Seven Vermont school districts participated in a five year professional development program sponsored jointly by the National Science Foundation and the United States Department of Education from 2002-2007. Using a robust mixed methods evaluation, teachers and students demonstrate pronounced organizational and academic growth. Analysis of data from focus groups held with teachers over the course of the period from fall 2004-spring 2006 provides strong supporting evidence for the growth. The purpose of this dissertation is to reanalyze the focus group data to document institutional and longitudinal change at the first person level. With focus groups as the unit of analysis, themes rising from the anonymous participants‟ I statements form the substance for this review. By revisiting an extensive pre-existing data set with a different method of analysis, this work expands on what is known about how teachers process change on the ground level. The findings reveal how complex individual feelings about one‟s experiences serve to describe degrees of institutional as well as personal change. New thematic coding confirms the original findings of the program evaluation. More importantly, the findings provide new details and understandings about organizational change and growth previously unobserved in the aggregate reports. By way of a methodological contribution, the research findings suggest and demonstrate an alternative approach to the analysis of focus group data in the aggregate.

The aim of this qualitative study is to identify what factors a group of professional disabled people perceived had influenced their career success, and how they define career success. The study is based on subjective accounts of thirty-one disabled highflyers: men and women from different social and ethnic backgrounds, with congenital or acquired physical impairments, and hold occupational positions in Social Class I or H of the Registrar General's classification of occupations. This work looks at the extent to which the disabled high-flyers perceived career choice and progression, childhood, education, disability, and personality to be significant to their career development and success, and how they define success. Using the data collected from semi-structured interviews, this research provides an indepth insight of the journey travelled, by each of the thirty-one disabled people, from childhood to achieving career success in adulthood. The study shows that oldstyle careers, operating in stable and supportive organisations are sometimes more beneficial to disabled people than some forms of new careers known as `boundaryless' and which require more flexibility and moving from place to place. It indicates the existence of the `glass ceiling' in many sectors of the economic market, showing it to cause disabled people to redirect their original career choice. The study also shows that individuals with congenital disabilities were often likely to follow more of a boundaryless approach of career progression in order to meet their initial career aspirations. It also found that, disability was not only sometimes a causal attribute of re-directed career progression, but also, at times, a precursor of career choice and success. However being disabled was not always the cause of career change and re-direction. Several of the disabled people perceived their career to have developed much the same as that of their non-disabled colleagues. This thesis recognises the role of education in the career and life success of the disabled high-flyers. The advantages and disadvantages of mainstream and segregated education are highlighted. Although segregated education does indeed restrict the educational and therefore, occupational choices of young disabled people, it is nonetheless considered to be essential to the social, physical and psychological development of disabled children. This work offers the idea of link schools and partial integration to facilitate disabled students to achieve life goals at the rate of their nondisabled peers. The career orientation of the female disabled high-flyers, particularly those with childhood disability, was unlikely to be influenced by their gender. It seems that disability was the master status, overriding all other attributes, including gender. However this was not a negative thing. It was found that disabled women are not only capable of achieving a status equal to non-disabled women in the home, but also have the potential to compete with non-disabled men in the workplace and succeed in gender atypical careers.

D.Econ

In an era of school reform it should not be uncommon for educators to review every strategy or tool to initiate changes that will result in increased student achievement and school improvement. The rhetoric is that the changes begin with the federal government, state board of education, local school board, superintendent, and central office, but the reality is that the changes must begin at the doors of the school. In the school, the changes must begin with the staff, students, and the parents. The school community must become alive with learning among the staff, students and parents. The school staff must see themselves as a community of learners, where the entire school learns together. The term used to describe a school where the faculty sees themselves as a community of learners is a "professional learning community" (Hord, 2004, p. 1). The purpose of this study is to determine how one school can become a professional learning community through the implementation of whole faculty study groups and peer observation. Professional learning communities do exist, but the manner in which they are created is nebulous. This study sought to evaluate a senior high school staff as they underwent the process of creating a professional learning community through the development of whole faculty study groups and peer observation. A questionnaire was given to the staff before, during, and after the implementation of peer observation and whole faculty study groups. A comparison was made of the results from the questionnaires over time. Critical incidents create the basis for an action research case study methodology. The critical incidents were ascertained through focus groups.

This research explored the possible reasons for the lack of males in professional psychology in the South African context, by examining the reasons why second and third year, male psychology students decide not to enter postgraduate studies in psychology. A mixed methods research design was employed. The quantitative aspect consisted of the administration of a questionnaire including the Male Attitude Norms Inventory-II (MANI-II), a questionnaire measuring levels of hegemonic masculinity, to test for the degree to which hegemonic masculinity may influence the decision to pursue or not to pursue postgraduate studies in psychology. The qualitative aspect involved semi-structured, one-on-one interviews with second and third year undergraduate, male, psychology students who specified that they did not intend on pursuing postgraduate studies in psychology. This aspect of the research was designed to determine the possible reasons for the decision not to pursue postgraduate studies in psychology, as well as to assess the degree to which masculinity affects this decision. Quantitative results showed that there was not a significant difference on the MANI-II between groups (although certain individual items did show significant results). The results of the qualitative interviews showed that many issues were potentially contributing to distorted and negative views of professional psychology, although a major finding was that the participants viewed their masculinity as being incompatible with the requirements of professional psychology and that professional psychology would be an unfulfilling career. Recommendations included greater education on the reality of the work involved in professional psychology as well as possibly increasing the exposure of undergraduate males to postgraduate and professional male psychologists as well as greater consultation to improve the media‟s representation to reflect the realities of psychological practice

A research report submitted to the Faculty of Health Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MSc (Med) in Bioethics & Health Law Johannesburg, May 2017 / Spiraling health care costs have posed a threat to access to health care for scheme members, as more has to be done with even less. Managed care programmes were introduced to control the health care costs by reducing medical doctors autonomy. My aim was to ascertain the extent to which the managed care processes impede medical doctors’ autonomy. Principled conditions were identified where the limitation of doctors’ autonomy as a result of managed care could be morally justified which include where implementation would result in a just distribution of resources and a limitation of medically futile treatment. However principled conditions where these managed care tools would not ethically be justified included where they would result in adverse patient outcomes, where they result in a loss of medical doctors morale or where they result in reduced trust in the patient doctor relationship. / MT2017

Thesis advisor: Irwin Blumer / This study was conducted within a small urban high school that exclusively serves English Language Learners in the northeastern United States. The purpose of the study was to determine teachers' perceptions of learning from each other, student learning and school wide collaboration as a result of the implementation of a Professional Learning Community as a means of improving instruction. The body of related literature provided the theoretical rationale for the data collection, analysis, and interpretation. Major sections of the literature review included: the definition and elements that make up a Professional Learning Community, a review of the theoretical and recent research concerning best practices to support English Language Learners and a review of the research regarding teacher collaboration. Data were gathered from six participants through pre and post interviews, journal entries throughout the year of the study, field notes from announced and announced visits and teacher made documents collected throughout the year of the study. Key findings included participants' perceptions that: they learned both practical and adaptive skills from their colleagues, that peer observation aided teachers in improving their practice, that student learning and student motivation increased, that participants felt that they made stronger relationships with students and that collaboration increased as a result of the implementation of the Professional Learning Community. Current research asserts that schools that implement purposeful and well planned Professional Learning Communities that provide time, space and training may foster teacher ownership that can be used as a powerful vehicle for improving teaching and learning and school wide collaboration. The study findings affirmed this. / Thesis (EdD) — Boston College, 2009. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Educational Administration.

by Yiu-kee Chan. / Thesis (M.S.S.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1990. / Bibliography: leaves 46-58. / ABSTRACT --- p.ii / ACKNOWLEDGMENT --- p.iii / TABLE OF CONTENTS --- p.iv / LIST OF TABLES --- p.V / LIST OF APPENDICES --- p.vi / Chapter CHAPTER I - --- INTRODUCTION --- p.1 / Chapter CHAPTER II - --- METHOD --- p.15 / Subjects --- p.15 / Instruments --- p.18 / Procedures --- p.21 / Chapter CHAPTER III - --- RESULTS --- p.22 / Demographic Variables --- p.22 / Analyses of Variance --- p.27 / Intercorrelations --- p.28 / Multiple Regression Analyses --- p.33 / Chapter CHAPTER IV - --- DISCUSSION --- p.38 / REFERENCES --- p.46 / APPENDICES --- p.59

The scientist-practitioner model has been widely espoused as the optimum model of professional training and practice for clinical psychologists and increasingly, the related professions of counselling psychology and counselling. However, it has also proved to be contentious regarding the extent to which it reflects or informs the realities of professional practice. This debate has taken on a new meaning in the current health care climate with the increasing emphasis on using research to achieve evidence-based practice'. This study explores clinical psychologists', counselling psychologists' and counsellors' beliefs about the scientist-practitioner model. Key themes relevant to this, and the related areas of theory, research and clinical formulation, were identified through in-depth, qualitative interviews and then tested further by using a survey instrument devised to reflect these themes. The results suggested differences between the professional groups in beliefs about research and the scientist-practitioner model and also indicated the influence of work setting. Differences in idiosyncratic definition of the scientist-practitioner model also emerged, which appeared to be related to beliefs about its value. Implications for training and professional practice are discussed and the contribution of the study to the existing literature and wider debate are reviewed.

Thesis (Ed.D.)--Boston University.