Thesis (M.B.A.)--Boston University

The three-fold purpose of this study is, (1) to show what church groups or private Christian organizations maintain elementary and more specifically, secondary schools, (2) to review briefly the history of each school, and (3) to present general summaries and trends in the growth of the Christian school movement.

Thesis (Ed.D.)--Boston University / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / Today, the demand for higher education is growing at a rapid rate in many developing countries throughout the world. Unfortunately, many governments have realized that their public higher education systems are unable to satisfy this demand. Under this condition and strong encouragement from international donors, private higher education has begun to emerge. Sri Lanka is an example where private higher education surfaced in response to a need from its society. However, private higher education remains a foreign and elusive concept for many Sri Lankans. This study seeks to determine what are the perceptions and attributes that influence pupils and students in Sri Lanka regarding their selection between public and private higher education opportunities. This study, using traditional push-pull theory, utilized a research design that combined both quantitative and qualitative research methods. The design focused on the pupil, student, teacher, and administrator populations in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Questionnaire surveys and interviews were administered. The data produced consisted of quantitative data from the questionnaire surveys and qualitative data from the interviews, all of which were analyzed for common themes. The study concluded that the major themes of the responses included the cost of higher education, quality of higher education, recognition of higher education, and the environment within higher education institutions. Further, the study also discovered several minor themes that played a role for some pupils and students. These included the medium of instruction and the issue of social class in higher education. The recommendations proposed include a need to provide pupils with loans to pursue higher education, to increase awareness of private higher education, to establish smaller private community colleges in rural areas of Sri Lanka and to provide more interaction between public and private higher education. / 2031-01-01

In this study the utilisation of information technology in alternative forms of provision of education was investigated by means of case studies. Certain recommendations were made based on this investigation. The distinction made in the Schools Act (1996) between public education and independent schools in the South African educational system was described. In addition to independent or private schools, independent schools also include other alternative forms of education such as home education and distance education institutions. It was indicated that the public school that is currently regarded as the norm, in a specific regard developed from alternative forms of education such as home education and independent schools. In the utilisation of alternative forms of education, parents and other parties involved found a welcome ally in the tremendous educational potential of modern information technology. It was established that the concept technology in education refers to the application of technology in order to facilitate more effective teaching and learning. Different forms of telecommunication such as satellite, radio, telephone and fax connections as basic components of the information technological system were discussed with a focus on the advantages thereof for education. In terms of video and television technology, the different modes of video-teleconferences were discussed, while further attention was given to computer-based technologies such as the microcomputer, CD-ROM and computer networks. The Internet, World Wide Web (WWW) and the virtual classroom were also discussed in terms of their usefulness in teaching and learning acts. On the basis of the literature survey and qualitative investigation, a model was developed for the utilisation of information technology in education. Modern theories of teaching and learning were discussed as basis for the integration of information technology. The origins, principles and teaching. methods of constructivism received the primary focus as the foundation for modern theories of teaching and learning that form the basis for the outcomes-based Curriculum 2005 project. Further attention was given to fundamental principles of teaching and learning such as co-operative learning, learner-centredness, individualisation, self-directedness, self-activity, relevance, learning facilitation and the way in which they are influenced by information technology. It was found that information technology that can be utilised in education is developed on a day-to-day basis and that the selection of a particular technology should not be based on personal preferences, but rather on principles of teaching and learning. Problems experienced by teachers in home education and at smaller independent schools in complying with the demands originating from the fact that they often have to handle more than one class or subject, can be addressed by making use of information technology. It was further found that the utilisation of information technology is not aimed at replacing the teacher, but rather at supporting teaching and at providing expertise when it is not available. In conclusion it was found that the learners are still central to the learning process and that information technology should not determine the learning process but rather serve and support it. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Potchefstroom University for Christian Higher Education, 2000

In this study the utilisation of information technology in alternative forms of provision of education was investigated by means of case studies. Certain recommendations were made based on this investigation. The distinction made in the Schools Act (1996) between public education and independent schools in the South African educational system was described. In addition to independent or private schools, independent schools also include other alternative forms of education such as home education and distance education institutions. It was indicated that the public school that is currently regarded as the norm, in a specific regard developed from alternative forms of education such as home education and independent schools. In the utilisation of alternative forms of education, parents and other parties involved found a welcome ally in the tremendous educational potential of modern information technology. It was established that the concept technology in education refers to the application of technology in order to facilitate more effective teaching and learning. Different forms of telecommunication such as satellite, radio, telephone and fax connections as basic components of the information technological system were discussed with a focus on the advantages thereof for education. In terms of video and television technology, the different modes of video-teleconferences were discussed, while further attention was given to computer-based technologies such as the microcomputer, CD-ROM and computer networks. The Internet, World Wide Web (WWW) and the virtual classroom were also discussed in terms of their usefulness in teaching and learning acts. On the basis of the literature survey and qualitative investigation, a model was developed for the utilisation of information technology in education. Modern theories of teaching and learning were discussed as basis for the integration of information technology. The origins, principles and teaching. methods of constructivism received the primary focus as the foundation for modern theories of teaching and learning that form the basis for the outcomes-based Curriculum 2005 project. Further attention was given to fundamental principles of teaching and learning such as co-operative learning, learner-centredness, individualisation, self-directedness, self-activity, relevance, learning facilitation and the way in which they are influenced by information technology. It was found that information technology that can be utilised in education is developed on a day-to-day basis and that the selection of a particular technology should not be based on personal preferences, but rather on principles of teaching and learning. Problems experienced by teachers in home education and at smaller independent schools in complying with the demands originating from the fact that they often have to handle more than one class or subject, can be addressed by making use of information technology. It was further found that the utilisation of information technology is not aimed at replacing the teacher, but rather at supporting teaching and at providing expertise when it is not available. In conclusion it was found that the learners are still central to the learning process and that information technology should not determine the learning process but rather serve and support it. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Potchefstroom University for Christian Higher Education, 2000

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The dynamic information context is challenging school communities to calibrate their ways of understanding information literacy. However empirical research reports a lack of shared understanding and vision around information literacy that is negatively impacting its development. The solution it is argued is to increase the level of multi stakeholder dialogue about the information literacy phenomenon. The purpose of this study was to create a platform for dialogue within an international school community by identifying and comparing conceptions of information literacy across multiple stakeholder groups to proactively inform information literacy practice. Working within the qualitative paradigm and invoking a phenomenographic methodological approach the research drew from a trans-disciplinary theoretical background in the information, management and education sciences. Using recorded focus group discussions stakeholders including students, parents, teachers, library staff, IT personnel, administration and leadership shared their perceptions of the information context as a stepping stone to sharing their conceptions of information literacy. The findings show that stakeholder groups perceived the information context to be characterised by environmental, social human and affective dimensions; that stakeholders did not hold one singular conception of information literacy but rather they shared a series of conceptions of information literacy to varying degrees, and that the variation in the ways information literacy was conceptualised prevailed across three continuums namely the individual-collective, affective-cognitive and competency–personal mastery continuums. Furthermore, the comparative analysis of the series of conceptions of information literacy created the opportunity to develop a model of the common ground of conceptual understanding of information literacy thereby making an original contribution to knowledge. The study provides compelling insights for information literacy practitioners recommending that a shared conceptual understanding of information literacy requires accommodating its complex socio-contextual nature and anchoring that understanding in the philosophical, pedagogical and strategic thinking of the learning community.

The privatization of K-12 education in Canada is not new. The public and private sectors feel like natural elements of the Canadian education system because they have existed side by side since confederation. However, this thesis challenges that tradition and argues that private education undermines collective responsibility for education as a shared, public good by catering to private interests and isolating students from the public realm. Not only does private education reinforce the likelihood of socio-economic stratification, but the concept of a “public good” is increasingly destabilized as social services like education are privatized. Why, then, does the privatization of K-12 education continue to be an insignificant political issue in Canada? This question is particularly pertinent at a time when neoliberalism is in full swing in the United States, and all the time more apparent in Canada. Neoliberalism’s emphasis on the precedence of economic ideals over concerns for social welfare and democratic participation has transformed the way that we understand “value”. Drawing on a broad range of scholars including Charles Taylor, Richard Pildes, Janice Gross Stein, Henry Giroux, Francois-Lyotard and Michel Foucault, this thesis argues that the values involved in the very concept of private education reinforce, and are reinforced by, neoliberal views about the place of the individual within society, and that these values are detrimental to the concern for education as shared, public good.

The English Public Boarding School is considered from a sociological perspective, and more particularly in the context of research in the field of complex organizations, as a residential organization. Concepts are used which have been developed in studies of other residential organizations such as military units, hospitals and prisons. The account is of an exploratory, descriptive case study of 'the research school', using a variant on the method of participant observation as the principal technique of data collection supplemented with data collected during visits to certain other public schools and an examination of published and unpublished documents by staff and past pupils. The size of these schools and their residential nature, which involves them in the custody of their pupils, give rise to certain specific organizational problems to which similar solutions have been devised by most of the schools. Certain aspects of the social process in the education provided by the schools are indicated in the examination of their admission procedures, processes of socialization on entry and the concomitants of organizational membership, of the agents and means of social control, together with a discussion both of the boys' perception of relative gratifications and deprivations with respect to various reference groups both within and without the school system and of the boys' different modes of adaptation to life in the socio-cultural context of the school. These schools belong to that category of complex organization which in addition to working through and with people work on them. The role of the school in socializing the boy and regulating his behaviour while a member of the school is emphasized, as education in the public boarding school is as much the attempt to socialize its pupils as to enable them to pass formal examinations or otherwise achieve academic ends, and it is with this former aspect of the schools that this account is primarily concerned. The schools' combined custodial and educational commitments make the maintenance of social order within them of fundamental significance. By anticipatory socialization in the home and at 'preparatory' school, and by their recruitment selection and admission procedures, by a formal system of control exercised partly through the prefect system, by the privilege system and certain ritualistic activities and ritualistic symbolization, the staff combine a high degree of organizational control with high scope and pervasiveness. During term a boy is engaged almost exclusively in activities involving other members of his school and organizational status embraces his life to an extent which is approached by few other types of organization in English society. Aspects of life at these schools are described which involve the pupils experiencing, rather than a sense of relative gratification, one of relative deprivation. The extent to which a particular boy experiences this is discussed in terms of disparities between his presenting culture on entry and the way of life associated with organizational membership, and in terms of his expectations and of the mode of adaptation and constellations of reference groups he has adopted at the time. The boys' responses to life in the socio-cultural context of the public boarding school are presented within the framework of a revised form of Merton's Typology of Individual Adaptation, and discussed in relation to the availability of the various modes of adaptation and to some of the determinants of their adoption by particular boys at certain stages of their school careers.

The purpose of the study is to investigate the actual and desired levels of shared decision making in some private and secondary schools in Ankara, Turkey. The sample of the study consisted of 253 teachers from 12 private primary and secondary schools in Ankara. Shared Education Decisions Survey-Revised by Prof.Dr.Donna Ferrara was used to collect data. Descriptive statistics were applied to analyze data. The results revealed that teachers are consulted in some but not all areas of school decisions. They always participate in the decisions about the general issues of their schools. Other areas which they are consulted in are curriculum/instruction, student achievement, pupil personnel, and parental involvement. Likewise, the decisions which they sometimes participate in are in the areas of policy, staff personnel, and staff development. However, it seems that teachers think they rarely or never participate in the decisions about school/community relations, budget, and plant management. According to the results of the survey, teachers always desire to be consulted in most of the decisions. It is understood that only for the curriculum/instruction area some of them stated that they sometimes would like to participate in the decisions.