Education Commons^™

Course Revision To Enhance Preservice Student Knowledge Of And Engagement Within Collaborative Learning Communities, Emily M. Jones, Oscar Nunez Enriquez, Zack Beddoes, Dan Phelps, Deborah Garrahy

Faculty Publications - Kinesiology and Recreation

This article shares a collaborative approach to refining an upper-level physical education teacher education seminar course. The primary goal of this refinement was to thoughtfully consider the existing course structure, content, and relevance to the evolving needs of schools. The approved course content focused on sociopolitical issues in education, strategies to navigate the complexities of professional roles in schools, and the transition into the teaching workforce. Through this process, the use of professional learning communities (PLCs) was considered as a viable approach to support preservice teachers’ learning and engagement in course content. Furthermore, by embedding PLCs into the course, the …

Equity In Coastal Resilience: A Framework For University Engagement In Community-Based Projects, Juita-Elena (Wie) Yusuf, Jennifer L. Whytlaw, Marina Saitgalina, Ogechukwu N. Nwandu-Vincent, Khairul A. Anuar, Thomas Allen, Joshua Behr

School of Public Service Faculty Publications

As communities face intensifying climate hazards, it is vital to strengthen resilience in ways that explicitly prioritize social equity. This study examines how higher education institutions can better support government, nonprofit, and community partners in advancing equity-centered coastal resilience in the U.S. Utilizing a qualitative research design, we analyze discussions among researchers and practitioners during a three-day workshop. We present a framework derived from a thematic analysis of breakout group transcripts from a three-day national virtual workshop involving 113 researchers and practitioners. The analysis identified four core themes: the necessity of aligning projects with community-defined priorities; the foundational role of …

Theodor Zeckler's Educational And Welfare Institutions In Eastern Galicia: Genesis, Institutionalization And Socio-Cultural Role, Vitaliy Dokash, Yurii Klonovskyi

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

This article examines Theodor Zekler’s educational and welfare institutions in Eastern Galicia from the late nineteenth to the first half of the twentieth century. It analyzes their genesis, stages of institutionalization, organizational structure, and socio-cultural role in the region. The study shows that the orphanages, schools, boarding facilities, and other charitable and educational institutions founded by Zekler combined the functions of care, education, moral and religious formation, and social integration. Particular attention is paid to the interconnection of pedagogical, confessional, and philanthropic principles in the operation of these institutions. Drawing on archival materials, published sources, and historiography, the article argues …

Motivational Factors Influencing Military Service: A Structural Equation Model Of Rotc Students And Service Members’ Motivation-Confidence To Serve, Brian J. Vansingel

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

Amid declining college enrollment across the United States, academic institutions with United States Army Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) programs must consider underrecruited populations, such as military-bound young adults, in their recruiting strategies. To support this effort, this study examined the motivational factors associated with individuals’ decisions to serve in the U.S. Armed Forces. This study utilized a quantitative, correlational research design with a survey comprising multiple sections: sociodemographic variables, items across six motivational factors for military service, and a Motivation-Confidence to Serve scale. The study used data from a convenience sample of 709 respondents, including college military science students …

Oh Brother, Where Art Thou: Between Brotherhood And Belonging For Black Male Athletes In Predominantly White Ncaa Spaces, Candice L. Turner

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines the college environment variables that significantly influence the academic and personal success of Black male student-athletes at predominantly White NCAA institutions. Grounded in a robust conceptual framework that integrates Astin's input–environment–outcome model, critical race theory, and resilience theory, this research seeks to identify the complex interplay between academic support, social integration, racial climate, and institutional policies on the retention, persistence, and overall well-being of Black male athletes. Recognizing the systemic and individual challenges that shape their collegiate experiences, this study adopts a quantitative case study approach, analyzing secondary data and exploring how factors such as faculty engagement, …

How Directors Of E-Learning Contribute To New Expectations Of Privacy, William R. Jones

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

This qualitative research study used semi-structured interviews to ask directors of elearning at regional public universities about decision-making concerning new information technologies that affected the data privacy and security of students and staff. The institutional setting and target population were chosen to standardize the inquiry and allow focus on how privacy decisions were made. The conceptual framework drew on Helen Nissenbaum’s theory of contextual integrity for privacy and contributions of behavioral economists on expert decision-making including studies of heuristics and biases, naturalistic decision-making, and the failures of deliberative groups. Data collection involved a first interview and then a second follow-up …

Examining Knowledge And Comfort Levels Of Nursing Students In Providing Sexual Health Education, Deanna M. Gower

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

Sex education has been a part of the education in the United States for over 100 years. Nursing education is focused on educating nursing students in a comprehensive fashion that develops a safe and competent nurse. Due to the substantial scope of content required in nursing programs, sexual health topics can be pushed aside. This may result in gaps in sexual health knowledge and comfort for nursing students as they may be inadequately prepared to competently address patients’ sexual health needs in clinical practice. The purpose of this cross-sectional descriptive study is to examine nursing students knowledge and comfort levels …

High School Students’ Uses Of Ai In The Writing Process: A Qualitative Study, Sydney S. Thomas

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The purpose of this Honors Research Project was to examine how Artificial Intelligence (AI) impacts the quality of student writing and to provide educators with insight into how AI-assisted work may differ from independently produced writing. This study includes a review of current literature on the growing use of AI in education, along with concerns related to student dependence and the limitations of AI-detection software. Anonymous archived student writing samples were then analyzed using a researcher-developed rubric that measured grammatical accuracy, sentence complexity, vocabulary, organization, use of evidence, and voice/originality. Results showed that AI-assisted writing consistently performed strongly in grammatical …

Designing Classroom Routines To Reduce Math Anxiety: A Growth Mindset And Productive Struggle Toolkit For Middle Schoolers, Heather Carey

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Math anxiety is an evident barrier to the success of students in middle school mathematics which often leads to decreased confidence, lower achievement overall, and avoidance of more challenging tasks. Research in mathematics education advocates that the instructional approaches that are more grounded in growth mindset and productive struggle can positively influence students’ attitudes toward learning and their engagement with solving more complex problems.

This project examines how researched-based strategies can be rendered into practical classroom applications. Using a qualitative design-based approach, this study integrates math anxiety, growth mindset, and productive struggle existing literature to inform the development of instructional …

From Curiosity To Code: Using Ai As A Tool For Phenomenon-Based Chemistry Teaching, Allie M. Chambers

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

In recent years, there has been an increased emphasis on integrating phenomena-based learning into science classrooms. This instructional approach engages students with real-world events that make scientific concepts more understandable and gives the students a personal connection to their education. However, implementing phenomena-based instruction proves to be a challenge to novice and veteran educators alike.

This project explores, through the lens of an education student, the struggle of implementing phenomena events. Starting with reflections on how lessons can be revised/ constructed to involve a phenomena event and a personal comparison of the difficulty of integrating these events without and with …

Amplifying Counterstories And Testimonios About Latine Rural Youth: A Case Study Of The Educational Experience Of Oaxacan-American Youth In Rural Humboldt County, Lorena Cortez

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

As the Latine community has increased in rural Humboldt County and in rural regions across the country, educators and researchers have struggled to address the needs of this student population. These challenges are reinforced by deficit perspectives that frame multicultural and multilingual student populations as “culturally lacking” or as “English learners”. Such narratives continue to drive policy in the K-12 education system and contribute to persistent inequities; Latine students represent the lowest educational attainment across other rural student populations (Sansone, 2023, p.60). To challenge these deficit narratives, this research applies a LatCrit methodological framework to create testimonios, a form of …

Decolonizing Restorative Justice: A Teaching Development Project, Lacy Felice Mitchell

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

The coloniality of power serves as a central axis within the matrix of domination that characterizes global capitalist modernity, as Anibal Quijano famously argued. This power is rooted in particular ways of looking, seeing, and understanding social reality, anchored in Eurocentrism as an epistemological paradigm for the hegemonic discourse produced by the West against both internal and external categories of “other.” Such categories still inform the production of knowledge in educational settings. In this project, I engage in a critique of the coloniality of power to explore its implications and potential for critical pedagogical practice within the context of sociology …

Supporting Risky Outdoor Play Through Professional Development: A Quasi-Experimental Study Of Tk–6 Educators’ Attitudes, Justin Ross Burrill

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

Children’s opportunities for active outdoor risky play have declined in many educational settings, despite evidence that manageable risk supports physical activity, self-regulation, confidence, resilience, and social participation. Educator attitudes and school culture may play an important role in determining whether children are offered developmentally appropriate opportunities for challenge, exploration, and autonomy. This quasi-experimental, single-group pretest-posttest study examined whether participation in a single-session professional development workshop was associated with changes in educators’ tolerance of risk in children’s play. Thirty educators attended a workshop focused on risky play, hazard-risk differentiation, inclusion of children with disabilities, loose-parts play, environmental affordances, and practitioner-informed implementation …

Reflective Observations Of Instructional Approaches In Job Coaching: A Personal Perspective On Student-Centered Strategies For Students With Disabilities, Cailey R. Piekarski

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This project is a reflective case study exploring my personal experiences as a job coach for students with disabilities at Total Education Solutions. The research focuses on my own observations, interpretations, and emotional responses while alternating between student-centered and teacher-directed instructional approaches during workforce readiness sessions. By journaling daily, I will analyze how I perceive student engagement, task completion, and session flow under different coaching styles. The consistent student group, task structure, and session format will allow for focused, qualitative reflection without collecting any student-specific data. The study aims to deepen my understanding of instructional decision-making in real-world coaching settings …

From Financial Education To Financial Decisions: Evidence On College Financing, Personal Finance Behavior, And Student Attitudes, Dongwei Shi

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

I examine how financial education shapes students’ financial knowledge, college financing decisions, and longer-term financial behavior.

The first chapter studies whether taking high school financial education in Kentucky affects students’ college financing decisions using linked administrative records on high school course-taking and postsecondary financial aid. Using school-level financial education course availability as an instrument, the chapter evaluates whether exposure to financial education is associated with differences in student loan borrowing and receipt of need-based aid.

The second chapter examines whether exposure to state high school financial education mandates improves financial literacy and longer-term personal finance behavior among U.S. adults. Using …

Phonics And Friends: A Critical Multimodal Discourse Analysis Of Popular Teacher Influencers' Content, Zachary T. Milford

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

This critical multimodal discourse analysis examined how five teacher-influencers aligned with the Science of Reading (SoR) movement performed authority, constructed discourses, and used affective and semiotic resources in viral TikTok videos about reading instruction. Drawing on Kress and van Leeuwen's (2001) multimodal social semiotics, Fairclough's (1992) critical discourse analysis, Foucault's (1977, 1982) theorizations of power, Papacharissi's (2014) theory of affective publics, Ong's (1982) secondary orality, and Taussig's (1993) mimesis and alterity, this interpretive, qualitative, multiple-case study analyzed fifty viral TikTok videos and four semi-structured interviews with teacher-influencers. Data were analyzed through within-case and within-mode coding, cross-modal analysis, and cross-case analysis …

An Ethical Analysis Of International Graduate Student Workers' (Igsws) Employment Vulnerability, Adeola F. Oladeji

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

International graduate student workers (IGSWs) occupy a distinctive position within U.S. higher education as students, employees, and temporary visa holders. Their academic progress, financial support, and legal authorization to remain in the United States are often closely intertwined, creating dependencies that heighten their vulnerability to exploitation, unequal treatment, and institutional power imbalances. Although previous scholarship has documented these challenges from empirical, legal, and policy perspectives, comparatively little attention has been given to universities' ethical responsibilities toward IGSWs.

This dissertation examines how U.S. higher education institutions should fulfill their ethical responsibilities to international graduate student workers. Grounded in Dewey's pattern of …

The Impact Of Emergency Remote Education On Teacher Environment Quality—A Systematic Review, Jenne' M. Porter

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

The abrupt onset of emergency remote education (ERE) during the COVID-19 pandemic exposed significant gaps in the conditions necessary for teachers to sustain instruction. This systematic review explores how ERE impacted teacher environmental quality, including access to technology, institutional and collegial support, professional development (PD), and teacher well-being and efficacy. Teacher environmental quality, in this context, refers to the teacher-centered conditions that influence educators’ ability to teach effectively during ERE. The study adhered to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) guidelines. It systematically analyzed scholarly literature, applied clear inclusion criteria, and evaluated study quality using a …

From Aid To Looting: Justice And Sovereignty Issues In The Ukraine–U.S. Mineral Deal, Petra Gümplova

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

This essay identifies three central moral and political issues with the the Ukraine–U.S. Mineral Deal. First, by linking financial and military assistance to access to Ukraine’s natural resources, the deal entrenches a form of resource conditionality that is highly problematic from the moral standpoint of international justice and other ethical principles. Second, the absence of a commitment to a just peace—including the restoration of territorial integrity, reparations, and security guarantees—renders the conditions for secure, long-term investment in Ukraine’s extractive economy a distant prospect, while raising the risk that a substantial portion of Ukraine’s resource wealth unlawfully seized by Russia will …

An Innovative, Interdisciplinary Intervention For Justice-Involved Emerging Adults, Courtney M. Holmes, Jeff Ciak, Marianne Lund, Zehra Sahin Ilkorkor, Grace Kye, Miguel King, Karen Akom, Sarah Jane Brubaker, Molly Hyer, Gary Cuddeback

Teaching and Supervision in Counseling

Interdisciplinary collaboration is an effective training model for counselors in training. As it is becoming increasingly likely that counselors will work in multidisciplinary teams post-graduation, engagement in clinical and research intervention teams is essential to promote learning. Benefits for counseling students include the development of self-efficacy, cultural humility, research skills, counseling skills, and interdisciplinary communication and collaboration skills. This article will discuss a federally funded, interdisciplinary intervention for justice-involved emerging adults that provides supported employment, trauma-informed mental health counseling, and peer support interventions. We will outline the interventions, structure of the project, as well as research and assessment outcomes. Future …

Neofeudalism: The Messy Political Economy Of Transitioning To Something Worse, Jodi Dean

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

No abstract provided.

Neofeudalism And Its Historical Unraveling. A Review Of Jodi Dean’S Capital’S Grave: Neofeudalism And The New Class Struggle (Verso Books, 2025), Jiang Lan

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

American Marxism political scholar Jodi Dean’s concept stands out from the numerous neofeudalism intellectual currents. In her early work, she proposed the concept of “communicative capitalism” as a more advanced form relative to traditional capitalism. However, in the development of her thought during the early 21st century, she demonstrated a trajectory from political critique to the critique of communicative political economy. Having become aware of the issue raised by McKenzie Wark in Capital is Dead concerning capitalism’s descent into an even more dire historical phase, Dean too perceives contemporary capitalism as potentially entering a state of decline, transitioning into a …

Chantal Mouffe And Albena Azmanova, Forty Years After Hegemony And Socialist Strategy (A Conversation), Chantal Mouffe, Albena Azmanova

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

No abstract provided.

Universities Can’T Be Politically Neutral, But They Can Be Pluralistic, Enzo Rossi

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

No abstract provided.

Lawyers Without Courts In Trumpland, Arjun Appadurai

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

No abstract provided.

Borderlands, Nepantla And Interdependence: Some Notes About Onto-Epistemology In Gloria Anzaldúa’S Work, Martha Palacio Avendaño

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

The purpose of this piece is to introduce some of the key concepts in Gloria Anzaldúa’s work. A Chicana feminist philosopher, Anzaldúa was born in a little town in Texas in 1942 and passed away in 2004. I am going beyond her idea of borderlands to point out that her idea of Nepantla offers multiple options for approaching our social reality, such as tracing diagnoses and evaluating the social conditions for the constitution of an emancipatory political subjectivity. Nepantla constitutes an analytical way for understanding the plurality of gender experience as well as a path of knowledge in the process …

Organizing Identities: The Power Of Technofeudalism In A Precarious World – Milei, Youth Precarity, And Post-Partisan (“Anti-Everything”) Identities In Contemporary Argentina, Valeria Brusco

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

This article explains why an anti-state radical-right agenda can become politically effective in contemporary Argentina by shifting the focus from ideology to the organization of identities. Drawing on survey evidence (ENCResPA, 7,130 online cases collected in 2022) and a corpus of anonymized semi-structured interviews with young people (2024–2025), I argue that Milei’s appeal is best understood as a form of negative politicization: a post-partisan stance built around rejection of mediation (parties, unions, experts, public institutions) and condensed moral narratives (“caste,” “cuts,” “freedom”). I identify an “Anti-Everything/Anti-Todo” identity as an electorally available and affectively intense orientation that travels efficiently …

The Present Interregnum: The Ultra-Right Revolution, María Pía Lara

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

This paper deals with recent political consequences of presentism as conceptualized by the historian Francois Hartog. It clarifies how our experiences of time and history have enlarged the present and the past and have almost disappeared the future (except for catastrophic views). The consequences of these changes in the experiences reflect profound changes in expectations about the future, and how this regime of historicity allows people to become disoriented. They were moved into the margins of precarity. As a result, many of their views on politics find resonance redesigned by the distorted narratives of ultra-right leaders who blame those who …

Why I Am An Activist, Mirella Elgersma

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

No abstract provided.

Standardizing Embolization Terminology In Non-Variceal Upper Gi Bleeding: Therapeutic, Preventive, And Empiric Approaches, Nurlan Aliyev, Lei Yu, Fedja A. Rochling, Ishfaq Bhat

Graduate Medical Education Research Journal

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