D.Ed

Ethnocentrism is a cognitive bias whereby people and practices of other cultures are viewed and judged according to what is right and wrong in one's own cultural group. Social studies teachers, when teaching about peoples and cultures, implicitly, if not explicitly, try to prevent the development of an ethnocentric attitude in their students. The purpose of this study was to develop a valid and reliable ethnocentrism scale for use by social studies teachers to gain feedback of how a particular unit of study effected their students. The scale can be used as a pre-post test measure before and after a course or unit of study. The known California E-scale, British Ethnocentrism Scale, and Australian Ethnocentrism Scale became the models for the construction of this scale. The developed ethno-centrism scale is a 30 item Likert summated rating scale using six response steps ranging from "agree very much" to "disagree very much". To insure content validity, test items were based on interviews with members of several minority groups in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia to gather information about practices and customs particular to their culture. The whole study was conducted using grade eight and nine students from four junior high schools in one Lower Mainland School District. The pool of test items were administered to approximately 550 subjects to gain data for item and factor analysis. Two ethnocentrism scales were constructed using items with high reliability rankings. The two forms were administered to groups of students to establish whether the forms were statistically parallel. The forms were not statistically parallel. One form using items with high item reliability rankings was constructed. An intervention study was conducted to check for construct validity. Eight social studies classes in one school were divided into experimental and control groups. The experimental classes were exposed to a three day lesson on ethnocentrism. The developed scale was used as a posttest measure. A significant difference between the two groups was reported. The experimental group means were significantly lower (p < .05), less ethnocentric, than control group means. Finally, the scale was administered to 215 students to gather data for test-retest reliability. At this stage the students were also administered a dogmatism scale and a self concept scale to check for concurrent and construct validity. Test-retest coefficent was high (p = .83) and the Hoyt reliability coefficent for test consistency was high for all administrations of the form ranging from .87 to .94. Recommendations for use of the developed ethnocentrism scale and areas for future research were based on the findings. / Education, Faculty of / Educational Studies (EDST), Department of / Graduate

This study investigates the effect on high school students' attitude toward school, on their academic achievement, on their attendance, and on their participation in extracurricular activities when they have been forced to transfer schools because of changes in school attendance zones. Four hundred four randomly selected high school students from four groups were surveyed in four of Virginia Beach's seven high schools. These four groups were divided as follows: Group I Students who were forced to transfer schools Group II Students who elected to choose junior/senior option in order to remain in their 1982-83 schools Group III Students who were not affected by the attendance zone changes and remained in their 1982-83 schools Group IV Students who transferred into Virginia Beach City Schools from outside the city To determine the effect on attitude, the students were administered an Attitude Toward School Survey. An analysis of variance between the mean scores of the four groups was utilized to determine significant differences among the groups. An Extracurricular Activities Participation Questionnaire was administered to students and an attendance and grade point average worksheet was completed by school personnel to measure the other effects. The results from these instruments were analyzed by the analysis of covariance procedure in order to determine significant differences. In those instances where significant differences were found, the means of the groups were further analyzed by a multiple range test. Results indicated that no significant differences in student academic achievement, attendance, or participation in extracurricular activities were found among the four groups. There were significant differences, however, in attitude toward school among the various groups. The differences in this area resulted in those groups of students who were forced to transfer schools, either from within or from outside of Virginia Beach, having a less positive attitude toward school than those groups of students who chose the junior/senior option plan or who were not affected by the attendance zone changes. / Doctor of Education

No description available.

The purpose of the present study was to find out which of the two types of attributes of the marketing education program (at the high school level), tangible or symbolic, have the greatest influence on student interest in enrolling in the program. The findings will help program planners to develop appealing and workable promotional campaigns. In addition, the results of this study will also assist in modifying existing aspects of the program that will facilitate in attracting and retaining appropriate students. The methodology involved the usage of two models, the ideal social self-image congruence model and the Bass-Talarzyk attitude model. The first model was used to measure ideal social self-image (the symbolic attributes), where the second one measured the belief/importance variables (the tangible attributes). The instrument used was a questionnaire which was mailed to equal numbers of marketing education students and non-marketing education students in Virginia. A preliminary study was also conducted in which two focus group interviews took place utilizing thirty high school students at two local high schools. The students were asked to respond to questions regarding the tangible and symbolic attributes of the marketing education program at their schools. Multiple regression procedures were used to analyze the data. The findings showed that students are influenced more by the tangible attributes and to a lesser, but significant degree, by the symbolic attributes of the program in relation to their attitudes toward the marketing education program. The non-marketing students were influenced significantly by the symbolic attributes of the program, where as the marketing students were not. It is recommended that an effective promotional campaign be designed which will emphasize the important tangible and symbolic attributes of the program that were found in this study. In addition, the "college-preparation" attribute of the program should be emphasized in the campaign. The promotional campaign should be aimed at the students, teachers, parents, and counselors. Also, the important program attributes found in the study should be used to redesign some aspects of the program, in order to achieve higher program quality. / Ed. D.

丘海雄. / Thesis (M.A.)--香港中文大學, 1987. / Reprint of manuscript. / Qiu Haixiong. / Thesis (M.A.)--Xianggang Zhong wen da xue, 1987. / 導論 --- p.1 / Chapter 第一章 --- 研究的問題 --- p.8 / Chapter 第二章 --- 理論與假設 / Chapter 第一節 --- 理論回顧 --- p.14 / Chapter 第二節 --- 變項與假設 --- p.21 / Chapter 第三章 --- 研究的方法 / Chapter 第一節 --- 自陳法 --- p.55 / Chapter 第二節 --- 樣本與資料收集過程 --- p.59 / Chapter 第三節 --- 概念的操作化和量度 --- p.63 / Chapter 第四章 --- 研究結果與分析 / Chapter 第一節 --- 兩變項分析 --- p.75 / Chapter 第二節 --- 多變項分析 --- p.79 / Chapter 第三節 --- 男女兩個群體的比較 --- p.98 / Chapter 第五章 --- 結論 / Chapter 第一節 --- 研究結果 --- p.107 / Chapter 第二節 --- 局限性 --- p.112 / Chapter 第三節 --- 討論與建設 --- p.114 / 注釋 --- p.117 / 中文參考資料 --- p.1 / 英文參考資料 --- p.1

The focus of the study was to explore to what degree culturally sensitive HIV/AIDS curriculum and materials were perceived as important by African-American students. Students selected for the research (N=121) were from a high school in San Bernardino, California, an area that represents a multiethnic population. Frequency descriptions and bivariate corrrelations were conducted to analyze the data. Trends found in this study indicated African-Americans did not perceive cultural sensitivity as an important aspect of HIV/AIDS education, and correlations between the Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure (MEIM) score of African-Americans and their perceptions of the need for culturally sensitive HIV/AIDS education materials were non-significant. Outcomes of this study suggest a more defined meaning of "cultural sensitivity" and "culturally sensitive" materials as it pertains to HIV/AIDS education.

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)

This investigation attempted to answer the following research questions, based upon student participation in "hands on" television production activities: (1) What shifts in the students' perceived acceptance of themselves occurred, (2) what shifts in the students' perceived acceptance of others occurred, and (3) what shifts in the students' perceived acceptance of school occurred? In seeking answers to the above three questions, the investigator located seven volunteers from a high school dropout retrieval program. As it developed, all of them were of Mexican American heritage. This investigation was based upon a theoretical framework drawn from perceptual psychology, education, and television. The framework consisted of television as a perceptual experience tending to effect acceptance of self, others, and school. A small n research design with multiple measures was used during this investigation. Data were collected with a student self-report measure using a modified Likert-type response mode. Qualitative data were collected from student interviews and investigator observations recorded as fieldnotes. The research results indicated no significant patterns in acceptance of self and others as a group. The qualitative data revealed the variety of individual shifts in acceptance of self, others and school. Certain unanticipated results occurred because the participants were Mexican American. These included cultural-related observations. The data indicated that "hands on" television production activities involve "learning in context" processes which might have important implications for dropout retrieval programs. The investigator recommended further "learning in context" TV or video studies with multicultural groups of students.

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.