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This manuscript incorporates recent proposals for enhancing the learning of mathematics by developing authentic statistics instruction and assessment for eighth grade students based on a cognitive apprenticeship approach. The goal of instruction was for small groups to create statistics projects that addressed a meaningful research question. To ensure that criteria for assessing such performance were understood, groups were assigned to two treatments--library of exemplars and text--which differed in the degree to which criteria were explicit. The effectiveness of elaborating on criteria through examples (i.e., library) or text (i.e., text) for enhancing learning was examined. Both treatments demonstrated significant performance gains from pretest to posttest. However, students' understanding of representative sampling was significantly better as a result of receiving the library treatment than the text treatment. Making criteria more elaborate through examples of performance can thus enhance students' understanding of more abstract statistical concepts such as sampling.

"Development of others" appears consistently in leadership competency frameworks; managers are now being asked to think of themselves as teachers in addition to their myriad other roles. Little empirical evidence however seems to exist that managers who teach their employees learn to lead better, generate more employee satisfaction and are indeed more effective than those who do not. This study found support for this claim. Twenty managers and forty-three of their employees participated in this study. Data were collected from both groups, before and after the managers attended a workshop designed using activity systems theory. Results indicate that employee perceptions are positively influenced by manager teaching, managers can learn to be situational leaders and that post-workshop teaching by managers to employees facilitates manager learning and leadership effectiveness. Suggestions for future research are provided.

One of the most striking facts disclosed in national reports is the large number of students who avoid mathematics courses, especially electives. The problem has become a serious public concern because it bears social and individual consequences: (a) a technologically advanced society demands a mathematically literate workforce, yet a large number of students drop out of mathematics; (b) inadequate preparation in mathematics seriously limits future educational and occupational opportunities of individuals. Although research on school and teacher effects has revealed the effects of school structure and policies and teaching practices on mathematics achievement, researchers have paid little attention to the course of students' academic careers. Even the few existing studies are compromised by serious methodological flaws. Researchers, thus, have not been able to provide policymakers with reliable answers to their basic concerns about mathematics participation. This study tackles these problems, employing the six-wave data from the Longitudinal Study of American Youth (LSAY). The primary purposes of this study are (a) to estimate the probability of students' dropping out of mathematics, conditional on psychological and sociological variables, including sex, socioeconomic status (SES), prior mathematics achievement, prior attitude toward mathematics, prior mathematics anxiety, and prior self-esteem, over a five-year period from grade 8 to 12, (b) to identify conditions that affect the probability, and (c) to determine whether there are critical transition points, and if so, whether certain factors have stronger effects at these points. Survival analysis is used to overcome the difficulties conventional statistical techniques have in modeling probability Analyses of mathematics participation indicate that (a) students are most likely to drop out of mathematics in grade 12; (b) males are more likely than females to participate in mathematics in grade 12; (c) the effect of SES decreases over grades; (d) prior attitude toward mathematics is as important as prior mathematics achievement, and their effects are almost constant over grades; (e) the longitudinal effect of prior mathematics achievement or prior attitude toward mathematics depends on students' sex and SES. Analyses of participation in advanced mathematics show that (a) students are most likely to drop out of advanced mathematics in grade 12; (b) males are more likely than females to participate in advanced mathematics in grade 12, and sex differences are similar across different levels of SES; (c) there is a male advantage in participation in advanced mathematics even when there is a male disadvantage in SES; (d) SES plays a critical role in the early grades, and socioeconomic differences are similar across different levels of mathematics achievement or attitude toward mathematics; (e) prior attitude toward mathematics has the strongest effect in the later grades, whereas the effect of prior mathematics achievement decreases over grades; (f) the effect of prior mathematics achievement varies across different levels of attitude toward mathematics, and vice versa; (g) the longitudinal effect of prior mathematics achievement or prior attitude toward mathematics depends on students' sex and their initial mathematics achievement and attitude toward mathematics.

The words, legends, maps, post-cards, and poems within this study are an exploration of geography curriculum, poetics, and embodied knowledge. There are three main sections and a supplement to this atlas. The first section is an exploration of semiotic theory and the notion of poetics. I inquire into structures of signification, the relationship between our words and our worlds, and the spaces of possibility that relationship opens for the inclusion of embodied knowing. The second section of this atlas is an exploration of geography curriculum in British Columbia and Saskatchewan, and of recent developments within academic human geography writ large, regarding existing constructions of geography and poetics and embodied knowledge. An attention to language, writing, and embodied knowledge can be found within academic geography, yet these same concerns have not been considered within Canadian curricular geography. The third section of this atlas is an exploration of post-structural approaches to reading/writing, and poetic possibilities on a personal level. Within this section, poetic language is explored as a genre for facilitating embodied knowledge within geography curriculum. The supplement to the atlas is a part of the atlas that finishes the form, and was written in an interpretive, poetic, and playful spirit. The underlying premise of this research is that how we write the world affects and reflects in the same instant how we understand and live in the world (our words and worlds perform a mingling dance of signification); therefore, attending to how we graphy the geo is of curricular concern (especially if we consider that curriculum provides the medium for us to understand self and world). Transformation of geography curriculum, and an inclusion of embodied approaches to (re)writing the world of curriculum theory (and dissertations) are the aims of this research.

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