<p> The purpose of this study was to identify the learning styles of international college students and instructional styles of their teachers in specific content areas to determine if relationships existed between the two. In addition, this study examined whether relationships existed between academic achievement, learning style, and teaching style, as well as between demographic factors, learning style, and teaching style. (Abstract shortened by ProQuest.) </p>

<p> The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between the transformational leadership behaviors of nursing instructors in the clinical learning environment and the level of communication apprehension experienced by associate degree nursing students. The study also examined if this relationship was altered by the moderating effect of age, gender, and previous clinical exposure on the transformational leadership behaviors of nursing instructors in the clinical learning environment. This study employed a non-experimental quantitative correlational survey design. Participants consisted of 481 associate degree nursing students who were members of the National Student Nurses&rsquo; Association (NSNA). Descriptive statistics, univariate, bivariate (correlational) and multivariate (regression) testing were utilized in the analysis of data. Data analyses revealed a statistically significant relationship between all but one of the transformational leadership subscales (providing individualized support) and communication apprehension. Additionally, the data revealed a statistically significant relationship between age, gender, high performance expectations and communication apprehension. However, no statistically significant relationship was found between communication apprehension and previous clinical exposure.</p>

<p> One of the challenges in nursing education is the need to enable students to internalize the skills needed to implement the thought processes of critical thinking and clinical reasoning. The research of Patricia Benner has been instrumental in explaining the need to improve the critical thinking and clinical reasoning skills of newly licensed registered nurses. Dr. Benner&rsquo;s research has changed the focus of nursing to include these skills in the education process. The study was designed to evaluate the efficacy of a classroom educational method designed to help students improve these skills. The ex post facto study was conducted at one Southern community college with students enrolled in an Associate Degree nursing program. The study used the nursing educational theory of Patricia Benner and the general educational theory of constructivist educational theory as a theoretical base. Archived data was collected from the results of two cohorts of nursing students based on their performance on two separate administrations of the Assessment Technologies Institute (ATI) critical thinking examination. The data was analyzed using central tendency statistics and an independent samples <i>t</i>-test. Analysis of the data indicate that the educational implementation was effective in increasing the skills needed for clinical reasoning as evaluated by the ATI critical thinking examination. The cohort that used the Critical Thinking Teaching Method (CRTM) increased their scores by 5.62 percent while the cohort that did not use the CRTM scores remained relatively static</p>

<p> Previous research indicated that women&rsquo;s advancement into the leadership and administrative ranks in higher education has stalled over the past twenty years. Studies highlighted the socio-cultural and structural barriers that create challenges for women&rsquo;s advancement in the academy. This study focused on the use of women-only leadership development programs (WLDPs) as a potential resource for women in the pursuit of advancing their careers. Few research studies to date assess the outcome for women who have attended WLDPs.</p><p> This study was an in-depth case study of the Women in Higher Education Leadership Summit (WHELS) held at the University of San Diego, School of Leadership and Education Studies. Using a sequential transformative mixed methods design, 95 WHELS alumnae were contacted to answer the research question &ldquo;How do women from various social locations understand the influence of WHELS on their career plan/trajectory?&rdquo; Using a quantitative survey (37% response rate), followed by qualitative interviews, five main hypotheses were tested to determine if WHELS alumnae reported improved leadership identity, improved leadership ability, improved understanding of effective leadership styles, whether they had advanced in their career, and if alumnae attributed WHELS to their advancement.</p><p> Based upon the findings all five hypotheses were supported by the quantitative data. Qualitative data also supported the quantitative findings, but it provided clarification into how women experienced WHELS. The qualitative findings revealed that women reported benefitting from attending WHELS, it confirmed the leadership ability and style the women already possessed. WHELS built women&rsquo;s self-awareness and self-confidence, allowing women to adopt a leadership identity. Women benefited from this leadership identity as it built their self-efficacy and agency.</p><p> This study confirmed that women do face socio-cultural and structural barriers in institutions of higher education, which create barriers to their advancement into leadership roles. However, through the completion of WHELS, the participants of this study built self-confidence in their leadership abilities, adopting a leadership identity. Through this process the women in this study returned to their institutions with self-efficacy and agency. The study concludes with a discussion of the findings, limitations, recommended future research, and implications for action.</p>

<p>The battle of reintegration has largely been lost by the country?s veterans with disabilities, now identified as Wounded Warriors. High rates of homelessness, suicide, unemployment, and depression are reminders that the war goes on for them long after they have come home. The lost war of reintegration ? especially in terms of the college classroom ? served as the foundation of this study. Staff, faculty, and fellow students are often inadequately prepared to meaningfully interact with Wounded Warriors. Using a phenomenological approach, the goal of this study was to uncover the lived experiences of Wounded Warriors in the college classroom and use the findings to help colleges and universities effectively integrate them into the classroom and university experience. The five themes that emerged from in-depth interviews were: friction with traditional undergraduates, cooperation with adult learners, self-accountability, professorial training, and relating to other veterans. Results showed that traditional undergraduates were one of the biggest transition obstacles Wounded Warriors faced. Cooperation with adult learners was positive; self-accountability was the primary motivation behind academic success; professorial training was uniformly confirmed; relating to other veterans was positive but deeply nuanced. The findings of this study confirm the need for further research to better understand and serve this segment of the higher education student population.

<p> Human trafficking is a crime involving the exploitation of people for sex or labor through &ldquo;force, fraud, or coercion.&rdquo; My research consists of an evaluation of three prevention and awareness-raising human trafficking presentations on a Southern California university campus for students&rsquo; retention and use of information. Using surveys, interviews, and participant-observation, I found that following the presentations, students had a more prescribed definition and identification of human trafficking. Additionally, students are likely to identify the most visible warning signs of human trafficking. Their understanding of human trafficking may have some correlation with choice of major (i.e., science-oriented majors are less likely to understand human trafficking in depth than are students with majors in business and the humanities). I recommend providing &ldquo;tangible takeaways&rdquo; to aid with recall of resources. Working more with students, especially those with science-related majors, to identify less visible warning signs of human trafficking is also recommended. </p>

Historically fund raising, or development, in higher education was the purview of only private four-year colleges; today, however, virtually all institutions of higher education are engaged in this endeavor. Attaining an institution‘s fundraising goals has become an integral part of a university president‘s or chancellor‘s role, consuming a high percentage of the CEO‘s time. While the president works very closely with the development office in garnering private support, there is often another player significant to the success of a university‘s development efforts. ―Hired‖ along with the CEO, the individual serves a major role, but has no job description and often works without a contract or remuneration. This is the spouse of the CEO. This study employed qualitative methodology to elucidate the role of the university CEO‘s spouse in development, alumni relations, and fund raising. The research focused on the traditional president‘s spouse, a female married to a male CEO. Seventeen interviews with spouses, development officers, and university trustees at seven different public land-grant universities were conducted to explore several questions: whether the spouse‘s role in development is formalized; whether the spouse was aware of the school‘s expectations for her in this area; the role of professional development staff in assisting the first lady; whether the spouse is recognized or compensated for her duties; how the spouse‘s role could be improved; and what could be done to make the role more satisfying, productive, or efficient. Several thematic areas were addressed regarding the first lady: (a) interview processes, (b) qualities, (c) support of the president, (d) role in development, (e) role in the university community, (f) acknowledgement, and (g) public opinion. The findings provide a multifaceted view of the role of the university president‘s wife in development. Recommendations for improving the role of the presidential spouse in university development include fostering open communication between all parties, tailoring the role to the individuals and institutions involved, and acknowledging the role of the spouse.

This thesis examines the employment conditions for clerical and administrative staff within the British Higher Education Sector. For this analysis a national questionnaire was distributed and 747 responses were returned and analysed. In order to further enrich the qualitative research data, 30 interviews were also conducted, mainly with clerical and secretarial staff but also with management staff who had progressed from clerical grades. The main focus of the research was to examine inequalities within the higher education sector that impinge particularly on the clerical and administrative workforce. The thesis develops an analytic framework based on dual systems theory to show how clerical occupations have developed into highly segregated female-dominated occupations. The dual influences of capitalism and patriarchy in the development of female disadvantage is illustrated in the historical sections of the thesis. Inequality regimes which operate within hierarchical organisations such as universities are then used to explain how these class and gender-based disadvantages are replicated and reinforced through organisational structures and processes. The conclusions drawn by the thesis demonstrate that class and gender discrimination is entrenched within the British Higher Education system. This institutionalised discrimination continues to work to the disadvantage of women in all occupational groups across the sector. However, clerical and administrative staff, as a predominately female. 2 group of workers, are particularly vulnerable to inequalities and lack of opportunities, both because of their gender and also their class position within the organisational hierarchy.

This thesis is located within the discipline of history, and centres around the experiences of women in US and British universities. Higher education in both the US and the UK, as throughout the world, has historically been male-led and male-controlled. This male hegemony of higher education continues to the present, as evidenced by the low percentage of women in the upper echelons of academia (for example, professors). Women in the US and the UK have been challenging this male hegemony since their admittance to higher education institutions in the nineteenth century. They faced fierce opposition in their efforts to open higher education to women. This opposition was later echoed in the resistance to twentieth-century feminists' efforts to found women's studies programmes. The male hegemony of higher education is evident in the case histories of the experiences of women at Appalachian State University (ASU) and the University of Gloucestershire (UG) in the latter part of the twentieth century. ASU and UG, although located in different countries, have similarities which make a comparison interesting. The male hegemony of the institutions, and women's challenges to it, is especially illustrated when analysing three areas: residence hall life (living), staff issues (working), and the women's studies programmes (teaching and learning). Women students at both institutions experienced, and successfully challenged, strict residence rules through the 1960s. National influences, such as the change in the age of majority, and pressure from the students themselves brought a loosening of these rules in the 1970s and 1980s. The conservative nature of the institutions also influenced the experience of women academic staff. Institutional management was not proactive regarding women's issues, and there is strong evidence of a `glass ceiling' at both institutions. The male hegemony of the institutions was also illustrated in the struggle to found and maintain women's studies programmes.

The thesis takes a human development approach to the potential value of international higher education. It evaluates the intercultural capabilities of UK and international pharmacy students in one university. As graduates and professional pharmacists these students will serve a diverse population of patients and work in multi-professional, multi-skilled and multi-cultural teams. Despite internationalised higher education offering a multicultural space in which students could forge a more global outlook, the reality found was that the potential is not realised in the case of many students. The notion of ‘cosmopolitanism’, conceptualised by Kwame Anthony Appiah as an obligation to value, respect and seek understanding of others who are different from us, was used as a basis for imagining the goals of the internationalised university. The capability approach, founded by Amartya Sen and developed by Martha Nussbaum, was employed to frame and evaluate the development of students’ cosmopolitan values. In this approach, social justice is served by promoting individuals’ freedoms - termed ‘capabilities’- to be, to do and to achieve what they themselves consider to be of value. The original capability sets referred to the whole of human living, as a way of reconceptualising poverty reduction and subsequently it was taken up in education to express educational goals in terms of the development of capabilities. Drawing on this work, for the purposes of this thesis, a novel intercultural capability set that identifies the key attributes of being more cosmopolitan-aware was formulated. The framework was constructed iteratively by first drawing up a set suggested by reading and then testing and modifying it as interview data was analysed. The four final overarching capabilities are: Social Relations and Participation; Respect, Dignity and Recognition; Mind and Imagination and Enquiry and Reflection. Each capability has a number of attributes that allowed the building up of a nuanced picture of the intercultural capability of the students who were the focus of the study. A series of 42 semi-structured interviews with 44 home and international pharmacy students explored their experiences and perceptions of an international educational environment. Analysis revealed a spectrum of intercultural capability amongst the students, in terms of the extent and type of capabilities and in terms of their functioning as people with cosmopolitan values. While some students had flourished through having been able to maximise opportunities in the internationalised environment to use and expand their capabilities to a significant extent, others were less able, either because of their initial capabilities or because of the constraining circumstances in which they found themselves. It was evident that the development of intercultural capability was effortful, but those students who were willing to make the effort appeared to connect its value with their own and other’s well-being. The possession of the capability and functioning of Social Relations and Participation was fundamental to enabling the development of other intercultural capabilities. Further analysis, taking case studies of two individual students who appeared to possess little intercultural capability and two who appeared to possess high levels of intercultural capability, revealed the personal and situational factors which allowed students to experience intercultural contact and friendships as transformative and enriching, while others found themselves disempowered, frustrated and limited by social and pedagogical arrangements; there were barriers to their freedom to develop and flourish as more intercultural beings. Social and educational arrangements can have a significant effect upon capability development and functioning. It was found that group working can act to support or hinder intercultural capability. The creation of a curricular space which provided the opportunity for collaboration and exchange, for some students had a profound effect upon the development of their personal and professional outlook and values, through exploration and development of a more cosmopolitan-aware self. The thesis concludes by proposing that an intercultural capability set provides a powerful theoretically and empirically informed tool for evaluating the extent to which home and international students are and can become interculturally capable within the higher education environment and for identifying factors which enable or constrain their capabilities. Such an evaluation is a step towards understanding how higher education might enrich the student experience and produce professionals and global citizens of value to society as a whole.