Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2003. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 134-149). Also available on the Internet.

Not available / text

Thesis (Ed. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.T.)--University of Texas at El Paso, 2008. / Title from title screen. Vita. CD-ROM. Includes bibliographical references. Also available online.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Oregon State University, June 2010. / Printout. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 178-184). Also available on the World Wide Web.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the relationship between anxiety reducing teaching methods and computer anxiety levels and learning gain of students in a college level introductory computer course. Areas examined were the computer anxiety levels of students categorized by selected demographic variables, the learning gain of students categorized by selected demographic variables, and anxiety levels and learning gain of students after completion of the course. Data for the investigation were collected via the Standardized Test of Computer Literacy (STCL) and the Computer Opinion Survey (CAIN), developed by Michael Simonson et al. at Iowa State University. The nonequivalent pretest/posttest control group design was used. The statistical procedure was the t test for independent groups, with the level of significance set at the .05 level. The data analysis was accomplished using the StatPac Gold statistical analysis package for the microcomputer. Based upon the analysis of the data, both hypotheses of the study were rejected. Research hypothesis number one was that students in a class using computer anxiety reducing teaching methods would show a greater reduction in computer anxiety levels than students in a traditional class. Hypothesis number two was that students in a class using computer anxiety reducing methods would show a greater learning gain than students in a traditional class. This research revealed that there was no statistically significant difference in the computer anxiety levels or the learning gain of students between the control group and the experimental group.

The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of a public community college on American Indian students in terms of their goals, aspirations, and persistence. These effects are fundamental to understanding attrition and the low transfer and completion rates of American Indians and other minorities in community colleges. The study was conducted as a case study in an urban community college in the Southwest. Seven individual case studies were embedded in the larger study. Data were obtained through weekly interviews and followup of students who dropped-out. Goodenough's cognitive theory of culture served as the theoretical basis for the study. Spradley's typology of question format, which is intended to generate the categories into which individuals divide their cultural knowledge, was used to determine cultural perceptions and related changes that occurred over time. None of the students completed the programs in which they had enrolled. A main finding was that the students perceived the community college as a way to disassociate themselves from social problems that marginalize Indian people and engender stereotypes. However, the culture that was produced at the college discounted the students' sense of competence and reinforced a sense of marginalization they were attempting to overcome. The students possessed a wide variety of background experiences, but maintained a deep structure of internal values and expectations associated with their unique Indian heritage and experience. These combined over time with the patterns and meanings of the institution, creating situational arrhythmia which frustrated the students' expectations, aspirations, and life tasks. Significant issues that arose included: (1) The acquisition of meaningful experience; (2) a lack of a sense of a supportive environment; (3) preferred ways of learning, (4) conflicts between institutional and personal priorities and (5) negative and regressive effects of the "deficit model" in remedial education. Community colleges are unaware of the actual effects that they have on culturally diverse students. They should become "culturally literate" and adopt policies and practice policies which will allow them to extend beyond the inherent ethnocentrism they now embody. In matching equal access with equality of outcomes, this study suggests that community colleges must consider significant changes and innovations.

Elaborative processing is important to the study of reading-to-write tasks because of its function in the integration of new knowledge. This study investigated whether assisting students to generate intra- and intertextual elaborations on source texts would (1) result in their writing essays in which textual information was transformed according to a personal purpose, and (2) result in their showing more metacognitive consciousness about their reading/writing processes. The pedagogical methodology was developed through analyzing the think-aloud protocols of six students writing from sources. Subsequently, two intact classes of first-semester freshman composition students attending community college composed essays from three autobiographical source texts. The experimental group was prompted to generate personal associations and new ideas from the source texts as well as to criticize ideas in them. Students in the experimental group were also encouraged to draw a diagram relating the three source texts to each other and to the students' own experiences. Students' annotations, notes, and essays were parsed into idea units and tallied according to categories of elaborations identified by Stein (1990a, c). Essays were also holistically scored for writing quality and organizational plan. Finally, students' free written responses to the task were analyzed and types of comments were tallied. Prompting students to elaborate is associated with their producing greater numbers of elaborations in their annotations. In the present study, however, no significant differences were found between the types of essays each group produced, in the types and percentages of elaborations present in their papers, or in the quality of their papers. However, members of the group receiving training in elaboration were better able to articulate the unifying concepts and organizational plans of their essays. Training in elaboration also seemed to heighten these students' interest in writing from sources. Future research on how elaboration affects the execution of reading-to-write tasks might involve more clearly prompting students to synthesize information from sources as well as giving them more extensive experience with elaboration techniques.

The purpose of this study is to investigate gender differences in mathematics anxiety and its relationship to test anxiety, trait anxiety, high school mathematics participation, and mathematics attitudinal factors in community college students. It takes place at a small rural community college in California, in which the majority population is Hispanic. The study relies primarily on quantitative methods, but includes a small qualitative component in the form of focus group interviews to confirm and enhance the findings. There were several main findings in the sample studied. Women scored significantly higher in mathematics anxiety than males among all age groups, ethnicities, and mathematics levels. Furthermore, the size of the gender gap in mathematics anxiety was not affected by age, ethnicity, or mathematics level. Significant relationships were found between mathematics anxiety and test anxiety, worry, emotionality, trait anxiety, self-confidence in mathematics, effectance motivation in mathematics, perceived usefulness of mathematics, and number of years of high school mathematics. Moreover, these relationships appeared to be approximately the same across samples of females and males, regardless of age, ethnicity, or mathematics level. Among the significant predictors of mathematics anxiety of particular importance were a lack of self-confidence in mathematics, a high presence of test anxiety—specifically emotionality—and a low presence of effectance motivation in mathematics. Follow-up focus group interviews suggested additional factors that could be related to mathematics anxiety, among which were an unpleasant experience with mathematics at the elementary or junior high school level, the requirement of having to follow precise steps in obtaining an exact answer, and the perception that the terminology of the mathematical language was confusing.

This dissertation examines how the formal schooling trajectories of forced migrant women from Africa and the Middle East are shaped by the ongoing confrontation of the women with the policies and practices of the community college they attend. It is based on ethnographic fieldwork done at a community college in the largest metropolitan area in the otherwise predominantly rural state of Maine. This work is motivated by an interest in the validity of the rhetoric of community college as the vehicle for upward social mobility for marginalized populations. The students in the study are constructed as various types of minorities: linguistic, racial, religious, national, depending on the bureaucratic, social or schooling context. Because of the ideology of equal opportunity, often the only documentation by the community college of minority status is their language status that is recognized in the standardized entrance exam. Racial and national origin information is voluntary and commonly left blank on official forms, but, along with religion, are made meaningful both in and outside of the classroom through interactions with white peers and teachers. Forced migrant students experience this construction of otherness, and react through the formation of social support networks made up exclusively of forced migrants where they teach each other ways of adaption and resistance. Because of the conditions that led to their flight, forced migrants have survived traumatic situations, face language barriers and may have interrupted formal schooling, as well as retain familial obligations around the globe that present unique challenges. The community college does not fully recognize these challenges, and maintains a narrow standard that is upheld through teaching practices and the use of standardized exams, which serve to marginalize forced migrant students. This marginalization translates into low graduation rates for forced migrants, effectively blocking any upward social mobility to be gained from the community college.