Historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) have historically provided a nurturing academic and social environment for African American students. Yet, a pervading homophobic climate exists on these campuses that adversely affects lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and/or questioning (LGBTQ) students attending. The purpose of this study was to document and explore the experiences of LGBTQ students attending an HBCU. It was designed to provide institutional leaders with information on how to improve their campus environments in becoming more inclusive and responsive to their needs. Documenting student voices helps their campus and community understand the issues they face. This qualitative study included participants who were undergraduate HBCU students who identified as LGBTQ. Feminist/queer methodology provided a way to study how LGBTQ students navigate homophobia on campus as they develop their adult and professional identities. A cross-case analysis of student experience narratives, gained by in-depth interview, allowed for a deeper understanding of this group and their needs. This study produced a new map of participants' developmental journeys at the Black and queer intersection from childhood through college. Participants described campus climates as tolerant but not accepting and found it difficult to be both Black and homosexual in these contexts. This conflict hinders positive identity development, leaving them at-risk. Homophobic discrimination catalyzed internal growth, leading to resilience and reliance on the internal voice. To them, education found on these campuses gives them the knowledge that helps them heal, stand up to homophobia and help others who may be oppressed.

Teacher evaluation systems have served to remove ineffective teachers and support teacher professional development. Even with changes in evaluation systems that incorporated student-growth measures, teacher evaluation systems are more likely to serve for teacher development than teacher removal. This qualitative study focused on teacher perceptions of one school's evaluation components in supporting teacher professional growth and student learning. The study broke the teachers into career level experience groups of novice, early career, and experienced. The required district/state evaluation components of goal conferences, classroom observations, and student-growth measures were selected for the study. The study also looked at the school practice of teacher-reflection in the evaluation system. Twenty-one teachers participated in focus group interviews designed to understand how teachers use goal-setting conferences, classroom observations, student-growth measures, and teacher reflection. Focus groups were designed to protect teacher anonymity and reduce bias in the study. The results revealed differences in how teachers value the evaluation components based on the teacher's experience level. At times teachers questioned the value of the evaluation system, goal meetings, classroom observations, and student-growth measures, yet teachers understood the need for the components in evaluations. Teachers requested more frequent observations and opportunities to review goals and professional practices. They also wanted fidelity in the evaluator the tools for the evaluation. Perceptual data identified teacher reflection emerged as the most influential component in improving teacher practices.

Student engagement is an essential component to student learning. Miami-Dade County Public Schools (MDCPS) has focused on providing schools with a unified approach to delivering quality classroom instruction. Despite the alignment and commonalities present, underlying issues still need further investigation. Discrepancies within student proficiency and learning gains exist across schools throughout the district. The purpose of the study was to investigate what patterns exist among fourth- and fifth-grade teachers across four schools within the district concerning the use of instructional practices and how these practices relate to levels of student engagement. This study investigated the relationship between student engagement, instructional delivery, and student achievement through a mixed-methods, comparative case analysis. Data were collected through classroom observations of sixteen teachers working in four MDCPS schools. A convergent mixed methods design facilitated a single-phase approach for simultaneously collecting qualitative and quantitative data. Observations provided correlations between High-Order Learning Tasks and Authentic Learning as well as Explicit Instruction with Connecting to Prior Knowledge and Providing Feedback. The primary instructional strategy used was teacher questioning. Furthermore, Student Engagement yielded varied degrees of correlation in association to the Instructional Delivery while compared to the Student Engagement indicators which generated weak correlations. Additional research is needed to identify which instructional strategies may predict higher levels of student engagement in the classroom as well as other observational tools that corroborate various forms of engagement. Professional development in the areas of Explicit Instruction, Use of Questioning, Providing Feedback, and Use of Technology is critical to building teacher capacity.

Student engagement is an essential component to student learning. Miami-Dade County Public Schools (MDCPS) has focused on providing schools with a unified approach to delivering quality classroom instruction. Despite the alignment and commonalities present, underlying issues still need further investigation. Discrepancies within student proficiency and learning gains exist across schools throughout the district. The purpose of the study was to investigate what patterns exist among fourth- and fifth-grade teachers across four schools within the district concerning the use of instructional practices and how these practices relate to levels of student engagement. This study investigated the relationship between student engagement, instructional delivery, and student achievement through a mixed-methods, comparative case analysis. Data were collected through classroom observations of sixteen teachers working in four MDCPS schools. A convergent mixed methods design facilitated a single-phase approach for simultaneously collecting qualitative and quantitative data. Observations provided correlations between High-Order Learning Tasks and Authentic Learning as well as Explicit Instruction with Connecting to Prior Knowledge and Providing Feedback. The primary instructional strategy used was teacher questioning. Furthermore, Student Engagement yielded varied degrees of correlation in association to the Instructional Delivery while compared to the Student Engagement indicators which generated weak correlations. Additional research is needed to identify which instructional strategies may predict higher levels of student engagement in the classroom as well as other observational tools that corroborate various forms of engagement. Professional development in the areas of Explicit Instruction, Use of Questioning, Providing Feedback, and Use of Technology is critical to building teacher capacity.

This dissertation explored a growing concern - the lack of retention of early career teachers (ECTs). We investigated the perceptions of a large sample of ECTs regarding how principal support and job satisfaction affects their decisions to remain in or leave the field of education. We employed an exploratory mixed approach based on a framework derived from DiPaola's (2012) work on principal support. Three surveys collected ECTs' perceptions of principal support, job satisfaction, and their intention to remain in teaching. A series of semi-structured focus group interviews were also used to collect data from ECTs across four school-level configurations in both high and low socioeconomic school settings. Findings revealed ECTs' preferences of different kinds of support from their principals. Although preferences for support did not vary among ECT in different grade level school configurations, there were significant differences in preferences of the kinds of support between teachers in schools with high socioeconomic characteristics versus those in low socioeconomic schools. Strong positive correlations were found between ECT's perceptions of support and their job satisfaction. High levels of ECT's job satisfaction were found to be significant indicators of their intention to remain in the teaching profession. Additionally, principal perceptions of how they support their ECT were compared to the actual perceptions of ECTs. Findings indicate that school socioeconomic factors have the greatest impact on perceptions, teachers value different types of support based on school configuration, and principals and teachers have similar perceptions. The study recommends a differentiated approach to principal support based on socioeconomic factors and, to a limited degree, school performance.

The higher education sector today faces an environment unlike any it has seen before. Serving a wide variety of internal and external stakeholders and facing diverse and fast-changing economic, social, and political pressures, universities can benefit from corporate-like approaches such as the use of analytics to inform strategic decision-making and planning. Institutional analytics programs can be a valuable resource in guiding university responses to modern challenges around fiscal responsibility, accountability, competition, and student success. Customizable when it comes to leadership, staffing, and data and technology infrastructure, analytics initiatives can be targeted to meet individual institutional resources, environments, challenges, needs, mission, and values. One such resource available at most institutions is Institutional Research (IR), a field that has undergone regular evolution to meet the changing needs of postsecondary education. The unique combination of technical, analytical, and interpersonal roles and skills needed for the effective use of data and analytics can often be met through the engagement of Institutional Research leaders and staff in these initiatives, and they are frequently key participants in the support and delivery of analytics efforts on campus. With Institutional Research as a resource, and flexibility in creating an analytics program that best meet the needs of individual institutions, analytics can serve as a powerful and effective tool for universities responding to todays’ pressures of academic capitalism.

This study sought to uncover the relationship among emotional intelligence, teacher self-efficacy, and socioeconomic status of schools amongst K-12 public school teachers. Correlations were analyzed between overall emotional intelligence and overall teacher self-efficacy, as well as between the subscales of both constructs. Furthermore, regression analysis was used to determine the predictability of teacher self-efficacy based on emotional intelligence, school socioeconomic status, and the subscales of emotional intelligence. Weak correlations were found between emotional intelligence of teachers and teacher self-efficacy levels. Emotional intelligence and school socioeconomic status were not found to be strong predictors of teacher self-efficacy. Subscales of emotional intelligence did not predict levels of teacher self-efficacy well. The current study calls into question the validity of the Reactions to Teaching Situations measure of emotional intelligence and suggests further research be conducted to determine the reason for the inconsistent findings as compared to prior studies on the relationship between emotional intelligence and teacher self-efficacy in field of education.

Abstract The demographic composition of America’s population has changed significantly over the past several decades which is reflected in classrooms that are culturally and linguistically more diverse. In particular, the rapidly growing population of non-native English speaking students has highlighted the need for language instruction programs to increase linguistic proficiency outcomes and close pervasive gaps in academic achievement in comparison to native English speaking students. Title III of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA) as amended by the Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015 (ESSA), requires that local education agencies (LEAs) as guided by state education agencies (SEAs), provide language instruction programs that ensure equitable access to core curricula and academic achievement for identified students. to comply with the federal and state regulations, language instruction programs must be based on sound theory and be effective in producing appropriate linguistic and academic results for English learners (ELs). The purpose of this study was to determine the extent to which a school district’s language instruction program met the seven dimensions of the Promoting Excellence Appraisal System (PEAS), a theoretical framework for assessing the effectiveness of programming for English Language Learners (ELLs). Evaluated in this study were data collected from document reviews, classroom observations, educator surveys, and extant student data. It was found that there were varying degrees of deficiencies, ranging from severe to moderate, in five of the dimensions. Recommendations were offered for the areas of leadership, professional development, and instructional program design and implementation.

With the challenges facing principals today, the question of how best to support new principals in meeting these challenges remains. The leadership abilities of new school leaders matter more today than ever with increasing accountability and additional responsibilities. The focus of this study was to determine participants’ perceptions of the impact of mentoring on the development on first and second-year principals in a suburban school district located in a fast growing metropolitan area within the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. The overarching question of the study was: What impact does mentoring have on first and second-year principal performance? Secondary questions that were explored in the study were: (a) What do principals who participate in mentoring report they learned based on their reflective activities and dialogue with experienced leaders? (b) What changes in professional practice of first and second-year principals did participants perceive to have come from the mentoring? and (c) What activities within the mentoring program did participants find most helpful for first and second-year principal leadership? The methodology employed to conduct this action research study was a qualitative process focusing on the development and implementation of a newly formed principal mentoring support structure. The study included the following data sources: an Appreciative Inquiry focus session with principal mentors, a district leadership development survey and face-to-face semi-structured interviews with 23 principals. Findings of the study were as follows: (a) New principals in this study valued the support of an experienced principal mentor and the participation in joint leadership development activities to assist them in navigating the complexities of being a new principal. (b) The quality of the mentor relationship is important. (c) For the principals in this study, formalizing the mentoring program by building time for mentoring into the calendar at the district level and providing supports such as the mentoring calendar and joint new principal/principal mentor leadership workshops were valued and seen as a positive district change. (d) The mentoring program could be improved by differentiating the program by the individual needs of each new principal.

In China, teacher performance pay has been implemented for eight years, but teachers’ perceptions regarding its implementation have been examined seldomly. Exploring teachers’ perceptions is a path to hear teachers’ voices, inspect implementation practice, and evaluate impacts. This mixed-method study explored teachers’ perceptions toward performance pay in Panda School District of Kunming City, Yunnan Province, China through surveys, interviews, and artifacts. A total of 333 valid responses to the survey were collected and 14 teachers participated in follow-up semi-structured interviews. The quantitative results indicate low to moderate teacher support for performance pay. The qualitative themes generated through content analysis present teachers’ perceived merits and problems associated with the implementation of performance pay. A seven-factor model was extracted through principal component analysis drawn from the teacher perception survey, with 58.4% of the variance in perceptions explained. Significant differences in teachers’ perceptions toward performance pay and evaluation measures were found based on participating teacher and school characteristics. The findings suggest that local governments should increase funding in teacher performance pay if it is to be successful. Additionally, the specific guidance needs to be developed to regulate school-based performance pay programs that consider school contexts. Further, policymakers and school administrators should focus on the structure and associated evaluation indicators of performance pay. It is necessary for school leaders to improve leadership through professional development programs at the same time of implementing performance pay.