published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

This qualitative research study examined developmental reading instructors' reported use of metacognitive reading strategies as well as what other approaches they used to improve and increase the reading comprehension of their struggling adult readers. The researcher collected data using two interviews per participant and document analyses. Although studies have deemed metacognitive reading strategies effective in increasing the reading comprehension of struggling readers, the results indicated that the participants did not typically instruct their struggling adult readers in the use of metacognitive reading strategies. The implications for the study were related to instructional practice in developmental reading courses, policy changes, and struggling readers. / Includes bibliography. / Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2016. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

黎萬紅. / 論文(碩士) -- 香港中文大學硏究院敎育學部, 1995. / 參考文獻: leaves 158-165. / Li Wanhong. / Chapter 第一章： --- 問題闡釋 / Chapter 第一節： --- 職業敎育的興起 --- p.1 / Chapter 第二節： --- 發展中國家職業敎育的發展 --- p.3 / Chapter 第三節： --- 農村敎育問題的論爭 --- p.5 / Chapter 第四節： --- 職業敎育的「適切性」 --- p.7 / Chapter 第五節： --- 中國職業敎育發展 --- p.12 / Chapter 第六節： --- 中國鄉鎭發展與農村敎育的關係 --- p.16 / Chapter 第七節： --- 主要硏究問題 --- p.21 / Chapter 第二章： --- 文獻綜述 --- p.22 / Chapter 第三章： --- 硏究設計 / Chapter 第一節： --- 硏究目的 --- p.28 / Chapter 第二節： --- 硏究範圍 --- p.29 / Chapter 第三節： --- 硏究對象 --- p.30 / Chapter 第四節： --- 硏究方法 --- p.31 / Chapter 第五節： --- 硏究限制 --- p.33 / Chapter 第四章： --- 新會市荷塘鎭及崖西鎭的槪況與職業敎育的發展 / Chapter 第一節： --- 新會市職業敎育的發展 --- p.34 / Chapter 第二節： --- 新會市荷塘鎮的槪況 --- p.34 / Chapter 第三節： --- 新會市崖西鎭的槪況 --- p.39 / Chapter 第四節： --- 荷塘鎭及崖西鎭職業敎育的發展情況 --- p.44 / Chapter 第五節： --- 小結 --- p.62 / Chapter 第五章： --- 職業敎育「適切性」的第一度向一職業敎育的功能 / Chapter 第一節： --- 影響職業敎育內在的因素 --- p.65 / Chapter 第二節： --- 職業敎育的外在功能 --- p.80 / Chapter 第三節： --- 小結 --- p.94 / Chapter 第六章： --- 職業敎育「適切性」的第二度向--職業敎育的內容：工作崗位 的實際需要 / Chapter 第一節: --- 僱主的招聘條件 --- p.98 / Chapter 第二節： --- 僱主的需要 --- p.99 / Chapter 第三節： --- 影響員工升遷的重要因素 --- p.107 / Chapter 第四節： --- 僱主對職業敎育的看法 --- p.113 / Chapter 第五節： --- 在職畢業生的看法 --- p.117 / Chapter 第六節： --- 工作崗位的實際需要--僱主與在職畢業生的看法 --- p.120 / Chapter 第七節： --- 職業敎育的內容--僱主與在職畢業生的看法 --- p.121 / Chapter 第八節： --- 學校敎育與工作崗位需要的配合 --- p.122 / Chapter 第九節： --- 小結 --- p.124 / Chapter 第七章： --- 職業敎育「適切性」的第三度向--職業敎育與勞動市場的關係 / Chapter 第一節： --- 勞動市場的需求 --- p.126 / Chapter 第二節： --- 敎育與勞動市場的配合 --- p.131 / Chapter 第三節： --- 小結 --- p.134 / Chapter 第八章： --- 總論 / Chapter 第一節： --- 對「適切敎育」論爭的回應 --- p.137 / Chapter 第二節： --- 中國職業敎育的發展 --- p.139 / Chapter 第三節： --- 實地考察的一些體驗 --- p.141 / 註釋 --- p.144 / 附件一 --- p.145 / 附件二 --- p.151 / 附件三 --- p.152 / 參考書目 --- p.158

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the interactional practices of Foreign language learners in an online Distance Education course. Additionally, this study sought to investigate whether a relationship exists between participant interaction and course completion and linguistic learning outcomes. The dissertation tracked the practices of 43 participants. The data of the study included log reports from the course website that gave detailed information as to what tasks each participant completed on the course website. These log reports were then coded and analyzed to provide insight to the overall number of tasks students completed, the partner with which they were interacting, the purpose of their tasks, the collaborative nature of their tasks and the media types participants preferred. The purpose of this study is two-fold. The first goal is descriptive: to gain an indepth understanding of how learners spend their time in an online course to better understand how they use online materials and opportunities for communication to learn a language. There is little known about actual student practices in DE as the majority of research conducted relies on self-assessment measures or assumptions. Many researchers believe that communication is vital for both FL learning and DE learning. However, some of the most recent studies on interaction have questioned whether more communication and interaction in DE is necessarily better, revealing that certain interactions are possibly more effective than others. To test this assumption, this study employed an inferential design to investigate the relationship of tasks in the online learning environment to course completion and learner outcomes. The results of this research found three variables were significant predictors of both course completion and linguistic outcomes: total tasks completed, total assignments completed and language tasks. Additionally, foreign language, collaborative and asynchronous tasks also correlated to course completion and individual tasks to linguistic outcomes. Further discussion of the research findings, along with a host of recommendations for further research in this field is presented for consideration. / text

published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

Cooperative learning has been one of the most widely used instructional practices around the world since the early 1980's. Small learning groups have been in existence since the beginning of the human race. These groups have grown in their variance and complexity overtime. Classrooms are getting more diverse every year and instructors need a way to take advantage of this diversity to improve learning. The purpose of this study was to see if heterogeneous cooperative learning groups based on student achievement can be used as a differentiated instructional strategy to increase students' ability to demonstrate knowledge of science concepts and ability to do engineering design. This study includes two different groups made up of two different middle school science classrooms of 25-30 students. These students were given an engineering design problem to solve within cooperative learning groups. One class was put into heterogeneous cooperative learning groups based on student's pre-test scores. The other class was grouped based on random assignment. The study measured the difference between each class's pre-post gains, student's responses to a group interaction form and interview questions addressing their perceptions of the makeup of their groups. The findings of the study were that there was no significant difference between learning gains for the treatment and comparison groups. There was a significant difference between the treatment and comparison groups in student perceptions of their group's ability to stay on task and manage their time efficiently. Both the comparison and treatment groups had a positive perception of the composition of their cooperative learning groups.

This thesis explored the potential of engaging gifted and talented learners in an online community of inquiry promoted by the use of asynchronous discussion forums. It employed a mixed-method, case-study approach where non-participant observation of online interactions and focus group meetings with the tutors contributed to the qualitative analysis of how the members realised participation in the forums. Quantitative analysis of membership data and online questionnaire responses revealed member characteristics of the sample members and patterns of active (vocal and silent) participation. Analysis was inductive and interpretive, informed by an original synthesis of the theoretical perspectives of two theories: the online learning theory suggested by Garrison, Anderson and Archer (2000); and the cognitive and affective domains for learning skills, proposed by Bloom et al. (1956) and Krathwohl et al. (1964). Content analysis of over 3000 messages posted or read by approximately 4500 members revealed community-based and ability-based characteristics that enabled the group to deal with social stigma, co-construct knowledge and promote meta- learning skills. The study concluded that participation in online discussion forums held the potential to address several of the needs identified by research for gifted learners: The need for the company of like-minded and similar ability peers; the need to develop higher order thinking skills; and the need to become independent learners. In this online network, the gifted learners could receive communal support from other members and tutors who acted as 'mentors' and role models for honing interpersonal and thinking skills such that they were motivated to pursue their interests to their full potential.

This study described and analyzed the development and implementation of an advisory program at one urban middle school. Development of the advisory program began during the 1997-98 school year. The implementation of the program was examined during the 1998-99 and 1999-2000 school years. This school site was chosen because of the in-depth research and planning of the program beyond the typical amount performed by many schools, and the wide-scale staff participation utilized in the program's development. In order to follow the processes of development and implementation, several models of change, innovation, and organizational analysis were used to provide focus for analysis of events that occurred during the three years of the program examined in this study. Data was collected in multiple manners. A complete review of school documents concerning the advisory program was performed, and over 50 percent of the faculty were interviewed through individual and team interviews. The findings of this study include various elements concerning the development and implementation of the advisory program. Data was collected and analyzed in three main categories including a) driving and resisting factors for beginning and implementing the program, b) processes used to plan, maintain and develop the program, and c) the periods in which the program became stable. Additional considerations were examined including the evaluation of the program, future possibilities for implementation, and staff roles in the program. Recommendations of the study include: limiting the focus of the advisory program; maintaining consistent goals; starting with a limited program; securing high staff participation; providing extensive time for planning; maintaining a high level of monitoring by administration and staff leaders; providing in-depth training; and, insuring that open lines of communication exist.

The purpose of this study was to compare personal investment levels among nonmusic major piano students in the contexts of portfolio and teacher-directed assessment. Three problems were addressed: 1) identifying students' perceptions of direction, persistence, continuing motivation, intensity, and performance in the context of teacher-directed goal setting, choice of instructional activities, and evaluation of performance; 2) identifying students' perceptions of the five personal investment behaviors in the context of portfolio assessment; and 3) comparing student perceptions as identified in problems one and two.

The changes in economy in addition to globalisation have impacted upon the audit profession. After the economic crisis in the 2000s, the audit profession was deemed to be a cause of the corporate collapse due to unethical behaviour of auditors. This issue also impacts upon auditing instruction worldwide, including Thailand where political and economic crises along with corruption issues have become significant and urgent problems in the Thai society. There has been a high scrutiny on capabilities, competence and ethics of auditors from the public and other stakeholders, whereas there is scant evidence to show whether Thai educators take action on enhancing holistic attributes of their auditing students, in particular, ethical sensitivity of the students. Thereby, Thailand needs to reform the quality of audit education in order to serve qualified graduate students to the business environment. This thesis developed a set of reflective case studies as an instructional intervention for auditing learning. It aims to enhance professional knowledge, skills and ethics of auditing students in Thailand. Four learning theories comprising Transformative Learning Theory (TLT), Experiential Learning Theory (ELT), Reflective Learning Theory (RLT) and Project-based Learning Theory (PLT) were applied as the theoretical framework. In addition, this thesis applied concepts of qualitative and action research together with the ADDIE instructional development as the practical framework for the development of an instructional intervention. There were five phases of the ADDIE model: Analyse, Design, Develop, Implement and Evaluate applied to organise the empirical work. Two empirical fieldworks were conducted within university settings in Thailand. The first fieldwork complied with the analysing phase of the ADDIE model exploring current practice and problems of audit instruction in Thailand in order to identify performance gap of the audit education. Semi-structured interviews were conducted in 11 universities with 34 participants who were audit lecturers and students in five regions throughout the country. The results showed that in general, audit instructors in Thailand mostly applied traditional teaching methods. However, there were problems of audit instruction comprising inappropriate learning strategies of the students, lack of staff and learning resources, deficiencies of knowledge and skills of audit students and lack of ethical awareness of the students. Significantly, the participants required case studies in Thai context as a learning tool to enhance the knowledge, skills and ethics of Thai auditing students. These elements were determined as performance gap which was required to improve. In response to the results of the first empirical fieldwork, the thesis applied the design and development phases of the ADDIE model to develop a set of reflective case studies for auditing students. A framework for the development of case studies derived from other professional education such as law, medicine, nursing and engineering where such real-life case studies have been successfully used to enhance ethical sensitivity of students. Additionally, concepts of reflective writing and audit working paper were applied in the cases studies. Other instruments such as guidance for lecturers and students were also developed for Thai auditing students. All instructional resources were validated by experts. The final version was refined and approved before the implementation. The second empirical fieldwork complied with the implement and evaluate phases of the ADDIE model. An experiment conducted with 77 auditing students in Naresuan University, Phitsanulok, Thailand. In addition, there were 15 participants who voluntarily participated in the reflective writing activity and the focus group interview. The results revealed that before the cases’ implementation, students had negative views on auditing learning. However, during and after the implementation, students had reformed their way of learning, attitudes towards auditing learning and ethical sensitivity.