This study surveyed 527 high school seniors in five Indiana high schools. It measured their political attitudes regarding high school and the local community. The study is based on two assumptions: first, that high school is a significant agency in the political socialization process, and second, that high school plays an important part in the creation of political attitudes. The overall scope of this study deals with the effect of high school on the political attitudes of students. It is concerned with these attitudes as they relate to the political process and culture of high school and the local community. Four hypotheses are tested:1. There is no significant difference between a student's perception of the political culture of high school and his perception of the political culture of the local community.2. The student's sense of political efficacy is related to his discernible view of the willingness of teachers and school administrators to discuss school related problems with him.3. The student's discernible view of his ability to influence decision makers in school is related to his sense of political efficacy.4. The perception that high school students have of their ability to influence decisions made by high school authorities is related to their perception of their ability to influence decisions made by local governmental authorities.The final survey was developed from a pool of 72 questions whose reliability and validity were proven by their use on prior instruments, and by a pilot study. A Pearson correlation and a factor matrix were the statistical tools used to determine which questions would be used in the final survey.The survey dealt with three aspects of the political socialization process: political culture, political efficacy and political cynicism. The null hypothesis was supported by use of the Pearson correlation of student responses. There is a similarity in student minds between the political culture of high school and the local community. However, insofar as political efficacy is concerned, students do not feel that their effectiveness is the same in both cultures. Students feel that they would be willing to try to use their political influence on high school authority figures, something they would not do with authority figures in the local community. This is particularly true when a comparison is made between student feelings about high school authorities and community authorities. While feelings of cynicism are not at a level that would indicate wide distrust of those in authority, the start of such feelings did appear to exist.Data gathered on the second, third and fourth hypotheses were inconclusive. Student feelings of efficacy are not the same in school as they are outside. Students are willing to talk to school authorities yet they feel that the principal may listen to them but does not seek their opinion. Students feel they cannot use the same methods of influencing high school decisions on community leaders. Student feelings of efficacy in school are such that they think they can or should be influential in school, particularly insofar as curriculum decisions are concerned. Student perception of community leaders is such that they do not see themselves as being able to influence these figures. They feel that authority figures outside school are not as concerned about them as those in school. It appears that what the adolescent has learned to use in school he would not use outside school. Students seem to feel that community leaders care about them, but that they do not actively solicit student opinion. While students feel they can be or may be influential via direct action in school, they cannot see this same course of action being used elsewhere.

This study attempted to determine the nature and degree of the relationship between assertive behavior and the situational context in which the behavior occurs.Specifically, the independent variables were sex-of subject, sex of antagonist and familiarity of the subject with the antagonist. An attempt was also made to determine if assertiveness was related in some way to attitudes toward equality of the sexes.Results revealed that subjects were more assertive toward unfamiliar antagonists, the only significant interaction. There were also correlations between the degree of assertiveness and duration of response and between assertiveness and affect.

The present study assessed the views of students on school-related determinants with respect to liking or disliking technology. In determining students' views, two self-report instruments, the Classroom Learning Environment Survey (CLES) and Attitudes Toward Science Scale (ATSS) were used. Also, an interview schedule was arranged with a selected group. Participants were 200 first years registered for Diplomas in Primary -, Secondary -, and Technology Education. Results indicated a positive relationship between attitudes towards technology and each of teacher characteristics, student characteristics and the classroom environment. Regression analysis showed that attitudes toward technology were predicted by the three study variables. On the other hand, no statistically significant gender differences were established. Recommendations and suggestions for further research are also advanced. / Mathematics, Science and Technology Education / M. Sc. (Technology Education)

M.A. (Sociology) / Please refer to full text to view abstract

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Knowledge of how different vocation-oriented groups of students respond to the classroom environment is a serious concern of an instructor in a first year college physics course -- especially those who accept the responsibility of facilitating the resolution of vocational choice determination. Knowledge about the nature of the instructor's class -- in terms of how they respond to various aspects of the teaching-learning situation -- has interpretative value in making decisions about special instructional provisions for the groups. This thesis was an attempt to provide information about the nature of the differences between vocation-oriented groups of students, in terms of selected dependent variables, important to the instructor of a first year college physics course. The data for the study was gathered from one class of a Physics 110 course offered at the University of British Columbia. Students in the class were divided into three groups based on vocational choice. Each of these groups were further subdivided in terms of the amount of high-school physics experience. Nineteen dependent variables were classified into three categories: (a) Antecedent -- Variables which provided information on a student's general academic ability, and his competence in Science subjects at the high-school level, (b) Cognitive -- Variables which provided information on student achievement during the year in Physics 110, and (c) Affective -- Variables providing information about a student's attitude towards concepts related to science in general and physics in particular. The data gathered was analysed first by a one-way multivariate analysis of variance. This analysis showed that there was a statistical significant difference between vocation-oriented group centroids on the dependent variables taken all at a time. The analysis was carried further to determine the nature of these group differences through a discriminant analysis. The discriminant analysis produced two significant discriminant functions which provided information on the variables that contributed most to differentiating between the groups along each function. The overall conclusion that was suggested is that only those students who were required to take just one year of college physics were clearly distinguished from the other vocation oriented groups. The major distinction between these groups being academic ability. Years of schooling in a subject area was also an important distinguishing factor for instructional purposes, but this factor did not discriminate between the various vocation-oriented groups. / Education, Faculty of / Curriculum and Pedagogy (EDCP), Department of / Graduate

Includes bibliography. / A number of distinct paradigms exist in the field of research into student learning in higher education. It is inevitable that new research initiatives will adopt one of these paradigms as the primary focus of the investigation. However, the relationship that exists between paradigms is not one of mutual exclusivity; rather it is synergetic in nature with developments in one informing advances in another. The perspective adopted in this thesis research is grounded in the naturalistic investigations into student learning in higher education undertaken by Noel Entwistle and his fellow researchers. When reference is made to this distinctive paradigm it is not to suggest that other researchers, adopting fundamentally different paradigms, have not informed the development of the concepts and ideas that are distinctive to this perspective. Indeed, parallel work undertaken by John Biggs into student motivation and its relation to approaches to studying made a significant contribution to the development of specific aspects of the paradigm, a contribution which may not be explicitly clear to readers unfamiliar with the early development of the Approaches to Studying Inventory. Similarly, the pioneering work on the intellectual development of students in higher education undertaken by William Perry provided an important basis for the refinement of concepts within the paradigm that this thesis research has adopted. Because the work of these researchers is implicitly acknowledged, it is important to stress that their role was at least as important as the role of those whose contributions are more explicitly evident, and who subsequently took their ideas and developed them further within the specific paradigm.

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