05/02/2024

Erin Tinti: Exploring the Self-Efficacy Beliefs of a Writing Teacher through the Practice of Student-Centered, Asset-Based Pedagogies: A Participatory Narrative Inquiry

Teachers, specifically early career teachers, report that they do not have high self-efficacy beliefs when it comes to teaching writing to adolescent students. Previous studies show that early career teachers of writing report not having much in the way of formal education on how to teach...

02/23/2024

Arby M. Ghemari: Asset-Based Frameworks for Highlighting the Brokering Experiences of an Arabic-Speaking Multicultural Liaison in Refugee Education

This alternative dissertation explored the multifaceted roles and experiences of multicultural liaisons in refugee education through a qualitative case study focused on a single participant, Amira, an Arabic-speaking liaison with refugee background. Whereas the body of research studies focused...

02/20/2024

Abijah L. MANGA: Understanding How Families with Refugee Backgrounds Promote Their Community Cultural Wealth in the Transition to a U.S. College Education: A Case Study of a Congolese Family

Continuing political conflicts in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) have pushed many individuals to seek refuge in other countries. The U.S.  has remained one of the preferred destinations for refugees and immigrants from various parts of the world (UNHCR, 2022). According to the...

02/05/2024

Dolan, C.V.: Nonbinary BIPOC College Students’ Freedom Dreams of Utopia

In this critical, hermeneutic phenomenological study (Gadamer, 2012; van Manen, 2016; Weiss et al., 2020), I met with 13 nonbinary Black, Indigenous, and/or people of color (BIPOC) collegian co-investigators multiple times to discuss their freedom dreams for utopia (Kelley, 2002/2022; Muñoz,...

01/25/2024

Sonya Stern: Leader Resilience and Leadership Styles of Director-Level Leaders of Sponsored Program Offices: A Mixed Methods Study.

The intent of this mixed methods explanatory sequential study was to explore the relationship between personal resilience and leadership behaviors practiced by director-level leaders of sponsored program offices across the United States. The study obtained quantitative results from surveying 250...

10/31/2023

Katherine Lee: Special Educator Burnout: A Mixed-Method Analysis of Role Stressors, Relationship Quality with Students, and Burnout

Researchers have noted that burnout in the United States is a problem among special educators and is getting worse (Brunsting et al., 2014; Garwood et al., 2018; Garwood, 2022), resulting in an annual attrition rate of 33%, leading to massive special education teacher shortages (Brownell et al...

10/26/2023

Deborah Hinchey: High School Nutrition Education In Vermont: An Exploratory Case Study

The weight-normative approach posits that weight is a primary determinant of health, that it is an individual-level problem to be managed and that weight loss improves health outcomes. This paradigm contributes to several negative outcomes including weight cycling, weight bias and stigma, the...

06/06/2023

Mary Beth Sellers: Organizational Supports of Rape Culture in Higher Education

Rape culture has roots in our gendered history of the United States which manifests itself on college campuses as well. Attending college has been found to be the riskiest time for women in terms of sexual assault, as up to 1 in 4 women may experience some type of sexual assault or attempt...

03/06/2023

Elsa Richter: DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF KNOWLEDGE CONSTRUCTION IN AN ONLINE TEACHER EDUCATION COURSE

Peer discourse is a valuable tool for knowledge construction in the higher education classroom environment, and can sometimes be neglected in asynchronous online classes, which have become increasingly prevalent in the past several years. Students interact in different ways online than they do...

03/06/2023

Rhiannon Kim: Exploring the Impact of an Embodied Socially Just Healing Pedagogy Of Praxis: A Mixed Methods Study

The way we teach (pedagogy) is as important as what we teach (content). Graduate level coursework is a form of professional development that many educators pursue. The pedagogical approaches utilized in many educational spaces, including in graduate level courses, is often built from the “...

02/17/2023

Ashraf Alamatouri:

Research shows that partnerships between families and school professionals can be an important factor in student educational outcomes and that such partnerships exist less for families with refugee backgrounds than for native-born Americans. There are gaps in the literature around linguistic...

02/06/2023

Gabriel T. McGann: PROMOTING FAMILY-PROFESSIONAL PARTNERSHIPS AMONG REFUGEE FAMILIES THROUGH COMMUNITY-BASED PARTICIPATORY ACTION RESEARCH

The purpose of this Community-Based Participatory Action Research (CBPAR) study was to work with local stakeholders involved in the RAFT (Relationships Among Families and Teachers) Project pilot study (Haines & Reyes, 2022a) to identify the constructs necessary to understand the impacts of...

01/05/2023

Sarah Griffin: Gender and United States Army Leadership Doctrine: Reserve Officer Training Corps Cadets' Experiences with Leadership

This study provides a comparative analysis of female and male Reserve Officer Training Corps cadets' experiences with the United States Army leadership doctrine, given the hypermasculine Army culture with deeply engrained gender norms and expectations that have long privileged men...

09/27/2022

Ellen E. Dorsey: Coaching in the Crevices: The Experiences of Instructional Coaches Supporting Teachers During COVID-19

In March of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic swept K-12 public schools across the United States and placed much of the world abruptly into a period of prolonged crisis. As schools switched to remote learning and then later returned on-site amid rigid safety protocols, teachers everywhere needed to...

09/20/2022

Heather Moore: Inspired to Garden: A Phenomenological Study of Participants’ Experiences in UVM’s Gardening for Health Program

The use of gardening as a practice or intervention to create better health has shown promising physical and mental health outcomes (e.g., Garcia et al, 2018; Rochira, 2020; Soga et al, 2017). This phenomenological study explored participant experience in gardening interventions specifically...

03/29/2022

Hans Cabra Hernandez: Understanding the Relationship Among Durable Goods, Academic Achievement, and School Attendance in Colombia

A joint report from the United Nations Development Program and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative indicates that while the number of people living with less than $1.90 a day declined globally, dropping from 2 billion in 1990 to 736 million in 2015, the number of people who...

03/22/2022

Eileen G.C. Kristiansen: THE GRADUAL DISAPPEARANCE OF FINANCIAL LITERACY IN TODAY’S WORLD. WHAT IS IT AND WHY IS IT SO IMPORTANT? MY OWN STORY OF ACQUISITION

There is a growing concern in this country that the middle class is disappearing and not in the way one would hope.  Instead of families moving into a higher socio-economic class and being able to provide richer life experiences for themselves and their children, vast numbers are shifting...

03/16/2022

Maria-Elena Graffeo Horton: FACTORS INFLUENCING THE IDENTIFICATION AND CLASSIFICATION OF ELEMENTARY STUDENTS WITH EMOTIONAL DISTURBANCE: IMPLICATIONS FOR SCHOOLS

Nationally, there is a mounting interest in better understanding students identified as having an emotional disturbance. Since 2005, clinical diagnosis and treatment of mental health issues in children has trended upward. Nationally, over that same timeframe, the number of students who qualify...

03/03/2022

Audrey Richardson: ENVISIONING EQUITABLE ACCESS TO SECONDARY LITERACY LEARNING THROUGH SOCIOCULTURAL AND CRITICAL APPROACHES TO THE IMPLEMENTATION OF MULTITIERED SYSTEMS OF SUPPORTS

The acquisition and operationalization of literacy is of critical importance to all learners. The use of literacy and language abilities including reading and writing as well as critical thinking and communication, are essential to accessing one’s human and civil rights (Goodwin & Jiménez,...

03/01/2022

Bly, Tina: HINA HANTA, THE BRIGHT PATH: THE CIRCLE OF METACOGNITION

This four-article dissertation is an autobiographical written study, a Scholarly Personal Narrative of life writing. It culminates with a research study by way of a Talking Circle among a group of scholarly elders who gathered to share guidance for Indigenous scholars navigating systemic...

02/02/2022

Nicole LaPointe: Online Cross-Cultural Mentorship In A Health Career Pipeline Program

This phenomenological study of cross-cultural mentoring is set in an online health workforce development program for youth from backgrounds underrepresented in medicine (URIM). The purpose of this study is to understand how personal and contextual factors influence the experiences of medical...

10/22/2021

Katie Stango: Making Meaning through College Leadership: An Exploration of Masculinity and Motivation to Lead

In my previous role as the Assistant Director for Campus Programs at the University of Vermont, (UVM) I noticed fewer and fewer college men pursing leadership opportunities during their time in college. Student affairs practitioners and scholars recognize the benefits and enhanced outcomes...

09/22/2021

Beth Taylor-Nolan: An Abrupt Transition to Remote Learning: The Tenuous Educational Experiences of First-Generation College Students Amidst the COVID-19 Pandemic

And just like that, on March 11th 2020, the university released a startling update informing the campus community that due to the COVID-19 pandemic, in-person instruction would not resume after Spring Break and that all classes would shift immediately to remote instruction.  What does...

09/22/2021

Vicki Garrison: Black Resilience and Empowerment through Self-Affirming Self-Care at Predominately White Institutions of Higher Education

The institution of higher education, especially predominately white institutions of higher education (PWIHE), perpetuates the subjugation of Black people through the existence of traditional societal ideologies, values, and practices that function with and reinforce racism as the norm. Limited...

05/07/2021

Sharon Ultsch: Using Institutional Ethnography to Illuminate the Contested Space of Grading (May-21-2021)

A plethora of research has documented the detrimental effects of assigning grades, A-F, to student work as well as the inherent inequities embedded in this century-old assessment practice that persists in the majority of US higher education institutions. Coupled with the ubiquitous Grade Point...