This study examined the nature and strength of relationship between specific related high school academic grades and the cumulative graduating average of students in five allied health programs at the British Columbia Institute of Technology. Lack of scientific studies on selection criteria for determining the cumulative graduating average of allied health professionals at the British Columbia Institute of Technology (B.C.I.T.) was evident. Educators argue that in order to enhance educational opportunities for institute students, there is a professional obligation upon the policy-makers to gather appropriate data to determine which factors contribute to the success of the allied health student. With the high cost of technical education, admission officers and admissions committees are accountable for their selection processes to the institute's administration, decision makers, provincial and federal funding sources, and society. The results of this study may assist admissions officers in selecting academic variables that indicate the cumulative graduating average so that a better match can be made between the students and their performance in allied health programs. The accessible population of 629 graduates from the allied health technologies in this study were biomedical electronics, medical laboratory, medical radiography, nuclear medicine, and prosthetics and orthotics. The dependent variable measurement of academic achievement for these students was their cumulative graduating average. Single variables consisted of the grade point average of the following: pretechnology academic requirements, high school English, high school algebra, high school biology, high school chemistry, and high school physics. Descriptive statistics, zero-order correlations, and stepwise multiple regression analysis were the statistical methods employed to determine which specific academic variable or multiple of variables exhibited a strong relationship between the cumulative graduating average and academic variables. The analysis identified certain variables that strongly related to the cumulative graduating average, both singly and in combination with others. Each of the program significant combination of variables are provided here in order of descending influence: Biomedical Electronics Technology- high school algebra; Medical Laboratory Technology- the pretechnology grade point average, high school chemistry, biology, and algebra; Medical Radiography Technology- high school biology and chemistry; Nuclear Medicine- the pretechnology grade point average, high school chemistry, and high school biology; Prosthetics and Orthotics Technology- the pretechnology grade point average and high school chemistry. Academic variables did not account for more than 34% of the total variables in any of the programs. The level of significance for individual variables was the convention, 0.05. Clearly, each program had its own character; however, the performance of students in the natural sciences were significant in four of the five programs. An attempt was made to investigate which specific high school subjects correlated highly with the cumulative graduating average of students at the B.C.I.T. through a inspection of five programs for five graduating classes. Relevant variables were identified that were indicative of academic achievement in each specific program of study. Investigating the nature and strength of relationship between preprofessional grades and the cumulative graduating average of allied health students at B.C.I.T. could benefit both students and admissions officers by supplying a piece to an educational puzzle that would demystify the selection process. The information presented may assist admissions officers and prospective allied health students make more suitable educational choices. / Education, Faculty of / Educational and Counselling Psychology, and Special Education (ECPS), Department of / Graduate

Learning Activities in Later Life Learning is a lifelong affair. Learning is critical across the entire life course for adults facing the potentials and problems of an extended life; learning is crucial for a society adjusting to the economic and social pressures of a rapidly aging population. How can adult educators respond to these challenges and become effective catalysts for learning activities in later life? One important, preliminary step involves understanding participation in learning activities from the older adult point of view. To date, however, adult educators only have a partial view of participation in learning activities in later life, a view clouded by narrow definitions of education and learning, and limited by concepts of traditional educational programs. The purpose of this current study was to explore participation of adults over the age of 55 in a broad range of learning activities and to examine the relationship between their participation and selected personal and sociodemographic measures influencing participation. A questionnaire consisting of a checklist of 71 learning activities and sociodemographic questions was distributed to 1228 adults over the age of 55. Responses from 332 respondents were analyzed using SPSS/PC+ (Ver. 3.0). On average, older adults reported taking part in 35 learning activities over the past year. Respondents reported participating in these learning activities for an average of 14 hours per week. Respondents who reported greater participation were more likely to be female, younger, more educated, and in better health. Those reporting greater participation also reported more reasons for participation, more sponsoring agencies for their learning activities, and were more likely to belong to community and professional organizations. Older adults reported certain changes in their learning activity choices since age forty. Active people remained active in later life although they restructured their learning activity choices. They restructured their learning activity patterns by increases in attending senior centres; watching Public Broadcasting System (PBS), Knowledge Network and other educational television; reflecting on life events; and, learning about health and nutrition. The most important learning activities reported by respondents reflected the significance of nonformal and informal activities: reading books or plays; watching Public Broadcasting System (PBS), Knowledge Network and educational television; reading newspapers and magazines; travelling; talking with family and friends; and, attending senior centres. The principal sponsoring agencies for learning activities in later life were senior centres, media, and oneself. The primary reasons for participation were growth and socially-oriented: keeping one's mind alive, gaining knowledge or skill, and meeting or being with friends. The leading barrier to participation, being too busy, suggested an active lifestyle for many later life learners. Other barriers were transportation, money, location of the activity, and health status. A factor analysis of participation in 71 learning activities produced 13 factors which accounted for 48% of the variance in participation. Major factor groups clustered around themes of Volunteer Involvement, Recreation, Home Life, Self Development, Spiritual Enrichment, Wellness, Language Arts, Crafts, Leisure, Expressive, Outdoors/Nature, Hobbies and Reflection/Reading. Current definitions of learning activities for older adults are too narrow. The findings from this study demonstrated the diversity and breadth of learning activities engaged in by older people. Participation in these learning activities is not necessarily bounded by rigid age barriers, educational background or income. This study challenges the relevance of narrow views of participation based upon traditional, institutionally-based programs and identifies a complex web of predominantly nonformal, informal, and self-directed learning activities in later life. Collaborative efforts among older adults, community leaders and adult educators will promote interdependent, positive lifestyles in later life and encourage the development of more accessible educational resources for older learners. / Education, Faculty of / Educational Studies (EDST), Department of / Graduate

A relationship between the perceptions of the Learning Assistance Teacher (LAT), the Classroom Teacher, the School Principal and the District Staff of the role of the LAT is examined through the use of a questionnaire employing a Likert-type scale. The study explored, described and attempted to compare the perceptions of these key observers in one school district in British Columbia. This study involved a comparative study method. Questionnaires were sent to key observers to obtain their perceptions of the role of the LAT within their school. The individuals represented two levels of district organizational structure - within school personnel and district personnel. The within school personnel could be further sub-divided into administrative and teaching personnel. The data were analyzed descriptively, a comparative analysis between the key observers was taken, the inter-group correlation for the key observers was examined, and the relative ranking of responses for the four groups was examined. It is argued that these findings can be attributed, in part, to the speculative conclusions in the following areas: 1. The consultation area of the LAT role is still a significant problem. 2. The out-of-school and within-school groups have differing perceptions. 3. The within-school personnel have highly correlated perceptions which may be due to the level of inservice training and/or written district policy and school objectives and goals for the LAT. 4. The increased level of education for the classroom teacher and LAT may have led to an increasing commonality of perception of the LAT role. 5. This district rates consultation and cooperative planning much higher than Dugoff, Ives and Shotel's (1985) research. This may be due to the increasing trend to service children with mild handicaps within the regular classroom. This district is moving toward total integration. Further research is needed to see to what extent the perceived role matches the actual role, what the desired or preferred role of the LAT is for these key observers, and what value the role has on learner outcomes. Possible pilot studies of other ways to meet students needs are suggested. / Arts, Faculty of / Psychology, Department of / Graduate

Students who are unable or unwilling to attend classes at an educational institution can often study at home through distance education programs. A consistently noted problem for students in these programs centres on the isolation experienced in such independent study. This sense of isolation may be one of the causes of the high drop-out rates common in distance education. The hypothesis of this study was that interaction with other students via telephone conferencing would decrease the drop-out rate, increase student satisfaction and improve academic performance. Twenty-nine students from a community college in British Columbia were involved in the study. They completed a questionnaire measuring the personality constructs "need for affiliation", "need for achievement" and "need for autonomy". They were randomly assigned to either the treatment or control group. Members of the treatment group participated in telephone conferences with the course instructor and three or four other students. Members of the control group received only individual telephone calls from the instructor. The completion rates of the two groups, measures of satisfaction and marks were compared. Only 2 of the 15 students in the treatment group dropped out while 7 of the 14 students in the control group failed to complete the course. The chi square with one degree of freedom was 4.55 significant at the .03 level. A Yates correction for continuity of curve, which was applied because of the small numbers, lowered the significance to .08. Differences in measures of student satisfaction were not statistically significant. For all students there was a moderate correlation between student achievement as measured by marks and need for affiliation, r=-.38, p=.10. However, when the correlation was computed for the treatment group only, r was -.11, p=.72, but for the control group only, the correlation was r=-.70, p=.08. This suggests that for the treatment group student-to-student interaction may have moderated the effect of the students' need for affiliation on student performance. The results indicate that student-to-student interaction may be beneficial to students in distance education courses and that need for affiliation may play a role in student success. Further study is recommended. / Education, Faculty of / Educational and Counselling Psychology, and Special Education (ECPS), Department of / Graduate

The current movement towards excellence in education has led to a renewal of interest in the academic and aesthetic disciplines. Many administrations are striving to provide opportunities for all students to experience a curriculum which develops a basic understanding of the arts, sciences and humanities. Recent moves by the British Columbia Ministry of Education, however, suggest that many students in this province may be limited in the amount of instruction which they will receive in some of the traditional areas of study, particularly the visual and performing arts. The professional development activities initiated during this case study were designed to foster an interest in the new elementary fine arts curriculum and to provide an opportunity for selected elementary teachers to experiment with the use of drama in the classroom. Through a series of classroom visits and related workshops, it focussed the attention of a number of students, teachers and administrators on the role of the arts in education. This paper provides a review of some of the current research on learning theory, educational philosophy and curriculum implementation. It also describes the educational goals and learning outcomes of a hypothetical K-12 dramatic arts programme and discusses the implications of the use of drama in various content areas. The study concentrates on the use of classroom-based intervention and personal communication between the researcher and each of the teachers as means of introducing drama as a learning medium. Teacher interviews and classroom observations provide the data which were analyzed to determine shifts in teachers' stages of concern and levels of use of the innovation. This analysis reaffirms the importance of developing implementation strategies that meet the needs of the individual teacher within the context of that teacher's classroom. It illustrates the importance of making provision for modelling, testing, feedback and interaction. It also identifies some of the pitfalls. Further research is needed to determine the effects of this model as it would be applied within a single school with firmly committed district support. / Education, Faculty of / Curriculum and Pedagogy (EDCP), Department of / Graduate

This study provides empirical research on the Language Experience Approach (LEA) to introducing the reading and writing process to beginner, First Language (L1) and Second Language (L2) readers. This is a worthwhile area of current research because LEA is a precursor to Whole Language. In the province of British Columbia, Whole Language is quickly becoming a very popular reading program. Whole Language incorporates a great deal of LEA in theory and in practice. Yet, while many researchers and educators have praised LEA and Whole Language in general, with particular value for L2 students, little empirical research on LEA exists. This study attempts to provide some of this necessary empirical research. An experiment was designed with an independent variable and several dependent variables. The independent variable consisted of one treatment using LEA and another treatment not using LEA. The dependent variables measured growth in reading and writing ability, growth in reading interest, and growth in ESL acquisition. Three Grade One classrooms were involved. Two used a popular, basal reader program and the other used LEA. Fifty percent or more of the students in the three classes were L2 students. Five research hypotheses were formulated. They were: (a) reading ability In the experimental group (LEA) would be greater than in the control group (basal readers), (b) creative writing ability in the experimental group would be greater than in the control group, (c) reading interest in the experimental group would be greater than in the control group, (d) Second Language acquisition would be greater with the L2 students in the experimental group than with those in the control group and, (e) L2 students in the experimental group would perform better in reading and writing ability and would have a greater increase in reading than their L2 peers in the control group. The experiment ran for seven months. During the course of the experiment, a formal checklist was used, in periodic visits to the classrooms, to ensure the experimental group was using LEA and the control group was not. Pretests were given in readiness, ESL ability, skill in independent writing, and in attitude towards reading. Posttests were given in vocabulary growth, reading comprehension, ESL ability, skill in independent writing, and attitude towards reading. The research hypotheses were designed in the experiment as five null hypotheses. Rejection of these null hypotheses occurred if p < .05. ANCOVA were used as tests of significance. Of the five null hypotheses, only the one for reading ability was rejected. There were significant differences in reading ability between the LEA and basal reader groups. The scores on the reading posttests favored the subjects using the basal readers. There were no significant differences in writing ability, reading interest, and L2 acquisition between the two groups and between the L2 subjects in the two groups. The results indicate more empirical research is urgently required. Before Whole Language, similar in philosophy and technique to LEA, is hastily adopted in British Columbia as the next, major Language Arts program, more empirical research is needed to determine whether or not Whole Language is in fact, a superior program. / Education, Faculty of / Language and Literacy Education (LLED), Department of / Graduate

This thesis evaluates the first three years of the Canadian Farmworkers Union ESL Crusade and the Freire-based philosophy which inspired it. Based on the author's three years of participant-observation, it pursues the following question: In the context of the union, is it possible to operate an ESL program which will both teach basic ESL and further the union's goal of organizing Punjabi farmworkers? The thesis begins by summarizing Freire's educational/ political philosophy, and continues by examining the program's context: conditions of farmwork in British Columbia, the role of CFU in improving them, and the dynamics of the Punjabi community which affect this process. This is followed by a detailed description and evaluation of the Crusade: its objectives, recruiting and training of volunteer tutors, teaching methods and materials, curriculum topics, organizing strategies, results in terms of both teaching ESL and organizing, and finally analysis of the program's limitations. The following section re-evaluates Freire's philosophy in view of three years experience in a North American setting. Key issues include the relationship between students' concerns and the union's agenda, dialogue versus banking, the complex nature of oppression for North American immigrants, the distinction between a realistic and idealistic frame of reference in operating and evaluating a program, and the importance of organizers reflecting on their own vested interests. All these issues proved salient to the daily operation of the program and have ramifications for other programs. In the course of three years, the Crusade was able to develop methods and materials which had good potential both for ESL instruction and organizing, and which approached the Freirian ideal. However, a number of limitations prevented the program from fulfilling this potential. Some of these could be overcome with changes in the Crusade's format, such as using full-time Punjabi tutors rather than Anglo volunteers. The study concludes by outlining these changes plus directions for further research. / Education, Faculty of / Graduate

A multidimensional study was conducted with learning disabled students to assess the effects of a social skills training program. Included were measures of self-concept, peer acceptance, and social competency as rated by parents and teachers. Forty-six intermediate grade children were evaluated prior to the program and after 13 weeks of either treatment, or no treatment. In addition, evaluation of the effect of different instructors was carried out. It was hypothesized that subjects would demonstrate significant (alpha=.05) increases in positive self-concept, peer acceptance, and ratings of social competency by parents and teachers. Support for this hypothesis was found for parent ratings. A secondary hypothesis was that there would be no significant difference at the .05 level between subjects receiving treatment or the placebo from Instructor A and those receiving treatment or the placebo from Instructor B. Partial confirmation was found on the parent and teacher ratings of social competency. The hypothesis was rejected for peer ratings and self-concept measures. Suggestions for practices in education include: (a) the expanding of social skills training throughout the elementary school by presenting it as a progressive skill building program, (b) ways to interest educators in teaching social behavior, (c) application of social skills assessment and training as a function of the counsellor or school psychologist's role, and (d) the practical logistics of setting up a social skills training program in an educational setting. Implications for future research suggest: (a) ways to refine the present study's design, (b) an examination of social behavior and peer acceptance in both the regular and special education class environments, and (c) the need for further understanding of the developmental stages in social competency. / Education, Faculty of / Educational and Counselling Psychology, and Special Education (ECPS), Department of / Graduate

A micro-analysis of the interlanguage (IL) employed by Pakistanis learning English as a second language (ESL) is performed on ten subjects' speech samples in order to gain insights into their second language acquisition. Only one aspect of ESL — collocation is studied. Collocation is idiomatic in nature and has single-lexemic function; it is assumed therefore to present some acquisitive and productive difficulties for second language learners, who would tend to fail to recognize collocations as "fixed" expressions and to view each word within them as independent and therefore replaceable. The objective of this study is to analyze the conversational collocation errors that Pakistani-Canadians make in ESL. This study addresses the following three hypotheses: 1) that in the English variation in collocation across discourse domains; speech of Pakistani subjects correctness will be found 2) that a continuum will be found for this variation, running between more Target-like collocations in the Work Talk Domain / Exposition Activity and fewer Target-like collocations in the Life Story Domain / Narrative Activity; 3) that formally educated subjects will show more Target-like use of collocations than informally educated subjects. The results of this study show that there exists an IL in Pakistani-Canadians' use of the English language. The IL of Pakistani-Canadians' English seems to indicate that: 1) IL collocations are domain specific; 2) Non-target-like collocations occur most often when referring to quantification; in T-unit initial position; and adjacent to parallel contextual and/or structural forms; and they often contain article ellipsis; 3) In addition, this study shows that formally educated subjects produce more Target-like collocations than informally educated subjects. Furthermore, this study has generated some questions and highlighted areas that merit further research. / Education, Faculty of / Language and Literacy Education (LLED), Department of / Graduate

This thesis examines the growth of small, church-related Christian schools in British Columbia, in particular those schools, largely non-funded, outside of British Columbia's Federation of Independent School Associations (FISA). The early chapters provide an overview of the history of private schooling in Canada and examine the social context of the growth of Christian schools. They show the importance of private alternatives in both Canadian and British Columbian educational history. They demonstrate that the growing disenchantment with public education is a by-product of societal changes in the last twenty-five years. Later chapters examine the Christian school parent's concern with the perceived lack of Biblical values and with the "secular humanist" philosophy of the public school curriculum, as well as the rationale underlying the growth of Protestant evangelical day schools in British Columbia. Although derived from a wide range of sources, much of the information was obtained from primary sources such as reports, directories, enrollment statistics and, in particular, oral interviews and questionnaires with principals and others involved in the Christian school movement in British Columbia. Private Christian schools in Canada have built their reputation on an increasing popular dissatisfaction with public education, its "secular humanist" philosophy and its perceived lack of Biblical values. This study demonstrates that the church-related Christian schools are not a phenomenon of any one urban or rural area but rather are spread quite consistently throughout many communities of British Columbia. The majority of these schools (64%) were founded between 1977 and 1981 and are small, employing one to two full-time teachers. Government funding for private schools began in 1977 but as this study shows, had little to do with the founding of these schools, a significant finding since 80% of the schools were founded after 1977. The Christian school's popularity can be traced to the philosophic convictions of the parents who view these schools as a bastion of Biblical truth and morality in a secular world. In elucidating this philosophy, the thesis points out the diversity of the Non-FISA Christian schools on such issues as government funding and control, teacher certification and curricula. The unifying theme is that religion was the raison d’être for the founding of the schools and that the home and the church were the preferred places in which to teach children how to live. It is evident that the private schools, particularly the Christian ones, meet a need for advocates of family choice in our pluralistic Canadian society who have become disillusioned with the public school system, and desire a more traditional education suited to their philosophy. / Education, Faculty of / Educational Studies (EDST), Department of / Graduate