Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Educational Leadership / Sarah Jane Fishback / This study examined how adult African American women experienced learning at two post-secondary institutions in the Midwest; a diverse, urban community college, and a predominantly white research university. The study also considered how barriers, challenges, responsibilities, and support systems impacted their learning experiences. Gender, race and age were variables of interest, and three theoretical lenses; Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger and Tarule's Women's Ways of Knowing, McClusky's Theory of Margin/Adult Roles and Responsibilities, and Critical Race Theory were used to explore the participants' experience of learning. This topic was of interest due to the paucity of research conducted in the area of post-secondary institutions, with adult African American women in the Midwest. This study found that learners used active learning, linked their learning to their life experiences, encountered racism, experienced barriers; situational, institutional, dispositional, and information; utilized familial, instructor, peer and spiritual support systems, would benefit from career advising, and that career goal uncertainty was a common obstruction. The women participating in this research were determined, motivated and goal oriented, and served as role models for their children, sought education to improve their lives, and emphasized the importance of education to reach career and life goals.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Foundations and Adult Education / Sarah Jane Fishback / There have been two classic models of the way self-directed learners organize their learning experiences – a planning model, discussed by researchers such as Tough (1971) and Knowles (1975), which considers self-directed learners to be actively and deliberately planning their learning projects, and an environmental model, proposed by Spear and Mocker (1984), which considers these learners to be strongly influenced by what they called the organizing circumstance. Later researchers have found support for both models. Both models posit that learning resources play an important role for self-directed learners, but there hasn’t been much research specifically looking at how learners make resource decisions. For this project, the researcher recruited 13 women from online sewing communities who had reported obtaining a particular hard-to-find sewing resource and interviewed them about their resource decisions and resource libraries. The project asked the questions of how self-directed learners are planning, the criteria they use to choose learning resources, how an environment of plentiful resources and the internet affect these choices, and how learners evaluate their resources. The researcher found that this particular group of learners are conscious only of doing short-term, project-by-project, planning, but reveal another, unconscious level of building mental maps of their entire field of interest, including judgments of their personal interests and evaluations of their personal skill sets. These learners enjoy this learning, and consider their resources to be treats as well as references; they seek relevant content, novelty, and intellectual challenge. They are strongly influenced by their communities, both local and online, but maintain independence in their learning choices.

Doctor of Education / Department of Educational Leadership / Sarah Jane Fishback / Educators across the religious spectrum claim that the quest for spirituality and issues related to spiritual fulfillment are important to Americans. Nevertheless, only twenty percent of evangelical churches are growing. The rest are either not growing or are declining in attendance numbers (White, 2003). Many in the field of church growth have come to the conclusion that churches that are growing and meeting the needs of people are those that create within their membership a sense of belonging to a group which is achieved primarily through their Sunday School programs. The purpose of this qualitative case study is to explore the effect, if any, that developing close personal relationships in an adult Sunday School class has on increasing a person’s desire to attend. The work of Francis (2005), Mims (2001), Taylor (2003), and others indicates this is the case and that there are three basic facets of this development. The first is purposefully organizing adult Sunday School classes as age-graded cohorts. The second is designing lessons that involve student interaction through the use of group projects and group discussion, as is the case with lessons that follow the Experiential Learning Model. The third is to provide social opportunities for class members outside of class time. Data was gathered through semistructured interviews administered to members of a young adult Sunday School class which was created expressly for this study. The interview protocol was designed to allow the participants as much freedom as possible to express their own views. Six major themes emerged from the data: 1) young adults value being a part of a stable group; 2) age-grading Sunday School classes enhances relationship building; 3) young adults appreciate the support they get from the class; 4) extracurricular activities help build relationships; 5) relationships are more important to women than to men; and 6) the Experiential Learning Model facilitates relationship building. These results could help shape the way in which evangelical churches approach their Sunday School program design and development in order to facilitate ministering to people more effectively.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Educational Leadership / Sarah Jane Fishback / This study investigated the relationship between the tolerance of ambiguity (AT) levels of the officers attending the U.S. Army’s School of Advanced Military Studies (SAMS) and the creativity of the military plans they developed. Located aboard Fort Leavenworth, KS, SAMS is an Army school providing education to specially selected officers in preparation for duties in positions as battalion commanders and lead planners for Army divisions and corps. The officers at SAMS are grouped into seminars for their classes, and they remain with their seminars throughout the yearlong educational program. The twin purposes of this study were to (a) test for the relationship between AT and creativity suggested by various theories of creativity and (b) contribute to the Army’s efforts to increase the creativity of its officers by empirically identifying the expected positive correlation between the officers AT levels and the creativity of their plans. A sample of 66 officers participated in the study. They each independently developed a military plan in response to a common notional scenario. Subsequently they each independently completed the short version of Norton’s (1975) MAT-50 to measure their levels of AT. Their plans were assessed for creativity using Amabile’s Consensual Assessment Technique (CAT). The high inter-rater reliability among the judges (r = .82) demonstrated the effectiveness of the CAT as a method for assessing the creativity of military plans. Counter to the expectation, analysis of the data revealed a small negative correlation throughout the sample between AT scores and the creativity of the plans, producing a disconfirmation dilemma for the researcher. Analysis revealed that the sample’s collective levels of AT differed among the various subscales of the MAT-50. Additionally, post hoc analysis revealed statistically significant variance of the creativity of the officers’ plans between the different seminars to which they were assigned. In the seminar with the highest creativity scores, there was a small positive correlation between AT and creativity, while in the seminar with the lowest creativity scores, there was a medium sized negative correlation between the two variables. Implications of these findings and recommendations for future research are discussed.

Sustainable international development efforts often rely on the ability of trained individuals to transfer their new knowledge to colleagues. Most USAID-funded participant training programs train for a multiplier effect. This study hypothesized that communication network analysis is an appropriate method to measure the multiplier effect and the degree of information decay of participant training. Returned Honduran participants (first generation learners) of teacher training were questioned on the nature of the relationship between them and the receiver (second generation) of the innovation information. Relationship tie strength was determined by combining measures of multiplexity, homogeneity and other indices as set forth by Granovetter (1973). Information decay was measured by questioning what was learned and taught by each generation. The study found weak ties were approached more often than intermediate or strong ties. Remarks about what was learned and what had been taught became more specific, as information flowed through generations. Communication network analysis is a promising evaluation method regardless of the training topic.

This dissertation has two main goals. First, it explores the use of hypermedia annotations by intermediate and advanced ESL learners while reading a hypermedia text. Second, the study investigates the relationship between reading comprehension and several variables that are the focus of this study: annotation use, text format, and prior knowledge. The participants are 103 ESL adult learners enrolled at the Center for English as a Second Language at the University of Arizona. Data were collected in several ways. A tracking tool incorporated into the hypermedia program recorded every interaction of the reader with the text in terms of the frequency of access to a given annotation or the amount and time spent on a given annotation. Data also included scores from a reading comprehension test and a prior knowledge test, both of which were developed for this study, as well as data from interviews and a questionnaire. Results indicate that intermediate and advanced learners displayed different patterns of annotation use. The intermediate group accessed annotations more frequently than the advanced group. However, they did not spend more time on annotations. The relationship between annotation use and reading comprehension also differed based on the proficiency level. While annotation use did not explain reading comprehension for the advanced group, over-reliance on certain annotations had a negative impact on the intermediate group. The study did not find any effect of text format on reading comprehension. However, prior knowledge was found to be an important variable related to reading comprehension. Finally, the qualitative data reveal that hypermedia reading had a positive impact on the participants' attitude towards reading on the computer. Despite the lack of quantitative evidence for the significant contribution of annotation use on reading comprehension, the participants indicated that the provision of information using multiple forms of media made reading more enjoyable and comprehensible.

This thesis is focused on residential and school energy conservation education programs in Tucson, Arizona. The major aim of the study is to determine the issues that should be considered when initiating a new energy conservation education program and/or evaluating an existing program. The methods, used in this study consist of: (1) Literature review, (2) Survey in form of questionnaire and personal interviews, and (3) Analysis of the existing energy conservation programs. The present study addresses the following objectives: (1) Analyze and evaluate selected school energy education programs, (2) Analyze and discuss the residential energy education programs, (3) Identify the effective methods used in energy conservation programs to educate the public about energy conservation techniques and, (4) Synthesize the lessons learned from evaluating energy conservation programs.

The "new traditional student" population in our nation's universities has been steadily increasing for decades and this trend continues. It is prudent for universities to examine how to design and evaluate intervention strategies and student services to motivate these students to persist because they contribute to improved GPA scores for all students and are the preferred students of faculty members. However, since there is no standard set of criteria for defining this population, it is not known who these students are. Therefore data reported on these students' persistence rates are questionable and student services are inadequate. Defining these students by a standard set of criteria is needed to adequately identify a more differentiated population.

<p> Learning English as a foreign language (EFL), a highly valued skill in the Chilean marketplace, is an arduous and complex personal endeavor requiring high student motivation. Reflecting this challenge is the heightened anxiety among EFL students, whose work has been associated with historically meager results. Blended learning, the fusion of face-to-face and online content delivery and assessment, offers a promising solution to EFL learner reticence. Evidence suggests that an active online teacher presence in a blended EFL course can enhance student engagement. The purpose of this study was to discover the perceptions of EFL instructional specialists concerning (a) student involvement and engagement in online portions of blended courses, (b) marginal teacher presence in the online portions of blended courses, and (c) ways to improve student involvement in the online portions of the blended courses. Results of a systematic qualitative analysis, employing constant comparative data analysis of individual interviews with a sample of 10 voluntary EFL instructional specialists, indicated teachers need to take part in design of blended EFL courses to address these issues. The findings, coupled with theoretical frameworks of social-constructivism, transactional distance, diffusion of innovation, and universal design for instruction, served as the background for a proposed teacher training project resulting from this study. The study can contribute to positive social change by inviting EFL teachers to become more involved in blended course design, increasing their sense of ownership, sharing best practices for blended EFL teaching and learning, and creating conditions for more successful upward social mobility opportunities for Chilean university students who have acquired certifiable English language skills.</p>

<p> Onboarding ensures learning success through sharing and acquiring knowledge to remain competitive. However, little is known about new Information Technology (IT) hires' learning needs in the absence of onboarding; therefore, the purpose of this case study was to examine, increase, and retain their technical knowledge at the Unified Communications Company (UCC). Following the theoretical model of knowledge management, which holds that knowledge is the key to confirm learning and knowledge sharing, the research questions were used to examine how the company assessed and increased their technical knowledge and how they taught their culture in the absence of onboarding. A qualitative instrumental case study design was employed with a purposeful sample of 4 former employees who were former new IT hires at the UCC. These employees contributed to the study using journals, surveys, and interviews drawn from their experiences as new IT hires at the UCC. Reoccurring themes regarding formal learning were extracted from the data, validated through peer and member checking, and then triangulated with each round of data collection and the themes described in the literature. The themes of culture, onboarding, training, and experience/feedback consistently emerged as areas needing improvement and indicated a need for formalized training. Based on these findings, a job aid was created to provide enhanced performance and learning to offer knowledge throughout training. Companies employing new IT hires can use the results from this study to provide onboarding in addition to their current orientation. The use of these data would positively affect social change by enhancing company competitiveness and job retention while reducing overall unemployment and the skills gap. </p>