<p> In this multiple case study design, high-performing Chinese language immersion students were investigated to better understand their profiles. This study focused on their attitudes, motivations, support systems, strategies for learning, and their social environment and how it related to them. I investigated three cases of high-performing Chinese language immersion students in a suburban school district in the Midwestern United States participating in a one-way Chinese (Mandarin) language immersion program. I utilized document analysis, solicited diaries, semi-structured participant interviews, parent interviews, Chinese immersion teacher pre-interview questionnaires, and Chinese immersion teacher interviews as data collection instruments. After analyzing the data, I wrote a case report for each of these cases and completed a cross-case synthesis to identify what was universal, variant, and divergent amongst the profiles of these high-performing individuals.</p>

The thesis covers two sides of the truancy problem in the period following compulsory school attendance - the truanting children and their parents, and the local authorities charged with enforcing the law. The introduction covers current concerns about truancy and school attendance, which have increased in prominence since the 1980s. Chapter 2 reviews the historiography, which has mainly debated working-class attitudes towards compulsory schooling in the nineteenth century. This study draws instead on the insights of development economists into household decision-making over children's schooling to investigate the effectiveness of enforcement in several contrasting localities - rural and urban, industrial and agricultural, and in a seaside resort. The thesis brings together evidence to show that local authorities could make an impact on attendance levels, even in unpropitious local circumstances. Chapter 3 considers the success of measures to improve attendance up to 1900. Chapter 4 offers a detailed case study of a sample of truants and their families from Coventry in the period 1874-99. Chapters 5 to 7 cover 1900-39 and demonstrate changes in the enforcement of attendance, within the context of growing local government services related to child welfare and the family. Attendance officers' local knowledge of working-class families supported the delivery of child welfare legislation in the period after 1906, including special education, assessment of families for free school meals, assistance with medical treatment and the policing of restrictions on children's street trading. Attendance officers also supervised children deemed at risk of offending, who were committed to institutions. These additions to the enforcement role led increasingly to a remedial, rather than punitive, approach to truancy during the 1920s and 30s. The conclusion returns to contemporary policy issues over truancy and sets in context the historical reasons why it has proved such a long-standing problem for government and schools.

The purpose of this study was to compare three different types of programming options for identified gifted and talented middle school students.

Title: Interaction between a teacher and a student in the group-form method of teaching skiing Objectives: The aim of this thesis is to compare the interaction between the teacher and the student in the process of teachig skiing in the foreign ski schools. Methods: In our thesis we used the method of observation with utilization of categorial system according to the standardized method MADI (modificated analysis of didactic interaction). This method involves seven categories describing forms of behaviour of a teacher, didactic content of training, didactic situation and the postural activity. Results: The teachers' profiles were proved to be different, which was caused primarily by the amount of experience and partially by the gained education. The results showed that the main differences were manifested at the teacher number three who gained the shortest practices. This teacher diametrically differs in all examined categories from other teachers. Between the other two teachers there were found differences as well, but not essential. The teacher number three commited many didactitc faults. Some of his forms of behaviour, demonstration and action were not coherent with the process of learning so that they were not able to be analysed. Keywords: ADI, MADI, ski school, ski education

This study is a mixed methods approach, consisting of a questionnaire and narrative interviews that opened the opportunity to investigate motivation in KSA by employing a post-positivist stance. This study is specifically aimed at investigating the attitudes and perceptions underpinning the motivation of Saudi students studying English in higher education. This study was limited to male students studying English in a preparatory programme at a private university in the Eastern Provence of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). The scope of this study was to identify social, cultural, personal and emotional factors that underpinned the attitudes and perceptions of Saudi students studying English in higher education and thereby this study established a foundation for motivational studies in Saudi Arabia. In addition, this study established a first time approach to employ the Dialogical Self Theory to triangulate data between multiple methods so that the interpretation and analysis of data could lead to expanding the previous definitions of integrative and instrumental orientations of motivated behaviour in motivation and SLA studies. Furthermore, this study established DST's debut in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The advantage of employing DST in this study was to ensure as much as possible that the voices of the research participants were genuinely reflected in the analysis and interpretation of data. In accordance with the literature search during this research, this study marks the first attempt to describe the constructs of a motivational profile of Saudi students studying English in higher education. The data suggested that Saudis demonstrated strong adherences to cultural and social supportive positions associated with or intertwined with high religious values toward constructing their self-identities. However, there are at least two succinct strategies that the students employ to lessen their internal social power struggles between their local selves and their reaching out to the global community that communicates in English with their global selves. The group that was less likely to reach outwards to the global community and feel being a part of it generated strategies around various degrees of strict cultural compliance to achieve feelings of safety within the self's society of the mind. The participants who were more likely to feel global through employing English constructed strategies and plans around hybrid-models within their self-identity to balance their desire to be part of the world community and to be true to their desire of compliance to cultural values. Students who were less likely to feel a belonging to the global community were more influenced by internal factors such as: a fear of assimilation and a fear losing Arab identity, which led to constructing strategies aimed at a greater adherence to cultural compliance. In addition, this study utilized Sullivan's (2010) theory that Vygotsky's (1978) dialectic understanding of juxtaposed positions and Bakhtin's (1984) dialogical understanding of vertically regulated values are not mutually exclusive, rather mutually inclusive. The result was that motivation can be imagined as a dynamic 3-D construction occurring within a certain context with other. This research employed a 29 item motivational questionnaire with a 5-point Likert scale constructed by using formerly employed themes that were shown to have had a greater impact on motivation and language acquisition. This study is unique as it triangulated quantitative data with narrative interviews by allowing common themes formerly associated with motivation and SLA to be expanded by the participants voices, which not only expanded some definitions formerly associated with motivation and SLA, but also subjected them to the refutability. This study concluded that effort and self-confidence were the attributes that most likely underpinned the construction of a hybrid model of the self, which opened opportunities of English acquisition both within the classroom setting and outside of it. Those who were less likely to feel a belonging to the global community that communicates in English were more likely to construct strategies around local Arab traditions and were shown to have to a greater fear of integrating themselves into international scenarios related to English use. Through triangulating multiple data sources, it was possible to assess the values students attached between their internal and external positions at four distinct levels: cultural, social, personal and emotional.

Thesis (M. Ed.)--University of Hong Kong, 2006. / Title proper from title frame. Also available in printed format.

This thesis argues that ijime (bullying) is a product of the regimented culture of the Japanese education system, which place a heavy emphasis on conformity. It also argues that addressing the problem of ijime requires a reculturing of Japanese schools. The thesis highlights Japan’s long battle against ijime, which is a consequence of the unremitting drive to educate suitable Japanese citizens. The thesis investigates the characteristics of Japanese education, which is based on a national form of meritocracy and egalitarianism, to find if there is evidence that Japanese schools systematically legitimise oppression of those who do not conform. It examines the socio-historical development of ijime, revealing the serious extent to which the problem has become inherent in Japanese society, leaving little prospect for significant improvement. The five major ijime-suicide incidents, Shikagawa in 1986; Ohkouchi, 1994; Ohno, 2000; Takigawa, 2005 and Mori, 2006, are also studied in order to show how ijime can escalate to a disturbing level and in some cases develops a criminal element. Ijime has become a major social problem over the past few decades in Japan, causing serious absenteeism and even suicides among school children. In response, the Japanese government introduced “relaxed education”, which reduces student workloads and provides diversity in learning. Within the schools, organisational support systems have also been developed to help students with problems. Despite these measures, ijime still regularly occurs and the number of those who find it difficult to go to school is increasing. There has been no indication of serious improvement. This thesis is partly based on an analysis of the views and experiences of Japanese students and teachers. The results indicate that Japanese students perform ijime to discipline nonconformists for the sake of providing order, and that teachers are involved in ijime either as direct or indirect initiators. Ijime has been, either intentionally or unintentionally, accepted by many some students and teachers. Moreover, the results show that many students target individuals to guarantee collective identity, implying that they need to participate in the collective act of ijime for their social survival at school. The Japanese school is shown to be one place where ijime is still accepted because it facilitates universal conformity and peer solidarity. The thesis identifies two major problems resulting from the group-oriented culture of Japanese education. One problem is that, despite its egalitarian educational policies, the Japanese school system has created a hierarchy among students, allowing conformists to punish or marginalise nonconformists. The other problem is that a heavy emphasis on group life at school to promote peer solidarity has augmented the risk of exclusion by students who maintain collective identity by alienating someone. The findings show that ijime has been promoted by the cultural values and goals of conformity, and that the problem of ijime will not be alleviated without changing the regimented system of Japanese schooling.

The importance of parental involvement in schools has been the focus of numerous studies (Cotton & Mann, 1994; Hoover-Dempsey & Sadler, 1997; McDermott & Rothenberg, 2000; Trotman, 2001; Epstein & Sanders, 2009). Many of these same studies correlate student achievement with parental involvement and suggest that student achievement is improved when parents are involved in their children's schools. In spite of this positive effect, school involvement continues to be low in many inner-city schools where a large number of parents are ethnic minorities whose socio-economic status is low (Cotton, 2000). Included in this group are the parents of inner-city gifted middle school students. / The purpose of this study was to investigate, evaluate, and determine, from the perspective of a group of inner-city parents of gifted middle school students, factors that foster, or deter, their involvement in their children's schools. Of the plethora of studies that have been conducted on parental involvement, few have focused specifically on school involvement by inner-city parents of gifted adolescents. A survey was used to collect quantitative and qualitative data. / Findings revealed that among the major factors that fostered school involvement was a school atmosphere that was inviting, friendly, and caring. A major deterrent to the participants' involvement was the school's failure to communicate with them.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2006. / The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file. Title from title screen of research.pdf file viewed on (April 25, 2007) Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M. Ed.)--University of Hong Kong, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 76-81).