M.Ed. (Educational Management) / Please refer to full text to view abstract

M.Ed. (Leadership and Management) / Please refer to full text to view abstract

The factors influencing the retention of physical therapy college faculty had not been previously substantiated. In this study investigating faculty retention, all 36 full-time faculty from the four accredited, entry-level physical therapy programs in a large southern state, received a questionnaire. Twenty-eight (78%) returned the completed questionnaire. In addition, interviews were conducted with eight consenting faculty, two from each of the four universities. Although mentors are considered by physical therapy faculty to be very valuable, mentorship alone did not significantly affect physical therapy faculty retention. In addition, no significant differences were noted between mentored and non-mentored faculty with regard to gender, rank, tenure, salary, career selection, prospects for future success, and job satisfaction. In addition, gender did not significantly influence retention, salary, tenure, rank, prospects for future success, career planning, feelings about job change or retention in present job. In this study a slightly higher percentage of women versus men were mentored. The majority of women and all men had a mentor of the same gender. Unlike women in male dominated professions, women in physical therapy faculty positions found other women and men willing to act as their mentors. Women also tended to remain in the mentoring relationship for more years than men. Mentored faculty, particularly women, had also taken on the role of mentor, thus perpetuating the mentor relationship legacy. Both women and men experienced relatively few problems as compared with the many benefits of the mentor relationship. There appeared to be a variety of factors influencing faculty retention. The questionnaire results revealed rank and tenure to influence faculty retention positively. Within the interviews, faculty most frequently mentioned other "faculty", as a positive feature attracting them to and retaining them within their institution. Salary, although not a significant finding in the survey, was mentioned several times throughout the interviews. It appeared that when salaries reach a critically low level, one lower than or approximating the salary of new graduates, faculty reconsider their options for clinical rather than academic jobs. The institution studied that had the highest retention also had the greatest percentage of tenured faculty and the second highest salary.

Few studies exist dealing with the career development of women to senior academic officers positions in higher education. As more women pursue these senior level administrative careers, there arises a need to better understand how they develop them. What is this phenomenon of career development? How do women develop careers in hierarchical organizations? How do traditional gender-roles influence career choice? The review of the literature comprises three sections: an exploration of the literature on the organizational structure of higher education and the career paths taken to senior academic administrative positions; an examination of the career development literature; and a review of the literature on the influence of role models and mentors on occupational choice. The methodology for this study was Naturalistic Inquiry. In Naturalistic Inquiry, a priori theory is used as guiding theory to help the researcher generate questions and search for patterns. To gain an understanding of the career development of the women chosen for this study, research questions focused on above questions. Six women participated in in-depth interviews. The analyses and synthesis of the data into assertions is presented in case studies. Many common themes as well as differences emerged from the data. These women labored to gain a depth of knowledge and breadth of experience in higher education administration. Much of their inclination to hard work was grounded in their desire to serve; they are committed to community college education. The dominant culture which places women in the private domain and men in the public domain significantly influenced the career lives of some of these women. Mentors were key to helping these achievers gain self-confidence and choose a path up the academic administrative career ladder. Finding the right fit, and positioning oneself were instrumental to developing a career in a hierarchical institution. Finally, obtaining the doctorate, while simultaneously growing intellectually and professionally, was also key to success. This study increases our knowledge on women's career development in the community colleges. Not every woman who pursues a career as a senior academic officer will act as these women. However, what we have learned can be applied to similar contexts.

The problem explored in this study is that African American, Hispanic American, and Native American students have a tendency to experience much lower levels of academic success in United States public schools than do European American and Asian American students. With such a problem defined, the purpose of the study becomes clear; to facilitate increased academic success of African American, Hispanic American, Native American, and other minority youth not experiencing academic success. The problem is shown to be pervasive by examining indicators of academic success and ethnic group membership on both the national level and on the level of the researcher's data from some of his teaching experiences in multicultural classrooms (N = 39) and from surveying experienced ESL teachers in a MAT program (N = 23). A survey was also given to middle and high school teacher interns being trained at a major U.S. university (N = 62). It was found that although these interns were well aware of how ethnic differentials in academic success were manifest in the U.S., they had little factual knowledge as to why these differentials exist and are a serious problem in need of speedy solutions. Hence, this study proposes that one way to facilitate minority academic success is to educate future teachers about the true reasons for ethnic differentials in academic success and about why these differentials are indeed a serious problems. Also generated from the teacher intern survey were data identifying some proposed teacher, school administrative, and teacher training program initiatives that were seen by the teacher interns as being potentially highly effective in facilitating the academic success of minority youth. The study concludes with suggestions for teacher, curriculum, school administrator, and teacher training program initiatives to facilitate increased academic success of African American, Hispanic American, and Native American youth, mainly by reducing the need to adopt alternation models of behavior in order to do well in school. It is proposed that such a goal can be accomplished through the inclusion of minority cultures and knowledge in the curricula, pedagogy, evaluation, and governing of schools.

The geographic landscape of this study is the Lao Peoples' Democratic Republic, also known by its French name Laos. Located in Southeast Asia, the Lao PDR is one of the six remaining socialist countries in the world. During my fieldwork in the Lao PDR, I facilitated a process of action research with a group of Lao INGO workers. I used qualitative research methods to capture the perceptions of the Lao development workers who collaborated with this study. This dissertation is primarily based on the data documented through interviews, participant observation, focus group discussion and reflective story writing. The core educational problem is to examine the historical reasons for the modest educational infrastructure in the Lao PDR and its impact on the growth of the development sector. The other related issues I explored include the limitations of mainstream development and educational models as well as the opportunities emerging as a result of the country's integration with the globalization process. Within the backdrop of the problem mentioned, the main purpose of this study is to explore an alternative strategy that has potential to facilitate the growth of local human resource capacity. The rationale for this exploratory endeavor is to generate functional knowledge that will potentially assist the policy makers and practitioners to develop an appropriate approach for the local human resource capacity building process. The research method I adapted in the field was a combination of action research and phenomenological inquiry. The key question that I pursued was “What is the process of collaborative capacity building that includes an alternative educational approach and model which have the potential to help Lao INGO staff to increase their capacity as development workers and, in the longer term, develop skills for self-management?”. I employed four techniques of data collection, which included interviewing 26 individuals, documenting action research process through the participant observation method, assisting Lao INGO staff to write reflective stories and conducting three focus group discussions. During the data analysis stage, I tried to incorporate the voices of the participants of the action research project to allow them constructing their way of knowing.

The purpose of this study is to describe and analyze principal behaviors and leadership characteristics that positively influence the organizational coherence and capacity of schools and subsequently, positively influence student achievement. This was achieved through the use of an in-depth, exploratory multi-case study design that examined the leadership of two principals of urban elementary schools who had led their schools from being underperforming to performing. The two findings of this study are that 1) instructional leaders engage in work that either directly or indirectly: focuses on learning for students and adults; communicates high expectations for student achievement and instruction; uses data to inform the work of the school, and develops a community that is unified around one vision and one mission for the school; and 2) the actions of principals that demonstrate the leadership traits of being carried by strong professional will and being personally humble and modest influence the level of effectiveness of the work of the principal in positively influencing student achievement. The findings of this study were the result of analysis of data that was gathered through a review of relevant documents, interviews with principals and teachers, and the identification and observation of artifacts that were identified through the interview as being the most important to improving student achievement. Based on these findings, the following conclusions were made: the construct of instructional leadership is defined by two elements—the work of the principal and the leadership of the principal. The principal's influence in each of the elements of the work of the principal may be direct or indirect. The leadership traits of principals who are instructional leaders are defined as carried by strong professional will and being personally humble and modest. These leadership traits are not necessarily balanced—one may be stronger than the other—but they are necessary for the development of shared ownership of outcomes on the part of teachers. The findings of this study provide clarity. Instructional leadership is not a one size fits all idea whose existence is linked to a single measure of student achievement but is instead a framework to be implemented and defined in practice by individual principals based upon their personal strengths and the needs of their schools.

This study examined graduate experiences among Black, female, doctoral students and degree completers, and how they perceived the effect of individual and institutional factors in relation to their persistence at a predominantly White institution. Research indicates that graduate students are not typically leaving because of academic failure (Baird, 1993; Moody, 2004; Nerad & Miller, 1996). Instead, a combination of individual and institutional factors best explain causes of attrition among graduate students in general and among Black, female, graduate students at predominantly White campuses in particular (Hinton-Johnson, 2003; Lovitts, 2001). The theoretical framework of this study was drawn from Vincent Tinto's (1987) Model of Institutional Departure, Rendon, Jalomo, and Nora's (2000) conceptual framework on minority student retention and Black Feminist Epistemology (P. H. Collins, 2000). The research methodology focused on the analysis of qualitative data gained from direct interviews and a focus group to determine common themes (factors). Data were collected from four Black, female, doctoral students and four degree completers from one major research university. The results of this study will extend the limited literature on the persistence of Black, female, doctoral students at predominantly White institutions of higher education.

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The purpose of this study was to describe how meaning was socially constructed within a task-based small cooperative learning group. The group was composed of five native English and English as a Second Language speaking teachers and teachers-in-training enrolled in a graduate course entitled "Curriculum Development for Heterogeneous Classes" in the Teacher Education and Curriculum Studies Department in the School of Education at the University of Massachusetts. This study examined the claim that participants in cooperative learning groups must be willing to set their personal beliefs, desires, and agendas aside in order to focus their attention on the learning needs of their peers and to shift the attention of their peers to explicitly relevant information (Gee, 1990). Further, groupwork is described as an interactional experience that involves conflict, tension, and individual risk-taking behaviors (McCutcheon, 1995). This study examined the claim that these behaviors can have a positive effect on a group's process when the willingness to analyze conflict and tension through the risk-taking process of revealing one's experience, perception, and self are present (McCutcheon, 1995). This study researched these claims by investigating the discourse of a small cooperative learning group in this course. This study provides an ethnographic thick description of the normative patterns that emerged through the group's work. These include the communicative norms that were co-constructed prior to and after the naming and analyzing of conflict. The results of this study reveal that participants were willing to focus their attention onto the needs of their peers and were willing to focus the attention of their peers to explicitly relevant information after conflict was named. Analyzing conflict was not easily obtained in this group. Members avoided and resisted this process. However, naming conflict was seen to have a purpose in this cooperative learning group and provided a rich source of insight about the complexities of conflict, tension, and individual risk-taking behaviors in cooperative learning settings composed of native English and English as a Second Language speaking learners.