According to the National Association of School Resource Officers (2009), every state in the nation employs school resource officers. The trend, which began in 1991, was initially funded by federal monies. Since that time, school resource officers have remained in schools, gaining popularity as a proactive strategy in fighting against school violence. The purpose of the study was to examine students' and teachers' perceptions regarding school resource officers' performance related to the 3 dimensions of their responsibilities: maintaining a safe environment, enforcing the law, and teaching. Data were gathered from 104 teachers and 272 students from a middle school and a high school, totaling 376 participants. An analysis of data was based on 6 research questions and information gathered from participant surveys. A t test for independent samples was then conducted to evaluate the mean differences for the 3 dimensions measured in the survey. The following grouping variables were used in the comparisons for each dimension: students and teachers, male and female students, male and female teachers, teachers with varied years of experience, middle and high school students, and middle and high school teachers. A significance difference was found between middle school students and high school students regarding each dimension, suggesting that middle school students observed school resource officers actively performing each role to a higher degree than did high school students. There was also a significant difference between teachers and students regarding the role of maintaining a safe environment and enforcing the law, suggesting that teachers observed school resource officers more active in these roles than in the role of counseling. A significant difference was also found between high school teachers and middle school teachers regarding the role of enforcing the law. High school teachers observed enforcement of law more than middle school teachers. This study suggests that school resource officers' roles need to be clearly defined for teachers and students. Students need to know they can report crime, have knowledge that they are being monitored, and know they have resources available other than administrators and teachers.

A plethora of stressors are known to be related to the process of transition to professional nursing practice as the neophyte registered nurse (RN) transitions from student to professional nurse. Although not new, accelerated second-degree baccalaureate nursing (ASDBN) programs have opened in record numbers in recent years in the wake of the current nursing shortage. Little is known about the experience of professional practice for accelerated second-degree baccalaureate graduate nurses (ASDBGNs). The stressful graduate nurse transition, current nursing shortage, and lack of an empirical base for ASDBN programs illustrate the significance of the research problem. This modified grounded theory study generated a substantive Theory of Overcoming: ASDBGN Transition to Professional Nursing Practice. Constant comparative method of joint data collection, analysis, theoretical sampling, and memoing was used. Data were collected through semistructured interviews using open-ended questions that were conducted over the telephone or in person. The identified basic social process (BSP), overcoming, encompasses 5 stages: reality check, goaling, getting started, coming out on top, and mastering. Study findings provide a beginning evidence-base for nursing education, policy, and clinical practice related to this growing student population.

The purpose of the study was to investigate the associations between first-time full-time freshmen's attributes and fall-to-fall retention at Northeast State Technical Community College. The 15 attributes included age, first-generation student status, gender, high school classification, race, the student's application date to the institution relative to the start of the semester, the 4 ACT test sub-scores, remedial/developmental course placement, major program of study, financial aid status, first-semester grade point average, and end-of-first-semester credit hour enrollment status. In addition to collecting the variables under study, each first-time full-time freshman's entry term and enrollment status for the subsequent fall semester was ascertained. This information was used to categorize individuals into persister and non-persister classifications for the subsequent fall. The data for this longitudinal study were housed in Northeast State's student records database, Student Information System. A preliminary analysis of the data was conducted to ascertain descriptive statistics. Chi Square and independent samples t tests were used to determine if there was an association between each variable and fall-to-fall retention. A multiple linear regression model was used to estimate the effect of the predictor variables upon the criterion variable, fall-to-fall retention. The results indicated that the variables of age, first-generation student status, gender, and race were not significantly related to fall-to-fall retention, while high school classification, application date, the 4 ACT sub-scores, remedial/developmental course placement, major program of study, financial aid award, first-semester grade point average, and end-of-semester credit hour enrollment status were significantly related to fall-to-fall retention. A multiple linear regression model indicated that the greatest influences upon fall-to-fall retention when researching the collective predictor variables were first-semester grade point average,the number of remedial/developmental courses required,the number of hours in which the student was formally enrolled in at the end of the first semester,an application date greater than or equal to 61 days prior to the start of the fall semester,receipt of financial aid in the form of Pell Grant funds only (negative association),associate of applied science student status (negative association), andGED graduate (negative association).

This is a descriptive phenomenological study of a 3rd grade classroom in East Tennessee that was transformed in late spring 2009 to be consistent with principles incorporated in the 21st Century Model for Teaching and Learning and Educational Change (Evanshen, 2010). The objectives of this study were 1)to document the current physical and learning environment and 2)interview the participant regarding a classroom transformation in relation to teaching and learning. Methods of data collection included: interview questions related to the classroom environment pretransformation and posttransformation, observation field notes, and photographs of the current environment. In addition, archival photographs of the pretransformation environment were used in analysis of data. Data were gathered and systematically analyzed and then compared to recommended best teaching practices for early childhood. Based on findings, one can conclude that a classroom environment based on principles of the 21st Century Model for Teaching and Learning and Educational Change (Evanshen, 2010) enhances teacher attitude in relation to role of the environment in the teaching and learning process.

The purpose of this quantitative study was to investigate factors that contribute to the academic success of African American males in the Blount County Area. More specifically, the study was focused on the perception of the participants concerning noncognitive, demographic, and institutional variables associated with the academic success of African-American males. The participants for this study were attendees of four local churches: Mount Pleasant A.M.E. Zion, Rest Haven Missionary Baptist Church, St. John Missionary Baptist Church, and St. Paul A.M.E. Zion Church. Each of the four churches is located in Blount County, Tennessee. Participants were male and female adults of varied ages and ethnic classifications but were all familiar with the focus area. Research supported the suggestion that both cognitive and noncognitive variables contribute to the academic success of African American males in the Blount County Area. The data were collected and analyzed using a 27-question survey measured on a 5 point Likert scale. The last section of the survey instrument was composed of 3 open-ended questions. Seven research questions served as the bases for this study and the data were analyzed using a series of single-sample t tests. Results indicated that participants agreed that noncognitive, demographic, and institutional factors are contributors to the academic success of African American males in Blount County, Tennessee.

abstract: Given the profound influence that schools have on students’ genders and the existing scholarly research in the field of education studies which draws clear implications between practices of schooling and sanctioning and promoting particular gender subjectivities, often in alignment with traditional norms, I conduct a critical ethnography to examine the practices of gender in one eighth grade English language arts (ELA) classroom at an arts-missioned charter school. I do this to explore how ELA instruction at an arts charter school may provide opportunities for students to do gender differently. To guide this dissertation theoretically, I rely on the process philosophy of Erin Manning (2016, 2013, 2007) to examine the processual interactions among of student movement, choreography, materiality, research-creation, language, and art. Thus, methods for this study include field notes, student assignments, interviews and focus groups, student created art, maps, and architectural plans. In the analysis, I attempt to allow the data to live on their own, and I hope to give them voice to speak to the reader in a way that they spoke to me. Some of them speak through ethnodrama; some of them speak through autoethnography, visual art and cartography, and yet others through various transcriptions. Through these modes of analysis, I am thinking-doing-writing. The analysis also includes my thinking with fields – the fields of gender studies, qualitative inquiry, educational research, English education, and critical theory. In an attempt to take to the fields, I weave all of these through each other, through Manning and other theorists and through my ongoing perceptions of event-happenings and what it means to do qualitative research in education. Accordingly, this dissertation engages with the various fields to reconsider how school practices might conceive the ways in which they produce gender, and how students perceive gender within the school space. In this way, the dissertation provides ways of thinking that may unearth what was previously cast aside or uncover possibilities for what was previously unthought. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Educational Leadership and Policy Studies 2019

Thesis (M.A. (Education)) -- University of the North, 1987 / Refer to the document

This thesis studies the junior secondary EPA curriculum and the complex cultural process of teaching and learning of the curriculum. It draws on theoretical frameworks developed in the field of cultural studies and critical pedagogy, particularly works by Michel Foucault, Stuart Hall, Lawrence Grossberg and Paulo Freire. It investigates how the EPA curricular texts attempt to produce the identity characteristic of "rational, sensitive and active citizens" in contemporary Hong Kong through constructing differences that negate the Other. Through analyzing classroom discursive practices, the thesis examines how the curricular knowledge "interpellates" teachers into subject position to talk about the "rational, sensitive and active citizens". The curriculum is a vast textual world where different and even competing ideological imperatives and discourses coexist and circulate. This thesis argues that teachers' discourses about the EPA curriculum and their classroom discursive practices have contributed to the creation of tensions and contradictions within the curriculum discourse. Such tensions and contradictions, coming from teachers' beliefs and the cultural resources they possess, may delimit the regulatory effect of the curriculum discourse. As a result, the regulatory power of the curriculum discourse on "suturing" subject positions that form identities of "citizens" is subject to negotiation, and critical pedagogies have a role to play to open up dialogues among the subject positions made available in the curriculum.

This thesis tests the validity of three theories purporting to explain the attrition of stop outs -- why students interrupt their studies with the intent to return to school. Data were gathered at two schools, Portland State University and Reed College. Two theories, those of social class and involvement, were tested at each school as contending explanations of attrition by path analysis of parsimonious models derived by factor analysis. These theories were found to explain little of the variance of attendance pattern (less than 4.3 percent) at either school. No particular lines of causation could be demonstrated at either school. The third theory, that of career planning, asserts that students interrupt their studies to re-evaluate their course of action upon recognizing that chances of employment in their field are not good. This proposition was supported by the data at Portland State University.

Previous research has focused on the role concerted cultivation has played as a pathway to academic achievement and cognitive skill acquisition, but there has been little to no attention given to the potential role concerted cultivation plays as a pathway to non-cognitive factors that shape academic achievement in school. There is substantial evidence that non-cognitive factors significantly determine educational and economic mobility, but we know relatively little about the specific role that parenting style, and concerted cultivation in particular, plays in shaping non-cognitive factors. The work of Bourdieu provides a rationale to hypothesize that the pathway connecting concerted cultivation to academic achievement is mediated by non-cognitive factors. Overall, the results support the central hypothesis of the study positing that non-cognitive factors mediates the relationship between concerted cultivation and academic achievement. Each of the non-cognitive variables assessed, positive behavior, behavior problems, and mastery, significantly mediate the effect concerted cultivation domains have on academic achievement. Specifically, positive behavior significantly mediates the relationship between parental involvement and both reading score and high school GPA; behavior problems significantly mediates the relationship between parental involvement and reading score and language patterns and reading score, and parental involvement and high school GPA and language patterns and high school GPA; and mastery significantly mediates the relationship between parental involvement and reading score.