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Students tend to perform at the academic level expected of them. Although most expectation research has centered investigation of decontextualized teacher-student dyads to understand whether students behaviorally confirm their teacher’s expectation, we now know that expectations operate at whole-group or system levels. Since underestimation is more common within historically marginalized learning communities, these student groups can experience comprehensive systems of underestimation at the level of the institution, with lifelong consequences for success and wellbeing. While intervening in such systems is possible (e.g., changing beliefs or practices to ensure over-estimation), it remains difficult because researchers do not yet understand how academic expectations are constructed or what governs the process. This is essential knowledge for generating more equitable expectation systems. Academic expectations constitute a complex and dynamic system. However, methodologies traditionally used to investigate them have collectively assumed otherwise, likely masking the pervasiveness of underestimation in marginalized settings. In this ethnographic case study I examine expectation co-construction in one 11th grade classroom serving marginalized students. Analyzing over seven hours of classroom discourse and fieldnotes across a five week span, participant recall interviews, learning artifacts, and archival data, I investigate three interdependent system facets: teachers’ and students’ expectation-related discourse; sociocultural inputs operating at multiple levels; and the emerging role identities of teachers and three focal students in relation to expectations. I describe and map an integrated network of 27 emerging expectations, and explain the how and why of their situated co-construction by members of the learning community. I argue that individuals’ awareness of their own contributions to the everyday behaviors, beliefs, and discourse that construct and reproduce underestimated expectations is critical to disrupting such systems. This study offers practitioners and researchers an adaptable methodology to build this awareness and inform subsequent interventions. / Educational Psychology

Typescript (photocopy). / Digitized by Kansas Correctional Industries

Higher education institutions are always directed through policy reforms to promote graduates employability by developing skills in students that contribute to human capital. This interest in employability through education system in the development of skills reflects is part of human capital theory. Considering this, underlying research investigates the expectation-performance gap in the development of generic skills for the purpose of employability offered by the accounting institutes of Pakistan. For the purpose of answering the research question, this research, adopted the theoretical framework of ‘expectation-performance gap’ by Bui and Porter and analysed it within the context of Pakistan. Adoption of this theoretical framework implies the evaluation of three constituent factors as research objectives; the ‘expectation gap’ (reflecting the differences in the expectations of accounting educators and employers), the ‘constraints gap’ (limiting factors to develop generic skills into the student learning process) and the ‘performance gap’ (reflecting the ineffectiveness of teaching activities). However, there is also a fourth objective, that is, to evaluate an outline of the ‘skills acquisition framework’ considering the context of Pakistan’s accounting job-market. Principally this research adopts the survey strategy of a questionnaire with closed-ended questions in order to collect the data. But for the purpose of refining the content of the questionnaire for relevance to the context of Pakistan there are also cognitive interviews. Thus, this research entails a mixed-method approach. The qualitative data from the interviews was analysed using content analysis, thematic analysis and textual analysis. Whereas the quantitative data from the questionnaires was analysed using numerous statistical techniques such as Mann-Whitney U-test, Independent sample t-test, Statistical mean and Principal Component Analysis. The findings related to the ‘expectation gap’ were that there are 19 skills where the accounting educators have dissimilar expectation from employers in terms of skill base education, such skills include decision making, economics, ability to analyse and reason logically, teamwork etc. The findings related to the ‘constraints gap’ were that there are 6 constraining elements which are prevailing within the context of professional accounting education, such constraints include ‘training organisations are not following standard procedures to develop skills in students’, ‘people (potential students) have misperception about accounting education’, 'enrolling students have weak academic background', ‘inadequate stipend offered by training organisations to trainees’, ‘accounting institutes are not appreciating teaching activities, and lack of training opportunities for academics’. The findings related to the ‘performance gap’ were that there are 24 skills where the accounting educators found to be ineffective in the development of skills in students as expected by employers for employment purpose, such skills include inter or multidisciplinary perspective, financial risk analysis, think and behave ethically, independent thinking etc. From the perspective of the ‘skills acquisition framework’, overall 6 skills components were identified from the perspective of Pakistan's accounting job-market, such skills components include appreciative skills, interpersonal skills, technical and functional skills, organisational and business management skills, personal skills and professional skills. Considering the novelty of the adopted theoretical framework (expectation-performance gap by Bui and Porter, 2010) there was a related paucity of literature employing it for empirical investigation using the questionnaire based approach. Therefore, this research provides such theoretical underpinning to this framework that now enables it to be used within the questionnaire based approach. Further this research has described all the generic skills used in this study from the accounting disciplinary perspective and highlights the constraining elements that are assumed to limit the ability of professional accounting institutes. This research also provides a skill acquisition framework which could be used as a reference point for new entrants to the accounting job-market.

This mixed method study is made up of a narrative study carried out with children and an interview study with practitioner psychologists. The narrative study examined the effects of narrative types, namely a picture book story, a first person narrative and a third person narrative, and age, 7, 9 and 11, on children's use of emotion descriptive words. The lengths of the three story types were used as covariates. A 3*3 ANCOVA was carried out showing that neither the tasks, nor the children’s age, have an effect on children's performance. However, the results show a significant, though small, interaction between age and story type effects when the covariates were jointly controlled for. The limited nature of significant findings is explained. A thematic analysis was carried out with the interview study data. This part of the study inquired about the experience and expectations of practitioner psychologists working therapeutically with children. The focus was mainly on the emotional expression of their young clients. Three main themes emerged including an adultomorphic tendency, developmental uniformity and the importance of a therapeutic relationship.

published_or_final_version / abstract / Social Sciences / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

High turnover among auditor assistants is a problem in the auditor profession. 61,7 % of young graduates economists have changed profession at least once during their first three years as employees (Hiltebeitel & Leauby, 2001), heavy workload in the auditing profession is considered to be a contributing factor (Axelsson, 2015). The main purpose of the study is to explain how students' views on the workload affects staff turnover among auditor assistants. In addition, the aim is to describe the expectations of a corresponding expectation gap between students and auditor assistants. In order to achieve the purpose of the study, behavioural theories such as Theory of Planned Behavior and Social Cognitive Theory have been adopted. Further, the Expectation Theory, Identity Theory, Theory of Professions and previous studies of the expectation gap and workload, stress and time pressure are used. The study is based on a combination method based on three interviews with auditor assistants, to develop an understanding of auditor assistants experience of the workload. Subsequently a questionnaire was sent to students with a total of 134 received answers. A short questionnaire with three questions similar to those sent out to students has also been sent to the auditor assistants, with a total of 43 received answers. The results shows that there is an expectation gap considering workload between students and auditor assistants. Further aspects have emerged as contributing factors to high staff turnover in the auditor profession, such as expectations for salary and work content.

Fifty-one male and 57 female college undergraduate students enrolled in an introductory psychology course responded to the Roe-Siegelman PCR Questionnaire, a modified form of Tharp's (1963b) Marital Role Expectation Form (MRE), and a Family Integration Scale as fulfillment of research participation requirements. Previous research had indicated that generally children who experienced love and warmth in their childhood home had marital role expectations of friendliness, spontaneity, adaptability, trust, responsibility, and leadership, while those who experienced rejecting and neglecting parental behaviors were more likely to have expectations of being seclusive, guilty, hostile, rigid, mistrustful, and irresponsible.

The discovery of transcription factor binding site (TFBS) motifs remains an important and challenging problem in computational biology. This thesis presents MITSU, a novel algorithm for TFBS motif discovery which exploits stochastic methods as a means of both overcoming optimality limitations in current algorithms and as a framework for incorporating relevant prior knowledge in order to improve results. The current state of the TFBS motif discovery field is surveyed, with a focus on probabilistic algorithms that typically take the promoter regions of coregulated genes as input. A case is made for an approach based on the stochastic Expectation-Maximisation (sEM) algorithm; its position amongst existing probabilistic algorithms for motif discovery is shown. The algorithm developed in this thesis is unique amongst existing motif discovery algorithms in that it combines the sEM algorithm with a derived data set which leads to an improved approximation to the likelihood function. This likelihood function is unconstrained with regard to the distribution of motif occurrences within the input dataset. MITSU also incorporates a novel heuristic to automatically determine TFBS motif width. This heuristic, known as MCOIN, is shown to outperform current methods for determining motif width. MITSU is implemented in Java and an executable is available for download. MITSU is evaluated quantitatively using realistic synthetic data and several collections of previously characterised prokaryotic TFBS motifs. The evaluation demonstrates that MITSU improves on a deterministic EM-based motif discovery algorithm and an alternative sEM-based algorithm, in terms of previously established metrics. The ability of the sEM algorithm to escape stable fixed points of the EM algorithm, which trap deterministic motif discovery algorithms and the ability of MITSU to discover multiple motif occurrences within a single input sequence are also demonstrated. MITSU is validated using previously characterised Alphaproteobacterial motifs, before being applied to motif discovery in uncharacterised Alphaproteobacterial data. A number of novel results from this analysis are presented and motivate two extensions of MITSU: a strategy for the discovery of multiple different motifs within a single dataset and a higher order Markov background model. The effects of incorporating these extensions within MITSU are evaluated quantitatively using previously characterised prokaryotic TFBS motifs and demonstrated using Alphaproteobacterial motifs. Finally, an information-theoretic measure of motif palindromicity is presented and its advantages over existing approaches for discovering palindromic motifs discussed.

The purpose of my study is to compare the academic experiences of international students with those of domestic students at the University of New Orleans (UNO). Specifically, I aimed the study towards determining international students’ perceptions and expectations of UNO, and assessing whether or not UNO’s ability to meet their expectations had an impact on student success or failure at UNO. To test this, I asked various international and domestic students to respond to a survey consisting of both open-ended and multiple choice questions. The open-ended questions were designed to capture the student experiences on expectations, academic atmosphere, and overall college life, all of which are likely to vary from one student to the other. The multiple choice questions were on student status, tenure, and other items that can easily be classified into distinct categories. I collected and analyzed the surveys over a period of four months to decide which variables in the international students’ experiences affect their academic career. In addition, I questioned if any of the stated variables aided in campus adjustment or helped meet the student expectations regarding school performance and goals. Results indicate that the majority of students, both domestic and international, feel their academic expectations are being met by what UNO has to offer. Those students who feel their expectations (of what UNO would provide them) are not met indicated their academic performance is reflective of their own efforts, an idea that students feel is fostered by UNO. However, there was no significant factor that may have helped or deterred positive experience overall.