Youth with emotional or behavioral disorders (EBD) have poorer outcomes compared to their peers with and without disabilities. As a result, the federal government has mandated transition services to improve supports and ultimately student outcomes. Using data from the National Longitudinal Transition Study-2 (NLTS-2), this secondary analysis looked at services provided to youth with EBD (n = 410). The purpose of the study was to show a relationship between utilization of multiple services and the attainment of paid employment, and/or attending post-secondary education. Results indicate relationships between receiving financial services, tutoring and educational services and vocational services with attending a post-secondary institution. Logistic regression indicated a relationship between time, age and amount or services with paid employment. These results indicate the need for continuous, systematic and linked services for youth with EBD well into their twenties.

This study examines the transition of a post-secondary correctional education (PSCE) system formerly facilitated by higher education to the current system administered by the State Department of Corrections (SDC). This study used qualitative case study methodology utilizing multiple perspectives from five different stake-holding groups or five socials units: state legislators, county law enforcement personnel, state higher education administrators, SDC personnel, and technical college personnel. A thick, rich description of the transition was obtained by relying on multiple perspectives recorded in interviews of stakeholders in PSCE.The stakeholders’ perception of this educational transition that changed PSCE in one state was shaped by personal perspectives on issues surrounding the education of the incarcerated. The rhetoric, political machinations, and reality of this transition define stakeholders’ perspectives of the driving forces that initiated the facilitation of PSCE from a Higher Education run system to one run by the SDC.

The North American community college model has received increasing and significant attention in Australia in recent years, particularly since the visit to Australia by Professor John Dennison in 1974. The community college concept has come to be seen as having much to offer for Australian education. Professor Dennison suggested that a network of community colleges be established throughout Australia and his influence is reflected in almost every major educational report published since his visit. The interest being given to the concept combined with attempts and proposals to develop community colleges raises a number of questions: is there a consensus of opinion in Australia about what is meant by 'community college'? why has the concept achieved such widespread popularity? how important is the educational rationale for community colleges when compared with the economic rationale? does Australia need a new type of post-secondary educational institution? The evidence suggests that the characteristics of the North American community colleges as summarised by Dennison have been readily accepted by many in Australia as educationally desirable goals. There has, however, been very little questioning or analysis of whether a new type of institution is necessary as a means of achieving these goals: there has been even less research into the practicality and feasibility of implementing an educational model conceived and developed in another country into the Australian system of post-secondary education. An examination of the relationship between education and 'the community', attempts to implement the community college model in Australia and the complex legislative and funding arrangements resulting from intricate Commonwealth/State relations in education suggest that the North American community college model cannot be developed in Australia without extreme difficulty and frustration. Reference to the provision of post-secondary education in this country indicates that with the exception of some non-metropolitan areas, opportunity already exists to meet the educational needs of individuals and communities. In non-metropolitan areas, unable to support each of the three existing types of post-secondary educational institutions educational needs are not well met and there is a need to consider the establishment of multipurpose, multi-level educational facilities in these areas. Should such an institution be established it is unlikely that it could or would replicate a North American community college. It is concluded that whilst current questioning of the quality and quantity of post-secondary suggests that there may be a need to restructure or rationalise the system any proposal for implementing the North American community college system can only be based on an inadequate knowledge of the Australian system of post-secondary education and/or an inadequate knowledge of the history, purpose and organisation of community colleges.

Within the field of mathematics teacher education, mathematics graduate students have recently become subjects of investigation. While research in this area tends to focus on future schoolteachers, little has been done to examine prospective university teachers of mathematics and their understanding of its teaching and learning. As a result, the experiences of mathematics graduate students and the development of their teaching practices are not well understood. Almost seventy-five percent of mathematics PhDs will become professors at post-secondary institutions dedicated to undergraduate education. Since much of their careers will be spent in the classroom, attending to the manner in which mathematics graduate students develop their teaching practices is important in understanding how they are shaped for their future profession. The purpose of this research project was to uncover issues and difficulties that arise as mathematics graduate students develop their views of their possible future roles as university teachers of mathematics. Over a six-month period, conversations were held with six mathematics graduate students exploring their experiences of and perspectives on mathematics teaching. Using hermeneutic inquiry and thematic analysis, the conversations were analysed and interpreted with attention to themes and experiences that had the potential to influence the graduate students ideas about and approaches to the task of teaching. This dissertation also attends to notions of identity for mathematics graduate students, in particular their emerging identities as mathematicians and what being a mathematician in the world means to them, as well as their identities as future post-secondary teachers of mathematics. The structures and expectations of behaviour within their department of mathematics had implications for how the participants formed their identities as mathematicians and mathematics teachers. Lave and Wengers notion of legitimate peripheral participation is explored with regard to the meta-themes that came through the analysis. These meta-themes are: replication where university mathematics teacher identity and classroom practices became a process of replication; resignation the research participants felt resigned to one particular way of being in mathematics and of mathematics teaching; and despondence the participants were beginning to lose their excitement about becoming post-secondary teachers of mathematics.

The integration of an instructional good idea in undergraduate classes through the natural and evolutionary process of instruction renovation was the focus of this study. More specifically, the question What personal, contextual, and innovation-related forces act on the integration of active learning into the traditional signature pedagogies of university tenured faculty? was addressed in an extensive research agenda spanning seven years. In the mixed methods study central to this research portfolio, self-nominating faculty who were proponents of active learning at the University of Saskatchewan shared their stories and perceptions about integrating active learning in their undergraduate classes through written data, surveys, questionnaires, focus group meetings, and individual interviews. The study revealed that the integration of active learning, and the development of unique personal signature pedagogies, took place naturally in a benignly neutral environment, when desire met with combinations of perceived needs and timely, resonating active learning solutions. Rather than change, instructional methods were gently renovated as participants experimented with solutions to address student learning needs. Active learning was fit together with personal and professional beliefs about student capabilities and effective instruction, and college signature pedagogies.<p> Participants indicated that supportive faculty development, student enthusiasm and engagement, policy that neither encouraged nor discouraged active learning, and the benefits of active learning were driving forces. Restraining forces included unsupportive or negative students and peers, a lack of alignment between stated organizational values and enacted values regarding rewards, and time. Active learning was thought to be effective, but was also perceived to be complex, difficult to try and assess, and too dissimilar from other instructional methods to integrate easily.<p> Findings from the central study and experiences associated larger doctoral research agenda activities suggest that faculty development could be expanded to provide coaching and suggest instructional methods which are clearly linked with signature pedagogies and instructional problems, and that small manageable ways in which active learning can be easily and comfortably integrated in undergraduate classes are showcased. In addition, students could be encouraged to interact with faculty as often as possible, that student stories of engaging instructional activities be prominently profiled, and that stated organizational values be clearly aligned with enacted values and the formal reward structure.<p> Future studies might focus on the effects of planting highly-regarded teaching enthusiasts, the relationship between student and faculty enthusiasm and engagement, the effects of external rewards on the inclusion of active learning, the role of collegial support in the integration of active learning, and the process of integrating other good ideas. Research might also be conducted on removing identified barriers and increasing driving forces identified in this study. An extension and elaboration of this study might create communities of practice on campus and encourage positive conversations about teaching as well as reveal additional driving and restraining forces that act on the integration of good ideas in undergraduate classes.

The purpose of this study was to explore the concept of mentoring amongst administrative women in higher education from an appreciative perspective. In 1985, Kathy Kram published her book on mentoring entitled, Mentoring at Work. This seminal work provided an initial body of knowledge that helped scholars conceptualize mentoring and encouraged a proliferation of research, in what was then an emerging topic for academic inquiry. However, twenty years after Kram advanced her understandings of mentoring, Chandler and Kram (2005) reported that [t]o date, multiple definitions of a mentor have been advanced, but researchers in the field have not unconditionally accepted any specific one (p. 5).<p> Mentoring has suffered from a lack of definitional and conceptual clarity. This lack of clarity has hampered research efforts and rendered research vulnerable to criticism. This lack of clarity has also made implementation of mentoring programs difficult with respect to whom or what exactly is providing the benefit.<p> This study explored the concept of mentoring through focus groups with administrative women in higher education. The study was conducted within a qualitative paradigm, adapting elements from the work on grounded theory by Corbin and Strauss (2008). Focus groups were used to gather the data, with the questions based on the appreciative inquiry method. The worldview underlying the methodological orientation and study design is best described as constructionist. A constructionist worldview assumes that knowledge is constructed as persons explain or try to make sense of their experiences in the context of conversing with others.<p> I anticipated the findings of this study would be significant to mentoring research in three ways. In the study, I addressed the lack of definitional and conceptual clarity of mentoring that have presented academic and practical challenges; I employed a methodological orientation and study design that focused on understanding the participants recollected experiences of relationships that have worked; and the population of interest (administrative women in higher education) was one that had been understudied in mentoring research.<p> In addition to my academic interest in mentoring I was intrigued by the myth behind mentoring. References to the mythical figure, Mentor, in Homers Odyssey abound and yet two important points about Mentor have gone largely unnoticed. First Mentor was actually a woman. Mentor was Athena. That Mentor embodied both male and female characteristics may be interpreted to suggest that features of both sexes are necessary to mentoring. The second point is that Mentor was only one of the disguises Athena wore in order to provide advice and guidance to Odysseus, Penelope, and Telemachus. The second point may be interpreted to suggest that it takes more than one kind of person or relationship to provide the full range of support that an individual requires over the course of their career. It was my hope that this study would help reconcile the myth of Mentor with the reality of mentoring.

In the Canadian North, capacity building through post-secondary education is a key policy strategy of territorial and federal governments. However, government support for the University of the Arctic (UArctic), a viable policy instrument that makes an important contribution to the capacity building efforts of the territories, has been inconsistent. This thesis will investigate whether devolution has impacted capacity building through post-secondary education, by using UArctic as a case study.

Why do some first year students continue and others leave before their second year? This has been a pressing question for a number of years. Consequently, there has been a growing interest in examining the experiences of first-year post-secondary students and identifying the factors that are associated with their attrition and persistence. In Canada, there is a specific need to understand the experiences of the Aboriginal people. This group of individuals has shown significantly lower post-secondary completion rates than the non-Aboriginal population, and many view their participation in higher education as being the key to a better future. The purpose of this research was to explore factors associated with the adjustment and anticipated persistence of first year Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal students. To this end, the connections between adjustment, person-environment fit, anticipated persistence and a number of psychosocial and background variables were investigated using a quantitative-descriptive mixed method design. In the first part of the study, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal participants within a university context and Aboriginal participants alone within a college environment were followed from the fall of their first year (N=316) to the spring of their first year (N=159) in order to examine the first year transition experience. In the second portion of the study, a subset of Aboriginal students (N=11) was interviewed about their post-secondary experiences in order to obtain a more comprehensive understanding of the transition experience. Full or partial support was found for the majority of the hypotheses related to adjustment, fit, and anticipated persistence. In the present study, academic, social and personal-emotional adjustment were each associated with subjective fit, beliefs about the transition experience, social support, and academic self-efficacy. Furthermore, each type of adjustment was also associated with additional unique correlates. This research also highlights that anticipated persistence is complex, with a number of background factors (e.g., high school preparation), psychosocial factors (e.g., beliefs about the transition experience, social support, academic self-efficacy) as well as adjustment and person-environment fit being relevant to this decision. In addition, this research highlights that Aboriginal students do not have poorer adjustment or fit compared to their non-Aboriginal peers but that they do have lower levels of anticipated persistence. A discussion of these and other findings as well as the implications and limitations of the present study is provided.

A growing number of interior design stakeholders believe that increased levels of research will lead to the legitimization of the profession, an expanded and specialized body of knowledge, professional recognition, disciplinary status, and sustainability of the profession. Despite the potential importance of research in the profession, few strategies exist for how research can have a more effective role within interior design. The main purposes of this study were to provide a strategy for incorporating research into interior design, and provide educators with information about how interior design programs could utilize the strategy. The qualitative study was based on a triangulated research design that included: (a) semi-structured telephone interviews with 29 participants (11 from educational institutions, 14 from professional practice, and 5 from professional organizations); (b) the collection of documents from all study participants; and (c) a case study, conducted over a five day period, within a professional practice firm in the United States. The study findings provide insight into the perceptions held by educators, practitioners, and members of professional organizations about research, and research in interior design specifically. These perceptions, combined with other information, led to the Theoretical Framework for Research in Interior Design. Consisting of three distinct, but interconnected, cultures: (a) design, (b) research, and (c) knowledge management, the Framework explains who, what, when, where, why, how, and with what consequences research is conducted, translated, used, and disseminated in interior design. The implications of the Framework for post-secondary interior design education programs suggest that first-professional undergraduate programs could focus on interior design, first-professional masters programs could focus on knowledge management, and post-professional masters and Ph.D. programs could focus on research. This arrangement would provide each level of post-secondary education and each program type with a specific focus, and would provide the discipline with a range of graduates capable of taking on a variety of roles within professional firms, educational institutions, professional organizations, industry, or government. Overall, the Framework provides a strategy for ensuring that the interior design profession retains its design identity, and expands and capitalizes on its research identity. At the same time, the Framework introduces a new identity that can bring designers and researchers together in more productive and beneficial ways. / February 2005

Why do some first year students continue and others leave before their second year? This has been a pressing question for a number of years. Consequently, there has been a growing interest in examining the experiences of first-year post-secondary students and identifying the factors that are associated with their attrition and persistence. In Canada, there is a specific need to understand the experiences of the Aboriginal people. This group of individuals has shown significantly lower post-secondary completion rates than the non-Aboriginal population, and many view their participation in higher education as being the key to a better future. The purpose of this research was to explore factors associated with the adjustment and anticipated persistence of first year Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal students. To this end, the connections between adjustment, person-environment fit, anticipated persistence and a number of psychosocial and background variables were investigated using a quantitative-descriptive mixed method design. In the first part of the study, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal participants within a university context and Aboriginal participants alone within a college environment were followed from the fall of their first year (N=316) to the spring of their first year (N=159) in order to examine the first year transition experience. In the second portion of the study, a subset of Aboriginal students (N=11) was interviewed about their post-secondary experiences in order to obtain a more comprehensive understanding of the transition experience. Full or partial support was found for the majority of the hypotheses related to adjustment, fit, and anticipated persistence. In the present study, academic, social and personal-emotional adjustment were each associated with subjective fit, beliefs about the transition experience, social support, and academic self-efficacy. Furthermore, each type of adjustment was also associated with additional unique correlates. This research also highlights that anticipated persistence is complex, with a number of background factors (e.g., high school preparation), psychosocial factors (e.g., beliefs about the transition experience, social support, academic self-efficacy) as well as adjustment and person-environment fit being relevant to this decision. In addition, this research highlights that Aboriginal students do not have poorer adjustment or fit compared to their non-Aboriginal peers but that they do have lower levels of anticipated persistence. A discussion of these and other findings as well as the implications and limitations of the present study is provided.