The study aims to determine the effect of parental involvement on the reading literacy abilities of Grade 4 learners. Literacy is a fundamental skill needed to successfully function in a country’s economy, as well as broader society. The acquisition of literacy is a complex and difficult process, where several factors can have an effect. One of the most important factors in the acquisition of literacy, is parental involvement. Many initiatives have been launched in South Africa to get parents involved in their child’s acquisition of literacy, such as the Family Literacy Project and Nal’ibali. Both of these initiatives aim to improve learners’ literacy through parental involvement. In order to determine the effect of parental involvement on the reading literacy abilities learners, this study focused on selected variables from the PreProgress in International Reading Literacy Study (prePIRLS) 2011, notably from the parental responses and Grade 4 learners reading literacy achievement results. This study took the form of a secondary data analysis while specifically using descriptive and multiple regression techniques to measure the effect of parental involvement and the parental level of education on learner reading achievement. The conceptual framework of the study consists of parental involvement and the parental level of education which might have an effect on the reading literacy ability of Grade 4 learners. The study adapted Epstein’s six types of parental involvement (1992, 1994), as well as Myrberg and Rosén’s (2008) path model of direct and indirect influences of parental education on learners’ reading achievement. This study found that higher levels of parental education, as well as higher levels of parental involvement can be associated with higher reading literacy achievement results. Therefore parental involvement is of great importance in children’s development of reading literacy skills. / Dissertation (MEd)--University of Pretoria, 2017. / Science, Mathematics and Technology Education / Centre for Evaluation & Assessment (CEA) / MEd / Unrestricted

Higher education institutions are tasked with providing opportunities in and out of the classroom that provide students opportunities for a successful college experience. First year student expectations of the college experience initially influence selection of academic and social activities. Unmet or unrealistic expectations may lead to poor academic outcomes, stunted social development, and attrition. This study focused on traditional first year students at the onset of their college career. Through selection of anticipated field of major study, GPA, and extracurricular activities, students initially identify potential academic activities and potential social activities. This study provided quantitative data in an effort to identify possible relationships between and among those intentions. Student selection of major field of study may drive academic progress and influence selection of social activities. This study used the College Student Expectations Questionnaire (CSXQ) responses of 3272 first time in college (FTIC) students who attended a large public university in the southeast during the fall 2012 semester. Results, conclusions, significance, and implications of the work to the discipline are reported here.

The yellowhammer (Emberiza citrinella) is a common bird of open areas whose song exhibits easily distinguishable dialects. The dialects are tied to the final part of its song. Some, especially older publications claim that yellowhammer's dialects can be divided into two broad groups with predominantly Eastern and Western European distribution, with a borderline intersecting Central Europe. Until recently, yellowhammer dialects have only been thoroughly researched in Denmark and in some parts of Germany. In the Czech Republic, a detailed study was carried on in connection with the"Bird of the Year"campaign, during which the general public was involved in collecting song recordings at various localities. Thanks toa project called "Czech Yellowhammers Dialect", more than 2600 recordings from throughout the Czech Republic were collected within three years. The recorded songs were then classified into one of the seven traditionally acknowledged groups; some new, not yet documented ones were also discovered. The distribution of the dialects generated a dialect mosaic with a clearly established borderline between individual dialects. Mixed singers were found along the borderlines. A borderline between two dialect groups, crosscutting Western Bohemia, was also found. It was proved once again that for a success of...

Youth mentoring has become a popular program model promoting positive youth development and outpacing available research to guide all the programmatic growth. The systemic model of mentoring (Keller, 2005) expands the traditional mentor-youth dyadic focus of program development and evaluation, taking into account other important contextual and influencing factors including the role of parents, program staff and the larger agency. However, there remains an absence of literature that examines what is known about parental involvement and the role parents play in their child's formal mentoring relationship. This study explores the nature of parental involvement in formal community-based youth mentoring relationships. An analysis was conducted of in-depth qualitative interviews collected at multiple data points from parents and mentors of 30 mentoring matches, selected from a larger longitudinal study of youth mentoring relationships, and one-time in-depth interviews with 12 staff members from the agencies supervising the mentoring matches conducted for the purposes of this study (a total of 162 transcripts). Thematic coding and narrative summaries were utilized to develop themes that were compared within and across cases. This analysis yielded three main findings regarding the nature of parental involvement in mentoring relationships and the beliefs surrounding it, namely 1) the presence of distinct assumptions and expectations held by participants regarding parents and their involvement in mentoring relationships, 2) the identification by participants of five parental roles that were both expected of and actually performed by parents in their child's mentoring relationship, and 3) the identification of three types of parent-mentor interactions, which contributed to the characterization of parent-mentor relationships based on a level of communication and a degree of closeness. These study findings bring the perspectives of parents to the forefront in the examination of parental involvement in mentoring, a topic that is only beginning to gain greater attention within mentoring literature and research. Together these findings suggest that programs may be missing opportunities to tap into an important yet undervalued resource of parents, in supporting and strengthening the youth-mentor relationship.

The majority of research about parent involvement and family engagement indicates a positive relationship between parent involvement and student achievement. However, parent involvement as a useful strategy in education in developing countries is not well known, let alone researched. Until the current study no research has been published specifically about the types and frequency of family engagement in Tonga. This means there is no frame of reference for teachers, administrators and parents in Tonga to evaluate the applicability of existing family engagement research which has been predominantly conducted in developed countries, to schools in Tonga. This research is a descriptive, exploratory study to understand parent involvement in Tonga from the perspective of Tongan parents and teachers. The guiding framework was developed by Hoover-Dempsey and Sandler (1995) who identified three key constructs that influence parents' decisions for involvement -- parent motivational beliefs, invitations to be involved, and life context variables. Quantitative and qualitative methods were used to gather and analyze data that were gathered from teachers (n=88) and parents (n=503) during focus groups and surveys at four schools that are owned and operated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Tonga. The overarching desire was to understand why parents make the choices they do about the types and frequency of their involvement. Factor analysis and reliability tests supported the use of the selected survey instruments in this study. Some findings were similar to those found in research in developed countries including the way Tongan parents and teachers defined what parent involvement is. Further research could identify parent involvement behaviors that are particularly relevant in Tonga which improve student achievement Although the schools involved in this study are English speaking schools, language did not appear to be a strong barrier or enabler for parent involvement. However, a strong culture of respect and duty was repeatedly mentioned as potentially inhibiting parent involvement. Invitations appear to play a significant positive role in promoting parent involvement and may help mitigate parents' reluctance to participate. Encouraging and training teachers to extend effective invitations to parents which include specific suggestions for involvement may help increase the frequency of parent involvement.

A FAREWELL TO ARMS: NON-MILITARISATION AND THE PARADOX OF MILITARY INSECURITY Nathan James Frank Williams Abstract A small number of scholars and political leaders have praised the economic and social benefits of 'non-militarisation' - the policy of possessing no national armed forces. While 26 states currently practice this policy, the security implications of non-militarisation have, until now, largely escaped critical assessment. However, it is this very question of security in the absence of a military which is perhaps the decisive issue for any state considering non- militarisation. Barbey's (2015b) study suggests that, since World War II, non-militarised states have been immune to interstate war. However, since World War II, intrastate war has proven to be both the more frequent and destructive form of warfare. Using a mixed-methods approach this dissertation seeks to quantify and explain the causal effect of non-militarisation on intrastate conflict. It begins by testing the hypothesis that non-militarised states suffer less years of intrastate war than states with a military, using cross-sectional logit analysis on all country-years between 1989-2008. It consistently finds a sizable negative relationship, suggesting that in a given year the probability of intrastate war occurring in a...

A community-based interdisciplinary health professions education project, involving the Colleges of Medicine, Nursing and Public and Allied Health, was implemented at the undergraduate level at East Tennessee State University from 1990 to the present. The outcomes of this project and the extension of the project into graduate health profession programs are described. Committed leadership, effective communication, and genuine community involvement are identified as essential to the success of community-based, interdisciplinary health professions training programs.

Factors influencing tourist behavior have been a focal point in tourism research for decades. Efforts to unveil the determinants that shape travel behavior stem not only from pure academic interest, but from practical business considerations (Pizam & Mansfeld, 1999). Destination personality, self-concept, and congruence between self-concept and destination personality (SC-DP congruence) are among the factors that are believed to influence tourist behavior. However, little research has been undertaken to understand the impact of these factors on tourist behavior. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects destination personality, self-concept and SC-DP congruence on tourist behavior. A theoretical model that attempts to investigate the influence of destination personality, self-concept, and SC-DP congruence on tourist behavior was developed and tested empirically. Specifically, the model proposed that tourist behavior is affected by destination personality, self-concept, and SC-DP congruence. Particularly, self-concept consists of four aspects, including actual self-concept, ideal self-concept, social self-concept, and ideal social self-concept; hence SC-DP congruence also includes fours such facets. Furthermore, tourist involvement is examined to see whether it would moderate the relationship between SC-DP congruence and tourist behavior. Data were collected using an online panel survey in December 2008. A total of 663 usable responses were obtained. Pearson correlation, structural equation modeling (SEM), and hierarchical multiple regression analyses were performed to test the hypotheses. For the SEM analysis, the sample was randomly split into two groups. One was used to test the model and the other was used for model validation. The findings suggested significant influences of destination personality, self-concept, and SC-DP congruence on tourist behavior. Findings of this study also showed that there are significant and positive relationships between destination personality and self-concept. However, tourist involvement was found to have no moderating effect on the relationship between SC-DP congruence and tourist behavior. The study also provided managerial implications for destination marketers based on the research results. / Ph. D.

Sleep and cortisol function are two physiological self-regulatory processes that codevelop during infancy. Dysregulation of each system is linked to enduring health problems, so it is critical to understand factors contributing to the development of physiological self-regulation. However, it is not clear how infant sleep and cortisol interact with each other or with the parenting context. This project examined (1) the interplay of infant sleep and cortisol; (2) how cortisol interacts with parent characteristics in relation to infant sleep; and (3) whether consistent parenting buffers infant cortisol dysregulation. Study 1 (86 parent-infant dyads) investigated whether average nighttime sleep onset and duration predicted cumulative cortisol exposure, indexed by hair cortisol concentration (HCC). As hypothesized, infants who fell asleep earlier at night had lower HCC regardless of their family income and household chaos. Additionally, I expected that sleep characteristics on one night would predict total salivary cortisol exposure (AUCg) the next day, and that salivary cortisol at bedtime would predict sleep the same night. Partially supporting expectations, time-based analyses revealed that infants with lower cortisol on a particular evening fell asleep earlier the same night. In Study 2 (84 parent-infant dyads), I hypothesized that the link between parent characteristics (i.e., bedtime parental involvement and parental sensitivity) and infant sleep would differ by AUCg. Falling asleep independently predicted earlier sleep onset only for infants with dysregulated cortisol, whereas bedtime parental involvement did not predict sleep for infants with well-regulated cortisol. Infants with emotionally warm and appropriately responsive parents fell asleep earlier at night only if their cortisol was well-regulated. Utilizing archival data of 82 mother-infant dyads, Study 3 assessed consistency in parenting behaviors (i.e., smiles and laughter, and positive vocalizations), cortisol, and socioeconomic status (SES). As hypothesized, higher-SES infants experienced consistency, whereas lower-SES infants experienced inconsistency, in maternal smiles and laughter across 6 to 12 months of infancy. Contrary to expectations, inconsistent parenting did not predict cortisol. Findings highlight the intricate relation between two vital physiological processes codeveloping in the first year of life – sleep and cortisol regulation – and the role cortisol plays in moderating how parenting characteristics contribute to infant sleep.

This study examines the nature and outcomes of the professional commitment of actuaries. The affective and continuance levels of professional commitment among actuaries are high. Overall, actuaries are more committed to their profession than to their employing organisations. Actuaries who have a high affective commitment to their profession and/or professional association are likely to have become involved in their profession recently and intend to remain in the profession for the foreseeable future. The overall professional-organisational conflict level for actuaries is very low. The outcomes of an increased professional organisational conflict are seen in an increased intention to leave the profession and/or professional association. Findings of this study have implications for the actuarial profession, employers of actuaries and the actuarial professional associations.