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.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Educational Leadership / W. Franklin Spikes / This study explored the relationship between anesthesiology residents' In Training Examination (ITE) percentile ranks and learning styles and domains with the variables of gender, ethnicity, and postgraduate year (PGY). The ITE is a national examination given annually as a measure of cognitive achievement. The learning style instrument was the adapted Vermunt Inventory of Learning Styles (ILS), a diagnostic learning style instrument designed for use with university-level students. The study included 112 anesthesiology residents in anesthesiology graduate medical education (GME) at four universities (five sites) during the 2006-2007 PGY. Responses to the surveys were analyzed using descriptive statistics, the Pearson product-moment correlations, and stepwise and backward elimination regression analysis. The results indicated that the residents' ITE percentile ranks had a bimodal curve. The ILS has 20 scales representing four learning domains factored into four learning styles. The relationships of the learning styles with the ITE percentile ranks were significant for two learning styles: positive for the meaning directed learning style (MDLS) and negative for the undirected learning style (UDLS). Analysis of the scales comprising the MDLS (seven) and UDLS (five) revealed significant relationships for 6 of the 12 scales for the anesthesiology residents (five positive, one negative). An analysis of the domain scale relationships for the other eight scales identified an additional two scales positively related to ITE percentile ranks: vocation oriented and analyzing. The significant scales positively identified with ITE percentile ranks included relating and structuring, concrete processing, two self-regulation scales, construction of knowledge, analyzing and vocation oriented. The only scale significant with ITE percentile ranks was ambivalent, which was negative. The potential exists that the UDLS can identify, in part, residents at risk academically. The positive relationship of the meaning directed learning style and the two significant, positive scales (analyzing and vocation oriented) with ITE percentile ranks offered an indication of learning styles and strategies of residents with higher cognitive achievement outcomes. These learning strategies have the potential to help residents learn how to learn more effectively.

Doctor of Education / Department of Educational Leadership / Sarah Jane Fishback / This qualitative case study described the incidence of stress in the lives of Army officers, and its effect on their learning experiences at the Army‘s Command and General Staff College (CGSC). It described the experiences of officers who have completed multiple combat deployments and coped with the effects of combat related stress in an academic environment. The study further illuminated a number of issues surrounding combat related stress and learning, and framed them using the words of the eleven United States Army Command and General Staff College student participants. This qualitative case study combined the interviews of the eleven students with other members of the Fort Leavenworth, Kansas Army community to include an Army psychiatrist, a Department of Army civilian psychologist, a CGSC faculty focus group, and an Army chaplain. All of the Army officers in the study are combat veterans with an average of over 23 months of combat. This case study confirmed that being in an academic environment increased the stress levels of even combat veterans. This research further confirmed levels of anger, alcohol usage, and sleeplessness among CGSC students and its effect on their learning. It identified the impact of transitions, dual enrollment, and social functioning in family settings, as well as confirming that there is still a continued stigma associated with Soldiers seeking assistance for mental health. The stigma is exacerbated by inaccurate reporting and a culture that reflects a lack of support within certain levels of the service. This study contributes to the current body of knowledge and provides additional information and insights on the effects of combat related stress on learning. Finally, this study is relevant, germane, and timely given the number of Soldiers who have been repeatedly exposed to combat operations. This exposure to combat exponentially increases the incidence of combat related stress in their lives.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Educational Leadership / Sarah Jane Fishback / This exploratory study investigated the level of satisfaction that faculty members have with their new faculty orientation experiences during their first year of employment at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, in Ft. Leavenworth, KS. The study solicited data from new faculty at this graduate-level military service college to help determine whether new faculty members were satisfied with their new faculty orientation experience; whether there were differences in the dependent variable, satisfaction, for any of the independent variables of campus location, teaching department, employment category, academic rank and educational level; and how the CGSC new faculty orientation program might be improved. Surveys were distributed to 297 new faculty members from January 2006 to December 2007. The survey instrument included Likert-scale questions to support quantitative statistical analysis. The study used non-parametric analysis methods to examine the dependent variable, satisfaction, with respect to independent variables. These results indicated that faculty members were satisfied with their new faculty orientation experiences and that there were no significant differences in satisfaction for campus location, teaching department, employment category, academic rank or educational level. Open-ended questions provided respondents an opportunity to add additional information; these comments were categorized by topic and then examined for themes or trends. Despite their overall satisfaction with the orientation program and processes, 84.80% of respondents indicated that inadequate institutional support was the greatest detractor to their success. They cited delays in meeting fundamental new employee needs such as providing a suitable work location, computer access, and information about institutional policies and procedures. Additionally, 35.67% of respondents indicated that either their sponsor was not helpful or none was assigned. Results of this study provided insight regarding unmet or inadequately fulfilled information and support needs of new faculty members at CGSC, informed further research in the area of faculty orientation, and highlighted areas for improvement of practice at CGSC and comparable institutions.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Educational Leadership / W. Franklin Spikes / To date, several academic studies have examined officer personnel leadership behaviors, while the leadership traits of enlisted personnel have largely been ignored. This dissertation investigates the leadership behaviors of active duty chief master sergeants (CMSgt) working on Randolph Air Force Base (AFB), Texas and offers conclusions concerning the acquisition of these behaviors. The main distinction between an officer and enlisted person is, enlisted did not have an undergraduate college degree when they first entered the Air Force. The enlisted population was selected because of the researcher’s background in the Air Force. The sample selection process consisted of obtaining a list from the Air Force of active duty CMSgts working on Randolph AFB. Next, several CMSgts were selected and asked to participate in the study. Those who chose to participate were asked if they knew of other CMSgts who could provide useful information for this study. Four of these participants were chosen to complete in the pilot study phase. Data was collected through the use of semi-structured interviews until thematic saturation was accomplished. Data analysis began with the first pilot interview and continued throughout all phases of this research study. This research found 12 significant leadership behaviors, which can be placed into eight categories. The eight categories are: Technical; Counselor; Problem-Solver; Manager; Networker; Communicate Vision; Eyes and Ears; Run Interference. The Technical category contains one sub-category: Assign Task / Communicate Expectations. The Counselor category is comprised of Influence, Supporter, and Facilitator, while the Manager category is made up of Decision Maker, Advisor, and Mentor.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Educational Leadership / Sarah Jane Fishback / This study explored the effects of personal epistemological beliefs about mathematics and beliefs about the ability to do well in mathematics on achievement in a college-level, developmental mathematics class. The influences of gender, age, and ethnicity on these beliefs as they relate to mathematics achievement were also explored. The Mathematics Belief Scales (MBS) was adapted from the Indiana Mathematics Belief Scales and Self-Description Questionnaire III to measure beliefs about the time it takes to solve mathematics problems, the importance of conceptual understanding in mathematics, the procedural emphasis in mathematics, the usefulness of mathematics, and self-concept about mathematics. MBS was administered to 159 participants enrolled in Intermediate Algebra over two semesters at an urban, state-supported mid-western university and two small private mid-western universities. Responses to the surveys and scores on the final exams for the Intermediate Algebra courses were analyzed using descriptive statistics, the Pearson product-moment correlations, analysis of variance techniques, and hierarchical regression analysis. Results indicated that students generally held nonavailing beliefs about mathematics and mathematics self-concept. Students typically believed that mathematical problems should be solved within ten minutes. Students generally did not believe that math problems can be solved with logic and reason instead of learned math rules. Over 40% of the students did not believe that mathematics beyond basic mathematics was useful to everyday life. Students were also generally not confident in their ability to solve mathematics problems. Additionally, men’s self-concept was significantly higher than women’s self-concept. Adult learners’ self-concept was also significantly higher than traditional age students’ self-concept. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that the importance of understanding mathematical concepts positively influenced final exam scores for men more so than women and self-concept positively influenced final exam scores for women more so than men. These results indicate a need for academic experiences at the college-level that will challenge students’ current belief system and provide an environment that is supportive and conducive to building individual self-confidence.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Educational Leadership / W. Franklin Spikes / This study sought to understand reasons for participation and non-participation in national incident management system (NIMS) and incident command system (ICS) training by elected officials in the state of Kansas as well as motivations and perceived barriers to participation in this training. County commissioners and mayors from first class and second class cities in the state were the population for this study (n = 202). One instrument comprised of three parts was utilized; a slightly modified version of the Deterrents to Participation Scale (DPS-G) developed by Darkenwald and Valentine in 1984, a slightly modified version of the Education Participation Scale (EPS-A) used by Morstain and Smart (1974) and based on the original work of Boshier (1971), and the third part of the instrument which gathered demographic information. Findings for the study noted that while there was a self-reported percentage of over 51% completion of NIMS training, the target population may be unaware of the Homeland Security and Kansas Emergency Management parameter for participation and are not in compliance with the emergency management institute (EMI) testing and reporting standards. The question of motivations to participation noted that although the EPS-A showed strong reliability to the target population, upon closer scrutiny the questions did not align for this population as they had for previously surveyed populations. A new version of the EPS for elected officials has been suggested for subsequent studies. The DPS-G was found to be a valid and reliable instrument for the target population. Additional demographic variables of age, rural/urban and time in position were explored. None of these variables were found to be significant to the participation decision. The possibility of a prediction model for participation was explored through a stepwise logistic regression. The model should be explored further utilizing several factors from the DPS – G (personal problems, lack of personal priority, and lack of confidence) as possible significant barriers. The qualitative responses on the survey noted the high percentage of respondents that had a lack of knowledge or understanding of the requirements or had questions on availability of the training. Implications and recommendations for the target populations and to the field of study are discussed.