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The purpose of this study is to identify aspects of successful Advanced Placement programs in small schools of enrollments of 600 or fewer, and to describe the strategies that are used in these schools to make their programs successful. The study includes a pilot research project with a small school with a floundering program identifying the major problems that it has faced in starting and creating its program along with cases of two additional small schools that have found success with their programs. The cases of the successful schools are analyzed to find the aspects of the programs that have led to their success to provide struggling schools with suggestions for improvements of their programs.

This dissertation contributes to our understanding of the role of elite single-gender schools in the reproduction of class and gender inequalities. This is an ethnographic study of an all-boys and all-girls school in the Toronto area, combining participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and web and print school documents. I focused especially on students in their final year of high school, when the potential advantages embedded within a private school are most likely to be capitalized on. The data provide an opportunity highlight three mechanisms of class and gender reproduction. First, I explore the teacher/student relationship as a source of advantage for students and show how teachers are complicit in these negotiations. I make sense of this in the context of the schools’ belief in the importance of educating the whole child, including traits like leadership, and the university prep focus of these schools. Second, I focus on how school personnel understand their students as gendered subjects and the contradiction this presents at the all-girls school, where administrators are keen on students defying stereotypes but draw on many of those stereotypes to develop best practices at the school. Third, I analyze the university choice process of these students, noting especially how they construct distinctions between Canadian universities despite Canada not having a steep and well-known hierarchy between institutions, and how they use the established hierarchies in other countries. I bring together theories on the correspondence between the economic structure and the education system and the role of culture in reproduction, staying mindful of how these educational settings are structured and what is happening in the classroom, including how students shape their educational experiences through their actions and their interactions with others, especially teachers.

This dissertation contributes to our understanding of the role of elite single-gender schools in the reproduction of class and gender inequalities. This is an ethnographic study of an all-boys and all-girls school in the Toronto area, combining participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and web and print school documents. I focused especially on students in their final year of high school, when the potential advantages embedded within a private school are most likely to be capitalized on. The data provide an opportunity highlight three mechanisms of class and gender reproduction. First, I explore the teacher/student relationship as a source of advantage for students and show how teachers are complicit in these negotiations. I make sense of this in the context of the schools’ belief in the importance of educating the whole child, including traits like leadership, and the university prep focus of these schools. Second, I focus on how school personnel understand their students as gendered subjects and the contradiction this presents at the all-girls school, where administrators are keen on students defying stereotypes but draw on many of those stereotypes to develop best practices at the school. Third, I analyze the university choice process of these students, noting especially how they construct distinctions between Canadian universities despite Canada not having a steep and well-known hierarchy between institutions, and how they use the established hierarchies in other countries. I bring together theories on the correspondence between the economic structure and the education system and the role of culture in reproduction, staying mindful of how these educational settings are structured and what is happening in the classroom, including how students shape their educational experiences through their actions and their interactions with others, especially teachers.

Significant numbers of Canadians in the 1960s believed their society and their schools required substantial change. A few, believing the public school system was authoritarian, competitive, unimaginative, and unlikely to change, set out to establish their own schools. In British Columbia, like-minded parents, educators, and even high school students founded over twenty alternative schools in the 1960s and early 1970s in the Lower Mainland, Vancouver Island, and the West Kootenays. Most of these people nourished idealistic world views comprising elements of pacifism, socialism, or spiritual mysticism. They claimed to be motivated by a sense of social and democratic responsibility, and also put a high value on personal freedom and the possibility of public and private transformation. Until the 1960s British Columbia independent schools had been organized chiefly on religious, ethnic, or class grounds. However, founders of alternative schools in the early 1960s typically followed a Progressive approach, emphasizing a "child-centred" curriculum based on the ideas of John Dewey. Later in the decade alternative schools took up the Romantic or "free school" ideas of A.S. Neill, and allowed young people almost complete freedom to organize their own educational activities (or none at all), and to be responsible for their own behaviour. They were influenced by the American Progressive and English Romantic educational traditions as well as Canadian social democracy, the American counterculture of the late 1960s, and the Human Potential Movement. By the early 1970s, alternative schools became "therapeutic" with the goal of attracting alienated young people back into the educational sphere and helping them to achieve personal growth. Two fundamental tensions existed in alternative schools-how democratic their decisionmaking would be, and how directive or free the adults would be in regulating the academic learning of the students. Although these schools tried to govern themselves in a participatory democratic manner, consensus was difficult to achieve. Furthermore, the participants could not usually agree on which educational approach they favoured. For students attending alternative schools educational results were mixed. Although most believed they had gained in self-reliance and inter-personal skills, many did not acquire sufficient literary or arithmetic knowledge and found their educational and professional careers limited. Alternative schools were hindered by financial instability, parental divisiveness, and the absence of a workable educational methodology. Further, the schools accepted too many children with special needs, or hired too many young adult teachers whose enthusiasm was greater than their pedagogical skill. Meanwhile, the social and cultural upheavals of the late 1960s had at last caused the public school system to accept some of the pedagogical and psychological premises of the alternate school movement. The examples of the alternative schools of the 1960s and early 1970s, along with the wider cultural changes of the time, led to a more flexible and inclusive public school system in the 1970s.

This study offers a hermeneutic phenomenological inquiry into the experiences of Malaysian parents who selected an international education for their children. Data collection was conducted at one international school in Kuala Lumpur, and consisted of both a survey and interviews. The study focused on parents’ own educational background and experiences, their expectations and motivations for selecting an international school, factors affecting school choice, and attitudes to cultural and self-identities within the context of international education. Findings suggest that Malaysian parents from different age groups as well as varying ethnic and linguistic backgrounds had similar motivations for sending their children to an international school. From the data analysis, three themes emerged: aspirational priorities, discouraging influences, and enabling factors. By scaffolding my examination within the theory of reproduction in education and notions of social and cultural capital, I examined how multiple forms of economic, cultural, and social capital are recognized and mobilized in the search for a quality education in an increasingly globalized market. I conclude that Malaysian parents in this study chose an international school for their children based on experiences forged in four spheres of influence: individual, social, national, and global. / Thesis (Master, Education) -- Queen's University, 2010-06-30 07:36:19.755

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<p>A favourable school atmosphere, in which adolescents behave positively, is one of the greatest concerns for teachers, administrators and parents. Although there are several different pressures leading to adolescent misbehaviour at school, the most contributing factors are peer pressure and the socio-economic status of the school. As adolescents enter the school, the peer group then functions as an important socializing agent for them. As peers socialize within their different school environments, individuals are forced to conform to the practices and opinions of the group. Usually this conformity is unconstructive and clashes with the parents&rsquo / and teachers&rsquo / expectations. The aim of this study was to examine the influence of peer pressure on adolescent misbehaviour in advantaged and disadvantaged&nbsp / schools. A quantitative methodological approach was used to conduct the study. The study was conducted with adolescents aged from&nbsp / 13 to 17 years in both advantaged and disadvantaged secondary (high) schools in Windhoek, Namibia. A sample of 300 participants was randomly stratified across the schools. The Exposure to Peer Pressure Control Scale (Allen &amp / Yen, 2002) and Child Behaviour Checklist&nbsp / questionnaires (Achenbach &amp / Edelbrock, 1987) were used to collect the data. Ethical considerations were carefully considered before and during the research procedure of data collection. The reliability of the instruments was checked by means of a pilot study. The data was analysed by means of the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 18 to reveal descriptive and inferential statistics. Results showed a significant positive relationship between peer pressure and adolescent misbehaviour in schools. In addition, misbehaviour was also positively predicted in both advantaged and disadvantaged schools, with disadvantaged schools being significantly more influential. When comparing peer pressure and adolescent misbehaviours in both advantaged and disadvantaged schools, adolescents in&nbsp / is advantaged schools engaged significantly more in misbehaviour activities and also responded positively more to peer pressure than their counterparts in advantaged schools. Implications for further research were suggested.</p>

Abstract Through an analysis of four case-studies, this essay aims to provide some recent data related to what extent information technology (IT) and ICT-tools are used in schools. It takes a closer look at some of the problems teachers can encounter in connection with computers, lap-tops, tablets and so on. The focus of the essay has been placed mainly on answering questions related to two areas; • What kind of attitudes do teachers express toward IT and its use? • How does the reality involving IT and IT-use actually look like in schools? The methodology used to acquire the information was based on R. H. Bernard's format for semi-structured interviews. Further, the study also brings up issues that can be worthwhile to elaborate on, and, how to better predict the future of IT in schools. Two factors were brought into view that seems vital to deal with in order for computers and IT to function well in a school-setting: • A sufficient quantity of the technological tools that are implemented • Access to updated and professional training in the tools being used This study also confirmed that IT in school is still very much characterized by trials, errors and experimenting, much like University professor Säljö stated eleven years ago. (Säljö, 2002)

This thesis is a phenomenological, qualitative study of student resistance and seeks to contribute to an understanding of the relationship between community, communication, and resistance by exploring the social contexts that provide meaning to the resistant behaviours of six graduates of an independent Christian school. In doing so, this thesis takes a transactional perspective of resistance – a perspective that recognises students as having multiple and shifting identities, and schools as being complex, social settings which contextualises student resistant behaviours. Integral to this perspective is a communicative potential of resistance that can be used as a means of signalling, generating, and building dialogue among the various groups of people who make up the school community. This study suggest that school need to go beyond seeing resistance as purely an expression of political statements or an engagement in power struggles and consider how resistance can be a potential communicative act. Specifically, resistance signals a need for reflection and dialogue on the ways in which the ideals of that community are both intended and experienced.