SNHU Academic Archive
Welcome to Southern New Hampshire University's online collection of student achievement, faculty research, and university archival material. Each community below contains a number of collections you may browse or search.
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Recent Submissions
A Study Exploring How Leaders Experience Cultivating Employee Engagement at Work
(Southern New Hampshire University, 2021-05-21) Allen, K.L.; Moehle, Matthew; Hudson, Nicole; Scott, Craig; Campbell, Leslie; Caridine, Eboni
Employee engagement is a key indicator of a company’s growth. Employee engagement and leadership styles have been researched for generations, as evidenced by the number of dissertations and articles written about leadership and engagement. The purpose of this research is to gain a better understanding of how leaders experience cultivating employee engagement at work. This study aims to contribute additional knowledge to the field of educational leadership by detailing how leaders experience cultivating employee engagement at work. This research focuses on the democratic, transactional, and transformational leadership styles and how they cultivate employee engagement at work. The findings can assist the private sector to enhance employee engagement and workforce productivity.
The theoretical foundation of this study is Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, which helps to understand why people behave the way they do. This study employed a qualitative approach to answer two research questions addressing how leaders experience cultivating employee engagement at work. This study used a non-probability sampling method; purposive sampling was used to select the study participants. The sample size for this study was 10 employees (n=10). A semi-structured survey was used to gather participant data and feedback. The data was analyzed by dividing the results into themes through a process known as descriptive coding, and the final information was captured in figures, tables, and survey comments.
The results of this study show that participants have not been directly exposed to cultivating employees; however, they believe in its concepts. The respondents believed that employee cultivation is necessary for employees. Various strategies and leadership traits are utilized by the respondents: They reported common leadership styles being used, such as transactional, transformational, and situational leadership. However, it should be noted that some participants did not ground their practice in leadership theory, and listed leadership traits rather than a theory. Half of the leaders believed that their employees perform better as a result of employee engagement and cultivation, while others believed their employees have intrinsic skills that allow them to perform well and meet and exceed their targets.
The Lived Experiences of Novice College Faculty During COVID 19: An exploration of pedagogy and online communities during a pandemic.
(Southern New Hampshire University, 2021-07-13) Garaventa, David J.; Rogers, Audrey; Murray-Chandler, Lynn; Lynn, Richard; Reder, Michael
During March of 2020, a novel strain of the Coronavirus began to close college campuses across the United States. But the teaching and learning did not stop, even though faculty and students were sent home to engage in remote teaching in order to avoid accelerating the spread of the pandemic on their campuses. In this study, interviews were conducted with 13 novice college faculty members at small colleges who had never taught online or blended courses prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. The purpose of this study was to explore the lived experiences of these novice faculty at small colleges across the United States and to bring their unique stories to light. Participants’ experiences of teaching during the phenomenon of the pandemic and the impact on their subsequent views and approaches to teaching were explored through the phenomenological inquiry method. Themes emerged relating to faculty connections and disconnection during emergency remote teaching; gaps in their online teaching skills and student readiness; and an overall sense of the acceleration of institutional change and faculty remote teaching skills.
How Rural New England Superintendents Create Community Engagement
(Southern New Hampshire University, 2021-08-11) Kimball, William H.; Littlefield, Charles P.; Tapley, Colleen; Richardson, Irving
America has a rich history of commitment to democratic values and ensuring that our public has a voice in how our communities provide public education. Ensuring public participation is especially true in the rural parts of our nation as they have a strong connection to the schools and their children. The purpose of this interpretative phenomenological analysis study was to determine the lived experience of rural northern New England superintendents who engage their communities. Using the Critical Place-Conscious Leadership, this study investigated the following research question: What is the lived experience of a rural northern New England superintendent who participate in community engagement?
This study included six superintendents who serve completely rural areas within their school districts. This study suggests that superintendents who engage their communities believe in a partnership with their communities built upon open and honest communication and is relationship driven. They also think they must purposefully plan all activities and flexibly altered by the stakeholders' feedback to ensure successful participation. Ultimately, the superintendents in this study believe they can build support and trust in their school system due to their community engagement.
How Students Experience Failure in a Content-Gamified Higher Education Course
(Southern New Hampshire University, 2021-09-07) Gentry, Benjamin James; Rogers, Audrey; Ayers, Richard; Case, Randall
Currently, in traditional higher education courses, the design of failure and its perceived and applied consequences have created an atmosphere of learning where students are often afraid to explore, try, and engage. Furthermore, when the same students do attempt goals and are met with failure, they are often dejected and demotivated. Yet, the opposite has shown to be true in how core design principles in many popular video games regularly encourage a model of constructive failure based on exploration, iteration, and engagement. Connecting these two atmospheres of learning, this study contributes to the conversation of gamification in a higher education course by specifically focusing on how students experience failure within a course that has been designed around core video game principles.
In order to explore how students experience failure in a content-gamified higher education course, the researcher completed a phenomenological study with eight student participants, primarily by conducting multiple interviews and collecting written anecdotes. Responses were transcribed and coded through in-vivo and pattern coding, and ten major themes emerged. These themes were examined through the theoretical frameworks for Clifford’s (1984) Constructive Failure Theory and Weiner’s (1985) Attribution Theory. The themes showed that students experienced failure in four stages, ultimately finding the experience to be constructive based on a course design that featured autonomy, recovery, feedback, and accumulation. The study results suggest that failure may be constructive in a higher education course where core video game design principles are employed.
Compassion Fatigue: It’s a Part of a Teacher’s Lived Experience Whether It Is a Global Pandemic or Not
(Southern New Hampshire University, 2021-08-30) Hammel, Kate; Littlefield, Charles; Tapley, Colleen; Truebridge, Sara
Compassion fatigue is a familiar concept in the social work and healthcare field, and it has recently become prevalent to the education field (Newell & MacNeil, 2010; Abraham-Cook, 2012). However, there has been limited research examining compassion fatigue specifically with classroom teachers. This study aims to add to the literature focusing on elementary classroom teachers and the self-care strategies that they are using to address their compassion fatigue. Although this concept has existed well before the COVID-19 pandemic, compassion fatigue is an important topic that is gaining attention of school administrators and educators now more than ever because of the added stress that has been brought on by the pandemic.
This case study contained four participants in the New England area who participated in in-depth interviews that focused on their experiences with compassion fatigue, their self-care strategies, and how they have addressed their compassion fatigue throughout their careers. Results from this study indicated that compassion fatigue was present amongst all four of the participants and that the self-care strategies that they utilized were established before they became a classroom teacher. Furthermore, the results from this study indicate that all four participants had a clear purpose as to why they were teaching. This helped to provide the participants with a meaningful focus to propel forward in their careers, especially when things were difficult and bleak due to what they were experiencing from their students’ lived experiences. The study concludes by providing implications for school administrators and classroom teachers for future research as well as professional development in hopes to help others address their own compassion fatigue. Additionally, limitations of this study are discussed.
By completing this research study, the researcher hopes to normalize the conversation surrounding compassion fatigue and to bring optimism and awareness to those who may be experiencing compassion fatigue in their teaching experience so that they find the strength and methods to move forward and remain strong in their field.