Dyslexia is a learning disability that hinders a person's ability to process elements of reading and writing. Although younger students with dyslexia often receive remedial education and accommodations, dyslexic college students may not receive assistance targeted to their individual needs. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to ascertain the challenges that might impede the academic success of college students with dyslexia and identify strategies used by academically successful dyslexic students at a 2-year college. Knowles's theory of informal adult education and self-direction provided the conceptual framework for the study. Using a case study design, 10 current college students who had a diagnosis of dyslexia with documentation on file at the college's student support center and a minimum 3.0-grade point average were purposefully selected to participate. Data from semi-structured interviews and reflective field notes were analyzed using open coding to develop themes. Eight themes emerged related to Knowles' constructs; 4 as challenges (accelerated pace, communication, time management, and concentration) and 4 as strategies to improve educational outcomes (technical assistance, organization, support, and modification). A workshop and mentoring program were developed to provide academic support for college students with dyslexia, highlighting those areas that dyslexic students identified as challenging. Continued research on the educational needs of older students with dyslexia was recommended. Targeted interventions for students with dyslexia may result in a positive social change by helping them achieve a higher education degree and become successful members of their communities.

In three low socioeconomic urban communities of Greenwood (pseudonym), young men's lack of education provides dim prospects of employment, possibly causing the young men to turn to gun violence. The purpose of this study was to understand the perceptions of concerned clergy, law officials, and members of a Neighborhood Watch organization regarding the factors that contribute to gun violence in the southern communities in the United States. The conceptual framework for this study was Bandura's modeling theory. The central research question addressed how the community stakeholder groups described their perceptions regarding gun violence among young male adults. For this qualitative case study, a total of 9 stakeholders from the clergy, law officials, and Neighborhood Watch organization who had knowledge about the issues being investigated were selected through purposeful sampling and interviewed individually and in a focus group. The data were coded and categorized for themes. Thick descriptions of the stakeholder perspectives were combined with notes and interviews. The emerging themes were lack of education, inappropriate leadership, and an unhealthy community life; therefore, suggesting that professional development needs to be provided to the stakeholders on how to support the unemployed men in achieving skills through education, developing leadership skills through positive role modeling, and building a better community life through nonviolent social skills. The results indicated that applying skills to the service of young men exposed to gun violence would contribute to positive social change by understanding other potential causes of the gun violence problem. The implications for positive social change will become evident as young men become educated, find employment, and regain self-esteem and confidence in their ability to lead.

This study compared learning strategies in an effort to determine which strategy would be most beneficial to transfer of learning. A number of approaches were suggested in the related literature for maximizing learning, one of which was to use "learning how to learn," also known by the term content general learning strategy. This study hypothesized that the use of content general learning strategies would produce more transfer of learning across both related and less related tasks than content specific learning strategies. Both learning strategies were combined with either a visual and semantic method of encoding or a semantic only method of encoding. A factorial analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) which combines regression analysis with analysis of variance tested the null hypothesis that the adjusted population means were equal for the covariate of the pretest and the dependent variable of the posttest. Analysis procedures of the ANCOVA on data results reflect that for related and less related tasks, content general with visual and semantic encoding outperformed all other methods tested. The results indicate that a general learning strategy (learning how to learn) is more productive for learning achievement in situations where transfer of learning is desired.

This study examined the effectiveness of intelligent tutoring system instruction, grounded in John Anderson's ACT theory of cognition, on the achievement and attitude of developmental mathematics students in the community college setting. The quasi-experimental research used a pretest-posttest control group design. The dependent variables were problem solving achievement, overall achievement, and attitude towards mathematics. The independent variable was instructional method. Four intact classes and two instructors participated in the study for one semester. Two classes (n = 35) served as experimental groups; they received six lessons with real-world problems using intelligent tutoring system instruction. The other two classes (n = 24) served as control groups; they received six lessons with real-world problems using traditional instruction including graphing calculator support. It was hypothesized that students taught problem solving using the intelligent tutoring system would achieve more on the dependent variables than students taught without the intelligent tutoring system. Posttest mean scores for one teacher produced a significant difference in overall achievement for the experimental group. The same teacher had higher means, not significantly, for the experimental group in problem solving achievement. The study did not indicate a significant difference in attitude mean scores. It was concluded that using an intelligent tutoring system in problem solving instruction may impact student's overall mathematics achievement and problem solving achievement. Other factors must be considered, such as the teacher's classroom experience, the teacher's experience with the intelligent tutoring system, trained technical support, and trained student support; as well as student learning styles, motivation, and overall mathematics ability.

Lifelong learning (LL) has been widely regarded as one of the activities that can enhance well-being of the society and benefit older persons in terms of psychological, physical, mental, and cognitive well-being. In foreign countries like the Unites States of America, the United Kingdom, Finland, France, Australia, and also China, LL among older persons had been developed successfully. Hong Kong, in contrast, has no systematic planning for the development of LL even though the aged population is increasing rapidly. This research aims at constructing a LL model for older persons in Hong Kong. The theoretical framework of study focused on figuring out the breaches between satisfactory models proposed by older persons and the existing lifelong learning model in Hong Kong. Interview survey and documentary study have been employed in this study. Interview survey was carried out from March to April of 2005 in order to understand older persons’ expectations towards LL. A questionnaire consisting of 39 big items was constructed. The author successfully interviewed 54 out of the 60 older persons originally intended, including 31 female and 23 male. The samples of this study were older persons aged 55 or above, and the median age of the respondents was 67.84. Also, 26 respondents had had learning experience in the six months prior to the survey being carried out. In the documentary study, both formal and nonformal learning programmes in Hong Kong were studied. Seven major older persons’ education providers were included, including one tertiary institution, one radio broadcasting company and five active NGOs. The findings show the gaps between older persons’ expectations and present provision of LL programmes. The Hong Kong Lifelong Learning Model should have tertiary institutions actively involved in the provision of both formal and nonformal learning programmes. Face to face interviews should be adopted. Formal learning programmes should be made available on the internet or radio. Moreover, older persons would be more satisfied if they could learn at tertiary institutions or centres most convenient for them. Thus, various organizations should have stronger cooperation with each other so that resources can be shared. Older persons preferred a greater variety of courses and lessons and would like to receive grants or travel subsidy. Most of the elder learners were willing to be instructors, therefore they could be recruited as voluntary teachers, and more courses to train older learners as instructors should be offered. The duration of formal learning programmes may be too long for the elderly learners, and they asked for a credit-accumulating system to be implemented in those programmes. A central data bank and newsletters should be made available so that older persons could gain access to information more easily. In order to improve the quality of courses, evaluation and needs assessments should be carried out regularly by service providers, and they should consider designing the course curriculum with elder learners. In order to help those who did not receive much education when young, foundation literacy courses could be offered. In addition, instead of written course work, tests, and examinations, oral presentations and examinations could be carried out. Finally, certificates, qualifications, and public and large scale graduation ceremonies are found to be good reinforcements for older persons’ learning behaviour. In conclusion, Hong Kong, as a beginner in the systematic development of LL for older persons, has much to do to improve the existing system. Irrefutably, making it perfect is arduous because both the service providers and the government have their own constraints. Nonetheless, trying the best to fill in the gaps between the ideal and the reality will bring the greatest benefits to older persons and the society.

No abstract included.

Continued improvement of the training and preparation of Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) special agents is critical to the organization's ability to protect the national security of the United States. Too little attention has been paid to the factors that improve new agent trainees' (NATs) ability to learn and succeed in their training programs. Based on the theories of reflective thinking and emotional intelligence, this nonexperimental, correlational study explored predictors of NATs' (N = 183) performance in problem-based exercises as part of the 20-week training program. Self-report instruments measured levels of critical reflection (CR), emotional intelligence (EQ), and perceived ability (PA). An established performance measure collected instructor-observed performance (OP) scores. Regression analysis tested the relationships of CR and EQ with OP but yielded no statistical significance. Due to concerns about the measure of OP, a second analysis revealed significance with PA scores for EQ (b = .193, p = <.001) only. Preparing effective special agents to respond to the challenges of a volatile global environment is a priority of the FBI and contributes to positive social change, as its mission is to ensure the safety and security of the United States. The main conclusion from the study was that a better measure of performance is needed to study the impact of CR and EQ on trainees. When measured more effectively, characteristics of trainees may be relevant to improving performance.

According to Knowles's theory of andragogy, the principles of adult learning are the need to know, self-directedness, the role of experience, intrinsic motivation, and readiness to learn. Whereas references in the andragogical literature have assumed that the principles uniformly apply to adults of all ages, differences between adult age groups may influence the effectiveness of the principles on adult learning. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate which adult age group was most accepting of the principles so that more effective teaching may occur. Three adult age groups, emerging adults (18-25), young adults (26-39), and mature adults (40-59) were studied, guided by three research questions. The first two questions addressed the degree of acceptance of andragogical principles and student satisfaction by the three age groups, and the third addressed the degree to which age and acceptance of andragogical principles predicted student course satisfaction. Using a cross-sectional, quantitative design, a convenience sample of 59 college students completed an electronic, web-based, Likert-scale survey. Multivariate analysis of variance, analysis of variance, and multiple regression analyses examined the relationships between the three age groups, andragogical principles, and student course satisfaction. Although there was no difference between the age groups and the acceptance of the andragogical principles or student course satisfaction, age combined with acceptance of andragogical principles was predictive of student course satisfaction. The social change implications are that educators should continue to implement the current principles across all adult age groups when designing learning environments and opportunities to improve the quality of educational instruction for one of the fastest growing student populations, the adult learner.

The purpose of this study was to measure the learning of the specific skills and knowledge as identified by the National Policy Board for Educational Administration during internships of students from universities participating in the Alliance for the Preparation of Educational Leadership. Former interns from Brigham Young University, East Tennessee State University, Florida State University, and Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, responded to a survey designed to measure the skills and knowledge as defined by the National Policy Board for Educational Administration. Indicators of the domains identified by the National Policy Board for Educational Administration allowed former interns to reflect and identify those areas that were best learned during the administrative internship. The target population included students who recently graduated from the participating universities. Reviewing the literature exposed the need for an inductive knowledge base. The amount of research was abundant in the area of effectiveness, the internship, and principal preparation. There was little research in the area of the development of specific skills as defined by the National Policy Board for Educational Administration using the internship as a method of delivery. The majority of the former interns were white females slightly over forty years old. The majority held a masters degree with 21% holding a degree higher than a masters. Few were serving as principals. Findings indicated that internships were highly valued, innovative, provided experiences for the domains of competency, and focused primarily on the functional theme. Recommendations included that internships ignore age, gender, and race; be designed by the university personnel; be one of a variety of field experiences; be innovative; and exist primarily in the operational dimension.

The purpose of this study was to determine those resources that selected leadership development experts rated as most effective in discovering and fostering the continuing professional development of leaders. In this descriptive study, three research questions were formulated. A modified version of Hunter's reputational technique was used to collect data through a snowball sampling of the selected population. In phase 1 of the study, a survey was developed, validated, and mailed to 56 LEADership directors in all 50 states, yielding 34 (64%) returns, which were used in creation of the final questionnaire. In phase 2 of the study, the final instrument, including 256 identified resources, was developed, validated, and mailed to 220 experts in leadership development identified in the initial survey. A return of 88 (40%) of the questionnaires identified leadership development resources that selected experts rated as effective. The 19 instruments, 128 books or other printed materials, 32 audio or video tapes, and 77 programs identified through the initial survey were rated either "not effective", "somewhat effective", "effective", or "very effective" on a likert-type scale.