Describe Their Capacity for Civic Engagement"—one of the feature articles of this issue. At the same time, action civics, precisely because it is so often conceived and enacted in out-of-school time spaces, is not, and …

Beyond The Human: Democratic Education Through The Ethics Of Care And Carriance. A Response To “Reimagining Democratic Education With Care Ethics—Toward Care-Full Democratic Education”, Michalinos Zembylas

Democracy & Education

This is a response to Koponen and Kasa’s argument that feminist theorizing and care ethics have been overlooked as theoretical approaches in the current democratic education debate. Their article draws on these insights to theorize democratic education in ways that combine care and democracy. In my response, I aim to offer clarifying comments and questions while suggesting ideas to expand Koponen and Kasa’s analysis. Specifically, I highlight two perspectives that, in my view, warrant further exploration in democratic education: developing theoretical frameworks that move beyond human-centered and anthropocentric accounts and, embracing care and the concept of "care-carrying" or "carriance" (Ettinger, …

Science Education For Democracy And Sustainability: A Transnational Critique Of Policy Texts In A Fast-Globalizing Reform Ensemble, Geraldine Mooney Simmie, Sara Tolbert

Democracy & Education

In a fast-globalizing reform ensemble, we reframe science education for a concept of civic engagement connected to a new social contract for democracy and sustainability. The American philosopher of education John Dewey, writing in the early 1900s, asserted that democracy requires a facelift with each generation in order to respond to the urgent needs of the moment. Dewey asserted that education acts as a midwife in the delivery of democracy. In this transnational comparative study, we conduct a generative critique of science education reforms in two democratic nation states, Ireland and New Zealand. We draw from critical and feminist perspectives …

“You Don’T Have To Tell Them It’S A Lie”: Teaching Social Studies Within A Backsliding Democracy, H James Garrett, Mardi Schmeichel, Christopher H. Clark

Democracy & Education

In this essay, the authors posit that democratic backsliding, rather than partisanship, is the prevailing political situation in which civics and social studies teachers are working. The authors then present evidence from focus groups composed of practicing social studies teachers from across the United States to illustrate how the reliance on evidence and argumentation is the primary mode of navigating contemporary political issues. However, while these strategies are built on decades of research in civic education, the authors illustrate a conceptual dilemma: Inquiry strategies may not be able to accommodate the realities of democratic backsliding and its attendant misinformation. The …

“The Domino Effect”: How Early Adolescents Describe Their Capacity For Civic Engagement, Michelle Bauml, Jonathan W. Crocker

Democracy & Education

This qualitative study explored how 28 early adolescents described their capacity for civic engagement as they participated in a civic education camp in the United States and engaged in action civics inquiry projects about local issues. Focus group interviews revealed that these youth recognized the capacity of people their age to raise awareness and advocate about issues they care about while acknowledging their limits as youth and conceding that adults have advantages of age and power. Participants also described their capacity to take personal responsibility for their actions and efforts and to leverage relationships to influence others. Findings suggest that …

Has “Better Fafsa” Been Better Or Worse? A Study Of Student And Stakeholders’ Experience With The 2024-25 Fafsa, Jonathan S. Lewis, Alyssa Stefanese Yates

Journal of Student Financial Aid

The 2024-25 or “Better” FAFSA was intended to be simpler, addressing long standing issues with the federal financial aid application process, and expand financial aid eligibility to more low-income students and their families. However, its problematic implementation had negative implications for college access, affordability, and enrollment. This study reviews findings from a mixed methods case study of 274 students, parents, high school counselors, and financial aid administrators’ experiences navigating the 24-25 FAFSA. Interpreting participant responses through an administrative burden lens, the study found some intentional changes in the 24-25 FAFSA, such as the Direct Data Exchange and user-centered design elements, …

Financial Aid Matters: The Relationship Among Financial Aid, Retention, And Graduation Rates In Online Students, Mary Ellen Dello Stritto, Dane Skinner, Naomi R. Aguiar, Greta R. Underhill

Journal of Student Financial Aid

A wealth of evidence indicates that financial aid is positively associated with retention and graduation rates among college students attending in-person courses. However, limited research exists on the relation between financial aid, retention and graduation rates among undergraduate students earning online degrees. The purpose of this study was to examine these relationships among five cohorts of students (AY2014-2018; ns = 305 - 495) seeking online degrees. Using multinomial logistic regression models, the results indicated students who received more total financial aid had a higher probability of graduating and a lower probability of stopping out, with some variations by cohort. The …

Gender And Racial Gaps In Student Shadow Debts, Melissa Jones, Jodonnis Rodriguez, Amanda Stype

Journal of Student Financial Aid

This exploratory study delves into the intricate landscape of student debt by spotlighting the demographics of non-returning university students who grapple with unpaid bursar bills, a type of shadow debt not visible in traditional assessments of loan borrowing and repayment. Analysis of such shadow debt at one regional Midwest institution reveals that underrepresented minority students and female students are disproportionately burdened, facing 117% and 19% higher odds of unpaid institutional balances being sent to collections, respectively. These findings illuminate the urgent need for 1) tailored interventions that can bolster the resilience of at-risk students, effectively addressing and alleviating the financial …

An Authentic Leader Never Dies: Lessons Learned From The Seminal Work Of Elizabeth Yerxa, Daniel Cezar Da Cruz

The Open Journal of Occupational Therapy

This Opinion in the Profession is based on the enduring legacy of Elizabeth June Yerxa, a pioneering leader in occupational therapy and occupational science, following her passing in December 2024. Rather than a traditional "in memoriam," the author uses the present tense to emphasize Yerxa's ongoing influence. The paper highlights four key themes from Yerxa’s work: the commitment of occupational therapy to social change, the importance of an occupation-centered education, the term “engaging in occupation”, and the establishment of occupational science as a foundational discipline. Yerxa’s advocacy for critical thinking, holistic perspectives, and the integration of diverse fields …

Promoting Sense Of Belonging Among First-Generation Students In Occupational Therapy, Pola Ham

The Open Journal of Occupational Therapy

First-generation students in occupational therapy programs face unique challenges that can impact their sense of belonging and academic success, potentially hindering efforts to diversify the profession. There is limited data on occupational therapy students who identify as first-generation students. However, the literature has noted improved efforts toward a sense of belonging in higher education among students leads to feeling a sense of connectedness with their peers and faculty, aiding in overall well-being, academic performance and retention. In contrast, a lack of these efforts can lead students to experience a diminished sense of belonging to the institution. This article examines the …

Occupational Balance Of Occupational Therapy Students Before And After Occupational Disruption Caused By Covid-19, Juan Pablo Saa, Georgia King, Kylee Lockwood, Tamara Tse

The Open Journal of Occupational Therapy

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing restrictions have caused occupational disruption, yet little is known about their relationship with occupational balance, student satisfaction, and stress. This study aimed to investigate the impact of COVID-19 restrictions on the occupational balance of occupational therapy students in the state of Victoria, Australia, and its association with measures of life satisfaction and distress.

Method: Participants completed the Occupational Balance Questionnaire (OBQ-11) twice (once rating their occupational balance before COVID-19 social distancing restrictions and again during the time these restrictions were in place); the Global Life Satisfaction Questionnaire; and the Depression, Anxiety and …

The Need For ‘Soft Skills’ In Occupational Therapy Curricula: A Descriptive Analysis Of French Students’ Internship Comments, Cynthia Engels, Nadia Oubaya, Aliki Thomas

The Open Journal of Occupational Therapy

A competent occupational therapist needs soft skills. Although the French national occupational therapy (OT) curriculum lists 10 competences to be acquired, they do not include soft skills. The objectives of this study were to (a) Identify the proportion of soft skills in OT students’ internship comments written by internship tutors and (b) characterize the mentioned soft skills to help determine whether and which soft skills should be included in the new OT curriculum nationwide in France. This was a qualitative descriptive analysis of tutors’ comments on internship evaluations based on the framework method. Of the 1060 internship reports, 1035 (98%) …

2025 Oerc Reserve Funding, Student Senate - Winona State University

Student Senate Passed Motions

This document is a Winona State University Student Senate (WSUSS) official motion passed on October 15, 2025. The WSUSS motion allocates between $15,360 and $30,184, dependent on which company the university decides to contract with, from the Student Life Reserve Fund (FY26) to support the Outdoor Education and Recreation Center (OERC) Bouldering Pad Replacement project.

Language Learning, Neurodiversity, And Advocacy: Tools For Success At Cod, Brian Kapustka

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

Informed by the pedagogical applications developed in my project, A Sociocognitive Approach to Second Language Acquisition: Integrating Neurodiversity and Advocacy in Language Learning—itself grounded in Atkinson’s (2011) sociocognitive framework—this presentation explores the intersection of language learning, neurodiversity, and self-advocacy through a strengths-based and socially grounded lens. It highlights how multilingual and neurodivergent students experience language acquisition differently and how embracing cognitive diversity fosters inclusion and success at the College of DuPage. The session introduces practical strategies for understanding one’s learning profile, communicating needs effectively, and navigating COD’s academic support services. Emphasis is placed on developing self-advocacy language, applying reflective …

October 15, 2025 Blazer Weekly, University Of Alabama At Birmingham

Blazer Weekly (student newsletter)

No abstract provided.

Exploring Social And Emotional Learning Implementation At The High School Level: Professional School Counselors’ Perceptions Of Student Academic, Behavior, Course Performance Success, And Post-Secondary Readiness, Charlene Fletcher

Ed.D. Dissertations

This qualitative interpretive study explored high school counselors’ perceptions of the influence of a schoolwide Social and Emotional Learning program on senior students’ attendance, behavior, course performance, and postsecondary readiness in school districts across the United States. The study sought to gain insight into how the implementation of Social and Emotional Learning practices influenced student outcomes, and better prepared them for life beyond high school graduation. Data were collected through single questionnaires and single semistructured interviews with professional high school counselors who shared their perceptions on the influence of Social and Emotional Learning in fostering student success. The findings revealed …