Doctor of Education (EdD) / Increasingly the Australian educational environment in which schools find themselves is one where schools are expected to achieve successes for their students and furthermore allow their successes or lack thereof to be compared with ‘transparency’ against the successes of other schools. The overriding principle expected from the politicians and society in general is one of providing parents with the best information possible on which they will be able to base their decision as to which school will be the best for their children. This notion is noble and honourable, one at which little criticism can be levelled. However, as researchers in the ‘Effective Schools’ and ‘Improving Schools’ research fields have discussed for decades, measuring the effectiveness of schools is not an easily achievable goal. It is far too easy to fall into the trap of using simplistic and narrow measures that supposedly allow easy comparisons. This study takes the view, as does most research to date, that univariable measures of school effectiveness are fatally flawed. The current trend in many western nations to simply compare the academic success of schools, however that might be measured, does little to measure the effectiveness of schools. What is most concerning is the growing trend of creating league tables of comparison and in some educational systems to use such tables to determine school funding. Equally disturbing is the amount of research that seeks to examine what students consider important in an effective school. There is a great deal of research on what characteristics parents, teachers, politicians and other key stakeholders consider an effective school to have but extraordinarily there is comparably very little research on what students consider important. This study seeks to somewhat address this inadequacy by measuring what students in their senior years of schooling in a single independent school in New South Wales, Australia perceive to be appropriate and useful measures of effective schooling. In so doing this research also examined if in the students’ minds their current school is effective and most significantly examines why students hold the views they have concerning effective schools. In order to achieve this aim, this study took a qualitative research approach to discover Student Perceptions of Effective Schooling. The theoretical orientation adopted was to both verify current theory of effective schooling as well as suggest possible developments, modifications and improvements to current theory in light of the students’ perceptions. As such both inductive and deductive analysis of the data took place. The data was collected using a range of methods from traditionally quantitative research tools, such as surveys, through to the qualitative research tool of focus groups. The results of this study demonstrated that while the current research has developed a good multivariable approach to measuring school effectiveness there were significant areas the students believed needed greater or lesser emphasis. The importance of technically good teachers, separate from the need for good and caring teachers, as well as the need for schools to be safe places were all important measures of effective schools. The ability of the school to engage students outside the classroom and provide a relevant and diverse academic curriculum was also considered essential for effective schooling.

Doctor of Education (EdD) / Increasingly the Australian educational environment in which schools find themselves is one where schools are expected to achieve successes for their students and furthermore allow their successes or lack thereof to be compared with ‘transparency’ against the successes of other schools. The overriding principle expected from the politicians and society in general is one of providing parents with the best information possible on which they will be able to base their decision as to which school will be the best for their children. This notion is noble and honourable, one at which little criticism can be levelled. However, as researchers in the ‘Effective Schools’ and ‘Improving Schools’ research fields have discussed for decades, measuring the effectiveness of schools is not an easily achievable goal. It is far too easy to fall into the trap of using simplistic and narrow measures that supposedly allow easy comparisons. This study takes the view, as does most research to date, that univariable measures of school effectiveness are fatally flawed. The current trend in many western nations to simply compare the academic success of schools, however that might be measured, does little to measure the effectiveness of schools. What is most concerning is the growing trend of creating league tables of comparison and in some educational systems to use such tables to determine school funding. Equally disturbing is the amount of research that seeks to examine what students consider important in an effective school. There is a great deal of research on what characteristics parents, teachers, politicians and other key stakeholders consider an effective school to have but extraordinarily there is comparably very little research on what students consider important. This study seeks to somewhat address this inadequacy by measuring what students in their senior years of schooling in a single independent school in New South Wales, Australia perceive to be appropriate and useful measures of effective schooling. In so doing this research also examined if in the students’ minds their current school is effective and most significantly examines why students hold the views they have concerning effective schools. In order to achieve this aim, this study took a qualitative research approach to discover Student Perceptions of Effective Schooling. The theoretical orientation adopted was to both verify current theory of effective schooling as well as suggest possible developments, modifications and improvements to current theory in light of the students’ perceptions. As such both inductive and deductive analysis of the data took place. The data was collected using a range of methods from traditionally quantitative research tools, such as surveys, through to the qualitative research tool of focus groups. The results of this study demonstrated that while the current research has developed a good multivariable approach to measuring school effectiveness there were significant areas the students believed needed greater or lesser emphasis. The importance of technically good teachers, separate from the need for good and caring teachers, as well as the need for schools to be safe places were all important measures of effective schools. The ability of the school to engage students outside the classroom and provide a relevant and diverse academic curriculum was also considered essential for effective schooling.

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by Yip Kam-wa. / Parallel title in Chinese characters. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1991. / Bibliography: leaf 64. / List of Figures --- p.iii / Acknowledgement --- p.vi / Abstract --- p.vii / Chapter 1. --- Introduction --- p.1 / Chapter 2. --- Effective-mass Approximation for Lattice-matched Heterostructures --- p.4 / Chapter 2.1 --- Introduction --- p.4 / Chapter 2.2 --- Formulation --- p.5 / Chapter 2.3 --- Model --- p.10 / Chapter 2.4 --- Exact Solution and Effective-mass Approximation for the Reflection Coefficient of 1-D Heterojunction --- p.15 / Chapter 2.5 --- Comparison --- p.20 / Chapter 2.6 --- Kinetic Energy Operator Ordering --- p.26 / Chapter 2.7 --- Conclusion --- p.30 / Chapter 3. --- Effective Hamiltonian for Semiconductor Heterostructures in a Uniform Magnetic Field --- p.33 / Chapter 3.1 --- Introduction --- p.33 / Chapter 3.2 --- Bloch Electron in a Uniform Magnetic Field --- p.34 / Chapter 3.3 --- Effective Hamiltonian for Heterostructures in a Uniform Magnetic Field --- p.40 / Chapter 3.4 --- Conclusion --- p.42 / Chapter 4. --- Effective-mass Approximation for a 1-D Strained Heterostructure --- p.43 / Chapter 4.1 --- Introduction --- p.43 / Chapter 4.2 --- Formulation --- p.44 / Chapter 4.3 --- Model --- p.50 / Chapter 4.4 --- Comparison --- p.54 / Chapter 4.5 --- Conclusion --- p.62 / Chapter 5. --- Conclusion --- p.63 / References --- p.64 / Appendix A --- p.65 / Appendix B --- p.67 / Appendix C --- p.68

The attacks on the World Trade Center in New York, the subway and bus bombings in London, and the suicide bombings in Casablanca are only a few of the examples in which in recent years, terrorists have opted to attack multiple targets at once. Often, their strong determination to attack makes it impossible to completely deter terrorists from attacking altogether, and instead, counterterrorist units must consider how to defend targets effectively to minimize damages. We attempt to model a version of this scenario by presenting a two target sequential game where two players try to attack and defend the targets respectively. The probability of successfully destroying a target is a function of resource allocations from both players, who are also subject to budget constraints. We attempt to find the defender’s strategy that will minimize expected damages by first exploring the attacker’s optimal strategy. We show that the attacker’s decision to attack only one or both targets is dependent on the size of the attacker’s allowed budget relative to other game parameters, and use that information to evaluate the defender’s strategy. We also numerically determine the optimal defender security investment, as well its sensitivity to other game parameters. We conjecture that as the damage and expected reward at a target increases, the defender’s allocation towards that target tends to increase, while an increase in the punishment results in the opposite effect. Such conjectures allow for the creation of a flexible defense policy in the more applicable bigger picture.

Wireless systems of today face the dual challenge of both supporting large traffic flows and providing reliable quality of service to different delay-sensitive applications. For such applications, it is essential to derive meaningful performance measures such as queue-length distribution and packet loss probability, while providing service guarantees. The concepts of effective bandwidth and effective capacity offer a powerful cross-layer approach that provides suitable performance metrics for the bandwidth and capacity of wireless channels supporting delay-sensitive traffic. Many wireless systems rely on multihop forwarding to reach destinations outside the direct range of the source. This work extends part of the methodology available for the design of wireless systems to the multihop paradigm. It describes the analysis of a communication system with two hops using this cross-layer approach. A framework is developed to study the interplay between the allocation of physical resources across the wireless hops and overall service quality as defined by a queueing criterion based on large deviations. Decoupling techniques introduce simple ways of analyzing the queues independently. Numerical analysis helps identify fundamental performance limits for Rayleigh block fading wireless channel models with independent and identically distributed blocks. Simulation studies present comparable results akin to that obtained using the analytical framework. These results suggest that it is imperative to account for queueing aspects while analyzing delay-sensitive wireless communication systems.

In this thesis, two-dimensional floating structure consists of single rectangular impermeable pontoon and single cable is studied.The purpose of this study is to obtain the motion analysis of incident waves acting on a floating with cable-restrained. All boundary conditions are linearlized in the problem which is separated into a scattering problem and radiation problem with unit motion amplitude. The method of separation of variable is used to solve for velocity potentials. Divide two kinds of discussions in cable-restrained¡G1¡BWith sag effective and flexural rigidity. 2¡BNO sag effective and no flexural rigidity. The boundary value problem with nonhomogeneous boundary condition beneath the structure is solved by using a solution procedure proposed by Lee(1995). By combining the scattering solution, radiation solutions of three degrees of freedom, and equations of motion of the floating structure, an analytic solution for the problem is developed.

Thesis (M.S.)--West Virginia University, 2002. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains vii, 25 p. : ill. Vita. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 21-22).