Thesis (Ed. D.)--University of Massachusetts Amherst, 2009. / Open access. Includes bibliographical references (p. 133-141). Print copy also available.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2010. / Title from title screen (site viewed July 6, 2010). PDF text: x. 242 p. : col. ill. ; 4 Mb. UMI publication number: AAT 3397864. Includes bibliographical references. Also available in microfilm and microfiche formats.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--School of Education. University of Missouri--Kansas City, 2006. / "A dissertation in urban leadership and policy studies in education and education." Advisor: Joan V. Gallos. Typescript. Vita. Title from "catalog record" of the print edition Description based on contents viewed Jan. 29, 2007. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 174-192). Online version of the print edition.

Thesis (Ed. D.)--West Virginia University, 2007. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains x, 142 p. : ill. Vita. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 109-131).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 327-342).

Dissertation (Ph.D.)--The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 2008. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed Jun. 2, 2009). Advisor: Deborah Taub; submitted to the School of Education. Includes bibliographical references (p. 116-123).

The problem of this study concerned the marketing strategies utilized by public community colleges, public and private colleges and universities for the nontraditional student in Texas. Subjects of this study consisted of 101, or 78.9 percent of the original population of 128 regionally accredited colleges and universities in Texas as listed in the Educational Directory, Colleges & Universities, 1980-81. Out of original subpopulations of 56 public community colleges, 48, or 85.7 percent; 26, or 76.5 percent of the 34 public colleges and universities; and, 27, or 71.1 percent, of the 38 private colleges and universities surveyed participated in the study. Contact persons for the study were primarily public relations officers.

The purpose of this study was to examine three components of Donaldson and Graham's (1999) model of college outcomes for adults: (a) Prior Experience & Personal Biographies, (b) the Connecting Classroom, and (c) Life-World Environment, and to assess their application to traditional and nontraditional students in community colleges in both technical and nontechnical courses. The study sample was comprised of 311 community college students enrolled in technical and nontechnical courses during fall 2005. A survey instrument was developed based on the three model components through a review of the literature. Demographic data collected were utilized to classify students into a technical or nontechnical grouping as well as four classifications of traditionalism: (a) traditional, (b) minimally nontraditional, (c) moderately nontraditional, and (d) highly traditional. This study found that nontraditional students vary from traditional students in regards to the three model constructs. A post hoc descriptive discriminate analysis determined that the Life-World Environment component contributed the most to group differences with the minimally nontraditional group scoring the highest on this construct.

This study explores adult returning students' mathematical experience and ways of thinking prior to enrolling in a community college arithmetic review course. It further examines one student's experience of the course. The first part of the study documents everyday activities adult students perceive as mathematical using Bishop's pan-cultural mathematical activities (Bishop, 1994), and queries students' prior experience with mathematics in school. The second part examines students' ways of thinking about proportion prior to instruction, using a framework developed from previous research (e.g., Lamon, 1993). The third part of the study examines the interaction between informal ways of thinking about mathematics that adult students bring to school and the mathematics they encounter in the classroom. Findings include: (1) Adult students view a variety of activities from their everyday lives as mathematical, (2) adult students' reasoning about proportional situations varies along a developmental trajectory described in previous research on proportional reasoning conducted with younger students, and (3) one student's experience in the arithmetic review course illustrates that she typically suppressed contextual ways of reasoning about problems she brought to the course and, when she did share prior experience, it was not leveraged to support the development of her and other students' mathematical understanding. These findings suggest that adult students' experience of everyday mathematics and ways of thinking about proportion should be the foundation that support students as they build upon informal ways of thinking toward the more formal ways of reasoning expected in school.

This study examined the role of course engagement in college student success, especially for students who have multiple life commitments and few social supports. Building on previous measurement work and based in self-determination theory, the study was organized in five steps. Relying on information provided by 860 undergraduates from 12 upper and lower division Psychology classes, the first step was to improve the measurement of course engagement, by mapping the increased complexity found in self-reports of college students (by incorporating items capturing engagement in "out-of-classroom" activities and general orientation, to standard items tapping classroom engaged and disaffected behavior and emotion). 12 items were selected to create a brief assessment covering the conceptual scope of this multidimensional construct; its performance was compared to the full scale and found to be nearly identical. Second, the assessment was validated by examining the functioning of course engagement within the classroom model: As predicted, engagement was linked to proposed contextual and personal antecedents as well as course performance, and fully or partially mediated the effects of both context and self-perceptions on actual class grades; findings also indicated the importance of including a marker of perceived course difficulty. Third, the university level model was examined, which postulated key predictors of students' overall academic performance and persistence toward graduation. Unexpectedly, academic identity was found to be the primary driver of persistence and the sole predictor of GPA; moreover, it mediated the effects of learning experiences and course engagement on both outcomes. The fourth and most important step was to integrate the classroom and university models through course engagement, to examine whether students' daily engagement predicted their overall performance and persistence at the university level. As expected, course engagement indeed showed a significant indirect effect (through academic identity) on both success outcomes, and these effects were maintained, even when controlling for the effects of university supports. Finally, student circumstances were added to the integrated model, specifically focusing on whether course engagement buffered cumulative non-academic demands on performance and persistence. Although unexpected, most interesting was the marginal interaction revealing that students whose lives were higher in non-academic demands showed the highest levels of persistence when their course engagement was high (and were the least likely to return next term when their engagement was low). Future measurement work and longitudinal studies are suggested to examine how course engagement cumulatively shapes academic identity, especially for students with differentiated profiles of non-academic demands and supports. Implications of findings are discussed for improving student engagement and success, and for using the brief assessment of course engagement as a tool for instructor professional development, and as part of threshold scores that serve as early warning signs for drop-out and trigger timely and targeted interventions.