Dissertations

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore how the gender of female academic library directors affects their leadership. The theory guiding this study was Acker’s theory of the ideal worker, as it offers a framework for examining the impact of worker gender in the workplace. The central research question of this study examined how the gender of female library directors at medium nonprofit private universities and colleges in the U.S. affected their leadership. This study utilized a phenomenological approach, conducting semi-structured interviews of female academic library directors at medium nonprofit private universities and colleges in the U.S. The results were then analyzed via data coding to identify major themes across the participants’ lived experiences. The study resulted in four major themes: (a) Relationships, (b) Service Orientation, (c) Identity, and (d) Emotional Labor. Overall, the identified themes center around women’s lived experiences as communally-oriented leaders. Although this offers career satisfaction to these female leaders, it also puts them in the conflicting position of being expected to align with the agentic ideal leader paradigm on a university-wide level while being rewarded for behaving communally on a library level.

This mixed-methods study examined how U.S. Army chaplains experience and facilitate the free exercise of religion. The research explored compelling narratives of best-case facilitation experiences, identified leadership qualities associated with successful religious support, and analyzed similarities and differences between best and worst-case scenarios. Using Brinkerhoff's Success Case Method, the study distributed a quantitative survey to 1,478 active-duty chaplains (achieving a 23% response rate) followed by twelve guided interviews with participants representing diverse ranks and faith traditions. The research revealed six major themes: significant gaps in education for pluralistic ministry, tension between personal religious convictions and professional duties, crucial impact of leadership on religious support culture, importance of proactive support approaches, systemic challenges in standardization and resource allocation, and transformation of understanding through direct experience. Analysis employed multiple theoretical frameworks, including Socio-Technical Systems Theory, Open Systems Theory, and Schein's organizational culture model. Findings indicate that successful religious support requires comprehensive education, psychologically safe environments for dialogue, standardized processes, and intentional leader development. The study demonstrates how chaplains navigate supporting diverse faiths while maintaining religious integrity, often experiencing significant personal transformation through engagement with service members. The research contributes to understanding how religious professionals balance personal convictions with institutional requirements in pluralistic settings.

In many Science of Reading programs, the focus on foundational skills like phonics and fluency can overshadow the importance of reading engagement in elementary classrooms. This dissertation answers the question: What are the effects of a six-week, small-group intervention incorporating engagement strategies on third graders' reading engagement in behavioral, cognitive, affective, and social engagement? Grounded in Engagement Theory, the study's instructional framework and literature review explore foundational theories of reading engagement within these subcategories: behavioral, cognitive, affective, and social. The research was conducted in a rural, Title 1 elementary school in the southeastern United States, involving 14 third-grade students identified as at-risk by a universal reading screener. The 12 small-group lessons were scheduled outside regular school hours to complement in-class tier 2 interventions and supplement the district's newly adopted Structured Literacy curriculum. Using a quasi-experimental design, the study employed quantitative methods to analyze pre- and post-survey data collected from four small reading groups, comprising two control and two treatment groups. The Reading Engagement Scale was the primary evaluation tool, revealing positive gains in all four engagement dimensions for the control and treatment groups. The behavioral and affective engagement subcategories showed the most growth, while cognitive engagement consistently achieved the highest overall scores. This research contributes insights into the interplay between student-centered balanced literacy approaches and enhanced reading engagement.

This mixed methods action research intervention study analyzed the influence of social music improvisation (SMI) on students' behaviors and perceptions of their connectedness to others in a virtual middle school classroom setting. Nine 10-minute SMI sessions allowed for the accumulation of data, with two additional pre-sessions being informative and exploratory to describe the SMI intervention and practice its aspects with participants in the intervention group. This study acquired pretest and posttest data from the Hemingway Measure of Adolescent Connectedness (Karcher, 2005) and observational information through process coding and field notes. Results showed how the presence or absence of SMI influenced 37 virtual middle school music students' perceived connectedness to others. Social music improvisation activities included playing instruments and singing using improvisation cards created by Dr. James Oshinsky (2021, see Appendix F). Qualitative field note data and process coding provided a more personalized snapshot of the results using the teacher-researcher's observations of actions and the nature of communication during sessions (Plano Clark & Ivankova, 2016; Privitera & Ahlgrim-Delzell, 2019). Actions recorded included playing an instrument, singing/speaking, smiling/laughing, and making eye contact. A statistically significant result (p=.035) in the connectedness to school subscale suggests that SMI activities positively influence students’ perceived feelings of connectedness to school, an integral part of this research. Qualitative data through observations and process coding showed that levels of participation during SMI paralleled with increased levels of connectedness to school for participants.

The problem that the researcher will investigate is the conflicting social media messages between the Office of the President and the two preeminent national health organizations (the CDC and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) at the U.S. National Institutes of Health) regarding the COVID-19 crisis. The purpose of this study is to explore alignment and disconnect in the social media messaging between the Office of the President and the top two health organizations and subsequent state government decisions around the COVID-19 pandemic in the southeast region of the United States. Given the research purpose of exploring the alignment between expert information, social media coverage, and leadership decisions around the COVID-19 pandemic in the southeast region of the United States, the research approach was that of a qualitative analysis employing the method of thematic analysis of social media messaging from the Office of the President and the top two health organizations during the first six months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Unfortunately, the southeastern region of the United States chose to disregard the advice of the CDC and the NIAID offered through their respective Twitter accounts during the first six months of 2020, in the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, regarding wearing face coverings, testing, staying at home, and vaccines. According to Chen et al. (2022) and Funk et al. (2022), the political affiliation of the state governors was an overarching contributing factor. Though the Tweets of President Trump initially also supported these initiatives to mitigate the spread of the vaccine, his Tweets and actions in the later part of the study period were not in support of these initiatives, leading Republican followers, specifically, to follow suit. The nation’s two top health agencies and the President were often not in alignment due to a lack of a concerted effort to work together to provide the best possible information to the general public. Because this study primarily focused on the decisions made in the southeastern region of the United States, it would be beneficial to extend this study to other populations to determine experiential differences and similarities.

This qualitative study utilized a phenomenological approach to examine the lived experiences female educational leaders’ face, which may influence their career aspirations. Phenomenology allowed the researcher to explore the commonalities across female educational leaders’ experiences. Female educational leaders from two school districts were invited to participate in the study, provided they had a minimum of one year of experience as school administrators. Participants were purposefully selected. The researcher utilized an electronic invitation inviting female educational leaders to participate in the study. The researcher then scheduled individual, semi-structured interviews with the participants to obtain data pertaining to the participants’ experiences. The data was then analyzed using Colaizzi’s (1978) Seven Step Method, which includes bracketing and member checking. The researcher then developed a clear, concise description that explains the participants' experience. Female educational leaders experience a multitude of experiences that play a part in their career aspirations. Female leaders face barriers that include the need to prove themselves, the need to develop a work-life balance, and gender barriers. However, they also noted supportive factors to assist as they transition into a leadership role, which include a mentor, encouragement, and inspiration, as well as district-level support. As new leaders transition into a leadership role, they develop their self-perception of their leadership. Leaders realize the need for empathy, building relationships, and continual professional growth. Many of the female educational leaders in this study were encouraged and inspired to pursue a leadership role. This left many leaders feeling accomplished and satisfied with their current role because they had already surpassed their initial career goals. Other leaders experienced feeling let down and discouraged when gender bias and stereotypes were encountered, and they were overlooked for a leadership position. While discouraged, these females persevered until they eventually obtained a leadership role.

In the world of customer service, it is commonly believed that the customer is always right, even when they may not be or may be. Roles that carry immediate interaction with the consumer have certain expectations that employees must fulfill, necessitating both surface acting and deep acting; tenets of emotional labor (Diefendorff et al., 2006). Previous research has revealed that relying solely on surface acting can lead to emotional exhaustion and burnout, impacting individuals and even spreading through emotional contagion (Mawritz et al., 2012; Totterdell & Holman, 2003). Leaders turn to emotional intelligence to address these challenges, which can potentially moderate the negative consequences of emotional labor and prevent burnout. This study investigates the role of emotional intelligence as a moderator in reducing burnout resulting from surface acting among summer employees in aerial adventure and zipline parks. Utilizing a quantitative, non-experimental approach our findings contribute to the fields of emotional intelligence and emotional labor.

This dissertation explores the strategies of Southern Baptist churches which contribute to the competence of their lay leadership. It examines the procedures for evaluating lay leaders’ knowledge of church doctrine and goals, as well as their motivation for pursuit of successful ministry. The research assessed Southern Baptist churches in a small county in the Southeastern United States through a qualitative case study with the primary research instrument being one-on-one, semi-structured interviews of church staff. The researcher sought an understanding of these churches’ practices to ensure that lay leaders are equipped for their ministry positions with regard to their leadership approaches, knowledge of church doctrine, and alignment with church goals. The project embraced a constructivist epistemology and a theoretical framework based on the Situational Approach to Leadership. The outcome of the project is an assessment of the local churches’ lay leadership evaluation procedures or lack thereof. Also discussed are avenues for future research. The research found that many churches’ lay leadership training programs were narrowly focused and based on tactical instead of strategic goals. The churches in the study are not utilizing the Situational Leadership model which encourages one-on-one assessment of development levels and mutual goal setting. Further, no church in the study conducts structured classes in doctrine for the laity; rather, they are relying on the congregation to learn dogma from the sermon. The study encourages future research into how the paradigms of pastors and members are being constructed and persisting in the local church’s culture. Plus, the study calls for a mixed methods, longitudinal study to measure the effects of employing Situational Leadership and formal instruction on the Baptist Faith and Message of 2000 in these churches.

The study will examine which factors predict faculty motivation in online learning. Additionally, the study will investigate the relationship between faculty perceptions of online learning and overall online teaching and learning and the relationships that exist between perceptions of administrative support and self-efficacy for online learning. The study's findings will provide insight into how institutions can support faculty teaching in the growing online modality. The overarching method for this study is a nonexperimental quantitative study. This method will collect numerical data that can be used to measure various aspects of behavior, including attitudes. The study's participants will be faculty members at an online higher education institution in the United States. A convenience sampling method will be used to collect the sample due to logistical and time constraints. The Online Teaching Motivation Scale (OTMS) will measure educator motivation on three subscales: teacher self-efficacy for online teaching, teacher perceptions of online teaching and learning, and perceived administrative support for online teaching with 24 4-point Likert scale questions. Results from the study indicated that years of experience teaching online, gender, and perceptions of administrative support are variables that combined help predict faculty motivation in online learning. There is a statistically significant correlation between perceptions of online teaching and learning and both years of experience and years of experience teaching online. Furthermore, full-time faculty members reported significantly higher perceptions of online teaching and learning. Lastly, there was a significant correlation between administrative support and self-efficacy for online teaching and learning.