The general purpose of this study was to investigate the concept that the learning disabled group (LDG) students who are given extra attention will show improvement in their regular classes. Three methods selected: Group counseling, individual counseling, and individual tutoring.

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Recognizing the importance of context with regard to youth agency, this study explores how 8 Black LGBTQ+ youth understand their practices of agency in ballroom culture, an underground Black LGBTQ+ culture. Ballroom was chosen as the backdrop for this scholarly endeavor because it allowed for the study of the phenomenon — Black LGBTQ+ youth agency — in a space where the youth might feel more able to be themselves, especially given that the 2019 Black LGBTQ+ youth report published by the Human Rights Campaign revealed that only 35% of Black LGBTQ+ youth reported being able to “be themselves at school” (Kahn et al., 2019). Thus, instead of asking what is wrong with schools, this study inverted the question to explore what is “right” about ballroom culture in which Black LGBTQ+ youth might practice different kinds of agency due to their intersectional racial and LGBTQ+ identities being recognized and celebrated. Framed by the youth’s understanding of their own agency across different contexts, my research illuminates the complex interrelationships between youth agency, social identity, and context. Extending the literature on youth agency and Black LGBTQ+ youth, the findings of this study suggest that in many ways these youth are always already practicing agency to work toward different ends, and that these different end goals are greatly mediated by the contexts in which they find themselves. In making connections between the ways Black LGBTQ+ youth feel liberated within ballroom space to use their agency to explore and affirm their identities outside socially constructed norms, the findings of this study point to new opportunities for education research, practice, and policy to learn from ballroom culture about how to better invite Black LGBTQ+ youth into schools in humane and educative ways, encourage their agentive imaginations within education spaces, and promote liberatory school environments that recognize and embrace these youth’s intersectional identities.

The University of South Africa (Unisa) as comprehensive open distance learning institution (ODL institution) in South Africa is fulfilling a critical social mandate to serve people who would otherwise not have access to education, either for financial reasons, being employed, living in remote areas, or because they cannot access residential universities owing to disability (Unisa, 2008[a]: 15). In facilitating the entrée of the previously identified groups into tertiary education, Unisa has an open admission policy where students mostly have unlimited access to the system. The policy aims to cross the time, geographical, economic, social, educational, and communication distance between students, academics, courseware, and their peers and to accommodate these prospective students from diverse backgrounds (Unisa, 2008: 2). Unisa’s self-evaluation portfolio for the Commonwealth Audit during 2008 mentioned that this policy leads to the revolving door syndrome where students have unlimited access to the system but then often without success (Unisa, 2008[a]: 27). Open access poses a challenge for the training of student social workers within an ODL context. The Department of Social Work at Unisa, currently trains 70% of all social workers in South Africa (Department of Social Work - Unisa, 2008: 5). Coupled with the former, is the fact that Unisa is regarded in the tertiary landscape of South Africa as the most affordable university with the result that it attracts large number of students who have come straight from school (Kilfoil cited in Schenck, 2009: 299). In coping with the large student numbers the Department of Social Work at Unisa is challenged, apart from addressing the theoretical social work programme, to also meet the practical work requirements as set out by the Standard Generating Body of Social Work, in that it needs to provide practical placements for students to conduct their social work practical work training in completion of their Bachelor’s degree in Social Work (BSW) (Lawlor, 2008: 19). The current state of affairs is that the numbers of students requiring practical placements for social work practical work training outnumber the number of practical placements available. In responding to and addressing these challenges, the Bright Site of Sunnyside Service-learning Centre (hereafter called “Bright Site” or the Bright Site”) was established in October 2008 as a strategic project by Unisa’s Department of Social Work. The Bright Site was developed in accordance with the service-learning model proposed by the Council for Higher Education (CHE) with the emphasis on service through learning, and learning through service (Department of Social Work Unisa, 2008:6). / Social Work / M.A. (Social Science)

This thesis explored the relationship between community adult education and social action. The study investigated how LEAD (Leadership Education for Action and Development), a non-governmental organisation based in the Western Cape, has empowered women to assume leadership and take social action in their communities.

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) of 1975 has made a profound impact on millions of children with disabilities who now enjoy their right to a free appropriate public education (FAPE). It is the goal of national policy, endorsed by Congress, to ensure equality of opportunity, full participation, independent living, and economic self-sufficiency for individuals with disabilities. With the enactment of IDEA, it ensures that all children, who participate in special education programs, have equal access to education. However, since IDEA's inception, a disproportionate number of African Americans children have been placed, or rather, misplaced in special education programs. African American students are three times more likely than Whites to be placed into categories as needing services in special education programs, making them subject to less demanding schoolwork, to more restrictive classrooms, and to isolation from their peers. For the purpose of this study, the goals were (a) to determine if there is disproportional representation of Black students and male students in the three categories of Educable Mentally Handicapped, Emotionally Handicapped, and Specific Learning Disabled and (b) to address whether the factors school districts' socioeconomic status, minority rate, and racial composition of instructional and administrative staff predict the representation of Black students and male students who participate in special education programs. A quantitative method, including the three disproportionality calculation methods of Composition Index (CI), Risk Index (RI), and Odds Ratio (OR), was employed to respond to the six research questions and test six corresponding null hypotheses. Sixty-seven school districts in the State of Florida were identified for data collection and analysis. / The enrollment data for the calculations covered AY 2005- 2009. Critical Race Theory (CRT) served as the lens through which to analyze the findings and discus the implications therein. It is clear that the problem of disproportionate representation is complex and the resolution to the problem is not an easy one. This study found that there was a relationship between the representation of Black students and male students in special education programs and the predictor variables. Statistical analyses revealed that socioeconomic status of the school district, minority rate, and racial composition of instructional and administrative staff predicted the disproportional representation. Critical Race Theory, which served as a methodological framework was employed to help in examining and challenging the manner in which race and racism clearly impacts practices and procedures in the special education referral process. CRT utilized the social construction of race and the role it plays in the education policies that affect minorities. As with any intellectual movement, CRT builds its scholarship upon certain theoretical pillars. The basic tenets of CR T include ordinariness, interest convergence, social construction, differential racialization, and legal story telling. For the purpose of this research, only the tenets of ordinariness, interest convergence, social construction, and differential racialization were examined in the context of disproportionate representation of black students and male students in special education. / by Anthony G. Allen. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2010. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2010. Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Submitted by Filipe dos Santos (fsantos@pucsp.br) on 2018-07-23T12:50:38Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Tiago Pereira Andrade.pdf: 11769566 bytes, checksum: c86d001a8ea120c9d6b32dcef23b24e6 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-07-23T12:50:38Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Tiago Pereira Andrade.pdf: 11769566 bytes, checksum: c86d001a8ea120c9d6b32dcef23b24e6 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2018-05-18 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES / We observe a crisis of higher education in the contemporary world. The goal of this thesis is to investigate in literatures and statements about what we understand by education, learning, knowledge, and how we are dealing with the training of young people in an individualistic society, steeped in bureaucracy, digital and neoliberal. Some among the various challenges found in this crisis will be covered in this research: the overvaluation of reason and science to the detriment of other forms of learning in the world, such as the arts, the poetry, the feelings, the myths; the fragmentation of knowledge that contributes to the lack of a sense in education today; and also, the immediacy of information in a society conected in social networks by means of the gadgets (cell phones and laptops). All these challenges articulate in how knowledge is produced and question the contemporary role of the teacher, the student and all agents in the educational institutions. The results are obtained as an open system in a dialogue with images, poetry and ih the end with testimonials, in a transdisciplinary way / Observamos uma crise da educação superior no mundo contemporâneo. O objetivo desta tese é investigar em literaturas e depoimentos o que entendemos por educação, aprendizagem, produção de conhecimento e como estamos lidando com a formação de jovens em uma sociedade individualista, imersa nas burocracias, digitalizada e neoliberal. Alguns desafios, dentre os diversos encontrados nessa crise, serão abordados nesta pesquisa: a supervalorização de um conceito de razão e da ciência em detrimento das outras formas de aprendizagem do mundo, como as artes, a poesia, os sentimentos, os mitos; a fragmentação dos saberes, que contribui para a falta de um sentido na educação dos dias de hoje; e também a instantaneidade das informações em uma sociedade conectada às redes sociais por meio dos gadgets (telefones celulares e computadores portáteis). Todos esses desafios se articulam na forma como o conhecimento é produzido e questionam o papel contemporâneo do professor, do estudante e de todos os agentes nas instituições de ensino. Os resultados são obtidos como um sistema aberto de conhecimento, dialogando com imagens, poesias e, ao final, com depoimentos, de uma forma transdisciplinar

Submitted by Filipe dos Santos (fsantos@pucsp.br) on 2018-11-27T11:33:49Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Cíntia Acioli da Silva Ramos.pdf: 1122539 bytes, checksum: 63bfc6a20279a9f1dd9b6c6b5e72416a (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-11-27T11:33:49Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Cíntia Acioli da Silva Ramos.pdf: 1122539 bytes, checksum: 63bfc6a20279a9f1dd9b6c6b5e72416a (MD5) Previous issue date: 2018-03-19 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES / The currentt study is inserted in the research line - New Technologies in Education of the Postgraduate Program in Education: Curriculum. Its main aim is to reflect on personalized adaptive learning and the use of technological resources (Information Digital and Communication Technologies - IDCT) and how they are associated to certain pedagogical tendencies. The theme is still insuficiently studied by the Brazilian academy, which is why the defined period for the research was from 2006, when we note a growing academic research till 2016. In this interval a clear trend can be observed on the interest of the subject in question. The study was based on authors such as Libâneo, Saviani, Aranha, Gauthier & Tardif, regarding the survey of pedagogical tendencies and their contexts in Brazil, and technologies applied to education, when approached by adaptive and personalized learning. Concerning to the technology approach are highlighted authors such as Almeida, Valente, Barberà & Rochera. The methodology used was the qualitative and exploratory approach, through a literature review, with the purpose of investigating how the subject is presented in the Brazilian academic researches, focusing on the productions that appear in the portal of Coordination for Improvement Personnel of Higher Level ( Capes). After defining the inclusion and exclusion criteria, the literature review resulted in 51 (fifty one) works, from which 10 (ten) of doctorate, 34 (thirty-four) academic masters and 7 (seven) professional masters. The study allowed us to conclude that the use of technologies in adaptive and personalized learning is more aligned with liberal tendencies of education than with progressive tendencies, being therefore, rather a continuation of old pedagogical practices than an innovation in the teaching process of learning / O presente estudo se insere na linha de pesquisa em Novas Tecnologias na Educação, do Programa de Pós-graduação em Educação: Currículo. Tem por objetivo refletir sobre a aprendizagem adaptativa personalizada e o uso de tecnologias digitais da informação e comunicação e de que forma eles se associam a determinadas abordagens pedagógicas. O estudo foi baseado em autores como Libâneo, Saviani, Aranha, Gauthier e Tardif, no que se refere ao levantamento das tendências pedagógicas e de seus contextos no Brasil, e em tecnologias na educação, quando abordada a aprendizagem adaptativa e personalizada. No que diz respeito à abordagem da tecnologia, destacam-se autores como Almeida, Valente, Barberà e Rochera. A metodologia utilizada foi de abordagem qualitativa e exploratória, por meio de revisão de literatura, com a finalidade de investigar como o assunto é apresentado nas pesquisas acadêmicas brasileiras de 2006 a 2016, com foco nas produções que constam do portal da Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (Capes). Após definir critérios de inclusão e de exclusão, a revisão de literatura resultou em 51 (cinquenta e um) trabalhos, sendo 10 (dez) de doutorado, 34 (trinta e quatro) de mestrado acadêmico e 7 (sete) de mestrado profissional. O estudo permitiu concluir que o uso de tecnologias na aprendizagem adaptativa e personalizada está mais alinhado às tendências liberais de educação do que às tendências progressistas, evidenciando práticas pedagógicas mais tradicionais do que inovadoras no processo de ensino e aprendizagem

Undergraduates' field of study is intricately linked to inequality in the US, where women have surpassed men in most indexes of academic achievement but continue to be less likely than men to complete STEM degrees. This gendered variation in major selection has substantial implications for stratification: college major choice is closely related to labor market outcomes and advancement to future degrees. Building on recent theoretical developments in social aesthetics and field theory, the project argues that academic interests are developed in concert with encounters in the environment, and that position in academic fields at the start of university, gendered distributions of interest patterns, and peer influence play a critical role in gender differentiation in college major choice. The project uses a unique longitudinal data combining complex administrative databases from an elite American university, merging admissions, housing, course, financial aid, and alumni data. Multiple correspondence analysis shows that students' interests are organized in academic fields characterized by divisions between knowledge domains: science interests oppose social sciences, economics interests oppose humanities, and life sciences are differentiated from hard sciences. Knowledge domains share features of retention and attraction, and movement between disciplines that are close together in students' interest spaces are more common. Using clustering methods, the project shows that there are important distinctions in how students are interested in disciplines: some students are particularly devoted to knowledge domains, while other students are generalists. These finding have important implications for women and men, who have different interest patterns. There is durability in gender differences in high school interests reinforced by both retention and attraction to disciplines once at school. The last chapter of the dissertation explores the role that peer influence plays in these outcomes. Because students' interests are organized in academic fields, peer influence on academic major choice is better understood as a field effect. Utilizing the fact that roommate assignment is random at this university, the project shows that choosing a major is associated with roommate's interests coming into college, and this association depends on students' own initial interests when applying to university. Generalist science students are more likely to complete science degrees when they have science or engineering roommates compared to those who have humanities roommates, while devoted science students are less mutable. Because women are less likely to have roommates who are in sciences and engineering, gender segregation of roommates contributes to gender difference in STEM outcomes. By reframing choice as a question of social aesthetics, the project makes important contributions to understanding choice, inequality and peer influence.

In rural China, when approaching the end of nine-year compulsory schooling, students face four equally popular post-compulsory education decisions (PCED): dropout, work after graduation, vocational high school, and academic high school. The literature tends to simply treat PCED as dichotomous (continue vs. leave school), and there is a geographical research imbalance favoring inner China. An increasing volume of studies also suggest that traditionally recognized factors like socioeconomic status and academic performance are not as influential as before in advancing the schooling. People have started to look at socio-emotional support, such as the promotion of self-discipline and confidence. At present, it is grassroots NGOs (GNGO) who take the major responsibility for providing this type of support in rural China, and there is rare discussion of achievements, let alone evaluation of practical impact. Given the existing problems, the key research questions of this study are: (1) What are the current PCED determinants for China’s rural students? More specifically, what are the PCED determinants for lower secondary students in rural Guangdong, a coastal province? (2) How can GNGO intervention affect PCED by boosting certain subjective factor(s)? The tested treatment is the Lighthouse program, whose one-month summer camp aims to improve student attitudes towards their life, such as making them more confident, organized, and social. The key to answering the first question is to explore a comprehensive list of variables applying to local populations, which cannot be achieved simply through a literature review. When answering the second question, since Lighthouse participation is voluntary, it is important to deal with selection bias, to ensure that any identified Lighthouse impact results from its activities rather than the student characteristics that lead to their participation. To overcome these methodological challenges, I first employed the Delphi approach. Delphi is an iterative process used to collect and distill the judgments of experts using a series of questionnaires interspersed with feedback. It is used to identify possible PCED determinants that are missing in the literature, to determine factors that lead to Lighthouse participation, and to collect discussions about both PCED determinants and GNGO intervention. Based on the Delphi results and literature, I then designed five questionnaires for students, households, teachers, principals, and Lighthouse volunteers. In Jun-Oct 2012, I led seven research assistants in conducting two waves of surveys in eight towns, building a firsthand dataset of 6298 valid observations with imputations. Multinomial logit was used to investigate PCED determinants. It predicted the PCED probabilities, given nine groups of independent variables. Propensity score matching was used to evaluate the program impact. It calculates the treatment propensity for each student based on their characteristics, so the Lighthouse impact can be compared between treated and untreated students of similar treatment propensity. Tests of robustness and heterogeneity were conducted after both methods. Qualitative materials collected from Delphi and on-site interviews were used to explore the causal mechanism. I use relative risk ratios to report the findings of PCED determinants. The findings challenge the existing literature regarding the roles of gender and parental background, further extend knowledge of monetary reward/cost and subjective factors, and confirm new possible determinants that have seldom been investigated in literature. The main model passes the robustness check, and there exist explainable heterogeneity effects. It is notable that education aspiration stands out as a strong PCED determinant, ceteris paribus. Propensity score matching shows that the Lighthouse program mainly affects PCED by boosting educational aspiration for students with high academic performance, although that impact fades gradually if there is no follow-up service. The novelty of the program to local people, volunteer team morale, and volunteer acceptance of Lighthouse training could help explain why increases in aspiration varied across sites. The role-model effect might explain why the increase in aspiration exists, as there are signs that the students tried to copy the volunteer’s schooling decision once trust was built. This study makes three major contributions. It can be translated into comprehensive advocacy for education policies related to PCED, such as dropout prevention and the promotion of VHS. It may also suggest the value of, or at least the required improvement to, China’s educational GNGOs, which are young and remain confined by governmental regulations. Last but not least, this is a unique showcase of how qualitative-quantitative sequential mixed-method works better in exploratory analyses. The study has limitations in timing, missing data, external validity, implementation of research methods, and heavy rely on self-reported questionnaires, but they can be largely eliminated by conducting proper further studies.