Intervention assistance models of special education service delivery are an alternative to traditional refer-test-place models. They are designed to promote problem solving and problem ownership among teachess regarding to difficult-to-teach students, and to reduce unnecessary special education referrals and placements. This study investigated teachers' perceptions of problem ownership as measured by their responses to vignettes which depicted students exhibiting academic and/or behavioral difficulties. The methods and results of the pilot study for this study are also presented. Participants in the present study included teachers from both intervention assistance and traditional model schools. Generalizability theory was used to estimate variance components at the model and the individual levels. Results indicated that no variance in teachers' perceptions of problem ownership was accounted for by different service delivery models. A substantial portion of variance was related to differences among individual teachers. However, the largest source of variance was the vignette-by-teacher interaction. Special education referral and placement practices were also investigated. Referral and placement rates across intervention assistance schools were compared with rates across traditional schools. Both referral and placement rates were significantly lower across intervention assistance than across traditional model schools. The proportion of placements to referrals was also compared between models. Results provided no evidence to indicate that the proportion of placements to referrals differs between the two models. Findings are summarized and discussed, and their implications for future practice and research are examined.

The purpose of this research was to explore variables related to the transition from elementary to middle level school. Student perceptions of the transition, attributions in motivation, and anxiety were all measured, which are similar to variables reported by other transition researchers in the literature. Instruments administered to the students included the Locus of Control and Attribution Style Inventory (Jerabek, 2000; Appendix D), "What I Think and Feel" Manifest Anxiety Scale for Children-Revised (Reynolds and Richmond, 1978; Appendix E), and a Junior High Transition Questionnaire (Appendix F). Fifty-two sixth grade students in five classes at two schools made up the sample. The demographic variables these students possessed include both genders, ages 11 and 12, several ethnicities, and prior school transition experience. Measurements occurred at baseline (early spring) and just before and just after a school-sponsored intervention program The intervention program was a half-day visit by the sixth graders to the junior high school. Literature before 1997 (since the string of school-related violence deaths) was compared to research since 1997 and the findings of this research in terms of differences in school-related safety issues. Pre-1997 literature did not use safety language as strong as was used post-1997. Some of the students in this research had concerns about their safety, mentioning weapons, drugs, and gangs as some of the specific worries. Analyses of mean differences using ANOVA and t-tests found few differences among the demographic groups on the measures. Anxiety did fluctuate over time for the sample, with greatest anxiety reported just before the intervention. Student attributions were related to anxiety levels in the sample. Degree of anxiety changed over time in different ways for students with internal attributions versus students with external attributions. Students with higher anxiety levels asked more questions about the school transition and junior high experiences on the questionnaire than did the lower anxiety students, but the low-anxiety group had questions that were more specific. Students with prior school transition experiences tended to have greater anxieties than students without school transition experience.

This was a study of 45 sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-grade students who attended a newly formed charter school in a large metropolitan city in the Southwest. The purpose was to explore students' conceptions of belongingness in two school contexts and to analyze how conceptions may (or may not) have changed over time and from one school context to another. Interview methods were employed to obtain both closed- and open-ended student responses. Results suggested that the role of student choice in changing schools is significantly related to whether students felt they belong. Further, students varied in their belongingness conceptions with some students emphasizing the importance of interpersonal relationships and others emphasizing academic achievement or opportunity. Results were used to generate a preliminary model of Fresh Starts Motivation (FSM) that describes the role of students' conceptions of belongingness as it exists and evolves through a major transition. Implications for future research on student belongingness are described.

This study assessed the number of fears, intensity of fears, type of fears and anxieties, and most common fears in children having a disability. In addition, the correlation level between different raters in the assessment of student fears and related anxieties were examined. Data were collected from public schools and evaluated using Multivariate Analysis of Variance, Analysis of Variance, slice effect test, frequency analysis, and Pearson Product Moment Correlation. Findings from the present study indicated that students with learning disabilities (LD) reported significantly higher total fear score and higher levels of fear in the two factors of the Fear Survey Schedule for Children-Revised (FSSC-R): fear of failure and criticism and fear of danger and death. In addition, the LD group reported significantly higher overall anxiety level and higher levels of anxiety in all the three subscale scores of Revised Children's Manifest Anxiety Scale (RCMAS). Results showed that girls reported significantly higher scores than did boys in total fear score, intensity of fears, and two factors of FSSC-R--fear of unknown and fear of injury and small animals. Furthermore, girls in the LD group reported higher total fear score, intensity of fears, and higher levels of fear in all the five factors of FSSC-R than their male counterparts in the same group. On the other hand, girls in the mild mental retardation (MIMR) group reported lower scores in these measures than did their boy counterparts in the same group. Regarding age differences, older students reported significantly higher scores in the fear of failure and criticism. In addition, older students in the MIMR group reported higher levels of total fear score, intensity of fears, fear of the unknown, fear of danger and death, and fear of failure and criticism than their younger counterparts. The 10 most common fears yielded from the Fear Survey Schedule for Children-Revised were mostly in the fear of danger and death factor. The results showed that there were low but significant correlations between child self report and teacher report of the child on most dependent measures examined in the present study.

In this study, I explored reasons for fifth and seventh grade girls' personal disengagement from physical activity. Regular participants in physical activity were used as a comparison to a target group of irregular participants. One central finding was that girls who do not participate in physical activity on a regular basis demonstrated a much lower knowledge base of the benefits of physical activity than the regular participants. This suggests that the value girls place on physical activity (i.e. willingness to participate) is related to their activity level (i.e. more active girls have a greater knowledge base). The less informed one is, the less one values physical activity. New contributions to the field of girls and physical activity are made from the findings on how irregular participating girls feel about professional suggestions for increasing their participation rate in physical activity.

The focus of this study was to manipulate factors to determine whether mental representations of logical problems differed by culture. The cultural differences hypothesis suggests that Anglo students would be more likely to have a linear representation (e.g. arranging objects that differ in a "line" mentally) whereas Hispanic and Native American students would have a nonlinear (pivot) organization. The results indicated that Hispanic children solved questions better if they appeared in a pivotal format, whereas, Native American and Anglo children performed better if the stimuli were presented in a linear method. With grade level, Hispanic children shifted to the linear format and Anglo and Native American children improved upon the pivot presentation. This suggests that there may be differences in mental representations of objects for Hispanic children that is influenced by acculturation.

The research questions for this study focus on the stress level reported by new faculty, the causes of stress, and the coping strategies used to deal with stress. Data from the New Faculty Project of the National Center for Postsecondary Teaching, Learning, and Assessment, were analyzed to understand the experiences of newly hired faculty at Research-I, Comprehensive-I, Liberal Arts-I, and Two-Year Institutions. Newly hired non-tenured, and below associate professor rank faculty were selected from the initial sample of 177 newly hired faculty; 136 faculty completed surveys, and 95 faculty completed interviews for each of the first three years of their employment. A moderate level of stress was reported and remained relatively stable over time. The causes of faculty stress were of three types: those innate to the position, those due to being new, and those due to life stressors. Three types of coping strategies were employed: those providing a solution, those allowing faculty to maintain, and those in which faculty "gave up".

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<p> Given the current amount of cheating in our society and more specifically in our schools, the focus of this dissertation was to examine the impact of religiosity on cheating behavior in an academic arena. Additionally social norms and the individual difference variable of self-monitoring were also investigated to determine their impact on cheating behavior. Furthermore, self-regulation was examined to determine if non-cheating high self-monitors deplete more self-regulatory resources than those non-cheating low self-monitors in a cheating situation. </p><p> Participants completed a religiosity and self-monitoring measure prior to coming into the laboratory. At a date of their choosing, participants completed the laboratory portion of the study. In the laboratory, participants were given a job-competency measure to complete, at which time they were given an opportunity to cheat. The participants completed the job-competency measure alone or in the presence of a confederate. Four different conditions were formed: a control condition, a cheating condition, a passive condition, and an active noncheating condition. It was also in the laboratory that their grip strength was measured. </p><p> Contrary to expectations, religiosity was not a significant predictor of cheating behavior. However, norms did impact cheating behavior; there was more cheating when the confederate cheated and less cheating when the confederate discouraged cheating behavior. Additionally, there was an impact of self-monitoring in response to the created norms, such that high self-monitors tended to follow the behaviors of the confederates more so than low self-monitors. Contrary to expectations, self-regulatory resources were not significantly impacted for noncheating high self-monitors in a confederate-induced cheating condition.</p>