Educational leaders often spend large amounts of time and money on professional development. However, many teachers struggle to change and improve instructional practices in the classroom. Researchers have presented a variety of professional development models and components in the quest for determining practices that lead to improvement in instructional practices. Teacher change is a complicated process and cannot be reduced to one set of components and a simple logic model. Critical reflection in a cycle of inquiry is supported by current research. However, certain conditions may be necessary in order for teachers to participate effectively in critical reflection, particularly when reflection is in a collaborative setting. This study was designed to stimulate critical reflection in order to gain insights related to how teachers identify areas of need, create a plan to improve, and identify supports to reach their goal. This was an interview study with elementary teachers. Participants were presented with a 15 minute, two-part writing prompt designed to promote critical self-reflection, followed by a semi-structured interview. Findings from this study indicated that teachers may need support in order to visualize improvement in their instructional practices and create an action plan. Teachers in this study identified people who could support their improvement. Reasons for selecting supporters included trust, level of expertise and availability. Furthermore, teachers identified different areas of need, thus sending the message that professional development may need to be more individualized in order to effectively support improvement in instruction. Throughout the entire project the issue of limited time, as related to professional growth, was a factor. As a result of this study, site and district leaders can gain insights toward creating conditions to support teachers improve their instructional practices.

The purpose of this study was to learn about the bicultural educational experiences of Japanese heritage and community language learners, and how they felt their heritage language learning influenced their ethnic identity development. Utilizing the power of reflective practices, current students and alumni of Japanese heritage schools were interviewed to understand their perceptions of their experiences. From an educational leadership standpoint, data that shows the effectiveness of heritage language pipeline/articulation agreements could help fund more heritage language schools as well as provide valuable information to language program coordinators and lifetime learning programs.

Ethnic identity is a major factor in heritage language development and is often viewed through a social and cultural lens (Chinen & Tucker, 2005a; Gibbons & Ramirez, 2004; He, 2014; Nunn, 2005; Shin, 2005). When researching heritage language learning, ethnic identity is examined alongside attitude, motivation, and self-identity.

Interviews with 14 learners and six teachers were completed. The results of the 20 semi-structured narrative interviews and 10 post-interview reflection essays written by learners will be shared. One learner also submitted the critical thematic autobiography they wrote in their Japanese heritage language class in university.

There were seven overarching themes that emerged from conducting interviews with learners and teachers, and reading learners’ post-interview reflections. The Japanese heritage language learners and teachers both agreed on the following points. First, there are significant differences between how learners of Japanese as a heritage language and learners of Japanese as a foreign language learn Japanese, and these learners have very different needs. Second, learners gain a deeper understanding of their ethnic identity through attending Japanese heritage school in K-12 and during their higher education. Third, heritage schools help students achieve bilingual status. Fourth, family life impacts the motivation of heritage language learners to study Japanese. Fifth, learners’ ability to balance both Japanese heritage school and U.S. local schoolwork impacts their motivation. This then impacts their ability to continue in Japanese heritage school. Sixth, it is challenging to attain a high enough literacy and Japanese speaking ability to use Japanese in a career. Seven, intergenerational language transfer was important to the learners.

Cyberbullying is a complex and challenging problem that affects nearly a quarter of school-aged students each year (Holfeld & Grabe, 2012; Patchin & Hinduja, 2015). Interventions aimed at decreasing the prevalence of bullying in schools have turned to whole-school approaches (Salmivalli, 2014). Through this whole-school lens, bystanders have become a key population for researchers to study, as most bullying incidents, including cyberbullying, have witnesses (Lenhart et al., 2011). These witnesses, or bystanders, have the power to intervene on behalf of the victim, and most bystanders report the desire to help, although most do not in fact intervene (Jones et al., 2015). What bystanders consider helpful in cases of bullying, however, is largely missing from the literature. This study aimed to close that gap by asking 20 middle-school cyberbystanders what they considered helpful in their online communities, as well as what factors may motivate them to be helpful (e.g., popularity, friendship, intensity of bullying). Each middle-school cyberbystander (nine female, 11 male) participated in a one-on-one, semi-structured interview that lasted approximately 30-45 minutes. Interviews were digitally recorded, transcribed, and coded to explore the themes that emerged. For the students in this study, the most helpful action cyberbystanders could take was peer support. Peer support was defined as comforting victims, spending time with them, and listening to them. However, the most important factor in determining whether to help was how close the victim was to the bystander. The closer the victim was to the cyberbystander, the more likely the cyberbystander was to show support for the victim. The belief in peer support was extended only to close friends, not non-friends or strangers. One of the main reasons for this preference was that cyberbystanders did not believe they would know what to say or how to comfort someone outside of their immediate friend group. Another key finding was cyberbystanders’ aversion to defending a victim, even if that victim was a friend. Defending was largely viewed as a public act, and as such, students had a heightened fear of peer backlash for posting messages of support in a group chat, which could result in the cyberbystander getting bullied.

Teachers are the foundation for effectively implementing personalized learning environments. This comparative case study investigated 16 teacher’s experiences with a personalized learning program by focusing on users of the Pinnacle Learning program at two, low-income school sites in southern California. This research’s conceptual framework is based upon Venkatesh and Davis’ (2000) determinants of perceived usefulness and Venkatesh and Bala’s (2008) determinants of perceived ease of use. Ultimately, this study reveals that in general teachers perceive personalized learning as relatively advantageous to their role in the classroom due to its fairly high level of ease and high level of usefulness, thus making teachers more likely to continue acceptance of this technology at their school sites.

During this study’s exploration of teacher beliefs about the Pinnacle Learning program, four specific areas were explored: training, use of program elements, classroom roles of teachers using a personalized learning program, and site implementation issues. By understanding teacher beliefs and attitudes on their use of and experience with personalized learning technology, this study was able to identify areas of concern that can be addressed and areas of strength that are beneficial to continue at each school site. Teacher input on the adoption of a personalized learning platform provides the often missing teacher voice from the research available on personalized learning. Input about how the role of teacher is changing may inform preparation programs and ongoing professional developments for teachers. Additionally, data from this research may help low SES schools who are considering the adoption of an online personalized learning platform as there have been limited studies which solely focus on this student demographic.

Teachers in educational systems throughout the United States face many challenges meeting the academic, social, and emotional needs of their students. These challenges faced by teachers often lead to stress and burnout, among other negative effects. This dissertation evaluated the effects of a mindfulness-based program on levels of mindfulness, stress, burnout, self-efficacy and self-compassion of teachers working at a low-performing school. The study utilized a mixed-methods research design to answer five research questions. The quantitative data were gathered through surveys and the qualitative data from semi-structured interviews and journal entries. The surveys administered at pre- and post-intervention were the Mindful Awareness Attention Scale (MAAS), Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ), Perceived Stress Scale-10 (PSS-10), Teacher Stress Inventory (TSI), Maslach’s Burnout Inventory-Educators Survey (MBI-ES), Teachers Sense of Efficacy Scale (TSES), and the Self-Compassion Scale (SCS).

There were no statistically significant quantitative findings for the general scores of the survey measures in this research study. However, statistically significant findings were found for the Depersonalization subscale of the Maslach’s Burnout Inventory-Educators Survey (MBI-ES) and the Non-Reactivity subscale of the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ). Additionally, mean scores for most survey measures demonstrated small changes in pre- and post-test scores in the hypothesized direction. Moreover, there were a total of 20 qualitative findings obtained from the semi-structured interviews and journal entries. Three of the most prevalent qualitative findings shared by most participants were 1) increases in levels of attention, 2) feeling more at ease or relaxed, and 3) decrease in levels of reactivity in relationships with others. Other major qualitative findings included: feeling less burned out at work, more positive attitude toward work, increase in positive self-talk, and more positive relationship with pain.

The qualitative findings from this research study provide rich anecdotal evidence about participants’ experience in the mindfulness-based program, and the effects experienced from completing the program. A majority of participants in the treatment group expressed having multiple beneficial effects as well as changes in behavior as a result of participating in the mindfulness-based program. Despite the lack of statistically significant quantitative findings, the qualitative findings of this research study provide sufficient evidence to support the claim that the mindfulness-based program implemented was effective for the majority of participants.

Students entering college underprepared for the standards and expectations of post-secondary schooling is a persistent academic problem. More specifically, students lack college-ready literacy skills, an important skill to access multiple disciplines. With the adoption of the Common Core State Standards and its goal of career and college readiness for all students, it is crucial to examine how high school teachers are understanding and implementing college-readiness standards. Furthermore, if there is a gap in perception of college readiness standards between high school instructors and college instructors, it is important to find out what high school teachers define as college preparatory instruction. Using a phenomenological approach to understand the lack of college-readiness for students, teachers at independent charter high schools were interviewed and some observed to explore teachers’ perceptions of college-ready literacy. The study had several significant findings: teachers’ background impact their perceptions of their students’ college-ready needs; teachers support Common Core but new standards do not prepare poor students for college; teachers believe student apathy, not their curriculum, is to blame for lack of college-readiness; teachers believe a college-ready model limits their students’ post-secondary options; and teachers are not thinking about students attending community college when thinking about college-readiness.