The purpose of this mixed methods action research study was to implement digital outreach strategies, which would enhance students’ motivation to complete financial aid requirements and scale the departments’ more time-consuming counseling efforts. Using self-determination theory as the primary framework, I implemented the use of a series of emails and text messages sent by students’ admissions recruiters to a group of first-year students admitted to a large, public Land Grant Institution. The messages were framed to enhance students’ autonomy, competence, and relatedness the summer before they enrolled. The digital campaign was also supported by supplemental opportunities, including virtual appointments, a targeted webpage, and virtual workshops. Following the intervention, I compared the enrollment and financial outcomes of participants and a comparison group. Intervention and comparison groups were also surveyed about their perceived levels of self-determination and satisfaction prior to high school graduation and the summer before enrolling at the university. Additionally, selected students from both groups were interviewed during their first semester at the university. There were no statistically significant differences in students’ perceived self-determination, satisfaction, enrollment, and financial aid outcomes following the intervention. Relatedness increased significantly across the two times of assessment indicating all students developed stronger relationships with those from the university’s financial aid and admissions offices, which boded well for students just entering the university. In logistic regression analyses, Pell Grant eligibility was a significant factor associated with negative financial aid outcomes of owing a student account balance of $500 or greater and not completing financial aid requirements on time. Taken together with qualitative interviews, these findings suggest a need for additional one-on-one or other high-touch support methods, to support admitted students in the financial aid process.

This dissertation investigates the impact of a pedagogical class and a Community of Practice (CoP) on the implementation of reading strategies by faculty at a community college. It explores the types of reading strategies instructors plan to use, their integration into classroom practices, the factors enabling or impeding this implementation, and the influence of attitudes, social norms, and perceived behavioral control on their intentions to use these strategies. The study employs a mixed-methods research design, incorporating both qualitative and quantitative data collection and analysis methods. The findings reveal that instructors intend to adopt various reading strategies, with the pedagogical class and CoP playing significant roles in their professional development and instructional practices. The research identifies enablers and barriers to implementing reading strategies, highlighting the importance of supportive institutional contexts, professional development opportunities, and reflective teaching practices. By examining the application of reading strategies in the context of community college instruction, this dissertation contributes to the broader understanding of effective teaching practices and faculty development in higher education.

Preparing graduates for full-time employment following graduation has become an increasing concern for universities. Student services departments who employ students have been tasked with providing intentional development opportunities for them. At Arizona State University those opportunities have been taken on by professional staff members (PSM) in Educational Outreach and Student Services (EOSS) who have served as the university’s support system and connection to resources to ensure student success. Many departments within EOSS have been student led and supported by PSM. This model provided PSM opportunities to work with student staff members (SSM) to ensure they were receiving professional development opportunities to grow professionally and personally. Unfortunately, this development has not always been intentional or targeted. Thus, I developed and delivered workshops, coaching, and facilitated an online community of practice (OCoP) to foster and support PSMs’ efforts in teaching transferable, career readiness, skills to SSM. The intervention components were based on three of the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) career readiness competencies including communication, teamwork, and leadership. Participants were full-time PSM within EOSS departments and SSM who were supervised and mentored by PSM. These intervention efforts took place over the course of one academic semester and effectiveness of these efforts was assessed using quantitative and qualitative instruments. Specifically, PSMs’ perceptions of knowledge, skills, attitudes, and self-efficacy were assessed to determine the influence of the invention. Moreover, SSMs’ perceptions of transferable skills and overall connections to work were also evaluated. Quantitative results showed modest increases in PSMs’ perceptions of skills across the intervention. On the other hand, quantitative results for SSM exhibited very slight changes in their scores about transferable skills. Interview data indicated PSM developed knowledge and skills to share the NACE competencies. Further, in their interviews, students indicated their competencies had grown and they felt better prepared for the future. The discussion was focused on describing complementarity of the data, explaining the findings based on the literature, communicating the limitations, portraying the implications for practice and research, describing the lessons learned, and offering conclusions.

Implementation of a Multi-tiered System of Support (MTSS) has proven to be a ‘big hairy audacious goal’ within the literature and applied settings. Positive Behavior Intervention and Support (PBIS) has utilized a similar framework and was represented under the MTSS umbrella. If implemented with fidelity, both MTSS and PBIS have been shown to have positive outcomes for learners, staff members, and school systems. To implement one component of PBIS, a coaching procedure which consisted of instruction, modeling, rehearsal, and feedback was provided for three middle school teachers. Two Tier 1 PBIS classroom management practices were the focus of the coaching intervention—opportunities to respond and encouragement of appropriate behavior through positive points of contact. This study utilized a mixed methods approach which incorporated a single-subject design, specifically a nonconcurrent multiple baseline design across participants, to assess the effects of the coaching intervention on the implementation of the two classroom management practices, student on-task behavior, and the social validity of the intervention. Findings indicated an increase in both practices as well as an increase in student on-task behavior, from baseline to intervention phases of the study. Additionally, all participants reported high levels of social validity of the coaching intervention. The discussion was focused on triangulation of the quantitative and qualitative data, which indicated these findings were complementary. Connections of the findings to the research literature, implications for future practice and research, limitations, and conclusions have been provided.

As the Director of Student Affairs for a developing two-year hybrid Doctor of Physical Therapy (DPT) program, I was tasked with developing a program to support the academic success of students. Limited evidence was available on supporting students who were geographically separated from campus during most of their preparation because hybrid programs only recently emerged. Academic coaching has been used in medical education and recently in hybrid DPT programs to support students’ academic and professional development. Coaching differs from advising and mentoring because it was focused on building relationships between students and coaches to promote students’ self-reflection, growth, persistence, and agency. I used asynchronous instructional videos, in-person workshops, and an online community of practice to train and support faculty members to serve as coaches. Coach training focused on specific coaching concepts including listening empathetically, asking powerful questions, and adhering to a coaching session structure. At orientation, faculty member coaches (FMCs) met with their 8-10 students in a group setting and also 1:1 to build rapport and establish communication. Subsequently, FMCs engaged each student in a coaching session twice, during the midterm of each of the first two academic terms of the program. In this mixed methods study, I employed quantitative survey and qualitative interview methods to evaluate faculty members’ attitudes, skills, and self-efficacy for serving as a coach as well as their relatedness to students. Additionally, I explored students’ perceptions of coach support, relatedness to their coach, and relatedness to peers. FMCs demonstrated increases in attitudes, perceived skills, and self-efficacy for the key coaching concepts because of the training. They rated their relatedness to students high and reported that building connections with students was a rewarding aspect of coaching. Similarly, students rated their coach and peers highly with respect to relatedness and had positive perspectives toward coaches’ support. FMCs were challenged by the time commitment to the coaching process. Moreover, students yearned for more opportunities to connect with their coach and peers. In the discussion, I highlighted the complementarity of the quantitative and qualitative outcomes, connected the findings to theoretical perspectives, and proposed implications for practice and for future research.

Schools across the nation have increasingly been required to fill social, emotional, and academic gaps for students. The cost to ensure the needs of students have been met has become challenging for many K-12 schools. Students in urban communities have faced additional adverse circumstances such as high family mobility, food insecurities, lack of adequate healthcare, and limited social capital. Community-school partnerships have played a critical, beneficial role in filling the needs of students when schools did not have the resources or capabilities to do so. Nevertheless, most school principals do not have tools and strategies to identify, recruit, and develop these partnerships. In this study, I created the Development of the Partnership Protocol for Principals (DP3) to help develop principals’ skills and self-efficacy to develop community-school partnerships. The DP3 protocol was made up of a series of four steps, which enabled principals to develop their agency to be successful in identifying, recruiting, and developing partnerships. The four-step process required principals to (a) conduct a needs assessment of the state of the school and its current partnerships, (b) strategically analyze potential opportunities, (c) develop pathways for partnerships, and (d) construct a plan to implement the partnership. In this study, I used quantitative and qualitative measures to assess principals' perceptions of their skills and self-efficacy for developing partnerships. Quantitative results showed increased skills and self-efficacy. Further, qualitative data complemented these quantitative results. Qualitative data also revealed partnerships benefitted students if the partnerships were aligned to academic or cultural gaps and needs of schools. In the discussion, I have described the complementarity of the data and connected outcomes to the intervention and the research literature. Moreover, I discussed limitations, implications for practice, implications for future research, and personal lessons learned. In conclusion, participation in the DP3 workshops increased principals’ skills and self-efficacy for developing community-school partnerships and DP3 exhibited potential as a means to develop skills for school leaders to support their efforts in building community-school partnerships.

During the last 25 years, the academic research environment has become increasingly competitive, with those seeking grants contending for over $83.7 billion, available from primarily six federal agencies. Notably, this increased competition occurred at the same time states have cut support for public universities. To deal with decreases in state support, university leaders and administrators have adopted “new managerialist” approaches that capitalized on three elements obliging early-career engineering faculty members to ‘win’ more federal funding. These three components include (a) leveraging the probationary period during promotion and tenure to stimulate grant production, (b) seeking revenue beyond tuition and operations to support the institution, and (c) augmenting faculty resources by including professional grant writers/support personnel who collaborate with early-career faculty members to mitigate challenges of increased competition for grants by providing domain and implicit knowledge to aid the engineers in grant development. The promotion and tenure process has become particularly challenging for early-career engineers because of the highly competitive federal research landscape.This mixed-methods action research (MMAR) study was conducted to examine the effects of an intervention designed to provide on-demand, online grant writing professional development using a set of five modules. The modules focused on providing information about five constructs related to grant development or grant writing, including requirements, processes, skills, attitudes, and self-efficacy. For three of the five modules, participants demonstrated modest or moderate increases in quantitative scores for the constructs based on survey data. During semi-structured interviews, early-career engineering faculty members revealed candid thoughts about the modules, grant writing, and the “need” to obtain grants as part of their professional lives. Four themes emerged from the qualitative data, including Knowledge, Online Learning, Grant Writing Process, and Winning the Next Grant. The discussion focused on connections between the quantitative and qualitative data, explaining the findings based on the theoretical frameworks, limitations, implications for practice and research, and included a summary.

To address national technology standards for PK-12 educators and accreditation requirements, Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College has developed an approach to preparing its teacher candidates by infusing technological learning experiences in its preparation programs. Faculty members have been expected to teach with technology, model various levels of technology integration, and provide their students with appropriate learning to develop their digital pedagogy skills. Part-time faculty members have been responsible for teaching courses with these requirements but often lacked access to professional development opportunities and support. The lead technology strategist in the college determined these part-time instructors needed improved strategies for knowledge development, support, and networking. Thus, an online community of practice was created as a potential solution to this problem of practice. This mixed methods study examined how part-time instructors participated in an online community of practice (OCoP) housed in two digital platforms, Canvas and Slack. Elements of the OCoP included learning sessions and resources based upon the Teacher Educator Technology Competencies (TETCs), the Technological Pedagogical Content (TPACK) framework, and elements integral to communities of practice. The investigation included measuring the influence of the OCoP on participants’ technology knowledge, technology skills, technology use, and technological self-efficacy. Participants were part-time faculty members responsible for teaching courses in various teacher preparation programs in the college. Data from the study included survey data, Canvas and Slack analytics describing use, lesson analyses and observational notes, and interviews. Results suggested the OCoP was an effective intervention for the purpose of providing digital connections for part-time faculty to develop professionally with respect to teaching with technology. Participants displayed an increase in TPACK, TETC, and self-efficacy construct scores and demonstrated development in technology knowledge, technology skills, technology use, and technological self-efficacy. The discussion focused on describing the complementarity of the quantitative and qualitative data, explaining the findings in relation to the literature, and presenting limitations, implications for practice and research, lessons learned, and conclusions.

The purpose of this action research study was to help medical students normalize feelings of shame related to academics and to respond to these feelings in more adaptive ways. Several cycles of research informed this study, which investigated the influence of an educational innovation. The innovation focused on helping medical students understand feelings of shame, foster self-efficacy in shame resiliency practices, and encourage help-seeking behaviors. In short, the study sought to understand how these medical students responded to feelings of shame related to academic performance before and after participation in the educational innovation. A total of 14 second-year medical students participated in this concurrent mixed-method study. The educational innovation was designed by this action researcher and informed by Brené Brown’s shame resilience theory. Three sources of data were used to answer the research questions, including a pre- and post-innovation survey, interviews, and student journals. Major findings suggested that the educational innovation was effective in enhancing the study participants’ knowledge of shame, increasing perceptions of self-efficacy in the practices related to resiliency to feeling of academic shame, as well as, promoting help-seeking behaviors. The data also revealed a range of academic shame triggers identified by these medical students. This action research study validated the need to normalize feelings of shame and support medical students developing practices for resiliency to this powerful feeling.

In the United States, the profession of Law Enforcement is facing a workforce crisis. There are fewer applicants applying for policing jobs than there was just a decade ago. To worsen the problem, many officers are leaving the profession in less than five years. The Arizona State University Police Department is no exception to this problem. Police employees leave the department for a variety of reasons but among them is a conflict with their supervisor in the area of organizational justice. There is a gap in the training of first-line supervisors in policing as a whole as it pertains to organizational justice and how to implement it within their workgroups. Organizational Justice Theory includes the constructs of distributive justice, procedural justice, informational justice, and interpersonal justice. This mixed-methods study tested the assumption that organizational justice training with first-line supervisors at Arizona State University Police Department would have an effect on their self-efficacy and implementation of organizational justice practices and therefore improve relationships with their subordinates. Results of the study showed a single eight-hour class on Organizational Justice had no effect on the self-efficacy or implementation of organizational practices by first-line supervisors within the timeframe of the study. Like the supervisors, there was also no statistically significant effect on the employees and their belief that their supervisors were practicing organizational justice within their workgroups.