<p dir="ltr">This qualitative narrative inquiry studied the career journeys of five Black school principals from Indiana with five or more years of experience in their role. The purpose of this study was to understand the following: (a) the experiences of each participant including who influenced them to pursue the principal role, (b) their successful endeavors as principals, (c) the obstacles they have faced along the path to the principalship, and (d) their beliefs as to why they have persisted in the role for at least five years.</p><p dir="ltr">The data were collected through two rounds of individual semi-structured interviews with the participants. Each round was at least three weeks apart. This protocol sparked rich discussion from which five themes emerged: (1) relationships vs. results, (2) scholarship, (3) perseverance, (4) ongoing issues, and (5) mentorship. Each of these themes was revisited with each participant in the second round of interviews.</p><p dir="ltr">The analysis of the data from this study led to three specific assertions that are discussed in the final chapter. Assertion #1: Effective professional mentorship has a positive impact on Black principals’ ability to persevere. Assertion #2: Black principal perseverance is fueled by reflection and intrinsic sources of inspiration. Assertion #3: A disposition toward life-long learning has a positive impact on a Black principals’ ability to persevere. These assertions and the corresponding implications were developed after a careful examination of the current literature on school leadership and the Black principal experience. This study can be utilized as a purposeful tool to recruit, develop, and retain Black educators generally and Black school leaders specifically.</p>

<p dir="ltr">This dissertation includes three manuscripts that explore the construct of teacher-readiness for integration of computational thinking (CT) skills in their teaching. The first manuscript is a retrospective observational study that builds a binomial regression model to predict teachers’ competence in CT procedural skills using factors such as number of professional development trainings taken, time since last training, subject taught, educational background, teaching experience, and whether they currently teach CT. This study provides insights for professional development providers to better design CT trainings. Some of these insights are then incorporated in the second study which is a design case of an online gamified professional development for K-12 teachers. The second paper provides design precedents for professional development providers of CT for better CT integration in K-12 education. The third study is a phenomenological multiple case study that investigates teachers’ CT self-efficacy, autonomous motivation, and goal relevance beliefs towards CT. It captures teachers’ understanding of what CT is and what its value is to the subjects that they teach. Together, the three studies holistically understand teacher readiness for integration of CT through teachers’ own perspective and provide key insights into how they can be better prepared for this change.</p>

Today's urban schools are composed of students from diverse cultural backgrounds and varying levels of academic readiness. At the same time, approximately 88% of teachers are White and middle-class. The dispositions of teachers have important educational ramifications. Teachers' beliefs structure the classroom atmosphere, influence perceptions regarding the abilities of students, and impact how they teach and expect students to learn and behave. In order to foster an accepting and productive learning environment, teachers must have cultural awareness. To ensure that all learners receive a solid academic foundation, teachers must be able to instruct dissimilar students. Special educators have been trained to work with students with unique, special needs, but the reality of today's demographics - and special education classrooms in particular - mandate that they also have the cultural knowledge to effectively serve diverse students. Perceptions and attitudes of elementary special education teachers regarding their cultural awareness and beliefs need to be explored. This study examined the cultural awareness beliefs of elementary special educators working in urban school districts located in southeast Texas. The research also needs to ascertain whether ethnicity or length of service effected such teachers' cultural awareness beliefs. Using the Cultural Awareness Beliefs Inventory (CABI) instrument, the investigator gathered self-reported data from 54 participants. The reliability and validity of the instrument were determined to be sound by previous investigators. The CABI contains eight major components: Teacher Beliefs, School Climate, Culturally Responsive Classroom Management, Home and Community Support, Curriculum and Instruction, Cultural Sensitivity, Cultural Awareness, and Teacher Efficacy. Data were analyzed using percentage analysis and one-way analysis of variance. The findings include: 1) Participants had favorable perceptions towards the School Climate, Culturally Responsive Classroom Management, and Cultural Awareness variables; 2) Participants had unfavorable perceptions regarding Teacher Beliefs; 3) In contrast to some previous research, it did not appear that teaching experience impacted cultural beliefs; and 4) Importantly, it was discerned that teachers' ethnicities yielded statistically significant effects on their cultural awareness and beliefs regarding African American special education students.

Estimates of “Street Youth” (SY) (those who live/work on the streets) show 150 million around the world, with approximately 50,000 in Kenya alone as of 2018. Challenges these youth face remain a significant barrier to national governments achieving Sustainable Development Goal 4 (Quality Education) targets, as formal schools limit access or fail to provide meaningful and supported learning experiences for SY. However, informal learning spaces that empower youth to solve problems themselves may provide them with the knowledge and skills they are denied by formal schools. SY rescue, rehabilitation, and reintegration centers all around the world emphasize and place education at the center of their operations. Recommendations for educational services for SY include providing flexible, alternative education and skills training for youth unable or unwilling to return to school. However, the lack of skilled professionals working with the SY population is one of the most critical challenges.<div>To meet the learning needs of vast numbers of SY, teachers already connected to this population must be trained in teaching more empowering, skill-based courses such as engineering, which are typically complex. Such innovative, problem-centered curricula demand skilled teachers who are prepared to facilitate a more student-centered classroom. However, sub-Saharan Africa faces a shortage of 17 million formally qualified teachers, even for its formal public schools. Therefore, connecting with the teachers in the context and training them in engineering teaching is crucial. Researchers have long argued the need for teacher professional development to be continuous and long-term. Through this dissertation, I present a Design-Based Research (DBR) study of untrained Teacher Professional Development (TPD) in collaboration with three aspiring engineering teachers at an alternative school for SY in western Kenya. I draw on the theoretical framework of Situated Learning and Communities of Practice (CoP) to discuss the outcomes of a three-phase professional development program. Each phase was designed using the recommendation from McKenney et al. (2006) to include three iterative micro-cycles of analysis, design, and evaluation leading to a meso-cycle. In total, three meso-cycles were completed to arrive at DBR’s final phase of reflection and generation of design principles.<br></div><div>In the first phase, teachers in this study adopted reflective practice strategies to increase their awareness of the practice. Analysis from the study showed that the teachers individually and collectively showed resilience to challenging and complex experiences by establishing a strong foundation for the community of practice. In the second phase, teachers engaged in action research to improve both teaching and learning outcomes. Results demonstrated increased active participation of the teachers in their teaching practice, and developed new understandings of engineering teaching. However, the first two studies also showed the challenges limiting the teachers from constructing an engineering teacher identity and unresolved questions about the sustainability of the TPD. Therefore, in the last phase, the teachers adopted mentoring new teachers as a strategy to develop their identities and sustain the engineering TPD.<br></div><div>The findings from the three phases resulted in generation of design outcomes that include a situated understanding of the theory in this fragile context and design principles that are transferable in comparable settings. Implications of this work suggest a sustainable teacher professional development model for untrained engineering teachers in fragile contexts and present relevant design principles for the CoP.<br></div>

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) has replaced No Child Left Behind (NCLB), and many changes were made to offer more flexibility for English language learners (ELLs). Historically, teachers have not been well informed of the changes made to the specific requirements of educational policy despite being at the frontline to implement these changes in their classrooms. This mixed methods study includes the development of a comprehensive online survey to investigate how aware Indiana teachers are of the ESSA specific requirements for ELLs and the results of the survey completed by 46 teachers. For the analysis of the survey data, both statistical analysis and visual analytics were employed. Findings suggest that the teachers were not highly informed of the specific requirements of ESSA for ELLs, as well as were not adequately prepared to teach and assess ELLs under ESSA. Accordingly, very few teachers reported that they have made changes to their classroom instruction and assessment practices that would be beneficial for ELLs under ESSA. This study reiterates that the effectiveness of federal educational policy should be examined at the classroom level and suggests that the first step should be to clearly inform the classroom teachers by offering district level professional development, which includes a summary of the changes resulting from NCLB to ESSA. The study further highlights that without informing Indiana teachers of the changes made in federal educational policies, the shift from NCLB to ESSA will be nothing more than a renaming of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Hence, the study underlines that only when these changes are implemented at the classroom level through teachers, all students, including ELLs, will benefit from these new policy changes under ESSA.

Many high school math teachers are not trained for teaching students with mild disabilities. Math curriculum is not typically developed with the needs of students with mild disabilities in mind. Teachers may not be aware of the unique barriers for students with mild disabilities, and strategies to help them master mathematics. The purpose of this study was to identify research-based techniques used by general education and special education teachers for teaching math to high school students with mild disabilities. The study also investigated teachers’ perceptions of and willingness to implement specific strategies to teach math skills to students with mild disabilities. Academic research articles were reviewed to identify strategies. A survey was taken by nine high school general education and five special education teachers who teach math. The results showed a reasonable degree of knowledge, experience, and positive perceptions of evidence-based strategies, especially co-teaching. There were significant differences between the responses of teachers with math teaching licenses compared to those with special education licenses. Based on the existing literature and the survey results, a handbook of resources was created for teachers of secondary math classes to support learning for students with mild disabilities.

<p>For more than five decades, education scholars and activists have argued for a culturally relevant and nurturing education that reflects students' diverse experiences in K-12 classrooms. Yet, with the most recent national reform on science standards, the call to engage all learners pushed for advancing STEM in the United States, and many science education scholars have problematized such rhetoric. Unfortunately, the inclusionary blanket term like “engaging all learners” and the efforts that lead behind it do not consider the sociocultural realities that young children bring into the classrooms and the negotiation in learning school science. In this three-paper dissertation, I explore how middle school science teachers recognize the sociocultural realities students come with and cultivate a culturally nurturing education in response to the increase of racial, economic, and linguistic diversity within their integrated STEM classrooms. In particular, the aim of this dissertation to understand how middle school science teachers align school science, specifically in teaching integrated science and engineering, to the sociocultural realities of students by centering on the sensemaking of teacher’s lived experience and experiential knowledge. The first study draws on a narrative inquiry case study approach to understand how a middle school science teacher cultivated a culturally sustaining STEM classroom. The research question that guided this study was: How does Mrs. Johnson make meaning of her experiences in making science and engineering learning more culturally relevant and sustaining for her diverse middle school students? Findings from this study illuminates a complex narrative such as the intentionality of making multiple epistemologies explicit in learning science and engineering and the required racial reflexive work for cultivating a culturally sustaining and student-focused STEM classrooms. The findings also highlight challenges Mrs. Johnson faced as she integrates students’ lived experiences and alternative ways of knowing and doing into science and STEM teaching. The second study uses a single-case study approach to understand specific teaching practices that truncated the cultivation of a culturally sustaining education by exploring the opportunities that allowed internalized and interpersonal oppression to perpetuate with the same teacher, Mrs. Johnson. The research questions that guided this study are as follow: In what ways does teaching the GMO and Loon Nesting Platform STEM units foreground individual and interpersonal oppression to manifest? What teaching practices allow these moments of oppression to be pervasive? Findings from this study suggest that oppression becomes pervasive when teaching integrated science and engineering without considering how STEM learning could be irrelevant to students’ lived experiences and the role of power in teaching science. Based on these findings, I developed a year-long virtual professional development program that emphasized teaching integrated science and engineering with a focus on culturally nurturing and asset-based pedagogies. The final study draws on teachers’ funds of knowledge and identity to explore the sensemaking of a rural science teacher as he participates in the professional development program and how the sensemaking of his lived experiences informed his use of asset-based pedagogies. The research question that guided this study was: How do Mr. Jordan’s funds of knowledge and identity inform their use of asset-based pedagogies in reform-based, rural science classrooms? Findings from this study highlights Mr. Jordan’ funds of knowledge and identity informing his use of culturally responsive and relevant pedagogies. Implications of the third study proposes generational cultural wealth as a theoretical framework as one way teachers can begin aligning school science to students’ sociocultural realities. The final chapter of this dissertation presents a synthesis across the three studies and a summary of the implications for teaching.  </p>

<p dir="ltr">Gen Z public school teachers in Indiana were surveyed concerning their perceptions of power used by their principal and their satisfaction with their principal’s supervision. One hundred and forty-five teachers responded to survey items regarding whether they have worked under one or more principals, the community type (rural, urban, suburban) where they teach, the Rahim Leader Power Inventory (RLPI) to measure perceptions of principal’s use of six different available power bases (coercive, reward, legitimate, information, expert, referent) and the abridged Job Descriptive Index (aJDI) to measure satisfaction. Reward power was the most perceived power base and referent power the least. Two statistically significant findings were revealed. First, the more participants perceived their principal using expert (F(6,138) = 55.12, p < .001) and referent power (t(6) = -5.32, p < .001) bases, the less satisfied with supervision they were. Secondly, Gen Z teachers who had one principal perceived their principal to access more legitimate power than Gen Z teachers who have had more than principal (t(143) = 2.16, p =.032). To effectively influence this influential generation, educational leaders should consider autonomy, personalized growth, tactful integrity, and aligned expectations. Gen Z teachers value trust and transparency, and clashes with traditional leadership methods can lead to dissatisfaction. Meeting their expectations for integrity and authenticity is key to enhancing their satisfaction with supervision.</p>

<p>  </p> <p>This study examined preservice teachers’ culturally responsive literacy teaching self-efficacy changes during the field experiences in relation to the sources of self-efficacy. I delved into the meanings under the theoretical frameworks of culturally responsive teaching and social cognitive theory. I explored 84 preservice teachers’ experiences over three semesters, who have been working with K-5 students from diverse backgrounds. Mixed-methods explanatory sequential design was adopted. In the quantitative phase, I administered a culturally responsive teaching self-efficacy survey before and after the field experiences. Additionally, sources of self-efficacy were studied using a source of self-efficacy inventory scale. Results of the quantitative study indicated that four different types of clusters exist: self-efficacy increased, self-efficacy high-stable, self-efficacy decreased, self-efficacy low-stable. In the qualitative phase, I investigated one preservice teacher from each cluster. This phase shed light on the reasons for the different self-efficacy change patterns among the preservice teachers. Findings from both phases (quantitative, qualitative) have implications: 1. It is crucial for both teacher educators and preservice teachers to understand their culturally responsive teaching self-efficacy and its changes. 2. Culturally responsive teaching self-efficacy and the sources of self-efficacy display reciprocal interaction. An awareness is critical of how preservice literacy teachers’ experiences in the field affects their culturally responsive teaching self-efficacy and other sources of self-efficacy. In light of the findings of the current study, teacher educators may wish to consider helping preservice teachers form informed and realistic culturally responsive teaching self-efficacy. </p>

<p>  </p> <p>This research study aims to explore the understanding and implementation of CT and its core concepts by CS High School teachers. This research study examined CS teachers' understanding of CT’s core concepts; a) decomposition, b) pattern recognition, c) abstraction and d) algorithm design. Furthermore, the study also explores how these CS teachers applied these core concepts to their instructional practice. </p> <p>The qualitative case study utilized the Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) framework as a lens to explore the teachers’ understanding. For this qualitative research study, purposeful sampling was employed to recruit participants with specific knowledge or experience about a topic of interest. In-depth semi-structured interviews were performed with five CS high school teachers for data collection. The researcher used coding and thematic analysis to analyze the data. Teachers shared their understanding of CT, its core concepts, and how they incorporate these into their instructional practice.</p> <p>The findings in the study present the different understandings of the teachers regarding CT’s core concepts and how each of them applied such concepts through different pedagogical approaches to their instructional practice. The findings in the study could provide an opportunity for high school teachers to explore different understandings from other high school teachers and potentially provide collaborative opportunities. </p> <p>The research study concludes with two significant findings and their implications for the field of CS education. It also recommends other researchers and provides collaborative opportunities with other high schools. Moreover, this research contributes to and enriches the current literature on CT in education. </p>