M.Ed. (Educational Psychology) / There has been a growing concern for the number of first year students who drop out of university before completing the course they have registered for. The increase in technological development and the creation of new and more demanding job opportunities requires a highly. skilled workforce. Therefore it is imperative that each individual should reach his highest potential. Numerous studies have been undertaken to determine the reasons for the high incidence of student - drop out. Both academic and social factors have been investigated. One factor that has only recently been investigated is the learning strategies of the student. Learning strategies entail the way in which a student plans and executes his studies, and the processes that are involved in this activity. This study was undertaken to determine if there exists a difference between the learning strategies of a first year student who is impersonally well adjusted versus a first year student that is maladjusted with regard to interpersonal adjustment.

Magister Educationis - MEd / Large numbers of students tend to experience failure and dropout in their first year at university. The fundamental aim of this research was to explore protective factors that could foster resilience amongst first year students. It is hoped that resilience research can give young adults the skills and support to survive academic challenges with the help of the university. This study undertook to determine resilience traits that could contribute to academic success. Students who enrolled at the University of the Western Cape for the first time during the year 2003 participated in this study. / South Africa

Please read the abstract in the section 00front of this document / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2007. / Curriculum Studies / Unrestricted

Any enquiry follows some incident which has prompted the question that leads to the enquiry. This study was prompted by a review of the 1974 first year examination results at the University of Fort Hare. The average percentage pass rate for that year was 59.3%. The cynic may remark that this is no different to the first year pass rate at white South African universities (cf. Erens and Louw, 1978), but when it is realised that students entering Fort Hare, or any other black university for that matter, are a highly select group, these figures have more Impact. The consequences of failure in terms of the wastage of human potential are immense (cf. Auerbach, 1977) but are more critical when this occurs, as It does, "... in a society which is competitive rather than co-operative, where people are for ever being classified according to what they have rather than that they can contribute and where competition plus classification inevitably breeds fears." Bligh (1978). A review of the first year examination results for the five years from 1971 revealed an average pass rate of 55.5% and for 1976, 1977 and 1978 a marked decline to 39.32%. For the earlier period, Downing (1977) found that 19.69% of students completed their degree courses In the minimum number of years. For the latter period (1976 to 1978) this has dropped to 16.3%, which, with the figure for the earlier period, suggests that whilst the failure rate may be highest at the end of the first year, in subsequent years it is also high. In this respect Fort Hare differs from white universities where about 75% of students complete their degrees in minimum time (cf. Erens and Louw, 1978)

The purpose of this study is to determine the extent, if any, to which the Summer Round Up Program, as planned and executed by the North Elementary School of Odessa, Texas, helped the first-grade children adjust to school life.

Past research has not established empirical links between living arrangement, identity achievement, and adjustment to college. This study examined the associations of living arrangement on the identity achievement and adjustment to college of first-year college students.

By measuring interactions among and between anxiety and the independent variables of country of origin, gender, level of education, and age, this study attempted to gain insight into how students from different countries experience anxiety on a U.S. college campus. Results of the Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) and the univariate test(ANOVA) indicated that the gender and level of education of the subjects made no significant difference. However, when it came to country of origin, there were significant differences between two of the cultural groups and respective anxiety level. Findings also support a positive correlation between age and anxiety levels, with the youngest participants having the lowest anxiety levels.

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The purpose of this study was twofold, 1) to assess and compare the family interaction patterns of families who home educate and those who send their children to public schools and 2) to determine the influence of family cohesion on the self-exposure and self-containment balance of children in middle childhood. In Phase I, 20 home schooled and 20 public schooled families were administered Faces III to assess their family interaction patterns. In Phase II, one child in each family was administered the Separation Anxiety Test to assess their overall emotional openness. Chi-square analyses were used to determine the differences in the level of mothers' scores on cohesion and adaptability between the home schooled and public schooled groups. Four separate T-tests were conducted to compare the means of the two groups for the perceived and ideal cohesion and the perceived and ideal adaptability scores. Discrepancy scores, differences between husbands' and wives' ideal and perceived scores for family interaction, were also compared for the two groups. None of the comparisons between the groups were found to be statistically significant. For Phase II, a series of separate-variance T-tests were conducted to determine differences between children from balanced and extreme families and between the home and public schooled children on the overall emotional openness score. No significant differences were found in any of the comparisons. In general, the findings did not support the notion that families who home educated their children represented closed systems and that such closure in family functioning was dysfunctional. / M.S.