<p> Educational reforms have created a climate of accountability and high academic pressure that has resulted in a pushing down of the curriculum into early childhood education. Once a prominent pedagogical feature, play is disappearing from kindergarten. The following is a doctoral dissertation that studied administrator, teacher, and parent perceptions of play and its role within the kindergarten curriculum at a Catholic elementary school in the Los Angeles Archdiocese. Using a qualitative case study method, the study noted how play was utilized in transitional kindergarten and traditional kindergarten classrooms at the school site. Interviews, classroom observations, and document review of school publications contributed to the following findings: play was used as a reward for classroom management, adults did not commonly see the connection between play and learning, and academic achievement was valued over play. These findings were placed in the larger context of kindergarten, play, and curriculum by using a theoretical framework built on Early Child Education theories and Epstein&rsquo;s (2011) Parental Involvement framework. This case study highlighted factors that influenced curriculum design and implementation in kindergarten. It contributes to the effort to inform parents, teachers, administrators, and policy makers of the importance of defending play within kindergarten in light of social pressures that favor a didactic kindergarten setting.</p><p>

<p> This was a quantitative, non-experimental, cross-sectional research study that surveyed California homeschooling parents with children in grades K-6 during the 2016&ndash;17 academic year. The purpose was to discover the methodologies and activities California homeschooled K-6th grade students received and experienced in the four arts disciplines: music, dance, theater and fine art. The data was collected through an online survey and a random representation of the research participants. The data collected included collecting specific information regarding arts activities and lessons, the approximated time and hours of instruction, and the locations or places where the lessons and activities were conducted. There were a total of 178 responses collected from the research participants. The overall participation rates within the four arts disciplines for this sample population of California homeschooling students in grades K-6 during the 2016&ndash;17 year in music was 80.34%, dance was 48.32%, theater was 52.81% and visual arts was 94.39%. The specific activities, lessons, time and locations were analyzed and discussed. This research concluded that the sample population participates in visual arts activities and lessons mainly in the home, and music, dance, and theater activities and lessons are experienced at private studios or theaters. It was additionally noted that just over 11% of the California homeschooling parents participating referenced the VAPA standards.</p><p>

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Abstract not available.

Although the literature establishes the importance of employee commitment and communication, there is a lack of empirical research focusing on communication's precise role for Quality Management (QM). Within the context of change, this thesis demonstrates that communication contributes to commitment by targeting both attitudes and behaviours. These findings were used to build a content analysis identified communication initiatives within a school's QM program and an interview linked those initiatives to desired changes in attitudes and in behaviours to build an employee survey assessing communication and commitment. A factorial analysis revealed that three communication factors -- Involvement, Learning Culture and Formal Communication -- contributed to changes in both attitudes and behaviours suggesting that organizations can emphasize these factors in their communication plans to set the foundation for commitment to quality. This study focuses on the role of communication in creating commitment to quality specifically through attitudes and behaviours. Future research would be valuable in validating this model within other types of organizations.

Since the Canadian educational reform in the 1990's, schools have included health education in their curriculum, and as all children under the age of 16 must attend school, on can ask "what better place to encourage health?" With this increased focus on health education, more schools are adopting a Comprehensive School Health (CSH) approach, yet as the CSH approach is not standardized in Canadian schools, school's choosing to adopt such principles must do so independently. In addition to independent adoption, school's who do chose to employ a CSH approach are under researched, resulting in little information on current CSH practices. This lack of research is prevalent in many countries, as researchers have acknowledged that the concept of the CSH approach is more advanced than its implementation (WHO, 1997). Therefore, by examining the physical activity habits and body image perceptions of rural students, this research sought to develop a better understating of a rural CSH approach. Results of this study demonstrated that this school's vice-principal and physical education teachers engaged in a series of health promoting initiatives. This school's joint development of their CSH approach was one of the factors that lead to their extensive application of the approach, as they benefited from the additional support of volunteers, government funding, pedagogical resources, and health professionals. With these unique opportunities, this school surpassed the level of CSH implementation that is presented in the current literature, by successfully implementing a Health Curriculum, a Healthy Environment, and providing an avenue for Health Services to begin. The students in this rural school demonstrated high levels of physical activity participation and body image satisfaction. Students credited their knowledge of health issues to their unique health education opportunities, parental and peer modeling, and their participation in regular physical activities.

This documentary analysis study critically examines representations of a multicultural perspective in selected Ontario elementary school visual arts curriculum and support documents. The study focuses on five documents that were published between 1985 and 1998, a period that coincides with important curricular changes in art education. This period was also significant with regards to developments that occurred in this province relating to multicultural education. To complete this analysis, references to race, ethnicity and culture were examined in order to identify ways in which they were being utilized in the documents. Furthermore, these references were analyzed from the perspective of critical multiculturalism to determine how multicultural education was being represented in the resources. I argue that while certain efforts were made to include a multicultural perspective in art education during this time period, these were for the most part inadequate in that they tend to present information out of context, fail to include diverse perspectives, overemphasize certain groups to the detriment of others, and perpetuate false information and stereotypes. I also contend that these deficiencies in art education are closely related to the political context that influenced the role and place of art education within the educational system.

This thesis examines the professional status of women kindergartners in Ontario in the late nineteenth- early twentieth century, by exploring the origins of the Kindergarten and the transformations that occurred to this system as it integrated into the provincially-controlled public education system. The masculine nature of the professions in nineteenth century, together with the gendered ideology that made the care of young children women's work, is critical to understanding what happened to the kindergartners as they moved from women-run private institutions to male run institutions of education in Ontario. This thesis examines the position, training, and inspection, of kindergartners in the provincial education system of nineteenth-century Ontario, while at the same time analyzing the meaning that "profession" had, together with its gendered and class connotations, and how this influenced the status of the kindergartners. I argue that kindergartening was a specialized profession when it was first introduced to Ontario in the latter part of the nineteenth century, and that the entry into the already existing teaching hierarchy, with its gendered social relations, began a process of de-professionalization, as control over the training of the new kindergarten teachers, as well as the support provided thereafter, moved from the hands of expert, professional women kindergartners into the hands of male government officials at the Ministry of Education.

This longitudinal, multi-informant study is an examination of aggressive behaviour and peer rejection as predictors of children's school adjustment over time. 524 children between the ages of seven and eight (272 boys, 252 girls) in greater Florence, Italy and their mathematics/science and language arts/social studies teachers participated in the investigation, which spanned 18 months. Following a review of the relation among children's aggressive behaviour, rejection from the peer group, their adjustment to school, and the Italian cultural context, analyses of hierarchical linear models indicated that children who were rejected by their peers generally liked school less, avoided school more, and performed worse academically over time than did children who were not rejected. The onset of peer rejection predicted a decline in academic performance in some cases. Peer rejection also forecast increased aggression in boys. Children who were aggressive avoided school more than nonaggressive children did. The present findings support the claim that peer rejection might be a pivotal contributor to the development of children's academic difficulties over time with aggressive behaviour, school avoidance, and school dislike as potential mechanisms of decline.

This study examined the ‘intended’ curriculum and the processes of its translation into classroom practices. The ‘intended’ curriculum is the rhetoric incorporated in state documents of the independence era in The Bahamas. These state documents included three key general educational policy documents in which policy makers presented persuasive arguments and strategies for the nation’s development, and the curriculum guides based on these earlier policy documents. Since these documents represent the educational intentions and objectives of the nation, it was assumed that an examination of their rhetoric would produce a portrait of the government’s ‘independence plan.’ However, because one cannot assume that rhetoric is translated into practice, this study also examined the extent to which teachers in the Bahamian Primary School System have translated this ‘independence plan’ into their contemporary practices. The methods of investigation included documentary analysis, participant observation, informal interviews with classroom teachers and other Ministry of Education officials, and a teacher questionnaire. The documentary analysis revealed a continuity of themes ran throughout the major educational documents. Foremost among these themes were the move toward the Bahamianisation of the educational system, the production of indigenous materials, the recognition of the classroom teacher as central in the reform process, and the importance of communication between policy makers and teachers. Field investigations revealed a divergency between the rhetoric of the educational policy documents and the practices within the contemporary educational context. The study identified five major factors that influence the success of the curriculum implementation process. These factors include resources, support services, the internal dynamics of the school context, assessment practices, and the personal backgrounds and professional experiences of teachers. The evidence reported in the study pointed to several components that would enhance success in the implementation of the intended curriculum. The question of resource availability, specifically resources of an indigenous nature, was the most significant issue uncovered by this study. In addition, the need for a more collaborative support network for teachers was evident. Finally, the study highlighted the importance of two components that are directly related to the formulation of policy. These include the need for policy makers to use teacher experience and insight, and be more cognizant of the factors that have an impact, both internally and externally, upon the school context. / Education, Faculty of / Educational Studies (EDST), Department of / Graduate