In the opening decades of the 21st Century, a movement towards parental choice in public schools has taken flight. One of the choices becoming more readily available to parents of young children is charter schools. Charter schools are expanding across the United States and Central Florida is representative of this growth. Parents are faced with more choices as they make decisions on their children's educational future than ever before making the availability of quality, accurate information about local schools paramount. While scholarly work on charter schools, the effects of media coverage on public opinion, and how parents make choices for their children exists, in many cases the research offers inconclusive results and rarely was there an attempt to connect all three. This paper, written from a parent's perspective, analyzes research, newspaper articles, interviews, and surveys of Central Florida's media outlets, public school representatives, and parents of young children to determine the types of information on charter schools available to parents of young children in Central Florida. The purpose of this thesis will be to investigate the information available to parents when considering a charter school for their young children by comparing the stated opinions of the local media, district school boards, and the charters themselves. It also identifies who is responsible for disseminating this information, and how the parents choose to gather and use this information.

<p>The present thesis examines the possible reasons social workers have for entering and eventually graduating from the Social Work Department in Iraklio, Greece. It is a three-phase study, consisting of three distinct but related research parts; each research part is built upon knowledge, issues and questions derived from the preceding part.</p><p>My background in sociology influenced the choice of theoretical perspectives; I was not interested in investigating students’ choice from a psychologically-based perspective. Bourdieu (e.g. 1977; 1987) and the work of others who have drawn on and developed his work (e.g. Hodkinson & Sparkes, 1997; Reay, 1998a) constituted a theoretical framework. In addition, theoretical perspectives which recognise the interplay between individual and structural factors (e.g. Kasimati, 1991) also proved useful. In this work both quantitative and qualitative approaches (grounded theory, narrative analysis) were employed.</p><p>The findings contradict views that stress the degree of free choice people have about work; it is clear that external structural factors limit or contribute to the shaping of this choice. This is not to say, however, that the findings stress the determining influence of solely external factors on students’ choice. Students in this thesis describe actively making decisions; they are players in the field of education. They enter the field with unequal amounts of capital (economic, cultural); thus, although in theory everyone is free to play, not everyone is equal. To the extent that they have different social backgrounds (gender, class), their classed-and-gendered habitus differs as well. In the process of students’ educational choice, their habitus along with the particular educational system (with all its opportunities and restrictions) influence students’ horizons for action, their perceptions of what is available and appropriate for them. The high value placed on higher education (educational fetishism) is another factor influencing students’ horizons for action. In the context of their horizons for action, students employ a variety of strategies in order to enter higher education (e.g. the way they prepare for the exams, their ranking of Schools in preference order etc). The outcome of these strategies is their admission to the Social Work Department, which may have been intended or unintended. After having entered Social Work, additional factors influence students’ educational choice; experiences within the School (e.g. practice tutorials) contribute to their attitude towards social work and their studies, thus to their decision to graduate from the Social Work Department. Students’ decision-making process is made up of patterns of routine experience interspersed with turning points.</p>

This thesis consists of four self-contained essays. The first essay concerns educational choice and the returns to college in Sweden. I apply a recently introduced econometric framework that allows for self selection and treatment effect heterogeneity. I also examine the influence of cognitive and noncognitive ability on college choice and the returns to college. Essays two through four concern different aspects of intergenerational income mobility. In the second essay, we study the impact on mobility estimates from heterogeneous income profiles and, more specifically, life-cycle bias. We use nearly career-long income measures for both fathers and sons to give a detailed account of this bias and assess recent methods to deal with it. In the third essay, we present a simple model of intergenerational transmission and use it to analyze the dynamic behavior of the intergenerational income elasticity following structural changes. We find that past structural frameworks, for example in the form of past policies or institutions, matter for current trends in mobility. The fourth essay provides a cross-country perspective on intergenerational income mobility. We construct comparable data sets for Sweden and the UK and account for country differences in the role of parental income for various productivity traits of children. Finally, we examine whether such differences can explain the country difference in intergenerational income mobility.

The present thesis examines the possible reasons social workers have for entering and eventually graduating from the Social Work Department in Iraklio, Greece. It is a three-phase study, consisting of three distinct but related research parts; each research part is built upon knowledge, issues and questions derived from the preceding part. My background in sociology influenced the choice of theoretical perspectives; I was not interested in investigating students’ choice from a psychologically-based perspective. Bourdieu (e.g. 1977; 1987) and the work of others who have drawn on and developed his work (e.g. Hodkinson &amp; Sparkes, 1997; Reay, 1998a) constituted a theoretical framework. In addition, theoretical perspectives which recognise the interplay between individual and structural factors (e.g. Kasimati, 1991) also proved useful. In this work both quantitative and qualitative approaches (grounded theory, narrative analysis) were employed. The findings contradict views that stress the degree of free choice people have about work; it is clear that external structural factors limit or contribute to the shaping of this choice. This is not to say, however, that the findings stress the determining influence of solely external factors on students’ choice. Students in this thesis describe actively making decisions; they are players in the field of education. They enter the field with unequal amounts of capital (economic, cultural); thus, although in theory everyone is free to play, not everyone is equal. To the extent that they have different social backgrounds (gender, class), their classed-and-gendered habitus differs as well. In the process of students’ educational choice, their habitus along with the particular educational system (with all its opportunities and restrictions) influence students’ horizons for action, their perceptions of what is available and appropriate for them. The high value placed on higher education (educational fetishism) is another factor influencing students’ horizons for action. In the context of their horizons for action, students employ a variety of strategies in order to enter higher education (e.g. the way they prepare for the exams, their ranking of Schools in preference order etc). The outcome of these strategies is their admission to the Social Work Department, which may have been intended or unintended. After having entered Social Work, additional factors influence students’ educational choice; experiences within the School (e.g. practice tutorials) contribute to their attitude towards social work and their studies, thus to their decision to graduate from the Social Work Department. Students’ decision-making process is made up of patterns of routine experience interspersed with turning points.

Studien undersökte förekomsten av brottsligt beteende hos ungdomar i allmänhet och hur sociala och personliga resurser kan fungera som skydds- eller riskfaktorer i synnerhet samt vilka skillnader som finns mellan flickor och pojkar. Undersökningen gjordes på 1324 ungdomar i årskurs nio genom projektet LoRDIA. Data analyserades med t-test, Spearman's korrelationsanalys och hierarkisk multipel regressionsanalys. Resultaten visade att den starkaste prediktorn för ungdomars brottsliga beteende var deras kamraters brottsliga beteende. Socialt välbefinnande visade sig vara en viktigare personlig resurs för flickorna när det handlade om att predicera brottsligt beteende. Psykologiskt välbefinnande var viktigare för pojkarna Överlag låg studiens resultat i linje med tidigare forskning. Avvikande resultat diskuterades. Undersökningen relaterades till möjlighetshorisonter och ungdomars uppfattning om vilka studie och yrkesval de stod inför. Slutligen föreslogs hur företag och branschorganisationer kan tänka och agera från studiens resultat. / The study examined the prevalence of criminal behavior among adolescents in general and how social and personal resources can act as protection or risk factors in particular and also what differences exist between girls and boys. The survey was conducted on 1324 youths in ninth grade through the LoRDIA project. Data was analyzed by t-test, Spearman's correlation analysis and hierarchical multiple regression analysis. The results showed that the strongest predictor of young people's criminal behavior was peer delinquency. Social well-being turned out to be an important personal resource for the girls when it was about predicting criminal behavior and psychological well-being was important for the boys. While overall the results were in line with previous research, some divergent results were also discussed. The study was related to horizons of opportunities and to young people's perception of the educational and career choices they faced. Finally ways for companies and organizations to think and act on the results of the study were suggested.