The purpose of this research is to further understanding of faculty-based academics’ views on what influences their understandings, behaviours and attitudes towards their continuing professional development. Informed by critical realist ontology, it is argued that it is necessary to explore academics’ understandings and accounts of professional development in their practice context in order to gain a better understanding of the complexity and differential practices that underlie professional development in academia. In doing so, the research addresses the current under-representation in the literature of the voices of faculty academics about what influences their approaches to professional development. The data collection was carried out during the academic year 2007-8, using a qualitative multi-case study approach. Methods included semi-structured, narrative interviews with academics, more structured interviews with ‘key informants’ and examination of relevant institutional documents. Findings from this research have enabled new themes and areas for reflection to emerge about the constraints and enablements academics perceive in respect of their professional development. In particular, themes such as issues of interpretation and meaning; concepts of professional status and academic values; misaligned initiatives and priorities; the influence of supportive networks; and emergent personal, individual concerns have surfaced. The conclusion is drawn that the significance of agency raises the importance of opening the debate and responding to the ‘voices from below’.

published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

<p>This study explored the learning experiences of black working class women in the context of the National Skills Development Strategy. The research focused firstly, on how the National Skills Development Strategy facilitated women's learning and secondly, what has helped and hindered their learning and how their learning experiences related to the literature on women's learning.</p>

The aim of this study was to investigate study skills and its relationship to student attrition and retention. The participants for this research were comprised of students recruited from a small technical college located In Central Maine. All participants were first year, full-time students who were beginning their studies at the college. This study was initiated during the Incoming students' orientation program prior to the commencement of classes, and their progress was monitored for up to two academic years.The primary assessment instrument was the Learnlnq And Study Strategies Inventory (Weinstein et al., 1987). The Learning And Study Strategies Inventory (LASSI) aids the student in becoming aware of their strengths and weaknesses in areas that have been causally related to success in higher education. It is a standardized measure of reading comprehension; a measure of self-concept and self-esteem; as well as a supplementary measure examining various aspects of cognition, anxiety and motivation.Initially, the students' learning and study -strategies were assessed utilizing the LASSI. Each student In the experimental group was then Individually provided with detailed feedback of the assessment results during their first semester. When appropriate, a personalized plan for needed support services or remediation was developed and strongly encouraged. The students In the waiting list control group received their assessment results later In the academic year and did not have the individual sessions.It was hypothesized that the study skills assessment, feedback process, and short-term intrusively delivered intervention would result in increases in students' cumulative grade point average, graduation, and retention, while producing a corresponding decrease in attrition.The data generated from this study suggests that the relationship among the previously mentioned factors are essentially unrelated to students' cumulative grade point average as well as graduation, retention, and attrition.Possible confounding variables are discussed. This discussion centers around a few methodological difficulties as well as an analysis of the unique Interaction of the student and Institutional factors which may have effected the study. / Department of Counseling Psychology and Guidance Services

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of teaching a study strategy on the ability of fifth-grade students to read a social studies textbook. The specific strategy was survey, question, read, recite, and review (SQ3R) (Robinson, 1961). It was taught as an integral part of the social studies lesson. The effect of gender and reading level on the SQ3R strategy was studied.The subjects were 72 students enrolled in four intact fifth-grade classrooms of two schools in an urban, midwestern school district. The classes were randomly assigned to a control group consisting of 37 subjects and an experimental group consisting of 35 subjects.The instrument used was the Sequential Tests of Educational Progress III (STEP III). The ability to read a social studies textbook was measured by the social studies subtest during pre- and posttesting procedures. The reading grade level indicator was determined by the reading subtest during the pretesting procedures.An inservice session conducted by the researcher trained the teachers of the experimental group in the SQ3R strategy. Traditional teaching procedures were followed by the control group teachers for the 9-week period.An analysis of covariance was used to examine the results at the p<.05 level of significance. The pretest score of the social studies subtest of the STEP III was used as the covariant.Statistical analysis of data generated the following results:1. There was a significant difference in the preinstructional knowledge of social studies between the experimental and control groups.2. There was no significant difference in the mean scores of the social studies subtest of the STEP III of fifth-grade students taught the SQ3R strategy and those taught the traditional way.3. There was no significant difference in the mean scores of the social studies subtest of the STEP III of males and females taught the SQ3R strategy and those taught the traditional way.4. There was no significant difference in the mean scores of the social studies subtest of the STEP III of above-average, average, and below-average readers taught the SQ3R strategy and those taught the traditional way.5. There was no interaction among the mean scores of the social studies subtest of the STEP III, the gender, and the reading level of fifth-grade students taught the SQ3R strategy and those taught the traditional way.

Scale titled the Metacognitive Reading Measure (MRM) based on Index of Reading Awareness (IRA) by Jacobs and Paris (1987) with adaptations made by the researcher was developed and evaluated for this study to measure metacognitive reading awareness in developmental college students. Procedure for scale development outlined by DeVellis (1991) was followed. The readability, reliability, and validity of the instrument were investigated.MRM scores from 287 undergraduate, developmental college student subjects enrolled in college reading or study skills courses at a medium sized Midwestern university were used. Student reactions from pilot testing, evaluations from reading specialists, and readability estimates were used to assess suitability and content validity.Reliability investigations showed the scale has internal reliability (( = .79) and test-retest correlations demonstrated reliability over time (r = .75).MRM could be read independently by developmental college students because the Homan-Hewitt, Fry, and Raygor methods of estimating readability yielded results within the sixth to eighth grade reading levels.MRM had content validity based on opinions of five reading specialists and links to current literature. MRM had limited concurrent validity with self awareness of study skills of information processing (r = +.38, p =.000) and selecting main ideas (r = +.40, p = .000). MRM had weak concurrent validity with general verbal skills as measured by SAT Verbal test (r = +.26, p= .000), and no concurrent validity with reading comprehension achievement from the Nelson Denny Reading Test (r =+.04, p = .76).Results of exploratory factor analysis indicated a three-factor solution with subscales for beneficial reading behaviors, negative reading behaviors, and text factors effecting reading comprehension, not four categories of metacognition from the Flavell (1978) and Jacobs and Paris (1987) definitions which were used for this study. The arrangement of items into the three factors suggests an alternative direction for the definition of metacognition in simpler terms, understandable to the developmental populations to which metacognitive strategy instruction is aimed.The MRM would be suitable for classroom use and further research into metacognitive reading awareness. / Department of Elementary Education

Teachers' thinking underpins their actions, in various ways, consciously or nonconsciously, and therefore it is necessary to understand their thinking in order to understand their teaching. Part of such thinking concerns subject knowledge, which is an important, albeit often assumed, feature in professional practice. For primary school teachers who cover the breadth of the National Curriculum there are particular issues. In music, despite frequent reports from Ofsted referring to the good quality of teaching, there still appears to be considerable lack of confidence among such teachers, frequently linked with a perceived lack of subject knowledge. Subject knowledge in music is under-researched in this country and this small-scale study was intended to explore the nature of teachers' beliefs about music in education. In a qualitative case study approach, the teachers in a two-form-entry, inner-city primary school talked individually, in three separate sessions over the course of an academic year, about various aspects of music in education. They also constructed concept maps to represent their thinking. A process of inductive and iterative analysis led to the identification of four main findings concerning enjoyment, the value of music, issues relating to instrumental teaching and the use of schools' broadcasts. These aspects form the basis of a discussion which moves beyond the original research questions to build an orthogonal model that conceptualises and contextualises teachers' thinking within two dimensions representing their professional/non-professional lives and the formal/informal contexts of musical involvement, nested in their beliefs regarding the nature and value of music. It is suggested that this model might also apply to other subjects. There are implications from this study not only for teachers themselves and for the schools in which they work, but also for those involved in supporting student and practising teachers through ITE, INSET and CPD, as well as for policymakers.

This study aimed at investigating the role of hope and study skills in predicting test anxiety levels of female and male university students. The sample consisted of 442 students from four different undergraduate programs of Faculty of Education at Ege University. Turkish version of State Hope Scale (SHS, Snyder, 1996), Turkish form of Dispositional Hope Scale (DHS, Akman &amp / Korkut, 1993), Study Skills Scale (SSI, Y*ld*r*m, Do*anay &amp / T&uuml / rko*lu, 2000) and Turkish form of Test Anxiety Inventory (TAI, Albayrak-Kaymak,1985 / &Ouml / ner, 1986 / 1990 / &Ouml / ner &amp / Albayrak Kaymak, 1986) were used for data collection. Adaptation study of the SHS and validity and reliability studies of the SSI were also conducted as part of the study. For the purpose of investigating the role of hope and study skills in predicting worry and emotionality dimensions of test anxiety, four stepwise multiple regression analyses were conducted separately for the worry and emotionality subscales scores of females and males. SHS scores, DHS scores, Course Participation subscale scores and Effective Reading subscale scores appeared as significant predictors for the emotionality scores, whereas SHS scores, Course Participation subscale scores and Effective Reading subscale scores emerged as significant predictors of the worry scores for the female group. The State Hope Scale (SHS) scores, Preparation for Exams subscale score, the Dispositional Hope Scale Scores (DHS), and Listening Subscale scores predicted the emotionality scores of the male students, and the State Hope Scale (SHS) scores, Preparation for Exams subscale, the Dispositional Hope, Motivation subscale, Health and Nutrition subscale and Writing Subscale scores predicted the worry scores of the male students.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Western Sydney, Nepean, 1998. / Bibliography: p. 363-389.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of North Texas, Dec., 2007. / Title from title page display. Includes bibliographical references.