Many schools are transitioning towards a preventative approach to meet the needs of at-risk learners with academic and/or behavioral concerns through the Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS) framework. This qualitative study explored the perceptions of the impacting factors for MTSS and the needs of building leadership teams through semi-structured interviews using a video conferencing-based online platform. Participants included 15 building administrators from school districts in a mountain west state of the United States. Interviews were transcribed and analyzed through thematic analysis. A total of four themes or impacting factors were identified. First, participants reported that MTSS relies on the district's capacity to provide support and partnership, like administrators or district leadership. Second, provision and prioritization of resources (e.g., personnel, time, or training) was perceived as key to MTSS implementation. Third, stakeholder buy-in and disposition were perceived as effecting MTSS practices, including staff buy-in, the awareness of the need for MTSS, and building's culture and established practices. Lastly, other contextual factors in the building were reported as also influencing MTSS implementation. The results of this study can act as an implementation guide for building and district MTSS teams looking to strengthen and enhance their MTSS efforts. It is also a call to action for school districts nationwide to prioritize their MTSS practices through ongoing training, provision of resources, and consistent support to building-level teams. Finally, this study sheds light on the day-to-day realities of MTSS implementation. Limitations of this study include the following: (a) limited generalization of findings to other geographic regions; (b) little to no involvement of the participants in day-to-day implementation of MTSS interventions; (c) potential impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic; and (d) possible confirmation bias during data analysis. Steps were taken to ensure the trustworthiness of the data, including pilot interviews, member checks, analyst triangulation, and audit trailing.

The purpose of this dissertation is to investigate how educational research, specifically Research-Based Instructional Strategies (RBIS), is adopted by education practice, specifically within the engineering Statics classroom. Using a systematic approach, changes in classroom teaching practices were investigated from the instructors\' perspective. Both researchers and practitioners are included in the process, combining efforts to improve student learning, which is a critical goal for engineering education. The study is divided into 3 stages and each is discussed in an individual manuscript. Manuscript 1 provides an assessment of current teaching practices; Manuscript 2 explores RBIS use by Statics instructors and perceived barriers of adoption; and Manuscript 3 evaluates adoption using Fidelity of Implementation. <br /><br />A common set of concurrent mixed methods was used for each stage of this study. A quantitative national survey of Statics instructors (n =166) and 18 qualitative interviews were conducted to examine activities used in the Statics classroom and familiarity with nine RBIS. <br /><br />The results of this study show that lecturing is the most common activity throughout Statics classrooms, but is not the only activity. Other common activities included working examples and students working on problems individually and in groups. As discussed by the interview participants, each of Rogers\' characteristics influenced adoption for different reasons. For example, Complexity (level of difficulty with implementation of an RBIS) was most commonly identified as a barrier. His study also evaluated the Fidelity of Implementation for each RBIS and found it to be higher for RBIS that were less complex (in terms of the number of critical components). Many of the critical components (i.e. activities required for implementation, as described in the literature) were found to statistically distinguish RBIS users and non-users. <br /><br />This dissertation offers four contributions: (1) an understanding of current ractices in Statics; (2) the instructor perspective of the barriers to using RBIS in the classroom; (3) the use of Fidelity of Implementation as a unique evaluation of RBIS adoption, which can be used by future engineering education researchers; and (4) a systematic approach of exploring change in the classroom, which offers new perspectives and approaches to accelerate the adoption process.<br /> / Ph. D.

Applied Behavior Analysis has experienced an increase need for practitioners at all certification levels. Most recently, a demand for the paraprofessional-level certification, the Registered Behavior Technician™ (RBT®), is being driven by state licensure and health insurance reform. This has subsequently led to pressure to quickly train paraprofessionals to work with at-need clients. While this growth is favorable for the field it means that agencies are often at odds with balancing quality and breadth of knowledge, which can negatively impact clients’ lives. Furthermore, outside of basic minimum training standards, the behavior analytic governing bodies do not currently regulate RBT trainings the way they do for higher levels of certification, leaving it up to training supervisors to determine competency. In a series of experiments, some of the concerns with respect to RBT training will be addressed. The first will determine if an online curriculum is feasible for training RBT candidates to a level of proficiency for conceptual and practical knowledge. The second thread of research will examine if Acceptance and Commitment Training can lead to gains in RBT performance. Implications for the findings as well as future directions are discussed.

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Following recipes is an analogy for maintaining intervention integrity, or, fidelity. Fidelity is the extent to which an intervention is implemented as intended. This editorial presents a recipe for assessing fidelity in family and health systems. The author discusses the challenges posed by the complex recipes of families and health systems interventions, in both research and clinical practice. The author concludes that increasing the measurement and reporting of fidelity is paramount in the exploding literature around family and health systems research. Researchers and practice improvement champions must find ways to assess fidelity or its proximal indicators and work to innovate new, more efficient methods that allow for ubiquitous fidelity assessment and monitoring systems, ensuring the best care for the families and system stakeholders they serve.

Hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) modeling is a powerful way of modeling complicated systems. However, some hardware is expensive to use in terms of time or mechanical wear. In cases like these, optimizing using the hardware can be prohibitively expensive because of the number of calls to the hardware that are needed. Variable fidelity optimization can help overcome these problems. Variable fidelity optimization uses less expensive surrogates to optimize an expensive system while calling it fewer times. The surrogates are usually created from performing a design of experiments on the expensive model and fitting a surface to the results. However, some systems are too expensive to create a surrogate from. One such case is that of a flapping flight model. In this thesis, a technique for variable fidelity optimization of HIL has been created that optimizes a system while calling it as few times as possible. This technique is referred to as an intelligent DOE. This intelligent DOE was tested using simple models of various dimension. It was then used to find a flapping wing trajectory that maximizes lift. Through testing, the intelligent DOE was shown to be able to optimize expensive systems with fewer calls than traditional variable fidelity optimization would have needed. Savings as high as 97% were recorded. It was noted that as the number of design variables increased, the intelligent DOE became more effective by comparison because the number of calls needed by a traditional DOE based variable fidelity optimization increased faster than linearly, where the number of hardware calls for the intelligent increased linearly.