The problem of this study was to identify relationships which might exist between variables measuring alienation feelings in high school students and variables measuring attitudes exhibited by those students toward the school environment. Mackey's Adolescent Alienation Scale was used to obtain student scores on three dimensions of alienation—Personal Incapacity, Cultural Estrangement, and Guidelessness. The Minnesota School Attitude Survey (MSAS) was used to obtain scores on attitudes toward factors in the school environment: School Curriculum, Self at School, Others at School, Support Received at School, Pressure at School, and Personal Development at School. Pearson Product moment correlations were computed for each dimension of alienation and the attitude clusters. Correlations were computed for each of nine statistical subgroups which comprised the sample group of 294 students— ninth-, tenth-, eleventh-, and twelfth-grade subgroups, male and female subgroups, and Anglo, Black, and Hispanic subgroups. Students in the population for the study were enrolled in a traditionally-organized, comprehensive curriculum, racially-integrated urban high school in a large-city public school district. Findings revealed that the single most influential environmental factor related to student alienation in this study was a feeling of pressure in the school setting. Pressure was related directly both to feelings of Personal Incapacity and to feelings of Guidelessness. Also, the greater students' feelings of Personal Incapacity, the less pleasant (more unpleasant) they felt their experiences were with the curriculum, themselves, and others at school. Alienation in the sense of Cultural Estrangement was related strongly and inversely to personal growth and development experiences at school. Feelings of Guidelessness were associated inversely with both students' attitudes of pleasantness/unpleasantness and their attitudes of importance/unimportance toward the school curriculum, themselves, and others at school. It is recommended that studies be conducted to determine specific learning activities, school experiences, and organizational processes which can reduce effectively students' feelings of alienation in the school setting.

謝淸美. / 複印本. / Thesis (M.A.)--香港中文大學. / Fu yin ben. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 48-54). / Xie Qingmei. / Thesis (M.A.)--Xianggang Zhong wen da xue.

The small Gulf nation of Qatar, despite its vast oil and gas wealth, suffers from a lack of human capital, particularly with respect to deficits in academic outcomes. Despite extensive investment in education, Qataris, and in particular Qatari boys, are still underperforming relative to international standards and relative to its wealth. In this dissertation I explored political, economic, and sociological approaches to investigate factors contributing to the underperformance of male Qatari students. Specifically, I have examined how male Qatari high school students internalize social values and economic and political policies as “signals” that inform and are reflected in their attitudes towards education and learning. I have hypothesized that Qatari male students who perceive the economic entitlement signals, and who perceive wasta (social status) as a venue of success, and who lack civic engagement, will do worse academically. My research focused on Qatari males attending public high schools in Qatar, which are operated by the Ministry of Education, and examined their performance on national standardized tests. To investigate my research question, I conducted a quantitative study using an original survey instrument. The target population included a representative sample of Qatari high school students who were in grades 10, 11, and 12 in the public schools in Qatar. My analysis of the data found mixed results in which economic signals appear to be strongly associated with male academic performance. Furthermore, Qatari high school boys’ perceptions of the value of wasta was correlated with their achievement on test scores. Surprisingly, Qatari high school boys’ perceptions of civic engagement did not appear to associate with Qatari males’ academic underperformance.

Abstract not available

The purpose of this qualitative study was to determine from the treated students' perspective what teacher behaviors facilitate recovery and what teacher behaviors inhibit recovery. Study participants included 16 high school students who had completed treatment for alcohol and drug dependency in grades 9-12, and 112 teachers. Students and teachers were interviewed to better explain the phenomenon from their perspectives. Data gathered from student interviews, student journal recordings, observer notes, and teacher interviews were used as corroborating data. The constant comparative method was used to analyze data (Glaser & Strauss, 1967).Five major themes emerged from the data analysis explaining the effects of teacher behavior on students who had completed treatment for drug and alcohol dependency. The data were segmented into themes using a bi-polar structure. These themes were: (1) student performance; (2) student communication; (3) student relations: security; (4) student: affective; and, (5) authority: student behavior. These themes yielded student identified causal conditions, intervening conditions, and action/reaction strategies that either inhibited or facilitated recovery.The data showed students did not have neutral feelings; they had either negative or positive feelings about their personal interactions with teachers or their observations of teachers' interaction with other teachers and/or other students. Teacher behaviors which resulted in negative student behavior consequences in each of the five major theme categories were not helpful to students and inhibited their recovery. Teacher behaviors which resulted in positive student behavior consequences in each of the five major theme categories helped students and facilitated their recovery.

No description available.

The purpose of this study was three-fold: to measure the ability of the Medical Explorers case-based curriculum to improve higher order thinking skills; to evaluate the impact of the Medical Explorers case-based curriculum to help students be self directed learners; and to investigate the impact of the Medical Explorers case-based curriculum to improve student attitudes of the life sciences. The target population for this study was secondary students enrolled in advanced life science programs. The resulting sample (n = 71) consisted of 36 students in the case-based experimental group and 35 students in the control group. Furthermore, this study employed an experimental, pretest-posttest control group research design. The treatment consisted of two instructional strategies: case-based learning and teacher-guided learning. Analysis of covariance indicated no treatment effect on critical thinking ability or Motivation and Self-regulation of Learning. However, the Medical Explorers case-based curriculum did show a treatment effect on student attitudes toward the life sciences. These results seem to indicate that case-based curriculum has a positive impact on students’ perspectives and attitudes about the study of life science as well as their interest in life science based careers. Such outcomes are also a good indicator that students enjoy and perceive the value to use of case studies in science, and because they see value in the work that they do they open up their minds to true learning and integration. Of additional interest was the observation that on average eleventh graders showed consistently stronger gains in critical thinking, motivation and self-regulation of learning strategies, and attitudes toward the life sciences as compared to twelfth grade students. In fact, twelfth grade students showed a pre to post loss on the Watson-Glaser and the MSLQ scores while eleventh grade students showed positive gains on each of these instruments. This decline in twelfth grade performance is an endemic indicator of underlying problems that exists in this transitional year of education and supports the need to strengthen the transitional connections between high schools and institutions of higher learning. / Department of Biology

This study emerged from a desire to put to an end the crisis mentality surrounding the status of History as a subject in the secondary school. There appears to be consensus amongst didactitions and practitioners of the subject that the present malaise from which History teaching suffers derives from a number of complex sources. The study, however, takes as its point of departure the problem of the content orientated (product) syllabus which over-emphasises the acquisition of factual information and neglects the conceptual understanding (process) of the subject. Experience is providing the futility of teaching only content (information) to the modern adolescent. Therefore in order to resolve the problem the study focuses, inter alia, on concepts, structures and syllabuses. It is concluded that all subjects are based on conceptual structures which, in turn, have a direct bearing on the authentic education of pupils in general and conceptualization in particular. It is suggested, therefore, that historical content (product) can only have formative value if it is harnessed to facilitate conceptualization (process). Towards this end a History syllabus which embraces both the product and process approaches is advocated for implementation. In essence this means that the content of History is organised around concepts, that is, relevant concepts are chosen as themes around which the syllabus content is structured. Such an approach, it is believed, would not only help to develop universally valid generalizations but also facilitate the conceptualization process necessary for obtaining historical insight. A model, with examples, is presented as a suggestion for implementation in the classroom. Altenative proposals are also mentioned. If historical conceptualization is to be effevively realised in the classroom, then it becomes necessary to obtain a perspective on the learning-psychological processes involved in conceptualization. In this regard, specific theoris are highlighted to guide the History teacher in the classroom. Ti is finally hoped that the new approach suggested would assist teachers, at least to some extent, to resolve the problem of conceptualization in History teaching and thereby help to store the subject to its original position of respect in the school curriculum / Curriculum and Instructional Studies / D.Ed. (Didactics)

No description available.

Comics, graphic novels, and manga differ appreciably from textual narrative formats, and materials with increasingly visual elements have found their way into progressive and student-centered library collections. But many educators and librarians still resist inclusion of graphic narratives in school libraries and devalue the reading practice of students who prefer more visual texts. Using the framework of radical change, which posits that both text conventions and reader expectations for text are increasingly multimodal as they possess characteristics of evolving digital media, this study considered the relationship of the characteristics of text individual students prefer, particularly those they select from the school library, and their attitudes towards aspects of reading practice as evidenced through the Adolescent Motivation to Read Profile instrument. Survey data was supplemented with circulation history from the library management system to inform a correlational study punctuating attitudinal differences based on reader preferences. Findings include high school students who engage with graphic narrative text formats reporting more favorable views of libraries and reading. There is a demonstrable distinction in attitudes between students who prefer more visual text when compared with peers with more traditional print affinities. Student engaging with graphic narrative texts also report more frequent engagement with text overall. These demonstrated relationships should help to legitimize the inclusion of more graphic narrative text formats in school library collections.