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Pandemics have reshaped societies and paved ways for advances in sciences, political systems, technology, medicine, and the economy. However, researchers have not explored how human resources (HR) function changes due to a pandemic in higher education institutions (HEIs) and how managing it contributes to employee performance and employee well-being. The purpose of this qualitative descriptive multiple case study was to explore how HR function changed due to the COVID-19 pandemic in different types of HEIs and how managing it contributed to employee performance and employee well-being. The study was grounded in Kotter's eight-step change management model. Data were collected through interviews with eight HR managers who met the participation criteria. Participants provided valuable insights into changes in HR function, strategic responses, and adaptations in response to the pandemic. The thematic analysis revealed key themes, including the strategic role expansion of HR management, an enhanced focus on employee well-being, and adaptability in HR practices. The findings of this study have potential implications for positive social change that include contributions to the field of HR management, serving as a resource for future pandemics and illustrating the benefits of Kotter's conceptual framework in maintaining HR functionality while positively supporting employee performance and well-being. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.] more...

Although women dominate the field of education as teachers, there remains a distinct lack of representation of women in school leadership, particularly in the role of secondary school principalships (Taie & Goldring, 2019). Prior research related to this phenomenon has centered on the barriers to entry, both external and internal, that inhibit potential women leaders in the United States from breaking through the proverbial glass ceiling (Bailes & Guthery, 2020; Bosak & Sczesny, 2011; Cellini, 2015; Dean, 2010; Gallagher, 2017; Gerzema and D'Antonio, 2013; Greguletz et al., 2018; Hallinger et al., 2016; Jarvis, 2019; Kruse & Krumm, 2016; Kurban, 2014; Malveaux, 2017; Maranto et al., 2018; Martinez et al., 2021; Murakami & Tornsen, 2017; Richison, 2011; Rosette & Tost, 2010; Smith, 2018; Vial & Napier, 2018; Zenger & Folkman, 2019). Given the lack of substantive research on the phenomenon of female international school leadership, this qualitative, phenomenological study explored the perceptions female school leaders had about the experiences they believe contributed to their career path to secondary school principalships in international schools. Through the lens of the glass ceiling theory, six key themes were revealed. The themes that surfaced reflect the participants' experiences on their path to breaking the glass ceiling. These themes are (a) the development of their own self-awareness, (b) the role that external sources of support played in contributing to their leadership path, (c) the leadership attributes they believe impacted their leadership path, (d) the internal and external barriers they faced, (e) the perception of gender-based differences in leadership styles, and (f) a final theme dedicated to the participants providing advice for aspiring female leaders. In examining the participants' perspectives in this study, insights and guidance is provided to females aspiring to be leaders in how they might break through the glass ceiling (Zachry, 2009). [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.] more...

The inclusion of students with disabilities in general education settings has steadily increased since the 1990s. Yet little is known about whether inclusive education is effective for these students or their non-disabled peers. I examine the impacts and associated costs of inclusive education on both student groups through the lens of one anonymous school district that implemented a policy of inclusion as the default student placement in the early 2000s. I leverage the staggered, school-level implementation in an event study model to estimate the policy's impacts on academic and behavioral outcomes and find there were no detrimental impacts on the academic performance of students with or without disabilities as a result of the policy. Elementary and middle school students' standardized test scores, as well as attendance rates across all school levels, were unaffected, while high school graduation and 9th grade promotion rates increased by two and six percentage points over the long term. I use a quasi-experimental synthetic control method to examine the associated costs of policy implementation, finding no short- or long-term impacts on district revenue or expenditures. Opportunity costs--a high level of investment required by school and district staff--presented the greatest implementation burden. This study offers evidence that inclusive education does not come at either high financial costs or the expense of students' academic progress. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.] more...

K-12 principals are held increasingly accountable for school success, yet their direct impact on students is negligible. Principals must thus work to positively impact teachers in order to indirectly impact student achievement. Transformational leaders are able to utilize intellectual stimulation in order to impact those who work under them. The data for this study was collected through qualitative means, with eight K-12 teachers, representing two school districts in East Tennessee, participating. The findings in this study indicated that principals were able to provide intellectually stimulating experiences for teachers without having to bring in outside resources or even add extra time to either their or their teachers' workdays. For the participants in this study, K-12 principal actions that provided intellectual stimulation were as follows: displaying trust, providing leadership experiences, questioning the "status quo," giving specific/actionable feedback, and facilitating academic study. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.] more...

The purpose of this quantitative correlational study is to determine if, and to what extent, there is a statistically significant relationship between the learning style of online postsecondary adult learners and their academic success as measured by their cumulative GPA. The theoretical basis for the study was Honey and Mumford's learning style theory and Kolb's experiential learning theory. The overarching research question sought to determine the relationship between variables learning style and academic success as measured by GPA. The study was conducted with a convenience sample of N = 135 teachers from a public school district in Missouri who have taken online graduate coursework. The results of Spearman's rho analysis found that the variable learning style did not have a statistically significant relationship with the variable academic success as measured by GPA of online postsecondary adult learners. Recommendations for future researchers to use a qualitative methodology to explore adult learners' perception of learning styles. Instead of self-reporting the data, future researchers may consider addressing the methodological limitations of the study using a more unbiased data collection method. Also, future researchers may consider offline data collection methods to ensure the inclusion of those adult learners who also took traditional courses. Lastly, future researchers should conduct a study that attempts to find if and to what extent teacher level of education relate to postsecondary learners' academic success, as no significance was found when looking at the learning style. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.] more...

The purpose of this study was to determine if individual and institutional factors predict candidates' performance on the Board of Certification for the Athletic Trainer (BOC) examination and to determine if institutions' demographic profiles of athletic training predict pass rates on the BOC examination for people of color (POC). A BOC candidate dataset was obtained with demographic variables for 18,127 candidates from 346 institutions. Race, sex, funding type, institution type, and geographic location were predictive of candidates' performance on the BOC examination. Of the individual variables that were statistically significant, POC and female candidates were more likely to fail the BOC examination than White and male candidates, respectively. Private institutions and historically Black colleges and universities also had higher associations with failure than public and predominantly White institutions. Of the ten geographic locations studied, candidates in Districts 8 and 10 were less likely to fail compared to the reference group, candidates in District 4. Additionally, demographic profile data was collected from 170 institutions and analyzed to predict pass rates on the BOC examination for POC from the number of years since accreditation, minimum required grade point average to remain in the program, secondary admissions process, maximum enrollment, percentage of students of color accepted, percentage of faculty of color, and percentage of preceptors of color. The seven variables did not predict pass rates for POC. Overall, the recommendation for athletic training education is to increase diversity within programs and identify intervention strategies to help POC succeed on the BOC examination. Future researchers should include experimentation with specific interventions, detection of best practices, and reassessment of the variables of interest from the present study at the master's level. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.] more...

The demands of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) increase each year, requiring all students to be proficient in all subjects by 2014. Due to NCLB legislation, schools sense additional pressure to meet national and state standards. This legislation not only expanded the role of the federal government, but it also increased the pressure on schools to demonstrate student achievement. Principals are now examining their personnel and making decisions on their staff members as they implement school-wide reform efforts. The purpose of this study was to examine the role of the principals in the era of accountability and the personnel decisions they make in the context of school reform. Furthermore, this study addressed the common issues detailed by principals as they followed the guidelines of NCLB when choosing and retaining highly qualified staff members. In order to accomplish this, principals were questioned on their perspectives of the No Child Left Behind Act and their leadership role with personnel under this era of accountability In this case study, principals were questioned about the way they recruit, hire, mentor, train, and dismiss teachers. Principals were also questioned about the induction of teachers in their schools. The sample consisted of principals in a rural district in a southeastern state. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.] more...

According to industry representatives, computer science education needs to emphasize the processes involved in solving computing problems rather than their solutions. Most of the current assessment tools used by universities and computer science departments analyze student answers to problems rather than investigating the processes involved in solving them. Approaching assessment from this perspective would reveal potential errors leading to incorrect solutions. This dissertation proposes a model describing how people solve computational problems by storing, retrieving, and manipulating information and knowledge. It describes how metacognition interacts with schemata representing conceptual and procedural knowledge, as well as with the external sources of information that might be needed to arrive at a solution. Metacognition includes higher-order, executive processes responsible for controlling and monitoring schemata, which in turn represent the algorithmic knowledge needed for organizing and adapting concepts to a specific domain. The model illustrates how metacognitive processes interact with the knowledge represented by schemata as well as the information from external sources. This research investigates the differences in the way computer science novices use their metacognition and schemata to solve a computer programming problem. After J. Parham and L. Gugerty reached an 85% reliability for six metacognitive processes and six domain-specific schemata for writing a computer program, the resulting vocabulary provided the foundation for supporting the existence of and the interaction between metacognition, schemata, and external sources of information in computer programming. Overall, the participants in this research used their schemata 6% more than their metacognition and their metacognitive processes to control and monitor their schemata used to write a computer program. This research has potential implications in computer science education and software development through its understanding of the cognitive behavior used to solve computational problems. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.] more...

Seventy freshmen in a reading and study skills center participated in a study of the relationship between persistence in participating in a voluntary, noncredit developmental reading program and sex, personality type, entrance reading proficiency, entrance general scholastic ability, type of program selected, and change in grade-point average. The 32 persistent students attended the reading and study skills center for at least nine hours; the 38 nonpersistent students attended for eight or fewer hours. Analyses of results indicated that there were no significant differences between persistent and nonpersistent students on any of the variables tested. (Author/AA) more...