<p> Having an infant admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) can be stressful and overwhelming for parents and families. Parents have developed anxiety and depression disorders, as a result of their experience from having their infant in the NICU. The stress and anxiety can also affect the parent-child attachment, as well as putting the infant/child at risk of abuse and neglect. A licensed clinical social worker will facilitate a support group using the strength based perspective to empower individuals and families. The support group goals are: to reduce the amount of stress that parents and/or caregivers encounter, as a result of their infant being in the NICU, to empower parents and/or caregivers to advocate for their infant who has been in the NICU, and to increase the parents and/or caregivers' ability to appropriately respond to the infant's needs. In selecting, Health Trust, as a funder, it values enhancing the well-being of individual and families in Santa Clara County. An actual submission to the funder was not a requirement of this project.</p>

<p> The purpose of this quantitative study was to identify psychological and physical health factors that influence African American college students' academic achievement using secondary data from the American College Health Association's National College Health Assessment (ACHA-NCHA). Using Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory, this study explored the influence of health variables on African American college students' academic experiences. Independent sample t-tests were used to analyze gender differences between African American female and male college students. Factor analyses and a Logistic regression was used to ascertain the influence of psychological and physical health factors on African American college students' academic achievement. Findings of this study highlight personal health issues, future help-seeking behavior, and impeding emotional experiences as significant predictors of academic achievement for all African American students. Implications for practice and recommendations for future research are reviewed.</p>

No description available.

<p> This study aims to increase understanding of teacher knowledge about Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). One hundred teachers completed the <i>Knowledge of Attention Deficit Disorders Scale (KADDS)</i> and a demographic questionnaire. Results indicate that teachers knew significantly more about the symptoms of ADHD than its treatment or general facts about the disorder. Special education teachers had significantly higher <i> KADDS</i> scores than general education teachers.</p>

<p> Children and adolescents arrive at schools with more than just academic needs. Unfortunately, accountability is paramount in the minds of legislators, thus making test scores top priority for most public educators. For decades, pet therapy and pet assisted activities have been quite successful in mental health institutions, hospitals, and nursing homes. However, the body of work concerning pet therapy and pet assisted activities in public education is limited. The purpose of this case study was to determine if pet therapy is successful in a southwest Missouri school district and to examine how teachers and administrators employ their pet therapy dog. A mixed methods design was utilized using a qualitative case study approach and quantitative methods to determine the consensus of teachers and administrators involved with pet therapy. The data were collected and then triangulated to procure commonalities with interviews, surveys, and research. Administrators and counselors in the district were interviewed to determine their perceptions on pet therapy. A survey was made available to teachers in the building to assess their opinions of the pet therapy program. The results of the study concluded pet therapy is successful in the participating rural southwest Missouri school district. The district utilizes pet therapy in every possible way from assisting with their special educational program, to applying it to their reading programs, even using their pet therapy dog with PTA fund raising projects. In conclusion, it was determined pet therapy is a positive academic, social, and mental tool in the public school setting.</p>

This investigation was designed first to determine the effect upon learning of various instructional treatments related to adjunct instruction, and second to determine the interaction of certain student characteristics with method in learning under these various instructional treatments. The term adjunct instruction is used to indicate instructional material designed to be used with other educational media, in this investigation, mainly the educational psychology textbook and secondarily with outside readings and instructor presentations.With respect to the treatments, the variables were format of the instructional material, as linear program or instructional quiz; the method of presentation of the instructional material, as teaching machine with immediate feedback and framed exposure, simple immediate feedback and framed exposure, simple immediate feedback device with open exposure, and delayed feedback device with open exposure; and the presence or absence of threat that the students’ performance on the instructional material would be counted as part of the final course grade.In the second aspect of the investigation, the following learner characteristics were studied with respect to learning or the various treatments: general mental ability, memory, ding, interest, attitude, general and test anxiety, and creativity.The subjects were 257 sophomore and junior level students enrolled in a course in educational psychology. The experimental unit was designed to be implemented in the assigned laboratory session, meeting one period per week and extending over a five-week period. The specially prepared linear programs and instructional quizzes were administered in the laboratory sessions.The criterion measure was a 44-item multiple-choice achievement test previously developed and tested in a pilot study. This measure was administered at the end of the experimental unit. The data concerning the eight learner characteristics were collected during the semester, prior to the administration of the criterion learning measure.The analysis of variance technique was employed to assess differences between instructional treatments. Two forms of this technique were utilized: the one-way analyses to test differences between the instructional variables, and the four-factor factorial to test for significant interactions. Where necessary, the Newman-Keuls test, an a posteriori method for testing differences, was utilized. As series of regression analyses were also run in which all eight learner characteristic variables were used in a single matrix to predict the dependent variable. No significant difference was found between the program the 'quiz, immediate and delayed feedback, open and controlled exposure to the instructional material, or the presence and absence of threat in the learning situation. The only significant postulated interaction occurred between the level of threat variable and the learner characteristic of mental ability. Here students of high ability operating in the non-threat situation scored significantly higher on the criterion test than the high ability group working under the threat rendition, and significantly higher than the low mental ability groups working in either the threat or the non-threat situations.Regression analyses were run for each of the two types of format, the three methods of presentation, and the two levels of threat. The reading test score appeared as a correlate in each of the seven sets of significant correlates. The multiple R for these sets of significant correlates ranged from .53 to .63. It was concluded that the level of multiple correlations remained essentially the same for the Seven analyses but that the set of predictor variables changed in the different instructional conditions.

There has been a general reluctance within education, and in particular physical education, to involve the child proactively in the research process. Assessments of children's experiences have occluded possibilities for the development of understanding by the proclivity to employ restrictive methods of research. Herein potential is confined to accessing only those categories deemed to be of significance by the researcher. This study aimed to expand upon existing studies by opening potential for accessing new possibilities through the involvement of children directly in the exposition of research issues and development of theory. An interpretive approach, adhering to a grounded theory methodology, was taken over a three-year period of data collection and analysis. Following an initial year of familiarisation with the research field, through observations in four secondary schools, a case study formed the basis of the main body of research. Diaries, group and individual interviews formed the essential basis of data that was supported by observational study. Children involved in this study were found to have the capacity for reflection and analytic acumen to cast their experience meaningfully and constructively for interpretation. Therefore, although superficially findings supported many more general issues studied to date within the subject area, analysis revealed more specifically that children's experience of physical education was organised around certain domains of awareness. These configurations formed what I have termed a 'working consciousness' in given situations. 'Physical education' as a practical, spacial and social phenomenon heightens the significance of experience through the multiplicity of sentient possibilities that it creates for the child. However, in particular, the presence of 'significant' peers was found to be a predominant determinant of actual working consciousness, on occasion overriding 'curriculum' itself.

<p> Unlike their private school counterparts, charter schools receive public funding but are relieved of some of the bureaucratic and regulatory constraints of public schools in exchange for being held accountable for student performance. Studies provide mixed results with regard to charter school performance. Charter schools are, by definition, schools of choice, and this means that observational data methods are required for comparing such schools with others. In observational data contexts, simple comparisons of two groups such as traditional public and charter schools typically ignore the inherent and systematic differences between the two groups. However, given well-designed observational studies and appropriate analysis methods, the effects of the selection bias can be reduced, if not eliminated. The result is that the usual simple comparisons of two independent groups are replaced by comparisons that make adjustments for covariate differences. This study includes development of new methods, largely graphic in form, designed for observational data to compare two groups. These methods are then used to investigate the question of whether students who attend charter schools perform differently than their traditional public school counterparts on two key academic domains: reading and mathematics. The new methods represent extensions of propensity score analysis (Rosenbaum &amp; Rubin, 1983) by aiding descriptions and aim in reducing selection bias in the context of clustered data. </p><p> Using data from the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) for mathematics and reading at grades four and eight, estimates of the differences between charter and traditional public schools were calculated at the state and national levels. This study finds that there is wide variability in math and reading performance for charter schools. But in aggregate, charter schools do not perform any differently than their traditional public school counterparts. </p><p> The new methods were used to examine potential relationships between the "quality" of state charter laws as determined by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools (NAPCS; 2010a) and aggregate differences in charter and traditional public school student NAEP scores produced by the new methods are explored. Analyses suggested that these relationships were either absent or modest across the two grades and subjects.</p>

This thesis reports on an ethnographic study of communicative interaction between young Inuit children and their caregivers. Data were derived from three sources: 80 hours of videotape of four children (aged 1,0-1,8 years at the outset) and their families, 20 ethnographic interviews of mothers, and participant observation notes. Themes emerged about the specific accommodations that Inuit caregivers made in their communication with young children. Child-centered accommodations included: (a) two special registers of affectionate talk, (b) specialized vocabulary, (c) making language more understandable to children, and (d) excluding children from adult conversations. Situation-centered accommodations instructed children through teasing and repetition routines. Finally, silence played an important role in communicative interaction. Inuit children were socialized to learn by listening and to communicate without talk. Stated cultural values, the status and role of the Inuit child, and the structure of caregiving influenced these patterns of communicative interaction.

Typescript. / Binder's title: Intellectual abilities of Filipino sixth grade students. / Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1973. / Bibliography: leaves 176-187. / viii, 301 l illus., tables