Transformational Leadership: Is It a Factor for Improving Student Achievement in High Poverty Secon
This mixed-method study addressed the following problem: What type of leadership is most appropriate to guide schools through the process of continuous rapid change required by the No Child Left Behind legislation and the twenty-first century while still performing well? It investigated a possible relationship between improved student achievement on state assessments, improved four-year graduation rate for high schools, improved attendance for schools without graduating classes, and the Leit
The United States Postal Service: A Case Study of Large Scale Government Transformation
The challenge of replacing the baby-boomer generation of employees is beginning in government agencies as they face a “tsunami” of retirements. This generation forms the core of middle managers or supervisors who are essential to providing the continuity in government organizations that serve the needs of citizens on a daily basis, or most critically in times of crisis.
This same generation of government employees worked through decades of change in public administration. The 1980s privat
Reducing the Premature Termination of Children from Psychotherapy through Research Based Program Eva
This study attempts to understand premature termination from psychotherapy by children. It attempts to supply recommendations for two different mental health settings to reduce premature termination from their programs. The programs were the Center for Applied Psychology at Indiana University of Pennsylvania (CAP) and the Community Guidance Center (CGC), both located in Indiana, Pennsylvania.
Premature termination is a serious problem in the delivery of services across populations. Estimated
Structural Equation Modeling Assessment of Key Causal Factors in Computer Crime Victimization
This dissertation empirically assesses a computer-crime victimization model by applying Routine activities theory. Routine activities theory is arguably, as presented in detail in the main body of this study, merely an expansion of Hindelang, Gottfredson, and Garofalo’s lifestyle exposure theory. The components of routine activities theory were tested via structural equation modeling to assess the existence of any statistical significance between individual online lifestyles, the levels of com
The Academic Environment of One Junior High School In Northeastern Pennsylvania as Perceived by the
This ethnographic study describes the academic culture and climate, as it relates to the music program, of a non arts-integrated junior high school as perceived by members of the English, mathematics, music faculty and selected administrators. The study, conducted using a three interview protocol, were guided by four questions: 1) What is the relationship between one’s life experience and their belief systems?; 2) What is the perceived value and influence of a teacher education and music pro
Improved Critical Thinking Skills as a Result of Direct Instruction and Their Relationship to Academ
This experimental study examined the effect of direct instruction in critical thinking on the critical thinking ability and academic achievement of Freshman students being tutored in repeat courses at a rural southeastern Pennsylvania university. This study used the Thinker's Guides, based on Richard Paul's model of critical thinking, and the Rationale Argument Mapping Program, based on the research of Tim van Gelder. Subjects' abstract reasoning and problem solving skills were measured by the C
Emerging Health Trends and Behavior Risk Factors for Chronic Disease Risk in Rural and Urban Pennsyl
The purpose of this study was to gain a greater understanding of the health access and utilization, health risk and preventive behaviors, chronic diseases, and selected public health issues for rural and urban residents of Pennsylvania. Only by the examination of these factors of health can policy makers and health providers make connections and understand the recommendations of implementing health education to prevent the onset of chronic diseases. It is not enough to recognize the data alone b
Favoriser lintérêt des filles pour la génétique par linvestigation
Depuis plusieurs années, il a été remarqué un désintérêt des jeunes en général, et en particulier des filles, pour les sciences. Cet état de fait est un des critère pris en compte pour concevoir une séquence denseignement visant lapprentissage de la structure de lADN et la notion de mutations, en classe de seconde. La séquence sera développée dans le cadre du projet européen SCY (Science Created by You), dont lobjectif est de créer des situations dinvestigations suppor
A View from Eternity: The Spiritual Journey of Emily Dickinson
A gap in the extant criticism of Emily Dickinson requires further discussion of the significance of her poetry. This study utilizes a theory of New Historicism to analyze Emily Dickinson‘s biography and body of work; it draws upon Dickinson‘s own poems and letters as well as critical, historical, social, political, and scientific sources. The study shows that the poet deliberately structured her lifestyle in a triangular configuration: she resided in her father‘s house; she developed her
Anticipating the Audience: An Ethnographic Study of a French-as-a-Foreign-Language Class Creative Wr
This study compared the creative-writing processes of native English speakers
(NES) composing for a real audience in two conditions: one group composing in their
native language (NL) and the other group composing in French as a foreign language
(FFL). Both groups wrote children’s fiction and were aware that children in the
community would read their stories.
Participants were observed while composing and interviewed about their writing
background, composing behaviors, and the texts produced
Peer Response Practices Among Writers in a First-Year Residence Hall: An Ethnographic Study
This ethnographic study examines peer response sessions among writers in a first-year residence hall. It explores how students practice extracurricular peer response and investigates the ways in which extracurricular peer response differs from traditional classroom peer response.
Because capturing peer response sessions occurring in a residence hall presents unique problems of access, the study’s research design includes the use of trained student recorders — first-year students residing
A Study of the Prereferral Intervention Process in Pennsylvania Following the Rescinding of the Inst
The increasing demand for special education services has been identified as a
major contributor to the rising cost of education, and frequently students are erroneously identified as requiring special education services when their needs could be adequately addressed in the regular education classroom. The prereferral intervention process has been proposed as an alternative to the traditional refer-test-place process of identifying special education students because struggling students receive ex
The Rhetorical Situations of College Writing Assessment: Exigence, Constraints and Audience in the E
While literacy educators in the field of composition studies have traditionally
approached the issue of writing assessment from a classroom perspective that emphasized
assessment’s role in the processes of teaching and learning, recent trends in American public policy have made data gathered from educational assessment the basis for arguments of education policy reform. In particular, during the past 15 years, a loose affiliation of advocacy groups known as the P-16 movement has sought to use
Child Caregiver Interaction Scale
Research on early brain development and early childhood demonstrates that the experiences children have and the attachments they form early in life have a long-lasting impact on their later development and learning. The link between high quality early childhood experiences and positive child outcomes is well documented. Quality child care is comprised of the combination of classroom environment and caregiver interaction. While there are measurement tools that adequately assess the environment of
Sexual Politics in the Works of Chinese American Women Writers: Sui Sin Far, Maxine Hong Kingston, a
In my dissertation, I explore the issues of sexual politics in the works of three Chinese American women writers, Sui Sin Far, Maxine Hong Kingston, and Amy Tan. I demonstrate how these writers reconstruct Chinese American women’s self-consciousness through their demand for freedom from the sexual oppressions of patriarchy of both American and Chinese cultures and their resistance against racial domination and their demand for power both as females and as Asian American women. I also explore h
Beyond Response: Transcending Peer Feedback Through Critical Collaborative Assessment
Composition has long recognized a rift between good classroom pedagogy for the
instruction of writing and the institutional necessity of summatively assessing writing for
a grade. While the former is student-centered, process-oriented, often collaborative, and
increasingly constructionist in its approach, the latter is typically authoritarian and
positivistic.
Several pedagogies, such as contract grading and portfolio assessment, have
emerged to address the rift between the two practices. By del
In Their Own Words: Korean Perspectives on Becoming English Interpreter/Translators
This interview study looks at the learning, life, and experiences of 15 professional Korean English interpreter/translators, exploring influences on their career choice, their education and upbringing, and their perspectives on their careers now. The following research questions guided the study: (1) What kind of background experiences led to these interpreter/translators’ interest in the field? (2) What kinds of language and cultural learning experiences have they had? (3) What experiences do
Rural Voices Winding through the Andes Mountains: A Collective Creative Literacy Research Project
This dissertation was a collective creative literacy research study
of a rural community in the Western part of the Venezuelan Andes. First, this
study aimed at portraying the meanings attached to some forms of “vernacular
literacy” (Barton and Hamilton, 1998) embedded in people’s everyday lives in
the community of St. Isidro and in the learning of St. Isidro children in a nearby
school. Second, a literacy workshop project was developed for a group of sixth
graders to fuse both community a
A Study of a Specific Language Arts and Mathematics Software Program: Is There a Correlation Between
The purpose of this study was to compare usage levels of CompassLearning Odyssey mathematics and language arts software among fifth grade students in order to determine the relationship between usage and achievement. While educational software designed by various companies is a regular part of daily instruction in most public schools across the United States, there remains a need for research-based evidence of the efficacy of specific programs. This study used a quantitative design to compare ac
ROOTS AND WINGS: LANGUAGE ATTITUDES OF PROFESSIONAL WOMEN NATIVE TO THE BLUE RIDGE MOUNTAINS OF NORT
Many professional Appalachian women have built their careers in employment environments which expect the language of the academy—Standard American English (SAE). This expectation, along with societal beliefs that Appalachian English (AE), the native vernacular of these women, is an inferior language variety, has led many women to balance the two language varieties through bidialectism. This qualitative study explored the language attitudes of twelve professional Appalachian women, seeking a be
