Each year, the United States Army recruits and trains thousands of new soldiers to fill vacancies in Army organizations created by promotion, transfer, or termination of service. Installations responsible for training new recruits is conducted in two phases: Basic Combat Training followed by Advanced Individual Training. Proper management of the Army's initial entry training program is a very complex, practical military logistics problem that demands timely scheduling of a broad range of reusable training resources, such as, training companies. Currently, manual heuristic methods are used to schedule training companies throughout the planning horizon to support initial entry training, where training company scheduling also involves deciding how many recruits to assign to training companies each week. These methods have evolved over a number of years when there were few changes to the training base, and recruiting levels remained relatively stationary. Unfortunately, there are several severe shortcomings with these methods. For example, determining the number of recruits assigned per training company and the number of weeks a training company remains busy training recruits is a manual trial-and-error process. Second, it is possible for different analysts to generate different solutions for the same recruitment scenario. Third, no methods exist for conducting comparative analyses to appraise the quality of competing feasible training schedules. Finally, the temporal interdependence of decisions makes decision variables in the future periods depend on current decision variables. This complicates resource scheduling and makes the manual generation of week-by-week training schedules a tedious, time-consuming task. This dissertation: (1) formulates a mathematical dynamic model of the Basic Combat Training phase of initial entry training; (2) formulates a decision model for optimally scheduling training resources based on dynamic programming; (3) formulates an improved heuristic procedure for scheduling training resources; (4) incorporates a "training quality" performance measure into the formulation of the objective function making it possible to compare competing feasible training schedules obtained by various methods; and (5) designs, develops and implements a fully operational computer-based decision support system (DSS) for scheduling basic training resources. The computational experiments reveal that the heuristic procedures developed are indeed computationally efficient and provide "good" solutions in terms of training "quality," resources utilization, and training cost.

Test bias is a current focus of concern in both education and psychology. No where are the polemics of test bias stronger than in the area of ethnic/racial group differences on measures of intellectual functioning. Th problem of test bias is exacerbated when verbal intelligence tests are administered to students in a language in which they have limited facility and/or cultural reference. This problem is most evident in the United States with Hispanics. This study was designed to evaluate the Raven's Progressive Matrices (RPM) as a measure of non-biased assessment for Mexican-Americans. The RPM was selected because it is a non-verbal intelligence measure. The subjects were 230 Anglo and 230 Mexican-American elementary school children from Douglas, Arizona. The data were evaluated by analysis of regression with the Total Reading and Total Math scores of the Metropolitan Achievement Test (MAT). Both groups were analyzed together to identify any significant slope or intercept differences. All regression analyses were by grade level. Group validity coefficients were also computed for both math and reading by grade level and across grade level. The results of regression analysis indicated no test bias against Mexican-Americans. Slopes were equal at all grade levels. Some intercept variance occurred which would result in bias against Anglos, rather than Mexican-Anericans, if common regression lines were used. Also, validity coefficients of academic prediction for the RPM compared favorably to coefficients of the WISC-R Performance Scale for Mexican-Americans. Limitations of the study and areas of further research are discussed.

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The teaching of young children has been of varying interest to educators, but with as many as 62% of women with children under the age of six in the workforce early childhood education in all-day programs assumes added significance. While many good quality curriculum guides are available for half-day programs there are few for all-day programs. This curriculum guide for an all-day program for three and four year olds addresses the physical learning environment of the center and the role of the teacher as well as the written program. A set of goals encompasses the entire day, acknowledging the role of the center in socialization and acculturation. Sample plans and evaluation techniques show clearly how these goals may be accomplished. It is hoped that such a curriculum guide may enable the non-education major to achieve an excellent program which will foster the social, emotional, cognitive and physical growth of the children.

Anthropology has long understood that cultures proscribe gender-specific roles. This thesis explores how gender role dynamics in America may contribute to more college women going abroad to study than college men. The past decade of data consistently indicates that two-thirds of American students studying abroad are female. While this statistic seems counterintuitive to the stereotype that Americans rear boys to be adventurous and girls to be protected; ethnographic methods were primarily used to identify and analyze the cultural scripts that influence female decision-making among this population. This research will reflect the web of complex and competing cultural scripts students face regarding the decision to study abroad, many of which are at least influenced by gender and socially transmitted by their families. / Department of Anthropology

The problem of this study was a comparison of two methods of teaching life career planning to junior high school students. In this study, the experimental group was taught by means of the Life Career game, and the control group was taught by a teacher-directed technique using more traditional methods and materials.

The problem of this study was to analyze the prevailing approaches to elementary school guidance in the United States.

The problem with which this study is concerned is the methods and techniques that are utilized by some teachers in the identification of a gifted student. This study has a threefold purpose. The first is to discuss the plight of some of our valuable human resources as manifested by the gifted in the American educational structure. The second is to present and contrast the current approaches to conserving these resources. The third is to project some possible trends in meeting the needs of the gifted segment in American schools. This study concludes that the field of teaching the gifted has been exploited by educators, and that there is very little likelihood in replacing the suggested methods and techniques entirely by new ones. Though there is little chance to replace all the suggested methods and techniques, there is sufficient room for expansion and internal renovations in the American educational mode of arrnagement.

Teachers’ beliefs about the reading standards as well as curriculum materials used to address the standards affect how teachers implement the standards, which further impacts student learning. In this case study, 26 middle grades (6-8) reading teachers each participated in a 90 minute one-on-one audio-taped interview consisting of 33 openended questions. Analysis was conducted on the teachers’ beliefs regarding the state’s academic reading standards, content materials the teachers used to teach reading, the teachers’ self-reported instructional practices, and how the selected teachers understand the relationship between their beliefs and instructional practices. Likewise, content analyses were performed using documents such as lesson plans, classroom assignments, and assessments that were collected from the participants. There were six major findings in this study. The first finding indicated that participants had mix feelings regarding the standards; they were viewed by some teachers as guides and building blocks while others viewed the standards as not being beneficial to have in the classroom. The second finding depicted that participants had mixed experiences of collegial planning; some shared that collegial planning assisted their efforts with understanding the standards while others indicated that collegial planning could be improved. The third finding portrayed that the curriculum materials used to teach reading were both district-given and supplemental. Due to a lack of rigor with the district-given resource, some participants opted to use supplemental resources that better aligned to the expectation of the standards. The fourth finding addressed both teacher and student challenges faced by the participants. Teacher challenges included the fast pace and implementation of the standards while student challenges included lack of motivation and student misbehavior. The fifth finding highlighted how participants viewed the relationship between their beliefs and instructional practices. Participants discussed the impact, or lack thereof, of the implementation of the shifts in the standards. The sixth and final major finding of this study emphasized that professional development was needed to teach the reading standards. As a result of these findings, implications include providing teachers with professional development opportunities that target practical ways on how to implement the shifts of the standards in day-to-day instruction and instructional strategies to enhance student motivation. / Includes bibliography. / Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2018. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

This research project has been designed as an initial exploratory survey of dropouts from graduate schools of social work. The target population was those students who had dropped from graduate schools of social work accredited by the Council on Social Work Education. The time frame covered a three year period from 1970 to 1972. The data was gathered through the development and administration of a survey instrument in questionnaire form.