Individuals holding the post of principal come from different backgrounds, trainings, and levels of educational experience. Using the research surrounding the first nine Florida Principal Standards as the lens, this research examines to what extent school leaders perceive to be prepared for the role of principal as measured by the Florida Principal Standards, to what they attribute their preparation and if demographic factors impacted their perceptions. Ninety-six school leaders in a Florida school district participated in this study. The total group of participants consisted of thirty principals, twenty assistant principals in a county level training program and forty-six teacher leaders who were members of a county level leadership cohort. These school leaders participated in an online survey composed of the forty-four descriptor statements of the first nine Florida Principal Standards. Thus, data in this research project was comprised of survey results from these various administrative points of view. In addition to comparison of percentages of each group's responses, descriptive statistics and a Kruskal Wallis test was used determine scores of preparedness for teacher leaders, assistant principals and principals and if they differed in responses. After data was collected, it was analyzed and interpreted. Three county level administrators who work in leadership development and instruction were then interviewed and their responses were used to help determine meaning from the findings. Because principals face similar issues as they make the transition from an assistant to principal, understanding individual's perception of their training is a critical step in assisting leaders as they move upward and attempt to lead in today's school systems. Findings in this area will allow for discussion regarding the leader's perception of preparedness, the way in which principals are trained and perhaps increase the knowledge base about principal preparation. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Education. / Spring Semester, 2014. / March 28, 2014. / Administrator Preparation, Beginning Principals, Florida school administration, Leadership preparation / Includes bibliographical references. / Judith Irvin, Professor Directing Dissertation; Randall Holcombe, University Representative; Marytza Gawlik, Committee Member; Shouping Hu, Committee Member.

Non-formal education programs that target women with little or no formal education living in resource-poor and marginalized communities of emerging nations are among the strategies adopted with increasing frequency to promote human development. Yet evaluations suggest that such initiatives are seldom effective in attaining their anticipated outcomes, despite indicators of continuing need (e.g. Street, 2001). Moreover, little attention has been given to one critical conditioning factor: the uses that African women with low educational qualifications are effectively able to make of the literacy and numeracy skills that they do acquire, and the ways in which these women interact with - or are constrained by profound contextual and gender related factors. A developing tradition in social science research on literacy, the New Literacy Studies (NLS) paradigm, has placed valuable emphasis on examining the actual literacy practices embedded in everyday life, but it has rarely focused on the situation of African women or the interactions between literacy usage and gender roles. The gap is attributable in part to the need for anthropological insight and social science methodology in investigating practical gender-related topics, as well as an insider's knowledge of everyday life and the socio-cultural context of the women concerned. Both remain very scarce in the field. In this study, ethnographic methodology was used to probe the nature of relationship that exists between women's uses of their literacy skills and the gender roles that they perform. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Fall Semester, 2013. / October 3, 2013. / Development, Literacy, West Africa, Women's Gender Roles / Includes bibliographical references. / Peter. B. Easton, Professor Directing Dissertation; Alysia Roehrig, Committee Member; Jeffrey Milligan, Committee Member.

Abstract Florida has undergone a 27.8% increase of ELL PreK-12 public school students within the last twenty years (www.fldoe/aala). Of the total student population in Florida, 9.4% speak 230 different languages and dialects with the highest percentage in Hispanic speakers. This is followed by Haitian-Creole, Arabic, Vietnamese, Hmong, Chinese, and Korean (http://www.fldoe.org/aala/). Despite these startling statistics, there are still teachers in Florida's public PreK-12 school systems who are not professionally prepared to meet the growing demands of the ELL population. In a 2012 report released by the National Center for Educational Evaluation and Regional Assistance (NCEERA), 41% of the teachers surveyed reported that they teach ELL students but fewer than 13% reported any ELL professional development. To better understand this phenomenon, this study offers a contextual framework that illuminates the issues that surround Florida's public school PreK-12 ELL teacher preparation: the first is teacher ELL professional development programs in Florida, the second is the policies that have influenced Florida's ELL professional development programs, and finally how teachers' perceptions of ELL professional development programs influence their classroom practices. This research argues that these constructs influence each other and directly affect teachers' perceptions of ELL professional development. The research questions addressed in this study are: (1) What are teachers' perceptions of the applicability of their pre-service and in-service preparation to teach English language learners and what are their current instructional practices?, and (2) Do these perceptions and practices differ on the following bases: (a) English as a Second Language endorsement, certification, or not, (b) Teaching experience based on the number of years teaching, and (c) The number of ELL students. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Education. / Fall Semester, 2013. / November 5, 2013. / Elementary School, ESOL/ell, Teacher Professional Development / Includes bibliographical references. / Robert A. Schwartz, Professor Directing Dissertation; Patrice Iatarola, Professor Directing Dissertation; Diana Rice, University Representative; Judith Irvin, Committee Member.

This three article mixed methods dissertation is titled "Three Studies on the Leadership Behaviors of Academic Deans in Higher Education." Each of the three articles offers a distinct thesis regarding administration in academic institutions. While the research questions and perspectives in each of the articles are quite different from one another, the articles are similar in that they all examine the same context within higher education, academic administration, and more specifically the deanship. Each article is based on a sample of 51 academic deans from a three state region in the Southeastern United States. Each dean who responded was contacted in advance and asked to participate in the study which included a survey and follow-up interview by phone. While only 17 of the 51 deans were interviewed, the overall study provides a rich set of data. Study One In the first study, the results of the statistical analyses reinforce the gender similarities hypothesis which states that "males and females are similar on most, but not all psychological variables" (Hyde, 2005, p. 581). Male and female deans did not differ significantly on political skill and social capital. However, the study did contain two methodological concerns which may have obscured the relationship between gender, political skill, and social capital. First, the sample size was necessarily small due to the time consuming nature of converting survey data into social network data for statistical analysis. Second, the political skill scores and social capital scores were based on self-reported data. Ultimately, there is ambiguity in my results because it is difficult to determine whether the results indeed support the gender similarities hypothesis as I argued or whether methodological limitations have resulted in non-significant statistical findings. Study Two In the second study, the central result is a conceptual model of information use in problem solving in academic administration. The conceptual model is a visual representation of the relationship between information use and problem solving among decision makers in academic administration. In my model, the problem solving process begins with a problem catalyst which initiates the information filtering phase of the process. The decision makers then embark on an iterative process of questioning, seeking information, verifying information, and weighing decision options. This information filtering phase is fed by information streams including explicit, tacit, cultural, external, internal, received, and sought information. The information filtering process narrows until a decision point is reached. After the administrator makes the decision, the institutional action phase initiates with successive cycles of decision sharing and institutional action. Ultimately, the possible outcomes of the problem solving process represent a continuum with unresolved problems at one end, resolved problems leading to incremental organizational change at the midpoint, and resolved problems leading to organizational paradigm shifts at the far end of the continuum. Data representing each of these phases of the problem solving process are presented. Study Three The third study illuminates the ambiguity of sexual discrimination and the issues around gender roles in academic administration. From these data, four propositions regarding gender are presented. First, there is ambiguity surrounding gender in academic administration in higher education because of the culture of academia. This explanation for the unwillingness of deans to express certainty surrounding the influence of gender in academic administration is that they are adopting the social norms of universities, which emphasize uncertainty both in their organizational culture and in the ideas they produce. Second, academic leaders who must represent the broad interests of male and female employees keep their own feelings of discrimination private as part of their practice of impression management within the organization. Ambiguity also surrounds gender in academic administration in higher education because of attributional ambiguity (Crocker, Voelkl, Testa, Major, 1991). This term suggests that there is considerable ambiguity about whether social interactions have occurred because of gender or for other reasons. Finally, changing gender roles creates ambiguity in academic administration in higher education Gender roles in the modern era are now constantly in flux, being quite rigid under some circumstances and quite flexible under other circumstances. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Fall Semester, 2013. / November 8, 2013. / Ambiguity, Gender, Information Use, Political Skill, Social Capital / Includes bibliographical references. / Robert A. Schwartz, Professor Directing Dissertation; Frances Berry, University Representative; Tamara Bertrand Jones, Committee Member; Bradley E. Cox, Committee Member.

This evaluation assesses the Alternative Route to Licensure (ARL) program of the Clark County School District (CCSD), in Clark County, Nevada from the program participants' perspectives. The program was implemented to reduce teacher shortages in the school district and allow persons with non-education-related Bachelor's Degrees to obtain teaching certifications. Much as do participants in traditional teacher education programs, ARL participants take coursework in pedagogy and content if they are not already holding a degree major in the content area, and they must pass competency testing. The main difference between ARL and traditional programs is that ARL participants do not have to complete a semester of student teaching before entering the classroom. As such, a primary concern is that ARL participants, without the tutelage of a master teacher, literally learn on the job in the absence of the traditional student teaching experience. Most ARL candidates are enrolled in education-related courses at local colleges and universities and have a specific number of years to complete the required college coursework and obtain the content knowledge, methods, and pedagogy (e.g., Nevada ARL students have three years to complete coursework). Specifically, ARL programs are important to CCSD because they recruit and place teachers in difficult to fill, content specific classrooms, such as secondary English, science, math, and special education. The purpose of the study is to examine and analyze the experiences of ARL candidates; I provide the CCSD ARL administrators and staff with feedback that can be used for further development and improvement of the program. Specifically, I assess ARL candidates' preparedness once they enter the classroom and their perceptions of the strengths and weaknesses of the ARL program. Data was collected through surveys and focus groups of current and past CCSD ARL participants. ARL Participants who have been in or completed the program over the past five years were surveyed through anonymous internet-based surveys and a subset participated in focus groups. Through the survey instrument I collected both quantitative and qualitative data and from the focus groups primarily qualitative data. The study provided key information pertaining to CCSD's ARL program activities. Respondents indicated activities that were perceived as important and effective and rated them accordingly. The majority of the program activities were viewed favorably by the program participants excluding the Praxis II exams and the induction modules. The program as a whole was rated highly in all five areas; program completion, program implementation, program preparation, implementation efficiency, and program activities. These high percentages warrant commendations to the CCSD ARL program and staff. Holistically, the program has met the intent which its creators have set out to do--prepare these individuals to teach. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Education. / Fall Semester, 2013. / October 29, 2013. / Alternative Route To Licensure / Includes bibliographical references. / Patrice Iatarola, Professor Directing Dissertation; Diana Rice, University Representative; Richard Kunkel, Committee Member; Carolyn Herrington, Committee Member.

Principal support for implementing changes in policies and practices in the schools they lead is understood to be an important factor related to successful reform. Although professional development opportunities for educators are routinely used as a primary vehicle for knowledge dissemination around educational reform initiatives (e.g., new instructional standards and practices or changes in accountability policies), little is known about impacts of professional development for school principals. To add to the body of knowledge in this area, the current study reports on findings from a 2009 randomized field trial involving elementary school principals (N = 110) who completed both pre- and posttests of the Change Facilitator's Stages of Concern Questionnaire (CFSoCQ), a self-report measure of attitudes toward leading implementation of an innovation in their schools. In this study, the innovation was Florida's new content standards in mathematics and science, the Next Generation Sunshine State Standards (NGSSS). Key components of the intervention were designed to: improve principals' mathematics and science content knowledge; increase their knowledge of the NGSSS; strengthen their ability to observe teacher's instruction and provide feedback; and develop their ability to support communities of instructional practice in their schools. These professional development foci were aimed at building principals' will and capacity for successfully leading the transition to the NGSSS in their schools. At pretest, the majority of principals in both the intervention and comparison groups reported that their primary concerns related to implementation of the new standards centered on a need for more information about the standards. Multinomial logistic regression (MLR) analyses suggest that assignment to the professional development condition was impactful for principals' self-reported attitudes toward facilitating the implementation of new content standards in their schools. At posttest, findings indicate that for principals assigned to professional development: the estimated odds of being focused on successful management of teachers' transition to the new standards were nearly four times higher than principals in the comparison condition; the estimated odds of being focused on the consequences of implementation of the new standards were more than six times higher than principals in the comparison condition; and the estimated odds of being focused on opportunities to collaborate with other administrators as they work to lead implementation of the new standards were nearly nine times higher than principals in the comparison condition. Given the use of the Information stage (CFSoCQ Stage 1) as the outcome reference category for the MLR, these results suggest the intervention was effective at moving principals from a stage of wanting more information about the new standards to stages focused on: successful management of teachers' transition to the new standards; consequences of implementation of the new standards; and opportunities to collaborate with other administrators as they work to lead implementation of the new standards. The results show that this intervention was successful for improving principals' readiness to lead their schools in the adoption of new mathematics and science content standards by moving them beyond a place of information-seeking to a focus on how best to manage, mitigate, and collaborate around the transition to the new standards. Study findings offer support for the use of professional development for school principals as a means of building principals' will to lead change efforts in their schools. In today's K-12 educational policy environment, principal support for the transition to the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) is likely to be a top priority for policymakers and state and district leaders in those states making this transition. The results of this study are particularly relevant in today's policy context given that the majority of states are working to transition to the CCSS / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies in partial fulfillment of the Doctor of Philosophy. / Spring Semester, 2015. / April 1, 2015. / change facilitator, educational leadership, multinomial logistic regression, policy adoption, principal, randomized field trial / Includes bibliographical references. / Laura B. Lang, Professor Directing Dissertation; Christopher J. Lonigan, University Representative; Carolyn Herrington, Committee Member; Patrice Iatarola, Committee Member.

Traditionally, women's leadership has been overlooked and underappreciated by researchers and policymakers although this leadership has been vital to America's ultimate success and infrastructure. Simply stated, contributions of female leadership have been overshadowed by a system that primarily values patriarchal forms of leadership and oppresses females. African American female leaders have been a part of this exclusion. This study explored the underrepresentation of African female leaders by focusing on the experiences of seven former African American female principals. To understand their perspectives and experiences, this study uses narrative life history and draws on two complementary lenses which facilitate a greater understanding of the experiences associated with African American female principals: Standpoint Theory and a Womanist perspective. The capturing of the seven former principal experiences were accomplished by tracing events from their childhood, adult life, extracting life lessons, patterns of socialization, and further exploring their everyday leadership realities. The realities included their successes, failures, limitations, reconstructions of identity, and personal resolutions as practiced through their leadership. Some of the findings within this study supported previous research findings on the principalship and some of them shed new light on possible new findings. This conclusion gives credence to the notion that research on African American female principals is vital and necessary to understand a growing population of professionals that have traditionally been omitted from leadership literature on two counts, by race and gender. As researchers further understand their unique standpoints and realities, the field of education becomes more equipped to better serve its people and purpose. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Fall Semester, 2013. / October 22, 2013. / African American, Experience, Female, Principals / Includes bibliographical references. / Stacey Rutledge, Professor Directing Dissertation; Maxine D. Jones, University Representative; Patrice Iatarola, Committee Member; Robert A. Schwartz, Committee Member.

Institutions are constantly seeking ways to facilitate and improve student-faculty interaction, especially in the first year of college, a time when students are facing a transition to a new academic environment. One approach institutions take to facilitate student-faculty interaction is to implement policies that create ideal environments for student-faculty interaction to occur. In order to fully understand the effects (and non-effects) of these policies, we must first understand the ideal conditions that enable student-faculty interaction, and the barriers that can prevent student-faculty interaction. Supporting the creation of such environments through policy can be difficult for institutions because student-faculty interaction manifests in multiple ways. Student-faculty interaction looks very different from student to student, and it varies on three major components across situations: quality, quantity, and content. This study examines the effects of institutional policy that aim to create optimal conditions for student-faculty interaction in the first year of college. While the literature reinforces the idea that student-faculty interaction supports student success and engagement, the data shows weak and inconsistent correlations between student engagement scores and levels of policy adoption. Enacting institutional policy is a top-down approach to creating student-faculty interaction, but can still have direct and indirect effects on student engagement. / A Thesis submitted to the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science. / Spring Semester, 2014. / April 9, 2014. / Engagement, Faculty, Institutional Policy, Interaction, Student / Includes bibliographical references. / Bradley E. Cox, Professor Directing Thesis; Lara Perez-Felkner, Committee Member; Tamara Bertrand Jones, Committee Member.

A number of studies, including a 2010 study by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), have documented persistence gaps between the educational attainment of White males and that of Black males and Hispanic males among other racial/ethnic groups. There is also evidence of a growing gender gap within racial/ethnic groups, as females are participating and persisting at much higher rates than their male counterparts (Aud et al., 2010). This growing gender gap within racial/ethnic groups presents a unique problem for Blacks and for Black males in particular. Research shows that Black males, unlike their counterparts, are entering college at a much higher rate than they are graduating from college yet the research further shows that when they participate in higher education, and when well-conceived and formalized support systems are put into place to promote achievement, Black males persist at a higher level (Bush et al., 2010). Previous research on student persistence has indicated a number of factors, such as financial aid, socioeconomic status, lack of preparation, and lack of engagement contribute to the attrition of students in general, however, a gap remains in the current literature regarding how much of an impact these factors have on Black male students at predominantly White institutions. Therefore, the purpose of the proposed study is to investigate the impact of engagement on the academic success of Black males at a predominantly White institution as compared to their counterparts at the same institution using the institution's data from the National Survey on Student Engagement (NSSE) in 2005, 2008 and 2011. Findings from this research may help to identify specific factors and their impact on the persistence of Black males and may provide further research on the persistence of Black males at predominantly White institutions. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Education. / Summer Semester, 2014. / May 1, 2014. / Black Males, Engagement, Persistence, Predominantly White / Includes bibliographical references. / Robert A. Schwartz, Professor Directing Dissertation; Maxine Jones, University Representative; Mary B. Coburn, Committee Member; Brad Cox, Committee Member; Tamara Bertrand Jones, Committee Member.

Previous research has demonstrated that African-American students expend more effort and achieve less gain when compared to White students at Predominately White Institutions (PWIs) (Greene, Marti, & McClenney, 2008; Kugelmass & Douglas, 2011; Watson & Kuh, 1996). This phenomenon, referred to in the literature as the Effort Outcome Gap (EOG) (Greene, Marti, & McClenney, 2008), can be explained by Cultural Capital Theory (Bourdieu, 1986) which describes how inequities for minority students attending PWIs are perpetuated from generation to generation. These inequities require minority students to exert intercultural effort, which speaks to the additional effort that must be put forth to achieve and persist at PWIs (Dowd, Sawatzky, & Korn, 2011; Tanaka, 2002). The purpose of this study was to better understand how course delivery type and student race are related to student engagement and gains for first-year students attending four-year degree granting PWIs in the United States. A conceptual framework grounded in Cultural Capital Theory and the construct of Intercultural Effort was used to interpret the results. This study examined whether or not there are differences in the relationships between course delivery type, student engagement, and student gains for African-American students and White students attending PWIs. Using a sample taken from the 2010 administration of the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE), multiple regression analysis was used to address the research questions posited by this study. Findings provide further evidence of the EOG between African-American and White face-to-face students attending PWIs. They also suggest that online course delivery may serve to mitigate intercultural effort for African-American students. Additionally, they demonstrate that online course delivery may benefit both African-American and White students in a way that face-to-face instruction does not. Finally, findings suggest that benefits associated with online course delivery are, for the most part, not differentially related to race. These findings have practical implications for higher education practitioners and administrators at PWIs. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Spring Semester, 2014. / March 26, 2014. / African-American, Effort Outcome Gap, Intercultural Effort, Learning Gains, Online Instruction, Student Engagement / Includes bibliographical references. / Shouping Hu, Professor Directing Dissertation; Vanessa Dennen, University Representative; Robert A. Schwartz, Committee Member; Kathy Guthrie, Committee Member.