The purpose of this study was to determine the use of microcomputers by principals in their roles as instructional leaders and managers, and its impact upon the use of microcomputer technology in the school. The research was done by having the randomly stratified selected sample population respond to a survey. The subjects of this study were elementary, middle/junior and high school principals in the Florida Public School System. Of the responding principals 82.8% reported having access to a microcomputer in their office at school. One-third of the principals reported not having a microcomputer in their own homes. Word processing was reported as the most used application program and spread sheet applications the least used. Principals reported using the microcomputer in managerial tasks such as attendance, discipline, scheduling and grade reporting. The data indicated principals have not taken a proactive stance in their own personal learning about microcomputers and how they can be used. Responding principals, for the most part, did not perceive of the teachers within the building they work as using the microcomputer for the managerial functions of teaching. Presently principals are not taking full advantage of the microcomputer as a tool that can help them in their roles as instructional leaders and managers. Principals must also become more actively involved in the decision making process of the various technologies in which their school can participate.

The United States is becoming more diverse; numerous immigrants and refugees enter every year. Among the newer groups are those practicing the Muslim religion. This qualitative research focused on the identity formation process of six adolescent female Muslim refugees from Afghanistan. Based on Erikson's paradigm of psycho-social development and Marcia's modifications to that theory, I used semi-structured interviews to understand how the participants negotiated their identities in the context of their families, the public school, and the community. This cohort appeared to exist within a circumscribed Afghan community, retaining significant parts of their culture, traditions, and roles. The exception to that retention occurred in the Educational/Vocational Domain. Economic necessity impelled them to assume new roles and to plan for post-secondary education and vocations, for which they were inadequately prepared, and for which their parents could provide little guidance. These young women needed assistance in educational and career planning and counseling programs to facilitate their entry into post-secondary education and to develop their job skills. It seems fair to generalize that this deficit exists for most foreign-born and limited-English students. Addressing this deficit is a daunting, but important, task for the educational system and for resettlement programs.

This study focused on the causes of student underachievement in a selected high school in Ghana. The anonymous name chosen for the school was Northside New Era Secondary School. The participants in the study were administrators, teachers, and students. They were selected from the same school where the researcher conducted the study. The school was located in the Northern Region of Ghana. It had proven records of underachievement compared to other schools in the country according to the Ministry of Education's recent statistical report on education. The criterion for measurement was based on the results of the final examination conducted by the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) for the years 1996 to 2000. The study employed a qualitative methodology to examine student learning. A list of guiding interview questions were developed and validated prior to the study. Seven categories were identified to be the main contributing factors to student underachievement in the school. The categories fell under two main themes: external and internal factors of underachievement. The external factors included the lack of government intervention in the provision of educational materials, the socio-economic background of people in the demographic settings, unworkable educational policies, and poor working conditions for teachers and administrators. The internal factors were comprised of the apathy and passivity with which teachers conducted themselves in the school, parents' beliefs and psychological underpinnings of what an ideal school should be, and the school's lack of educational resources. This study found that both external and internal factors contributed significantly to student underachievement in schools. Participants' knowledge of the implications of the themes, and their understanding of all the educational stakeholders' role in the provision of a sound-learning environment in the school became the bedrock of the study. The researcher challenges all educational authorities everywhere, especially those in the third world countries, to consider student academic achievement as a major priority, necessary for strong nation-building into the 21st century and beyond.

This descriptive study explored the relationship between moral distress, professional stress and intent to stay in the hospital setting. The study involved 234 nursing participants and was conducted via an online survey over a 90 day period. The survey tool consisted of 51 items taken from known moral distress, professional stress and intent to stay tools. The items were divided into frequency and intensity of occurrence. Various statistical measures were utilized to conclude that moral distress and professional stress factors were significant (p

During 2 decades of debate about teacher preparation education practitioners and policymakers have called for a more skilled professional teaching force (Darling- Hammond, 2010). Of particular concern has been poverty’s impact on education -- specifically in struggling urban schools -- prompting legislation such as the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), which shifted funding formulas in an effort to directly target poor students and struggling schools (Talbert-Johnson, 2006). The major purpose of this study was to explore novice teachers’ (teachers in their second to fourth year of teaching) perceptions of their preparedness to teach in urban schools following completion of a traditional 4-year undergraduate teacher preparation program. Several issues influenced their perceptions: prior experiences and attitudes regarding diversity, coursework, and field experiences. The theoretical frameworks of Vygotsky’s (1962) social cognition learning model, Piaget’s theory of psychological constructivism (1952), and Moustaka’s heuristic research (1994) framed this research study. Using a qualitative method, focus groups and interviews were conducted to gain an understanding of the attitudes, beliefs, and perceptions of novice teachers towards the effectiveness of traditional teacher preparation programs. Pattern coding guided the identification and coding of themes in the data. This generated themes regarding attitudes, beliefs, race, social class, and parental involvement. Recommendations for teacher education included modifying field experiences, extensive xi training of directing teachers, matching preservice teachers with strong mentors, and including content in preparation programs focused on parental involvement. Recognizing the perceptions of novice teachers may assist in influencing schools of education to strengthen current programs to better prepare teacher candidates to work with students of diverse backgrounds.

Teaching vocabulary to middle school students requires that educators find the most effective means of instruction to achieve this goal. The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of using an interactive word wall as the tool to combine five effective, research-based teaching strategies with social interaction to teach vocabulary to middle school students. In this study, 124 middle school students participated. The control group consisted of 67 eighth grade English students, and the intervention group was comprised of 57 seventh grade English students. The intervention was for a period of four weeks and included specific activities that embraced effective teaching strategies plus social interaction. Throughout the intervention, an interactive word wall was used as the tool that combined the teaching strategies and social interaction. The assessments included a pre-assessment, four weekly assessments, and a four-week delayed assessment. The words for the pre-assessment and the four weekly assessments were taken from each group’s newly assigned words for their respective grade level. The words for the delayed assessment were randomly selected from the lists of words that each group used during the intervention phase of the study. Each assessment used the same format and contained a definition and sentence portion. A discriminant analysis was conducted on the data from the study. Overall, the definition portion of the assessments offered a greater weight to the discriminant function than did the sentence portion. Also, the mean scores between the two groups began to narrow as the intervention continued. On the delayed assessment, the intervention group performed almost as well as the control group, which was an unexpected result. Given the improved overall scores on the weekly assessments, and given the narrowed gap in the means on the delayed assessment, indications are that the word wall intervention yielded success in teaching vocabulary to middle school students.

This qualitative research study focused on the perceptions of 12 faculty members teaching courses in adult basic education and described their professional experiences and interactions with adult learners within the context of a two-year, public, postsecondary institution. Participants, ranging in teaching experience from 13 years to 43 years, volunteered to take part in one-to-one, semi-structured interview sessions to offer insight into their professional experiences. The interview sessions yielded the complex, context-specific data for detailed analysis. Data analysis, supported through educational criticism and relevant concepts from the professional literature (Eisner, 1998), was used to develop four themes: how the faculty viewed themselves professionally, how faculty viewed their students, instructional strategies used to promote student learning, and perceived challenges to student learning. Faculty perceived themselves as caring, humanistic managers; moreover, faculty viewed their students, while limited in certain fundamental academic skills, as being capable learners equipped with ancillary skills that could be used to complement their classroom learning. Furthermore, faculty reported that they used active, student-centered instructional approaches relevant to students' experiences to promote learner persistence in the face of challenging circumstances. This study included recommendations for leaders in higher education to provide high-quality professional development opportunities for faculty and adequate counseling, mentoring, and tutoring services for the students the faculty serve.

This non-equivalent group study explored the impact of teacher participation in the development and use of a web-based instructional resource on computer utilization by students. The effects of participation in the technology initiative on teacher attitudes toward computers, technology proficiency, and stages of adoption of technology were also investigated. Teacher volunteers participated in a treatment group that received a professional development intervention and a comparison or web access group (WAG) that received no professional development. The treatment, or Professional Development Group (PDG), received instruction that modeled a constructivist hands-on approach to creating technology-rich lessons based on classroom curricula and Internet technologies to encourage technology integration in the classroom. The lessons were posted online using identical web sites for both groups and accessed by students of the PDG and WAG teachers promoting the school-wide use of technology as a tool for active, directed learning. Use of the online resource was analyzed descriptively through computer lab usage logs, teacher-reported weekly logs, and number of hits on the websites. Utilization of the online resource by students of the professional development group of teachers was slightly higher than by students of the comparison group of teachers. The findings also indicated that exposure to the professional development intervention increased reported use of integrated applications and encouraged higher stages of adoption by the experimental group of teachers (PDG) than the comparison group of teachers (WAG).

This study investigated the learning style, teaching style, and attitude toward change of elementary school teachers and the relationship of these variables to the adoption of computer technology into teaching and learning strategies. The researcher used four instruments to gather data about the preferred learning style, teaching style, attitude toward change, and current utilization of computer technology both personally and with students. Survey forms were delivered to seven selected elementary schools in a Northeast Florida public school district. An educational technology survey was distributed to each of the 200 elementary school teachers in these schools. The return rate of completed surveys was approximately 36% (N=73). In addition, those teachers in each school who elected to participate in this study completed one of the following instruments: the Teaching Style Inventory, the Change Seeker Index, or the Learning Type Measure . Statistical analyses were conducted to determine if there were any significant relationships among the three factors (teaching style, learning style, and attitude toward change) and the adoption of computer technology by the teachers in this study. Descriptive statistics were used to describe the length of computer use and the location of computer use by the participants as well as other demographic variables. The major findings of the study were: (1) The highest instructional use of the computer by teachers was drill and practice. (2) Teachers were using the computer sparingly. The usage of the computer with their students ranged from once-a-year usage to daily usage. The most frequently reported usage was drill and practice on a daily basis. (3) No significant relationships between the preferred learning style and the adoption of computer technology were evident. ( 4) No significant relationships between the teaching style of the participants in this study and the adoption of computer technology were identified. (5) The relationship between the intrinsic factors and the adoption of computer technology was not significant. The relationship between the extrinsic factors and the adoption of computer technology was significant at the p Recommendations related to preservice teacher education, inservice training, and promoting the adoption of technology were made. Also, recommendations were made regarding future investigations that examine the relationship of learning style, teaching style, attitude toward change, and the adoption of computer technology by school teachers.

The purpose of the present study was to examine how perceptions of a chilly climate differ between students in traditionally female-dominated majors versus traditionally male-dominated majors, and how these perceptions relate to students' intentions to persist or pursue higher education in their chosen field. Participants were 403 students attending a community college in the southern United States, including students majoring in information technology (IT), engineering, education, and nursing. Participants completed the 28-item Perceived Chilly Climate Scale (PCCS) and other informational items. The primary research question asked: To what extent can scores on the five subscales of the PCCS be explained by the predictor variable set of gender, ethnicity, age, college major, and intent to leave the field? Canonical correlation analysis yielded an initial canonical root of .40 (Rc^2 = .16, p < .001), indicating that the predictor variables accounted for a moderate portion of the variance in PCCS subscale scores. Gender (rs = .89) accounted for the highest proportion of explained variance, followed by major (rs = .75). Findings indicated that women found the climate chillier than men, non-white students found the climate chillier than white students, younger students perceived the climate chillier than older students, and students in traditionally female-dominated majors perceived the climate chillier than students in traditionally male-dominated majors. Intent to leave the field was not a significant predictor of perceptions of chilly climate.