The mothering role of African American women has largely been ignored in the literature. Contemporary research on the construct of becoming a mother has focused on upper middle class, White women who are partnered. When African American women are included in research, they are often poor, single, teenage mothers and their experiences have not been described within the context of the African American worldview. Hermeneutic phenomenology from an afrocentric feminist perspective is the methodological approach used in this study to provide insight, analysis, and understanding of the experiences of three generations of African American women in the transition to motherhood. A purposeful sampling of eighteen women from three generations was used to identify information-rich cases that would provide an in-depth understanding of the phenomenon. Generation one included seven women, between the ages of 65-83, who became mothers between 1950-1970, prior to the Civil Rights Movement. Generation two included five women, between the ages 51-58, who became mothers between 1971-1990, after the Civil Rights Movement, and there were six women in generation three, between the ages of 30-42, who became mothers between 1991-2003. All of the women in this study described themselves as middle-class; four women were single when they became pregnant with their first child, and education ranged from high school to master’s degree. Three constitutive patterns and their associated themes were identified. The first pattern, It Took Me a Minute, had three themes, Finding Out, Realizing What Mothers Do and Way Tricked! The second pattern, Preserving Our Home had four themes, Mothering Within the –isms: racism, classism and sexism, I Did the Best I Could, Mothers and Others, and Spiritual Mothers. Eat the Meat; Throw Away the Bone, the third pattern had two themes, The Ways in Which We Learn and Someone Who Looks like Me. The results of this study reveal some consistency with current descriptions of maternal identity and maternal role attainment and add to our understanding of the complexities that racism, classism and gender play in the lives of African American mothers and their families. The data from this study also suggests that future development of theoretical frameworks and analytical tools, used to assess the effects of stress and other psychosocial factors on health, need to be grounded in an historic understanding of the African American experience and of the African influence on family and cultural knowledge. Additionally, this study demonstrated the impact that the media, both professional and mass media outlets, has in defining and perpetuating our beliefs and feelings of the ‘good mother/bad mother’ dualism. The description of motherhood for this group of African American women illustrates that motherhood is a source of power and provides significant meaning, satisfaction and respect within the family and the larger community. It also highlighted the communal role that “othermothers” and spiritual mothers have in facilitating the transition to motherhood and providing strong social support.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the changes in the inadequate labor force sector of Taiwan before and after the coming Knowledge-Based Economic Time, which is considered as important to this study. The inadequate labor force sector mentioned above consists of inadequate working hours, low paid and mismatches between educational attainment and occupation. The raw data been used was from Manpower Surveys and Manpower Utilization Surveys Taiwan area, Republic of China by Census Bureau in both year 1991 and 2003. The study reveals the following findings. 1.In the inadequate working hours portion Workers who are male, age 35 to 44, married or cohabited, highest educational attainment is primary school or below, private-sector employed, working in north area of Taiwan and taking the roles as agriculture, animal husbandry, forestry & fishing and craft & related trades workers are significantly easier to fall into the inadequate working hours sector. 2. In the low paid portion Workers who are male, married or cohabited, highest educational attainment is primary school or below, own-account workers, workplace is located in middle area of Taiwan, agricultural, animal husbandry, forestry & fishing workers are significantly easier to fall into the low paid sector. 3. In the portion of mismatches between educational attainment and occupation Workers who are male, age 25 to 34, married or cohabited, highest educational attainment is senior high school & vocational school or above, private-sector employed and working in north area of Taiwan are significantly easier to fall into this sector. Especially, workers who take the roles as prod., machine operators and related workers, plant & machine operators & assemblers , and manufacturing share a large proportion. According to the conclusions above, this study provides typical suggestions for government polices toward utilization of labor force. The given comments will be helpful to the relative researchers in the further.

The transition to motherhood requires adjustments to new roles and growing demands on time and financial resources. Consequently, this transition can be a time of emotional upheaval and can often lead to increased levels of maternal stress. Research on parenting stress has identified social support as an important resource for coping with the demands of parenting, but, empirical studies also show that access to social support is likely to differ based on one’s socioeconomic status. Consequently, levels and effects of support may differ by maternal educational level. The primary purpose of the current study is to investigate the associations between four types of perceived support, maternal educational attainment and maternal parenting stress. The study sample is drawn from the first year follow-up wave of the Fragile Families and Child Well-being dataset (n=2412) and includes only mothers who were involved with the father of the child at the time of the child’s birth. Fragile Families is a nationally based, longitudinal birth cohort study of approximately 4,800 mothers and their children. Data were analyzed using multivariate regression modeling to investigate direct effects of perceived support and education on maternal stress as well as testing a moderating effect of education on the association between perceived support and maternal stress. The results showed that perceived support from one’s partner significantly lowers maternal stress regardless of the level or type of support (emotional, mothering or instrumental) that the partner provides. Expected support from kin or friends does not have an effect on maternal stress. The effect of perceived support differs by education level for two types of partner support: support of mothering practices and instrumental support. Increased symptoms of depression and fussy child temperament each increase maternal stress levels. Investigation of the direct effect of various types of perceived support on maternal stress indicate that partner support is critical during the first year of motherhood. Results reveal that not all types of perceived support affect maternal stress with the same magnitude. Thus, special attention should be given to the context within a mother is functioning. / text

<p>Social capital has so far been suggested to enhance the career outcomes of disadvantaged immigrants by compensating for their lack of human capital. Contrastingly, by examining labor market outcomes by immigrant groups, my dissertation argues that social capital can actually serve as a source of disadvantages for immigrants in the labor market, especially for a socially disadvantaged immigrant group like Mexican immigrants. Specifically, the dissertation proposes three kinds of social capital processes through which social status and network processes interplay to disadvantage disproportionately a low-status immigrant group in the job attainment process: access, activation, and return deficit of social capital. Using data from the 2005 U.S. Social Capital-USA survey, I examine these three kinds of social capital deficit across three ethnic immigrant groups: Mexican, non-Mexican Hispanic, and non-Hispanic immigrants. The first chapter explores the inequality of social capital across immigrant groups. The result shows that among the three immigrant groups, Mexican immigrants are the only immigrant group who have smaller, less diverse networks than the native-born. This access deficit of social capital for Mexican immigrants is driven primarily by their relative lack of human capital compared with other immigrant groups. The second chapter investigates whether ethnic enclaves constrain the access to social capital of enclave immigrants. The result shows that the constraining effect of ethnic enclaves on the social capital building of enclave immigrants is found only for the ethnic enclave of Mexican immigrants. This is because the ethnic enclaves of disadvantaged immigrants facilitate social connections to other coethnic enclave immigrants with similar socioeconomic traits, while constraining them from extending their networks beyond the enclaves. The access deficit of social capital for Mexican immigrants will eventually aggravate their job prospects because they cannot mobilize social capital for their job finding as much as other immigrant groups do. The third chapter examines the activation and mobilization of social capital in the job attainment process across immigrant groups. The result shows that Mexican immigrants activate and reap the benefit from mobilizing social capital for their job finding in ways that are different from those of the native-born as well as the high-status immigrant group. Due to their access deficit of social capital and negative stereotypes about them, Mexican immigrants are obliged to use a less rewarding job search method (i.e., using information passed from job contacts) rather than use a more rewarding job search method (i.e., using invitations from job contacts). Although Mexican immigrants benefit to some degrees from using information passed from job contacts in getting low-tier occupations, their heavy reliance on such a job search method can also prevent them from attaining middle- or top-tier occupations. By illuminating these serial processes of social capital in the job attainment for disadvantaged immigrants, my dissertation, therefore, sheds light on a new role of social capital as a source of immigrant disadvantages in the labor market.</p> / Dissertation

The Swedish Upper Secondary English Curriculum consists of lists describing required core content and attainment levels necessary for assessing students on English courses 5, 6 and 7. These lists display relevant instructional information for individual English courses in different places, complicating efforts in course planning. This study performs a text analysis on the curriculum’s core content and attainment level information, with the aim of making the information more accessible and useful in course planning and assessment. The text analysis synthesises attainment levels into concretised goals and then further analyzes the concretised goals to evaluate how they evolve over the English courses. A text analysis is performed on the curriculum’s description of core content to evaluate how they evolve over the English courses. The results, showing the evolution of both core content and concretised goals over the English courses, are displayed in a tabular format for ease of comparison. In addition, the results comprise a list of concretised goals in each course. The concretised goals evolve to a relatively small degree over the English courses, whereas the core contents evolve to a relatively larger degree over the English courses. This study may be of use in helping teachers in their course planning and assessment first, by providing a checklist of concretised goals that can be used in planning instruction aimed towards student fulfilment of curriculum attainment levels; second, by providing user-friendly information on concretised goals and core contents and their evolution over the English courses.

This thesis examines the problem of low educational attainment rates of Portuguese- Canadian students in the areas of “Little Portugal” and West Toronto. Interviews were conducted with former students, teachers, administrators, and community leaders who have all experienced or are linked to the public education system in those areas of Toronto. The question, “why has there been a low educational attainment rate among Portuguese-Canadian students in Toronto?” was asked of the interviewees. The first three chapters provide background information regarding the struggles of the Portuguese in their homeland as well as Portuguese immigrants in Toronto in order to contextualize the information garnered through the interviews. The final two chapters present the thoughts of the interviewees, regarding the subject matter, which were collected during the study.

This thesis examines the problem of low educational attainment rates of Portuguese- Canadian students in the areas of “Little Portugal” and West Toronto. Interviews were conducted with former students, teachers, administrators, and community leaders who have all experienced or are linked to the public education system in those areas of Toronto. The question, “why has there been a low educational attainment rate among Portuguese-Canadian students in Toronto?” was asked of the interviewees. The first three chapters provide background information regarding the struggles of the Portuguese in their homeland as well as Portuguese immigrants in Toronto in order to contextualize the information garnered through the interviews. The final two chapters present the thoughts of the interviewees, regarding the subject matter, which were collected during the study.

Magistro darbe aptariamas formalaus, neformalaus ir savaiminio gamtamokslinio ugdymo(si) teorinis grindžiamumas, pateikiama moksleivių nuomonė apie Gamtos mokslus ir jų mokymą(si), apžvelgiami Vilniaus miesto 5–6 - ųjų klasių moksleivių (2004 ir 2005 metų) gamtamokslinių olimpiadų II – ųjų etapų organizavimo ypatumai, atliekama kiekybinė ir kokybinė šių olimpiadų analizė, pateikiama Lietuvos moksleivių gamtamokslinių pasiekimų rezultatų apžvalga nacionalinių ir tarptautinių tyrimų kontekste. Darbe pateiktos teorinės – literatūros analize ir praktinės tyrimo rezultatais pagrįstos išvados. Gauta grįžtamoji informacija apie gamtamokslinio ugdymo(si) dalyvius. Nustatytas šeštųjų klasių moksleivių, olimpiados dalyvių, bei Lietuvos moksleivių gamtamokslinių pasiekimų lygmuo. Magistro darbą sudaro 89 puslapiai. Pridedami 6 priedai (su priedais 115 psl.). Sėkmingam darbo atlikimui iškeltas tikslas ir šeši uždaviniai. Išanalizuoti 31 magistro darbui svarbūs literatūros šaltiniai. Tyrimų rezultatai pateikti 11 lentelių ir grafiškai pavaizduoti 32 paveiksluose. Atliktą darbą apibendrina 10 išvadų. / The main issue of this master thesis is education of formal, informal and natural sciences, it‘s theoretical base. The material of research consists of the date of the second part of natural sciences Olympiad and it‘s peculiarity of organization, witch was organized for schoolchildren of the 5th and 6th form (2004 – 2005 years), their attitude towards natural science and it’s learning, also. The quantitative and qualitative analysis of this Olympiads is given in this work. The results of Lithuanian schoolchildren’ attainments are overlooked in national and international context. There are analysis of literature and conclusions of practical researches in this thesis, the feedback of participations in natural sciences, also. The level of schoolchildren’ attainment in natural sciences was estimated. The thesis of master consists of 89 pages. 6 appendixes are attached (115 pages in total with appendixes). The main purpose and six taskes were set for the successful work. 31 sources of literature important for the thesis were analysed. The result of researches are laid out in 11 tables and 32 charts. 10 conclusions end the thesis of master.

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Public higher education is a large enterprise in the United States. Total state expenditures for higher education totaled nearly $152 billion dollars in FY2008, accounting for over ten percent of total state expenditures and representing the single largest category of discretionary spending in most states (NASBO, 2009). The last three decades have witnessed the introduction of hundreds of pieces of legislation across states which make structural changes to state higher education governance systems (Marcus, 1997; McLendon, Deaton, and Hearn, 2007). Despite the ubiquity of state higher education governance change much remains unknown, both in terms of why states choose to enact reforms as well as the implications of state governance arrangements for institutional performance. This dissertation attempts to fill these critical gaps in knowledge. First, it surveys the historical development of state higher education governance structures and reviews the limited empirical literature regarding the antecedents and impacts of various state approaches to higher education management. Drawing on this literature, the first empirical chapter, utilizing hazard modeling, seeks to uncover the factors associated with state enactment of legislation decentralizing higher education governance. It finds that state fiscal characteristics emerge as strong predictors of decentralization. Specifically, states with greater tax efforts are much less likely to decentralize, while states experiencing real dollar declines in tax revenues are much more likely to decentralize, all else constant. The second empirical chapter explores the implications of state management of public higher education for institutional degree completion rates. Utilizing a unique, institutional-level dataset comprising 518 public, four-year institutions of higher education in the United States, it finds that, controlling for relevant institutional-level characteristics such as institutional selectivity, mission, and per-FTE student expenditures, inter-institutional competition emerges as a powerful predictor of student degree completion. Institutions operating in more competitive environments—defined as states with less concentrated undergraduate enrollments and states with weaker higher education governance structures—graduate students at higher rates than institutions operating in less competitive environments. The dissertation concludes by discussing the implications for these empirical findings for policy makers seeking to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of public higher education.