Welcome

A Dissertation
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
Educational Psychology and Educational Technology - Doctor of Philosophy
2021

License

Licensed under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 International License by
Kenneth Bret Staudt Willet
2021

Dedication

For my family, E3,
who continually remind me of what really matters.

Acknowledgments

Thanks

My dissertation research has been guided by my co-advisors and co-chairs, Matthew Koehler and Christine Greenhow, who I credit for teaching me how to think and write. I cannot thank them enough. Matt is able to get to the point of things more efficiently than anyone I’ve ever known, and Chris is the savviest planner I’ve ever met. They have been an incomparable pair of guides on my Ph.D. journey — the best advisors anyone could hope for. I also wish to express sincere thanks to my other two committee members, Ralph Putnam and Gail Richmond, whose wisdom and expertise have significantly inspired me and shaped my ideas. I have benefited tremendously (and wouldn’t be here without) daily chats with the so-called Koehler Diaspora (Josh Rosenberg, Mete Akcaoglu, and Spencer Greenhalgh) and my Ph.D. cohort-mate Paul Reimer. Paul also served as the second coder to test and improve inter-rater reliability for this study, not to mention a daily sounding board for the past five years. His friendship buoyed me through many rough patches; everyone needs a buddy like him in grad school. Finally, I am deeply indebted to Sharon Hammond, our program secretary, who has solved innumerable procedural issues for me over the years; she really gets all of us in the program to where we need to go.

Land Acknowledgment

I have learned from the faculty at Michigan State University in East Lansing MI, built on the traditional land of the Peoria, Anishinabewaki, Odawa, and Sauk Peoples, and I have lived and completed my graduate schoolwork in Lancaster County PA, on the traditional land of the Susquehannock People. This acknowledgment demonstrates my commitment to continue the process of working to dismantle the ongoing legacies of settler colonialism. Learn more at Native-Land.ca.

Tools

This online version of my dissertation was created with the bookdown package (Xie, 2021a) in R, which in turn was built on top of R Markdown and knitr (Xie, 2021b).

Contact

Correspondence concerning this dissertation should be addressed to Bret Staudt Willet, Department of Counseling, Educational Psychology, and Special Education, Michigan State University, 620 Farm Lane, 513 Erickson Hall, East Lansing, MI 48824. E-mail: