Educational Leadership Program Dissertation Briefs

In his ELP dissertation, Onyejiji examined the relationship between career self-efficacy, career aspirations, and school performance for high school students from low-income communities of color. The results showed positive associations between career self-efficacy and academic performance for high school students from low-income communities of color—particularly for boys. And, in certain cases, students’ career aspirations could be connected to academic performance. Read more about the study in The Latest News.

Read the full ELP Dissertation Brief, including more detailed findings and recommendations.

Study findings make the case for helping students develop tech social capital. Read more about Madda in The Latest News.

Read the full ELP Dissertation Brief, including more detailed findings and recommendations.

Study findings suggest improv’s play-based, spontaneous activities can reduce anxiety and increase engagement among newcomer English-language learner students. Read more about Metz and the brief in the The Latest News.

Read the full ELP Dissertation Brief, including more detailed findings and recommendations.

ELP Dissertation Brief explores elementary school computer science teachers' thinking about equity. Study highlights strategies teachers use to make their practices more equitable. Read more about Toohey and the brief in the The Latest News.

Read the full ELP Dissertation Brief, including more detailed findings and recommendations.

“Teachers of color feel less belonging than their white colleagues in terms of their voices being valued or having input on school policies and procedures. They feel like tokens sometimes, and face more pressure to prove themselves,” Kim-Seda says. “There seems to be a weariness and a tiredness that I think leads to kind of expedited burnout.” Read more about Kim-Seda and the brief in the The Latest News.

Read the full ELP Dissertation Brief, including more detailed recommendations.

How universities respond to sexual misconduct matters. Conduct administrators need an option to provide complainants and respondents with greater satisfaction and behavioral change outcomes. Restorative justice—with the guiding principle of addressing the needs of the person who was harmed to create social equity and to actively work toward mutual respect and human dignity—provides one option. Ultimately, the successful implementation of a restorative justice response provides a new way to talk about and address sexual harm. This has a ripple effect on how students interact with one another, form relationships, and experience campus climate (Koss et al., 2014). Read more about Wade and the brief in The Latest News.

Read the full ELP Dissertation Brief, including more detailed recommendations.

“This research is really about how the financial aid process affects students individually and personally, and the impact that process has on students’ experiences in college,” Do said. “I was really interested in seeing how the personal impact of some these processes that we put in place affects students.” Read more about Do and the brief in the The Latest News.

Read the full ELP Dissertation Brief, including more detailed recommendations.

Independent School BIPOC Students Call for Change
During the nationwide protest against police brutality and racial injustice in 2020, outcries could be heard from BIPOC K–12 students and alumni at predominantly white independent schools (PWIs) from around the country. This movement, often referred to as Black@activism, utilized social media accounts to share students' experiences with problematic behaviors in their schools, such as racially inappropriate teacher comments, peers using racial slurs, and frequent racial microaggressions.

Read the full ELP Dissertation Brief, including more detailed recommendations.