D.Ed.

This thesis is a record of two research strands that have been intertwined during the development over a four year period of a classroom curriculum for an elective Geology 12 course in a new school. It discusses traditional belief systems identified as common to the practice of senior science and how one teacher wanted to challenge those beliefs to produce a working curriculum that would focus on long term learning within the framework of an externally prescribed curriculum and a provincially mandated external final exam that counted for 40% of the students mark. The teacher, working on her own in a portable for the first two years was in the unenviable position of being supplied with textbooks with a foreign focus and with supplies that as the title suggests were of little use over the long term. By Christmas of the first year a number of major problems had been identified, these problems falling into two major categories - developing strategies for long term learning that, within the operational constraints of grade 12, would enable the students to take far more responsibility for their own learning, and second, developing a science research programme for acquiring the resources, principally through field work, that were identified as being necessary for the programme. The major concerns within these two problem areas were identified and a four year timeline was developed for implementation. On the pedagogical side, after examining some of the literature on learning, particularly that around the area of cooperative learning that has had a substantial focus in recent years in a number of local school districts, reflecting on what worked for me in terms of my practice over 27 years of science teaching, I chose to focus on the Project for Enhancing Effective Learning (PEEL), out of Monash University, Australia as my working framework for learning. The process of developing this classroom curriculum was framed as a qualitative individual action research project over time as, within my professional life, there were no other teachers involved with the geology programme within the school, and at the same time being in a portable isolated me from my peers-l had no choice but to be self contained and self reliant. The pedagogical side of the process saw the evolvement of a programme that differed significantly in many ways from traditional senior science teaching. This is not to say that many teachers are not already reflecting on and trying to improve practice but for most of them it is through quiet reflection, discourse and evolution much as it had been for me until this time. For me this was the first time in my career that I was able to develop a programme from the very beginning. The thesis details the development of a multi-level learning strategy with an underlying theme being the development of more metacognitive students. The programme entails the identification of prior learning, reflective and collaborative practice, multiple processings of content and skills, peer assessment, and semi-formal reflective assessment. For many students, particularly during my first two years, most of these strategies were completely foreign to their cultural expectations of the teacher's role as dispenser of information to be regurgitated back through formal assessment. During the last two years these challenges to student thinking have been far less dramatic as I am now a known quantity in the school and the students taking my course expect to be working at becoming more independent long term learners. The programme is also built on the premise that for geology, relevant hands-on activities are an integral part of the learning process, and this other research strand is also explored and described. This is the story of the two research strands by which a semi-independent multi-level learning environment has been developed and implemented with a high degree of hands-on activities. Although a formal assessment of the programme is almost impossible to do within the constraints of my working environment, the personal feedback that I receive from the students, parents and colleagues indicates that it has been successful. / Education, Faculty of / Curriculum and Pedagogy (EDCP), Department of / Graduate

No description available.

The growth of Independent Study divisions of the state-supported educational institutions of the area covered by the states of Utah, Nevada, Idaho and Wyoming, and the increasing demands for the establishment of new curricular offerings, coupled with these states' limited financial resources, make the exploration of possible cooperative offerings a rather crucial necessity. The purpose of this study was to develop and appraise the climate for developing a consortium of the Independent Study divisions of Utah State University, University of Utah, University of Nevada, University of Idaho, and University of Wyoming. A systematic sequence of approach for accomplishing the stated objectives was developed and prospective problems faced in the implementation of the proposed model were identified. The possibilities of developing the above mentioned consortium were explored through the following sequential approach: Step 1. Conduct a review of related literature, with special emphasis on the processes involved in the development of consortia. Step 2. Informally disseminate the objectives of the study among potential participants and, then, appraise their reactions. Step 3. Conduct a thorough feasibility study through individual exploratory interviews with the potential participants. Step 4. Extract and channel the expressed desires of the potential participants into a systematic approach to consortium development. Step 5. Obtain feedback on the proposed systematic approach and recommendations.

No description available.

This research project was designed to study the relationship between the heart rate and trait anxiety of intercollegiate athletic coaches, as measured by telemetry and the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory. The concept of determining the degree of emotional and psychological stress undergone by college coaches as reflected in the heart rate and trait anxiety level, has been an area of little consideration within the exercise physiology, psychology or medical fields... The primary purpose of this investigation was to determine the relationship between the heart rate and the trait anxiety level of college coaches of intercollegiate athletic teams, as measured by telemetry and the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, respectively. The following subpurposes were also established: (1) to determine the mean resting heart rates of each coach under morning (11:00 A.M.) and competition time (P.M.) conditions; (2) to determine the mean and maximum heart rates of each coach under training session conditions; (3) to determine the mean and maximum heart rates of each coach under pre-competition conditions; (4) to determine the mean and maximum heart rates of each coach under competition conditions; (5) to determine the mean and maximum heart rates of each coach under post-competition conditions; (6) to determine the percent rank score of the trait anxiety inventory administered to each coach.

published_or_final_version / abstract / Linguistics / Master / Master of Arts in Applied Linguistics

Thesis (M.A (Psychology))--University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Humanities, 2016 / Undergraduate students’ require a certain degree of digital literacy in order to make use of the internet as a resource and educational tool. This report argues that two critical aspects of digital search literacy are the student’s ability to effectively execute and monitor the search strategies used to navigate the ever-increasing number of webpages; and the critical thinking skills required to evaluate those documents in an academic context. Therefore, digital literacy requires effective self-directed learning (SDL) skills and appropriate epistemic cognition (EC). The present research used a sequential explanatory design, which comprised of two phases: Stage 1, N = 119 and Stage 2, N=17. The sample for both phases of the project was drawn from students enrolled for first-year level psychology courses at the University of the Witwatersrand. The sample for Stage 2 was drawn from students who had already completed Stage 1, which required the completion an online questionnaire. During the second phase, students were tasked with conducting a web-based search on an essay topic relating to the discipline of psychology. Several research objectives were examined; general self-reported epistemic cognition and readiness for self-directed learning levels of a sample of undergraduate South African university students; self-reported self-directed learning behaviours, epistemic cognition and digital search literacy issues; the impact of search strategies on the type and quality of information sources located; and the psychology-specific epistemic beliefs involved in the evaluation of source features of web based documents. Findings showed that students did indeed engage specific self-directed learning and epistemic cognition behaviours while searching for resources online. The key components of digital search literacy included, self-directed learning (monitoring and strategy use) and epistemic cognition (source evaluation). In terms of rating the sources, personal justification and justification by authority were the most predominant when students rated the most credible sources; while relevance to task, personal justification and format/style were applied more often when rating the least credible web documents. In conclusion, future research on digital literacy should include the relative contribution of SDL and EC components as important mechanisms for online search strategies and critical source evaluation. Keywords: self-directed learning, epistemic cognition and beliefs, source evaluation, web search, navigation behaviour, strategies / GR2017

A major change being advocated in education is that of making students more self-directing; that is, helping them become more responsible for their own learning. The focus of this investigation was on fifth grade students' use of self-directed learning strategies and self-directed perceptual skills. An experimental study was conducted using the nested design for analyzing data obtained from the Guglielmino Self-Directed Learning Readiness Scale, the Zimmerman and Martinez-Pons1 Self-Regulated Learning Interview Schedule, and the Bradley-Lane Self-Directing Perceptual Scale. One hundred fifty-two fifth graders were involved in the eight week study along with their six teachers. Both students and teachers were immersed in a module of training that included emphasis upon self-directing behaviors and learning strategies. Two striking findings emerged; namely, (a) in comparing the average number of learning strategies acquired after treatment, the experimental group (low, middle, and high IQ levels) scored 40%, 50% and 29% higher respectively, than did the control group; (b) in comparing the fifth grade students use of learning strategies it was found that most students nearly doubled the number of learning strategies they had previously acquired. Thus, it was concluded that children who do not have actual teaching of information or data concerning learning strategies will likely never acquire the same repertoire of skills that students acquire when exposed to this critical information in some specific, systematic fashion. A primary product developed for the purposes of this investigation was the Bradley-Lane Self-Directing Perceptual Scale—a 132-item Likert Scale designed to identify the self-perceptions of elementary and middle school students. After field-testing, a chi-square treatment was applied to each item of the Perceptual Scale resulting in a reliability of p<.01 for the majority (79%) of the test items, while an additional twelve items (9%) were found to be reliable at the .02 level of significance.

Thesis (Ph.D)--Psychology, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2010. / Committee Chair: Rogers, Wendy; Committee Member: Catrambone, Richard; Committee Member: Charness, Neil; Committee Member: Feldman, Jack; Committee Member: Fisk, Arthur. Part of the SMARTech Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Collection.