A research report submitted to the Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Masters in Education (Educational Psychology). / Although various policies have been implemented to lessen the impact of Apartheid on all levels of education since 1994, sub-Saharan Africa still has the lowest level of higher education enrolment in the world (Bloom, Canning & Chan, 2006). This study therefore aimed to identify which factors contributed to students' university enrolment in South Africa and how these factors affected their academic success at university. A self-developed questionnaire assessing factors influencing enrolment for three key areas (personal, parental and schooling) was administered to 337 psychology one students registered at the University of the Witwatersrand and academic success was estimated using their psychology one mark for the first semester. Data was analysed using frequency counts, Spearman's correlations and two independent sample t-tests. Results showed that intrinsic and extrinsic motives had the greatest influence on individuals' decision to attend university, with those students intrinsically motivated performing better on average than those motivated by any other factor. In addition, socio-economic status played a role in success at university, possibly because it affects the quantity and quality of resources available to an individual. As a result, those students' with a higher socio-economic status tended to do better than those of lower socio-economic status. Further analysis indicated that fluency in English also had an effect on student's overall success. / AC2017

A few studies have attempted to examine whether children’s low self-esteem is partially explained by being relatively younger than their peers. In the present study this relative age effect on self-esteem is hypothesized to be mediated by children’s relationships to their teachers and the children’s performance in school. This study is based on nationally representative data from the Korean Youth Panel Survey. A total of 2,844 Korean fourth graders (M age = 9.86, SD = 0.35; 53.6% male) self reported their self-esteem, student-teacher relationships and academic achievement. Structural equation modeling revealed that both student-teacher relationships and academic achievement served as significant mediators in the relative age effect on self-esteem, even after family socioeconomic status was controlled for. The older children in the classroom formed higher quality student-teacher relationships and performed better in school, thereby ending up with higher self-esteem relative to their peers. These results may be used as guidance when creating intervention programs aiming to improve children’s SE and prevent negative development. / Ett par studier har undersökt om barns låga självkänsla delvis förklaras av att vara relativt yngre än sina klasskamrater. I denna studie antas barns relationer till sina lärare samt barns prestationer i skolan vara medierande faktorer för den beskrivna effekten av relativ ålder på barns självkänsla. Studien använder nationellt representativt data från Korean Youth Panel Survey. Sammanlagt 2,844 koreanska fjärdeklassare (M ålder = 9,86, SD = 0,35; 53,6% pojkar) skattade sin självkänsla, deras relationer till lärare och deras prestation i skolan. Strukturell ekvationsmodellering visade att både relationer till lärare och prestation i skolan var signifikanta medierande faktorer för effekten av relativ ålder på barns självkänsla. Detta även när familjens socioekonomiska status kontrollerats för. De relativt äldre barnen byggde relationer av högre kvalitet med sina lärare samt presterade bättre i skolan och fick därmed högre självkänsla än deras klasskamrater. Dessa resultat kan användas som vägledning när program med syfte att förbättra barns självkänsla samt förhindra negativ utveckling ska utformas.

This ontologically qualitative research study was conducted at Central China University (CCU, pseudonym). The purpose of this research was to (a) explore student narratives regarding their educational experiences in the CCU Business School's at-home internationalization programs; (b) provide an in-depth narrative analysis of student learning challenges and achievements; and (c) add valuable research-based knowledge of student-described experiences at CCU for use by program administrators. The findings focused on student-identified links between the challenges they encounter and their achievements. Additionally, student performance level and sex were closely associated with the challenges and achievements that students reported. In understanding the results, the concepts of student learning found in the approaches of learned optimism, growth mindset, and grit provide potentially fruitful insights. The findings of this research have powerful, instructive implications for administrators at CCU for determining how student challenges should be strategically chosen and shaped to generate specific, positive student achievements.

The number of universities in Sweden has increased since the 1960s and universities have been discussed to have economic and social advantages to the community they are established in. At the same time, residential segregation is an increasing problem which affects the opportunities in life of the most vulnerable. This study aims to explore if the presence of one or several anchor institutions may have an effect on the school achievements of pupils from neighbourhoods with different socioeconomic status in secondary school and upper secondary school. Furthermore, it aims to investigate how the presence of HEIs affect adolescents’ opportunities in life, especially in vulnerable neighbourhoods. The effects of HEIs on the neighbourhoods with different socioeconomic status in Sweden are measured through linear regression analyses with interaction effects. The findings suggest that (1) the presence of university campuses have an equalisation effect on the school achievements of secondary and upper secondary school pupils; (2) the university design matters: new universities have an equalisation effect on the school achievements in contrary to old universities; (3) the presence of a university hospital does not have an improving effect on the grades like universities do, in contrary, the findings suggest that they have a negative effect; and finally (4), there are some evidence indicating that the findings can be explained by endogenous neighbourhood effects, as the presence of universities increase the number of role models within the community, which would affect the school achievements of secondary and upper secondary school pupils.

Australia faces many challenges in a globalised and rapidly changing world. Schools are increasingly being given responsibility for ensuring the future economic, social and political wellbeing of the nation and its successful transition into the knowledge age. Teachers have the responsibility of educating their students for an as yet unknown future. To meet these complex professional challenges, teachers need to become creators rather than consumers of knowledge. Through engaging in knowledge creation work teachers can re-image their work, reconceptualising the meaning of teacher professionalism. The study explores understandings of knowledge creation that emerge from the experiences of three Queensland schools engaged in IDEAS, a process of whole-school renewal which focuses on the work of teachers. In each case, through collaborative effort, the teachers created new knowledge. How this happened, what was achieved, the dynamics of the relationship between individual and group learning, and the subsequent impact on practice varied from case to case. The nature of the knowledge created was strongly influenced by contextual factors such as the dominant organisational paradigm, socio-emotional climate, cognitive processes, leadership and organisational coherence. In each school extensive data were gathered through in-depth interviews, artefact and document collection, and participant observation, particularly of IDEAS related activities. The story of each school and its engagement with IDEAS – constructed from the accounts of the teachers – is told to provide a basis for understanding knowledge creation in each context. In the final stage of analysis, cross-case comparisons are made to provide a more generalised understanding of knowledge creation processes and the factors which impact on the nature of the knowledge produced. The findings indicate a link between the creation of knowledge in the three schools and a re-imaging of teachers’ work.

¡§Employees¡¨ are the most important factor to concern the business. However, love to go ease and hate to work hard is human¡¦s nature. If less to take care the workpeople for a long time, wasting resources, neglecting handling official papers, making excuses¡Ksuch events should be happened. It¡¦s an important issue to build up the good organize and harmonious atmosphere, make the employees willing and enthusiastic at work. On workpeople and affairs management, there are two important things ¡§trusty¡¨ and ¡§effectiveness¡¨. For examples, when you have a target practice, all of the shootings are on the bull¡¦s eye. It means good at ¡§trusty¡¨ and ¡§effectiveness¡¨¡F If all of the shootings are on one spot out of the bull¡¦s eye, it means good at ¡§trusty¡¨ but not at ¡§effectiveness¡¨. All of the bosses would hope their employees are good at ¡§trusty¡¨ and ¡§effectiveness¡¨ on their work field. Due to the competitiveness of Taiwan¡¦s industries, it is hard to avoid moving to overseas. Because of the enticements of cost down and prosper market, Mainland China is most of the industries¡¦ common investment choices. There are different politics and economic policies between two sides of straits. And the wide gap of social culture and values exist in Taiwan and Mainland China. As a result of politics and economic policies open and develop, especially industrial circles focus on pursuing achievements, it brings workpeople new thoughts. It also makes some problems at adapting to thoughts and behaviors of the workpeople. Therefore, the complexity and importance of human resources management are manifested. The passive components industries are widespread in Taiwan. To comply with the assembling factories generations alternating and products renewing, the attached business opportunities should be brought up. But Taiwan is just good at low technique production resistance and capacitance. The international main industrials use as low price to occupy the market. The materials and innovation skills are controlled by Japan, Europe and China. They become to the production center in the world year after year. The passive components industries in Taiwan must bring up the effective human resources management tactics to build up superiorly competitiveness to break through the difficult position. Otherwise the passive components industries in Taiwan will face the threat to be knocked out. This research is based on the passive components And try to find out the different and similar views on human resources management between two sides of strait. To contrast and analyze the advantage and disadvantage draft the different policies to suit different environment, to improve the satisfaction of employees. Furthermore, the passive component industrial in Taiwan should be raise on business effects and competitiveness.

Bakgrund: Vår självskattade fysiska självkänsla är av betydelse för vår motivation att vilja vara fysiskt aktiv. Det har även visat sig i tidigare forskning att högre fysisk självkänsla påverkar elevers resultat i skolan positivt. Syftet med arbetet var att se vilka samband det fanns mellan fysisk självkänsla och elevers närvaro i idrott och hälsa. Metod: Två klasser på en skola i sydöstra Sverige deltog i undersökningen, HT -12. Studien bygger på en kvantitativ undersökning i form av en redan framtagen enkät: ”Sådan är jag! – barn”, även kallad CY-PSPP (Children and Youth – Physical Self Perception Profile). Deltagarna har då fått skatta sin fysiska självkänsla som sedan jämförts med elevernas frånvaro i ämnet idrott & hälsa. Resultat: Elever med högre fysisk självkänsla har inget signifikant samband med lägre frånvaro i idrottsundervisningen. Resultatet visade dock att undergrupperna idrottslig kompetens, fysisk kondition och kroppsattraktivitet, har var och en ett signifikant samband med fysisk självkänsla. Konklusion: Lärarens roll är viktig för att nå alla elever i undervisningen för att stärka individens tro om sig själv, samt hur denne ser på sig själv i fysisk aktivitet. För att nå elever som har låg fysisk självkänsla finns det anledning att se över innehållet och granska idrottslärares planering och utformning av undervisningen.

For several decades, reading strategies have aroused many researchers’ interest.Readingis a very important language skill for English learners; however, many English majors feel that their reading proficiency is far from satisfying though they have studied English for more than ten years. Therefore, the current situation of using reading strategies among Chinese sophomore English majors is studied in this paper. The research aims to study the relationship between the use of reading strategies and the students’ reading achievements. The reading comprehension part of TEM 4 (2006) and two questionnaires are adopted in this study to collect data from the investigated students. The participants are 54 English major sophomores from a university in China. The major findings of this study are: English majors use reading strategies in medium level when doing reading comprehension tests. Both metacognitive and cognitive reading strategies significantly correlate with reading achievements and both of them play important roles in reading comprehension. There are differences in the application of reading strategies between high-proficiency readers and low-proficiency readers. Teachers do not pay high attention to instructing reading strategies in the classroom, so some pedagogical implications on the teaching of reading strategies are suggested.

For several decades, reading strategies have aroused many researchers’ interest.Readingis a very important language skill for English learners; however, many English majors feel that their reading proficiency is far from satisfying though they have studied English for more than ten years. Therefore, the current situation of using reading strategies among Chinese sophomore English majors is studied in this paper. The research aims to study the relationship between the use of reading strategies and the students’ reading achievements. The reading comprehension part of TEM 4 (2006) and two questionnaires are adopted in this study to collect data from the investigated students. The participants are 54 English major sophomores from a university in China. The major findings of this study are: English majors use reading strategies in medium level when doing reading comprehension tests. Both metacognitive and cognitive reading strategies significantly correlate with reading achievements and both of them play important roles in reading comprehension. There are differences in the application of reading strategies between high-proficiency readers and low-proficiency readers. Teachers do not pay high attention to instructing reading strategies in the classroom, so some pedagogical implications on the teaching of reading strategies are suggested.

The development of independent schools is a relatively new phenomenon, which has been increasing during the last 20 years. Most of the independent schools have been proliferated in the larger regions such as Stockholm, but are increasing more and more in smaller regions. This study aims to compare public and independent schools in the region of Sandviken and Gävle in order to analyse how the final grades are affected by different variables. From two different perspectives the focus is to see if location of schools and students makes any difference according to the distance decay and how important motivations are according to the choice theory and its ideas about motivation. This study is done by using statistics collected from the independent and public schools and also by a regression analysis. The conclusion is that there are no significant differences between the schools and students and the achievements, the location of the school, the relation between distance to school and achievements and there are no differences from a gender perspective. The schools themselves do also have an important role for good education as a good study environment may increase the students’ motivation for the education.