As outlined in this paper, Rotation Model (RM) Sunday school employs early childhood education practices. This study investigates the attitudes of parents, children's Sunday school leaders, and children in RM Sunday school compared to those in Non-Rotation Model (NRM) Sunday school. The purpose of the study was to determine if the attitudes of children and adults involved in RM were more positive than children and adults not participating in the model. Thirteen churches in East Tennessee and Southwest Virginia participated in the study. Surveys rating attitudes toward Sunday school were completed by 100 children and 63 adults. Results showed no difference between attitudes toward Sunday school of the children in RM and NRM programs. Adults in this study involved in RM have significantly more positive attitudes toward children's Sunday school than those in NRM. Children's Sunday school attendance was reported for nine Sundays in order to study attendance patterns.

In recent years there has been an increase in the number of children committing extreme acts of violence prompting many schools to adopt and implement character education programs. Character education has been defined as educating students to understand, act upon, and care about universal virtues like respect, truthfulness, responsibility, and caring. There are many character education programs available from which a school's staff can choose. The LIFESKILLS and Lifelong Guidelines program is one that focuses on producing a caring community of responsible citizens for life. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to evaluate the perceptions of students, teachers, and parents regarding the value of a character education program that was implemented in 2003 at a public elementary school located in a small urban area in East Tennessee. In order to gather data, teachers and students participated in one-on-one interviews and parents completed openended surveys. The findings from this study suggested that the LIFESKILLS and Lifelong Guidelines program has had a positive effect on the school participating in the study. Students explained that the program has helped them and that they use the LIFESKILLS and Lifelong Guidelines at home and school. Teachers perceived the program to be a beneficial addition to the school’s curriculum. Parents perceived the program as valuable and reported their children discussing the LIFESKILLS and Lifelong Guidelines at home. The teacher and parent participants gave several 3 suggestions for improving the program including: further staff development, additional information being sent to parents, and meeting the goal of having consistent use and implementation of the program on a school-wide basis.

Waging war against economic, political and social inequity, Highlander, founded in 1932 in Monteagle, Tennessee, near Chattanooga, served as a community-training center for southern industrial labor and farmers’ unions and as a major gathering place for black and white civil rights activists, even in those days when such activity was illegal. Teachers at Highlander believed in the capacity of people to educate and to govern themselves. Humanitarians or communitarians, those working at Highlander were concerned with the interrelated systems of class and race, which, they felt, consistently enabled a small segment of the population to exploit, dominate and oppress others. This work explores whether or not there was a factor in the Highlander pedagogy that encouraged activist involvement and delves into participant assessment of Myles Horton as a charismatic leader. Although a variety of sources mention Highlander School or Myles Horton, little material exists that examines the relationship, if any, between the pedagogy or methodology used at Highlander and the leadership that emerged from the workshops. This study endeavors to fill that gap by using historical records, interviews of participants and anecdotal evidence to reveal a connection between Highlander, activism and charismatic leadership.

The purpose of this study was to examine the perceptions of parents and teachers regarding effective parental involvement with elementary students based on Epstein et al.'s (2009) 6 typologies of parental involvement. The population consisted of 77 teachers in a particular east Tennessee school district and the parents of 889 students enrolled in kindergarten through 6th grade. Parents and teachers were asked to indicate the effectiveness of 4 activities within each of the 6 parental involvement categories: parenting, communicating, volunteering, learning at home, decision making, and collaborating with the community. Parents and teachers were asked to rank each activity numerically with 1 indicating not effective and 5 indicating highly effective. A ranking of 2, 3, or 4 indicated an activity between not effective and highly effective. In a separate section, parents and teachers were asked to rank the 5 most important activities from a list of specific parental involvement activities. Findings indicated that parents and teachers in this study have some similar views and some differing views regarding effective parental involvement. Parents and teachers in this study shared similar perspectives by ranking the top 5 specific parental involvement activities from a list of 10 specific activities. Parents and teachers used a Likert scale to indicate the effectiveness of activities from Epstein et al.'s (2009) 6 typologies: parenting, communicating, volunteering, learning at home, decision making, and collaborating with the community. The t-test indicated significant differences in the perceptions of parents and teachers regarding effective parental involvement in 5 of the 6 typologies. ANOVA and post hoc analysis revealed significant differences among the parent population based on age, education level, gender, and race. No significant differences were identified among the teacher population based on the 4 demographic areas examined: age, education level, teaching experience, and gender. This study revealed that parents and teachers surveyed had some similar perceptions and some differing perceptions regarding effective parental involvement, but both groups identified communicating as the most important typology from Epstein et al.'s (2009) 6 major types of involvement.

Human Trafficking is an epidemic around the world, but if you ask the average person, they know little more than what is shown in media. To try to understand this, we asked the questions of whether college students also have a lack of awareness around trafficking, and if so, is education the best way to fix this? Our literature review found many professions, such as healthcare and K-12 education, are pushing for human trafficking curriculums to be implemented in their fields. To determine if this method would be effective on a college campus, five college students were interviewed to determine what their baseline knowledge is. Most of the questions they were asked were left unanswered due to lack of knowledge; this answered question one. Two out of five students were randomly selected to participate in a human trafficking 101 presentation. Four weeks later, those two individuals were given the same interview, with no contact with the data during those four weeks, to see what they retained. On interview two, both participants showed a drastic increase in knowledge, comprehension, and the ability to discuss the topic more fluidly. This shows that, when done by a licensed professional, a social worker or someone from a trafficking nonprofit, human trafficking education has proved very effective in creating awareness. We found this answered question two in the way we hoped.

The purpose of the study is to determine whether an instructor’s intentional effort to build community in his/her classroom results in a higher sense of classroom community among students. This study also examined what types of community building activities were conducted by each instructor and measured the students’ responses to each different activity. This was intended to establish a preliminary set of best practices for creating classroom community. A two-part questionnaire, including an adapted version of the Classroom Community Scale, was administered to instructors (n=5) and students (n=113) enrolled in two or four unit courses at California Polytechnic State University. These courses were designed to introduce students to their chosen majors. One-way analysis of variance, and two-proportion tests were used to determine the relationship between instructor intentions and student sense of classroom community, and the differences in student sense of classroom community between courses. Findings indicate that what course a student was in was the significant factor in determining sense of classroom community. Additionally, students accurately perceived their instructor’s intent to create classroom community.

It was the purpose of this study to identify the influences that contributed to bringing about curriculum change in selected educational agencies which employed consultants in the social sciences through NDEA Title III-B projects. The research attempted to find the ways districts planned, organized, and implemented curriculum change through the use of the NDEA consultants. It focused on the procedures, interrelationships, and interactions taking place within the structure of the projects and the agencies involved in accomplishing those projects. Neither the amount nor the direction of the changes was the intent of the study. NOTE: Both archival copies of this manuscript held within the University of the Pacific library were missing page 203.

This dissertation is an investigation into Knowledge Producing Schools (KPS). KPS is a socio-cultural change effort that reforms that traditional structures of schooling and the connections between schools and the communities in which schools are embedded. KPS schools attempts, through New Literacies, to bring out-of-school practices into schools, in an effort to make students' schooling experiences overall and those incorporating technology more relevant. The position of this dissertation supports KPS goals while rejecting the pedagogy of New Literacies. Instead this dissertations builds upon two elements implicit in KPS/New Literacies work, social inquiry and the facilitation of publics. By making these implict KPS elements explicit this dissertation offers a KPS-Dewey hybrid that locates socio-cultral change efforts in public social inquiry contexts that supports and helps create the communal conditions that can facilitates able, active, publics. These able publics work toward community self-management and alternative representation while dealing with daily problems and current matters of concern. Able publics have been a recent concern in the educational literature that calls for the need of educational reform to be resituated as social movements for education equity. / Ph. D.

Research indicates that Kentucky agricultural educators are overworked and experience job related stress. Balancing work and home can be a struggle and stress induces burnout and teacher attrition. Shortages in the agriculture classroom could result in loss of agricultural education programs and negatively affect the profession. The purpose of this study was to 1) describe the demographics of Kentucky high school agricultural educators; 2) describe the work and home life balance for Kentucky agricultural educators; 3) determine the level of job satisfaction among Kentucky agricultural educators; 4) determine the perceived busiest time of the school year for Kentucky agricultural educators. The study was conducted on a census of the 2015-2016 Kentucky agriculture teacher directory and the survey was distributed online. Results indicate that agricultural educators work 52 hours per week, can balance work and home responsibilities with assistance from spouse/partner and experience job related stress on a regular basis. It was concluded that Kentucky agricultural teachers are satisfied with their job, but stressed about meeting the needs of work and family balance based on barriers including FFA activities, nightly meetings, childcare and time with spouse/partner.

The intent of this project is to develop an auditory training program for kindergarten children which will strengthen auditory perception. The program will identify the essential auditory skills, establish objectives, construct evaluative measures and outline activities that will develop basic auditory perception skills.