The short existence of Early College High Schools has not allowed for considerable research to assess their operational effectiveness. Furthermore, the effectiveness perceptions and reactions of students enrolled at these schools have not been given ample opportunity to be studied – an integral component of any school’s operation. The purpose of the study is to focus on one specific ECHS while in its third year of existence to assess its operational effectiveness from the perspective of its students. The research methodology which was selected as appropriate for the study involves the use of qualitative research coupled with the case study method. In order to assess for reliable observations, currently enrolled students were interviewed to gain knowledge of their perception of the operational effectiveness at their early college high school. Additional qualitative data was utilized with an inductive analytic approach to provide for a detailed view of the school. Data was segmented into relevant parts to help identify emergent themes. The following themes emerged from the findings: attainable success; student roles and responsibilities; personalization; support to achieve higher-level work; highly qualified teachers; and engaging parents and community. The findings suggest that student perceptions reflect an effective school environment that enables them to meet the expectations of high school graduation and completion of up to two years of college credit. Moreover, the supplemental data collected provided evidence of effective school administration and instructional practices that foster the support and engagement of students to meet their needs as early college high school students. An objective study of an early college high school may assist its administrators to ascertain whether they are meeting the needs of their students. Future research concerning this topic may be able to utilize the results and conclusions of this study to further enrich the knowledge of effective early college high schools. / text

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the impact of Same-Language Subtitles (SLS) on the subject-specific comprehension and the academic literacy levels of EAL students on the Vaal Triangle Campus of North-West University (NWU). Essentially, the study aimed to determine whether exposing students studying through English as an Additional Language (EAL) to subtitled lectures (live or recorded lectures) would help improve their comprehension of the academic content as well as their receptive academic literacy skills, compared to students who were not exposed to subtitled lectures. This study stems from the identification of an academic performance-related issue on the Vaal Triangle Campus of NWU. Indeed, campus statistics show that the throughput rate of EAL students remains low, and that these students‟ academic literacy levels are inadequate. In other words, EAL students on this campus are underachieving and seem to have difficulties in mastering academic English. Based on various studies that showed SLS to be a valuable tool in terms of learning and academic literacy, this study proposed to introduce SLS (both live via respeaking and offline) in the university classroom as a learning aid, thus optimising the time students spend in lectures. Very little information was available in South Africa on the impact of SLS on the subject-specific comprehension of EAL students in a tertiary academic context. Furthermore, it had been anticipated that a certain number of technical constraints were likely to be encountered during the empirical investigation. These two factors made it difficult to predict what other factors could influence the outcome of the study. As a result, the study was based on the principle of Action Research, a research method characterised by the fact that the research is carried out in as many cycles as may be necessary in order to achieve the optimal conditions for a specific intervention. Three cycles were necessary to reach the optimal design of the present study so that a confident conclusion could be made regarding the impact of SLS on comprehension and academic literacy. For each cycle, the intervention was carried out over an academic semester. In the first cycle, a test group composed of EAL first-year Economics students was exposed to live SLS via respeaking during class, while a control group (also composed of EAL first-year Economics students) attended the same class at a different time, without SLS. In the second cycle, the live SLS via respeaking were replaced with offline SLS. The intervention was taken out of the regular classes and was carried out in the context of practical revision classes scheduled specifically for the purpose of the intervention. The test group viewed subtitled videos of lectures, while the control group viewed videos without subtitles. After each viewing, all participants were required to complete a short comprehension test. This cycle was also conducted in first-year Economics. The basic design of the third cycle was similar to that of the second cycle, but for the fact that the intervention took place in the context of a Psychology module, which, unlike the Economics module, was taught without the lecturer making use of slides. After these three research cycles were completed, it could be concluded that offline SLS indeed have a positive impact on the subject-specific comprehension and the receptive academic literacy skills of EAL students in a tertiary academic context. This conclusion was supported by the following findings: 1. The first research cycle pointed towards a slight, but statistically insignificant benefit in terms of both comprehension and academic literacy. However, at this stage of the empirical investigation, the technical constraints made it difficult to draw a precise conclusion in that respect. 2. In the second research cycle, the SLS seem to have had a significant impact on the receptive academic literacy skills of the test group, compared to the control group. However, no such impact could be noted in terms of subject-specific comprehension. This was attributed to the presence of a confounding variable, namely slides used during the lectures. This once more made it impossible to draw a confident conclusion regarding the impact of SLS on comprehension. 3. The third research cycle made a more confident conclusion regarding the impact of SLS on subject-specific comprehension possible. Indeed, the results of the statistical analyses show that the test group performed significantly better in their semester test (covering the work done in all the recorded lectures) than the control group, which was not exposed to any videos at all. On the basis of these findings, it was concluded that SLS in their offline form have a positive impact on the subject-specific comprehension and the receptive academic literacy skills of EAL students in a tertiary academic context, specifically if the students are given sufficient time to get used to the mode. This study seems to indicate that the benefits of SLS for comprehension can be recorded provided that students are exposed to the intervention over a longer period of time. However, there may be further scope for refinement as far as this study is concerned. It is therefore important that the topic be investigated further. / MA, Language Practice, North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2012

"The problem here is to determine the scholastic prediction in English at the college freshman level by means of the correlation coefficients of the following test scores and marks at North Texas State Teachers College..."--1.

It is the objective of the writer to compare the grades of the athletes and non-athletes as well as to consider factors other than intelligence to show the difference in Academic Achievement at North Texas State Teachers College between athletes and the average student.

"It is the purpose of this present study to investigate further the aptitude areas into which Home Economics courses may be classified, and to determine whether a relationship exists between these areas and the areas of the Differential Aptitude Test."--1.

The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) recently passed new legislation highlighting the critical role coaches play in student-athlete success called the Head Coach’s Academic Progress Rate (APR). The APR measure does not calculate the actions of the head coach and is therefore an inadequate measure of coaches’ influence. There are numerous verbal accounts of the influence of the coach on student-athlete success, but there is little quantitative data to support this claim. As a result, this correlational study explored the relationship between head coaches’ influence and student engagement among a sample of 135 women basketball players at National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I (DI) institutions. The Student-Athlete Perception of Coaches’ Influence, Student Engagement and Student Athlete Success Survey (SAPCISESASS), an instrument developed by the researcher, was used to measure coaches’ influence and engagement. Results revealed that overall student-athletes perceived an overall positive relationship with their head coach, were satisfied with their relationship, and would choose to return to attend the same institution if the same coach were employed with the institution. Student-athletes reported being heavily engaged in community service and engaged in 16 or more hours per week in athletic-related activities. Student-athletes perceived the overall campus climate to be supportive and relationships with various campus constituencies were positive. Student-athletes reported a strong belief in their head coaches’ influence on their personal and social development. A strong relationship was found between coaches’ influence and personal and social development (adjusted R2 = .62, p

Made available in DSpace on 2014-12-17T15:38:55Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 CarlaFFR_DISSERT.pdf: 572328 bytes, checksum: 49af4b3accc926fc4715e67401a6ad1f (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010-10-18 / Coordena??o de Aperfei?oamento de Pessoal de N?vel Superior / One of the Psychology challenges, especially among the assessment and educational areas, is to understand and predict individual differences. In this context, this research aimed to verify the personality styles of students with high and low academic performance. The study included 236 university students from Petrolina-PE and Juazeiro-BA campus of the UNIVASF (Universidade Federal do Vale do S?o Francisco). They were uniformly distributed in four disciplines (medicine, psychology, administration and civil engineering), 10 students from each semester (five highest scores average students and five lowest scores average students) took place of the sample. The Millon Index Personality Styles (MIPS) was applied to analyze the personality/behavioral styles of the students. The MIPS is a 180 dichotomous (true/false) item scale. It was also developed and applied a questionnaire about the students characteristics and their academic information. Descriptive and central tendency statistics analysis (mean, standard deviation, frequency and percentage) were done to provide sample information. Then we performed a Mann-Whitney test in the overall sample and in each course and a factorial ANOVA. The results suggest that the university population is heterogeneous and there are significant differences (p <0.05) between the personality styles of students with high and low academic performance, when analyzing the overall sample and in courses of different areas of knowledge. Students of Medicine who have higher performance as personality styles prevalent the conformism and compliance, while students with lower income in this course, the styles are: innovation and discrepancy. Psychology students with higher income are more systematic and lower income students to score significantly on accommodation. The civil engineering students of the two groups differed only in personality style intuition, being such a style more characteristic of higher income students. Students of Management with higher yield stand out more in the style of the doubt and lower yields in these styles: individual, reflection and discrepancy. This study is correlational, but had an exploratory nature because there are no studies about this relationship in Brazil. Therefore, it provided a better understanding of the action characteristics of students with high and low academic performance. Further studies using the Big Five Personality Factors instruments are required because it is the most used model in understanding the influence of personality on students performance. This way, the relation between personality and academic performance will be better discussed. Otherwise, it will be possible to compare with the existing studies in the area / Um dos desafios da Psicologia, principalmente para a ?rea de avalia??o psicol?gica e educacional, consiste em compreender e predizer as diferen?as individuais. Nesse contexto, esta pesquisa teve como objetivo verificar os estilos de personalidade de estudantes com maiores e menores ?ndices de rendimento acad?mico. Participaram deste estudo 236 estudantes universit?rios da UNIVASF (Universidade Federal do Vale do S?o Francisco) dos campi de Petrolina-PE e Juazeiro-BA, distribu?dos uniformemente em quatro cursos (Medicina, Psicologia, Administra??o e Engenharia Civil), sendo 10 alunos de cada semestre (cinco com as maiores notas e cinco com as menores notas m?dias). Para analisar os estilos de personalidade/caracter?sticas comportamentais, foi aplicado o Invent?rio Millon de Estilos de Personalidade (MIPS), que ? composto por 180 itens, respondidos atrav?s de uma escala dicot?mica de respostas (verdadeiro/falso). Foi elaborado e aplicado, tamb?m, um question?rio para melhor caracteriza??o da amostra e com informa??es sobre a vida acad?mica dos estudantes. Foram realizadas estat?sticas descritivas e de tend?ncia central para fornecer informa??es sobre a amostra. Em seguida, foi realizado o teste de Mann-Withney na amostra geral e em cada curso, al?m de uma ANOVA fatorial. Os resultados sugerem que a popula??o universit?ria ? heterog?nea e h? diferen?as significativas (p<0,05) entre os estilos de personalidade de estudantes com maior e menor rendimento acad?mico, quando se analisa a amostra geral e nos cursos das diferentes ?reas do conhecimento. Os estudantes de Medicina com maior rendimento possuem como estilos de personalidade preponderantes o conformismo e a concord?ncia e os estudantes de menor rendimento desse curso, os estilos inova??o e discrep?ncia. Os estudantes de Psicologia com maior rendimento s?o mais sistem?ticos e os de menor rendimento pontuam significativamente mais na acomoda??o. Os estudantes de Engenharia Civil dos dois grupos diferiram apenas no estilo de personalidade intui??o, sendo tal estilo mais caracter?stico dos estudantes de maior rendimento. Os alunos de Administra??o com maior rendimento se destacam mais no estilo d?vida e os de menor rendimento nos estilos individualismo, reflex?o e discrep?ncia. O estudo, embora correlacional teve um car?ter explorat?rio, uma vez que no Brasil ainda n?o h? estudos acerca dessa rela??o, al?m disso permitiu uma melhor compreens?o sobre as caracter?sticas de a??o de estudantes com alto e baixo rendimento acad?mico. ? necess?rio que novos estudos sejam realizados e que sejam utilizados tamb?m nesses estudos instrumentos no modelo dos Cinco Grandes Fatores de Personalidade, j? que este ? o modelo mais utilizado na compreens?o da influ?ncia da personalidade no desempenho de estudantes para que, assim, se possa discutir melhor tal rela??o, bem como estabelecer compara??es entre os estudos j? existentes na ?rea

Public policymakers have failed to address public high school students' social and emotional learning (SEL). Recent public policies such as Common Core State Standards (CCSS) do not measure SEL outcomes as significant. Public education is government funded and therefore public policy driven. Research indicates SEL competencies have a positive influence on students' academic successes, classroom behaviors, and future career outcomes. The conceptual framework for this study was based on SEL components described by the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) and served as the lens though which the data were analyzed. Research questions for this phenomenological study explored teachers' self-reported knowledge and classroom implementation of the 5 SEL tenets: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making skills. Participants were a purposive sample of 10 teachers of all subjects and levels at Title 1 schools in the southwestern United States. Semistructured open-ended interviews were used to collect the data. Key results indicated teachers needed clarification on SEL competencies and wanted SEL training. Participants discussed structured SEL activities necessary for well-rounded citizens. SEL may contribute to positive social change if policymakers, education administrators, teachers, and other stakeholders seeking policy reforms focus on SEL inclusion into public policies such as CCSS.

Decades of research have noted the importance of parent involvement in students' academic success. Less is known about parent engagement models that aim to increase Latino students' reading achievement. This project study examined the effectiveness of a 2-year parent engagement program implemented to address poor reading achievement of Latino elementary school students in a small urban district. The purpose of this study was to determine disparities in student scores between those parents who participated in the program and those parents who did not participate. The research questions examined parent engagement levels in comparison to increased summative reading scores. Based on 3 foundational theories: cultural capital, deprivation, and social reproduction theories, concerted cultivation and accomplishment of natural growth theories, and funds of knowledge theory, this causal-comparative study used preexisting test score data to analyze the differences between pretest and posttest reading scores. The findings from the dependent- and independent-samples t tests suggested that there was limited evidence to support the claim that Latino 3rd grade students whose parents participated in the parent engagement framework showed a statistically significant greater gain in reading proficiency levels than Latino 3rd grade students whose parents did not participate. The conclusions of this study can be used to inform leadership and teacher professional learning initiatives for low-performing districts planning to implement parent engagement programs intended to raise Latino elementary student reading achievement. Results from this study may positively impact social change by providing culturally relevant parent engagement strategies and thus contributes to the overall reading attainment of districts' Latino students.

The economic sustainability of an area is largely dependent on the education level of its population, yet little is known about the role cultural racism may play in academic success. The purpose of this correlational study was to evaluate the theory of cultural racism, defined as, the establishment of cultural institutions by whites/Europeans to the detriment of non-white people, as it relates to academic success at the college level. Data were collected from 100 participants from 3 predominately African American high schools in the Atlanta, Georgia area to explore whether the presence of cultural racism existed from the perspective of the participants, and the impact of cultural racism, income, and status as a first generation college student on self-reported academic success. Data were collected through a web-based survey which included the Index of Race-Related Stress questions and analyzed using logistic regression. Study results indicated a statistically significant relationship (p < .01) between the elements of cultural racism and academic success, suggesting that students who experienced cultural racism also experienced poor academic performance. Other variables, including income and whether the student was a first generation college student, also contributed to the overall collegiate academic achievement among this population. Indicators of positive social change stemming from this study include recommendations to policy makers at all levels of government to enhance diversity training for students and educators about the implications of cultural racism in order to ameliorate its negative effects, thereby promoting more economically stable and diverse communities.