Across the country many mentoring programs are developing, which are designed to match interested adults with students who need help with getting through school, making career decisions and coming into young adulthood in the twenty-first century. Since the 1980's a significant number of mentoring programs have been eagerly received by educators, through businesses partnerships. But, there is much disagreement among the supporters of the mentoring movement about exactly what should constitute a mentoring relationship, how early in a student's life mentoring should begin, and whether these relationships can be developed on a large scale. Moreover, mentoring is more than a business partnership project. It is a series of complex relationships that often fail. Given the state of urban families and schools, coupled with the state and federal government's reluctance to fund more educational personnel, it becomes critical to find the best ways to take advantage of the largess of the business community in implementing urban mentoring programs. Therefore the study of an urban mentoring program was essential. This research looked for areas of success for others who wish to initiate urban middle school mentoring programs may be more successful. Within the context of the John W. McCormack Middle School-business partnership quantitative data was collected to discern what constitutes the profile of an ideal mentor for early adolescents. Further, this study identified which factors motivate an urban adolescent to become involved with an adult tutor/mentor. Lastly, the study identified which factors motivate working adults and their tutees to volunteer to work with one another in an urban middle school. This study's quantitative data was collected from participating adults and students. The results were supported by interviews. Furthermore the results confirm what was found in the evaluation reports of Career Beginnings and The Partners in Growth studies. The results of this study are very important because of the recent nationwide emphasis on school-business partnerships that involve using their human resources rather than direct financial philanthropy.

There are certain ways of reading to young children that are more effective than others in increasing language, vocabulary, and building early literacy skills. Dialogic reading is a method to enhance shared book reading by providing a context for dialogue and interaction between the adult and the child. Dialogic reading has been shown to have positive effects on young childrens’ early literacy and language skills. Thus far, parents and teachers have used these techniques in the home and school in one-on-one or small group settings. However, results have been variable due to inconsistent implementation. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of implementing dialogic reading techniques in a preschool setting via cross age tutoring by fifth grade students. Students in preschool and fifth grade were recruited from a school in Eastern Maryland. Fifth graders served as tutors and were trained to use dialogic reading techniques with preschool students in the same school. The tutoring dyads met three times a week for 30 minutes for 8 weeks.

Students with learning disabilities are enrolling in post-secondary education programs around the country with increasing numbers. The literature suggests that students with learning disabilities are often unprepared and overly challenged by the academic demands of college. This study introduces three domains of self-management (academic self-understanding, procedural self-management, and content mastery self-management) identified through a focused literature review, and presents an short-term, ten-week long (one session per week), skills based training as an intervention to better prepare students with learning disabilities for post-secondary educational success. Students with learning disabilities from a local college were identified as eligible for this study according to criteria outlined in the methods section of this study, and all eligible and interested students were included in the study. Students were pre and post tested on a set of dependent measures. This study presents a program evaluation using as a before and after design including seven case studies. Confidentiality of all human subjects was in adherence to the ethical research guidelines of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

This research investigation examined the effects of GO Solve Word Problems math intervention on problem-solving skills of struggling 5th grade students. In a randomized controlled study, 16 5 th grade students were given a 12-week intervention of GO Solve, a computer-based program designed to teach schema-based instruction strategies (SBI's) to solve math word problems and 16 control students continued with the standard school-based mathematics curriculum. A subset of items from the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) as well as the Group Mathematics Assessment and Diagnostic Evaluation (GMADE) was used to measure student test performance. Examiner-made probes were given to both the treatment and control groups every other week to measure student progress. Results indicate that the mean difference scores of the experimental and control groups were statistically significant on a subtest of MCAS problems and a large effect size was reported. However, no statistically significant difference between the experimental and control groups was found on the on the Process and Application subtest of the GMADE. On examiner-made probes, there was a statistically significant difference between the experimental and control groups. Limitations of this study as well as implications for practice will be discussed.

This collective case study examined students' beliefs and perceptions regarding art education and investigated factors that influence and shape students' art attitudes and their intrinsic valuing of art. The main focus of this investigation was centered on students' voice regarding art education and on the conceptions students hold about the value and significance of art. A phenomenographic orientation guided this research. The study was based on classroom observations, interviews and critiques with 12 highs school art students taking elective art courses. The analysis of data involved a constant comparative method to develop categories and themes. Three major themes were developed to explain and describe the results of this study. 1) Art Attitudes—explored students' beliefs and conceptions about art. A working definition of "art attitude" was developed to serve as a steppingstone in this inquiry. The ABC model, focusing on affective, behavioral, and cognitive modes, was employed to organize data. Students' emotional responses, actions and verbal indications of behavioral tendencies and cognitive evaluations of artistic experiences described their art attitudes. 2) Inspiring Mechanisms—investigated various influences exerting a positive impact on attitude formation. This section was organized into four categories: Introspections, Art Valuing, Consequential Art Experiences, and Family Zone. 3) Inhibiting Mechanisms—examined the negative forces that affect students' art attitudes and their valuation of art. This section was organized into two categories: Disengagement and Creative Trepidations. Study results suggest that the process of attitude formation involves a collection of determinants. Some of them promote increasingly positive attitudes: positive personal experiences, meaningful learning, engagement, self-esteem and nurturing family environment. While other determinants, such as anxiety, boredom, and poor self-perception exert a negative influence. Inspiring and inhibiting mechanisms exert impact on students' perceptions and beliefs about art and their self-concept as artists. These forces shape students' attitudes and affect how they feel, think and respond to artistic experiences. The attitudes that students form consequently determine their willingness or reluctance to expose themselves to new ideas and their eagerness or apathy to learn and experience more about art.

In general, most women have different ways of knowing, communicating, and acting from most men. Women's characteristic modes of thought, expression, and action are complementary to, not in conflict with, those modes that are more characteristic of men. The particular qualities that women demonstrate can and do have value in the governance of modern institutions. Institutions that include women along with men in their governance, and also allow expression of their particular women's gifts, benefit from this inclusion. Centuries-old prejudice and fear prevent modern institutions from enjoying women's strengths as well as men's strengths in their administration. Organizations in our society which have historically not included women have recently opened to the participation of women in administrative roles. This change in organizations is laudable; however, researchers in the last two decades have shown that merely the presence of women is not enough. At the same time that organizations have been opening to women in administrative roles, researchers have shown that women are different from men in how they work in organizations and in how the organizations respond to women. Because of the work of scholars such as Miller (1976); Gilligan (1984); Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, and Tarule (1986); and Tannen (1990), it is now known that women are different from men in their moral and cognitive development and in communication; therefore, women are likely to be different from men as administrators in organizations such as higher education institutions. How do these factors--that organizations are including women in administrative roles, that women are different from men, and that women's differences affect their work in organizations--contribute to the impact that women have on organizations and vice versa? This research study provides insights into and analyses of the above questions based on in-depth interviews of five women administrators in higher education in the New England area. In this thesis, I draw on the research of others to demonstrate women's different, characteristic ways of knowing, communicating, and behaving. Then I show through others' research and my own with women administrators in higher education how women's ways are both expressed and thwarted in the governance of the institutions these women serve.

“Why are the students at the College of Micronesia having problems understanding their academic texts and materials?” That is the question that this study explores through extensive interviews with professors and students, and more than 400 reading proficiency tests. This study finds that Micronesian students have difficulties with several aspects of reading, and that there are a multitude of factors that contribute to the problem. Those factors fall into the following areas: language, educational background, culture, motivation, learning and reading strategies of the students; and the teaching methodologies, institutional policies and sociopolitical conditions of the school. The study concludes by recommending to the faculty to directly teach metacognitive reading strategies in all areas of instruction, to adapt the content, language and level of the materials to the educational and cultural characteristics of the students, and to adapt methodologies to the Micronesian learning style. The new role of college instructors should not be to impart a list of foreign facts, but to serve as a bridge between the culture and academic background of the students and the culture and content of their textbooks. Seen from this perspective reading for Micronesians will become an active interaction between their world and the world of the writer, and no longer an oppressive memorization of meaningless facts.

Early difficulties in children's academic and emotional development can set in motion long term patterns of maladjustment. Research which focuses on the intersection between these two developmental domains warrants increased attention. This study examined relationships between early internalizing problems, including symptoms of anxiety, depression, somatic complaints, withdrawal, and social problems, and emergent academic skills cross-sectionally and over a six month period of preschool. Relationships were considered in light of relevant socio-cultural factors, namely gender and socio-economic status. This study utilized a multi-informant measurement of child behavior and objective measures of emergent academic skills. Participants included 134 preschool children, their mothers, and their teachers. Correlational and regression analyses were performed to evaluate hypothesized relationships. Although results support the overall hypothesis that internalizing symptoms and related social problems are associated with early academic skills, findings were mixed with respect to the strength of relationships and which symptoms and skills were related. Specifically, expressive language skills and letter naming skills were the academic skills most negatively associated with symptoms, and withdrawn behavior and social problems were the symptoms most related to skills. Different patterns of relationships were indicated for boys and girls and for SES groups including unanticipated positive associations between some skills and symptoms for high SES children. Several longitudinal associations were found. Initial symptoms predicted later letter knowledge and reading concept skills, and initial letter knowledge skills predicted later symptoms, pointing to bidirectional influences. These findings provide a step forward in drawing connections between children's early mental health and emergent skill development and in identifying gender and socio-economic differences and directions for future work.

The purpose of this study was to test the effectiveness of a practical and feasible means of providing teacher consultation that can be used to improve class-wide behavior in a middle school setting. A multiple-baseline design across four teachers was utilized to evaluate the effects of an intervention involving training and ongoing performance feedback via email on a) teachers' use of behavior-specific praise (BSP), general praise (GP), and reprimands (R) in the classroom, and b) the incidence of problem behaviors in classes of middle school students. The study also assessed whether behavioral changes were sustained over time, as the frequency of emailed feedback was reduced and eventually terminated. As expected based on previous research, the intervention was effective in increasing use of behavior-specific praise (BSP) in the classroom across all four participating teachers. Overall ratios of positive (BSP and GP) to negative (R) statements used by teachers in the classroom increased post-intervention; however, the degree of this increase varied by teacher, with three out of four approaching or exceeding the commonly-recommended 4:1 ratio, while one teacher did not. Results on the observational measure of student behavior were mixed, with two out of four classes showing significant decreases in problem behavior, one with decreases which were non-significant, and the class in which the teacher showed the lowest use of BSP demonstrated no change in student behavior. Findings from the current study provide evidence that it is possible to successfully increase teachers' use of specific praise, thereby reducing class-wide rates of middle school student problem behavior, through a simple training and ongoing emailed performance feedback procedure. Limitations of the study and additional implications for future research and practice are discussed.

This study was a test of the relative importance of theory versus facts among six and nine year old children in explaining how something works. In learning science for young children, there is a misconception in understanding of theory and facts. Children learn by reconstructing their misconceptions of theory based on their everyday experience. Their ability was measured by examining the drawing of a pencil sharpener in the act of sharpening a pencil. The research design has four treatments: Treatment 1 (Think), Treatment 2 (See), Treatment 3 (Do) and Treatment 4 (Speak and Do). One hundred and sixty preschoolers and one hundred and sixty third graders were randomly assigned to perform four groups of treatments. The participants in each group of treatments had to explain how the pencil sharpener works by using drawing and words spoken (orally) describing what they see and think. The results of this study were not confirmed, but the ad hoc findings demonstrated that when showing the representation of functional relations of a system, children expressed their understanding better in words than in drawing. However, children are better able to represent the details of objects and the relationship between two objects of a working system by using the medium of drawing rather than the medium of words. These findings also suggest that third graders can make more improvements in representing the details of a working system than preschoolers can.