The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship of a programmed study skills unit to the academic achievement of a selected group of eighth grade students.

A number of investigations of pupil progress in school have definitely shown that the percentage of failure in the first grade is much higher than in the other grades. In the light of these investigations, it is safe to assume that there must be a number of contributing factors to this failure in grade progress. The nature of these factors and what the school can do, if anything, to mitigate their influence on pupil progress in the first grade constitute a challenge to educational research. The present study undertakes an investigation along these lines. The purpose of this study is threefold: (1) to investigate the need for a pre-school program; (2) to study the reported values of such a program; and (3) to survey a certain number of schools to determine the extent and nature of preschool programs if any.

M. Ed. / Many higher education institutions face the loss of subsidy due to the high attrition rate of students. Despite the many advantages of alternate access programmes documented in literature, numerous Engineering Faculty members and members of the management of the University of Johannesburg believed that first time applicants with A and B symbols on their senior certificate were stronger students than those students who had completed an alternate access programme. Furthermore, they felt that the alternate access students took up the places which should have been given to those students with excellent senior certificate results. While many studies have been conducted on alternate access programmes there appears to be no evidence of the academic benefits that students derive from them. This generic qualitative study focused on what students perceive to be the academic benefits of alternate access programmes for their mainstream study. Purposeful sampling was used to select Engineering students from the 2005 and 2006 cohort to participate in focus group interviews and the data gathered during the interviews were analysed and interpreted using an Interpretivist lens. The themes that emerged from the study confirmed that students found the programmes to be beneficial but that they became aware of most of the academic benefits only once they joined the mainstream students in their second year of study. This study revealed the alternate access students were of the opinion that there are a number of academic benefits that they had derived from the alternate access programmes. They were in agreement that these benefits had helped to prepare them for mainstream study and they concluded that the benefits had contributed to their academic success in their mainstream studies. The findings of this study suggest that alternate access programmes have an important role to play in providing students with access, support and success in mainstream studies which in turn leads to the increased throughput of students and higher education institutions retaining subsidy.

A Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Science, University of the Witwatersrand, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science Johannesburg, 2012 / The Internet is a technology that has become a big part of people’s daily living. Through its ability to act as a support medium in the different functions for which people use it, the Internet was introduced to academic institutions as a tool to enhance students’ academic experience in the mid 1990s. Today, the Internet plays a major role in the classroom, from course materials being available online to larger ranges of academic resources being a few clicks away, the influence of the Internet on campus is incontestably felt. This dissertation looks at finding evidence of an association between Internet usage and academic performance among university students. It addresses the need to evaluate whether the Internet is fulfilling the role it was initially brought on campus for. In this dissertation, a qualitative and a quantitative study were developed to measure students’ Internet usage on campus, the reasons for which they use it and how the Internet influences their academic grades. 389 3rd year students from different academic disciplines participated in this study. In summary, the results of this study show that the Internet exerts some influence on students’ academic performance but no link of causality between the two could be established.

Thesis (M.Ed.(Educational Psychology)--University of the Witwatersrand, 1990.

For several reasons, Guilford's psychological theory, "The Structure-of-Intellect" (SI), seems a good candidate for relating to the learning of mathematics. The general purposes of this study were to identify SI factors which would be significantly related to achievement in a junior-college mathematics course for non-science, non-mathematics majors and to determine whether semantic factors would be better predictors than symbolic for students classified as having high verbal ability. The two topics in the mathematics course which were selected for study were (1) numeration in other bases and (2) finite systems. / Typescript. / "August, 1975." / "Submitted to the Area of Instructional Design and Personnel Development, Program of Mathematics Education, in partial fulfillment of the requirements of Doctor of Philosophy." / Advisor: Eugene D. Nichols, Professor Directing Dissertation. / Vita. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 151-153).

What is the effect of the above procedures upon the emotional development of the school child? Do they affect his adjustment and school learning? Does his failure in school affect his adjustment outside of school, in his home, and in his community? In the development of this paper the literature will be surveyed for the opinions of educators and investigators in this field as to the emotional effects which follow the present day procedures in dealing with failures, and for any objective investigations which throw light upon the effect of failure. / Typescript. / "July 21, 1944." / "Submitted to the Graduate Committee of Florida State College for Women in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts." / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 36-39).

Singapore educational context contains some of the most provocative and ideological features in a mature education system – school choice, selectivity and tracking. The facts that schools follow the same curriculum, students take standardized examination and teachers have similar pre-service training makes Singapore a suitable case to study peer effects. The policy to give an option to a small group of students, who missed the cutoff for an academically more demanding, to decide their educational track allows me to study the impact of peer quality. Specifically, students at the margin of the cutoffs have a choice to study with better peers at an accelerated learning pace at the expense of a low rank order in class i.e. ‘Second in Rome’ effect or study with weaker peers at a slower learning pace and longer duration but enjoy a high rank order in class i.e. ‘First in Village’ effect. In both settings, students are exposed to the same curriculum albeit at a difference pace with the ‘Second in Rome’ completing the curriculum in 4 years while the ‘First in Village’ group complete theirs in 5 years. I applied the regression discontinuity strategy to compare the performance of students at the margin of the thresholds.

Reading interest is a significant predictor of reading achievement, with effects on both reading comprehension and vocabulary. We measured students’ interest in reading as an estimate of duration of observable reading using whole intervals of silent-reading time. In Experiment 1, we assessed associations among interest in reading (i.e., reinforcement value of reading) and the reading comprehension and vocabulary of 34 second-grade students. There were significant correlations between reading interest and these dependent measures. In Experiment 2, we simultaneously conducted a combined preintervention and postintervention design with multiple probe logic to test the effect of the establishment of a high interest in reading (i.e., conditioned reinforcement for reading) via a collaborative shared reading procedure with a teacher on reading comprehension and vocabulary. This procedure involved periods of reciprocal reading and related collaborative reading activities designed to increase students’ interest in reading. The establishment of a high interest in reading for 7 of the participants resulted in grade-level increases from 0.1 to 2.2 grades on various measures of reading achievement in less than 9 sessions (315 min). In Experiment 3, we implemented a combined small-n experimental-control simultaneous treatment design and a single-case multiple-probe design with multiple-probe logic. We tested and compared the effects of the establishment of conditioned reinforcement for reading, via the collaborative shared reading procedure with a teacher versus a peer, on participants’ gains in reading comprehension and vocabulary. All participants for whom conditioned reinforcement for reading was established in Experiment 3 (n = 7) demonstrated gains in reading achievement after a maximum of nine sessions (412 min), with grade-level increases between 0.2 and 2.5 on measures of reading comprehension and 0.3 to 3.1 on measures of vocabulary. Based on a comparison of the dependent variables included in both Experiments 2 and 3, the modified teacher-yoked collaborative shared reading procedure in Experiment 2 resulted in greatest relative average gains in reading achievement for participants who acquired conditioned reinforcement for reading (n = 3). However, the modified collaborative shared reading procedure with a peer required the least amount of teacher mediation and may be more viable for teachers. This trans-disciplinary effort proposes an account of motivation to read as conditioned reinforcement for reading content and its effects on reading achievement, with the educationally-significant goal of establishing reinforcers for continued learning.

The study called for the identification of a group of underachievers at the eleventh and tenth grade levels.