Standardized tests are designed to show what students have learned and retained in a classroom setting. The study examined principals' perspectives related to the impact standardized testing has on teaching and learning in Grades K-12. In addition, the correlation between principals' perceived effects of standardized tests on students' performances and principals' characteristics was investigated. Vygotsky's theory was used as theoretical framework of the study, as the theory suggested nonstandardized assessment approaches are more effective. Research questions focused on principals' perspectives on the effect of standardized testing on teaching and learning within the school district in North Carolina and the extent that principals' experience, type of schools, gender, and academic degree are correlated to their perceived effects of standardized tests on student performance. A quantitative method with descriptive and correlation design was used to answer the research questions. A purposeful sample of 31 participants completed the online Likert survey. Data were analyzed using means, standard deviations, and correlation tests. Findings indicated that principals perceived that standardized testing hinder students' perfromaces. There was not a significant relationship between principals' perception related to the impact standardized testing has on teaching and learning in grades K-12 and their years of experience, type of school, gender, and academic degree. A positive social change implication includes informing educators about principals' views related to standardized testing as a feasible tool to enhance curriculum content delivery and student achievement.

Researchers in educational leadership have identified a need to improve principal preparation programs to meet today's educational demands. According to school administrators in the local area, not all leadership preparation programs used the same pedagogies to prepare future leaders, and principals were critical of existing leadership practices. School districts, students, parents, and community stakeholders would benefit from well-prepared administrators who can apply the most effective habits of principalship. The conceptual framework of the study was derived from J. Davis and Jazzar's 7 habits of an effective principal preparation program. For this qualitative case study, 16 principals were interviewed to find out which components of a principal preparation program they thought were the most important or had best prepared them for their positions. Analysis involved open coding, and resulting themes revealed that principals perceived the most important components to be a multisituational internship and extensive experience with school budget/finance. A professional development session was created to share interview responses with policymakers. Principal preparation programs that involve an in-depth internship and practice with school budget and finance could be used to assist policy makers in developing leadership training programs for future principals to improve student and school performance for school districts. This project study could foster social change with greater school success for students, resulting from improvement in leadership preparation programs.

Incivility disrupts the learning environment for nursing students and faculty, and contributes to the national nursing shortage since many nursing faculty reportedly leave academia because of disruptive student behaviors. Academic leaders at a midwestern college of nursing are concerned by the increasing number of students engaging in uncivil behaviors and are seeking solutions. Using Clark's conceptual model, which holds that incivility can be mitigated with effective communication and engagement, this qualitative case study was designed to understand what faculty perceive as the cause of student incivility, and what actions they believe would decrease these uncivil behaviors. Data were collected from semi-structured interviews with 10 purposefully selected faculty members who met the established criteria for participation. The data were transcribed, member checked, and coded for emerging themes. Coding was completed using an open and axial coding process. Nursing faculty communicated a lack of knowledge regarding how to address student incivility, and expressed not feeling properly skilled to defuse uncivil encounters. Five major themes emerged, as follows: classroom expectations, caring culture, organizational support, orientation, and student entitlement. A 3-day professional development workshop on managing student disruptive behaviors and promoting civility within the learning environment was developed as the project outcome. Addressing incivility by learning effective ways to respond, manage, and diminish disruptive behaviors has the potential to positively impact the nursing profession, the patients in nurses' care, and the healthcare system.

Many children in U.S. K-12 schools struggle with childhood obesity. A healthy lifestyle taught in a child's early years is essential for student learning, and it can set the pace for healthy choices to be made in adulthood. The purpose of this exploratory case study was to explore the experiences of parents in Montgomery County, Ohio, who successfully improved their children's health and academic grades. The transtheoretical model of behavior change grounded this study to evaluate the willingness of children and adults to take action on new health and wellness behaviors that can lead them through the stages of change to action and maintenance. The study was guided by 1 overarching research question: What are the experiences of the parents who guided their children through lifestyle changes using local community health and wellness resources, and reported improved health and improved academics? Specifically, the research subquestions asked about the successes, challenges, and strategies applied. This case study targeted 6 parents who guided their 6th grade children for at least 6 months on changing their health and wellness habits. Qualitative data were gathered and coded from structured interviews listing noteworthy statements and identifying patterns. The data were analyzed using data reduction, data display, and conclusion drawing. According to the study's findings, children who ate healthy, got proper rest each night, and engaged in daily physical activity lost weight, felt better, and performed better in school. This study contributes to positive social change by providing parents with strategies to improve health and wellness and academics in their overweight children.

Teachers struggle to address motivation and its impact on reading achievement and the continued desire to read, even with first-grade students. The theoretical framework for this study was based on Bandura's social cognitive theory of self-efficacy, which pertains to how individuals feel and think about themselves and the way they self-motivate; it was also based on Skinner's operant theory, which maintains that a student can be motivated by positive reinforcement. A quasi-experimental design was used to examine the impact of 3 motivation conditions (intrinsic, extrinsic, or a combination of both) on the reading achievement and oral reading fluency of 66 first-grade students. The students in 3 intact classrooms were assigned as 3 different treatment groups, each representing a separate motivation condition. The dependent variables were reading achievement and oral reading fluency. Data were pretest and posttest scores on reading achievement and oral reading fluency measures. Students in 2 of the 3 groups graphed their oral reading fluency (words read correctly per minute), which supported the intrinsic motivation condition of goal setting. Similarly, students in 2 of the 3 groups received rewards, which defined the extrinsic motivation condition. After 8 weeks of treatment conditions, posttest scores were compared with pretest scores as a covariate. An analysis of covariance showed no statistically significant differences in reading achievement between the 3 motivation conditions. Further analysis revealed a statistically significant difference in oral reading fluency favoring the intrinsic motivation intervention group. The findings suggest that 8 weeks may not be sufficient for students to benefit directly from any specific motivation condition, but suggest that engaging students in goal setting may improve reading achievement and eventual literacy.

Effective school board leadership is often an ephemeral ideal in today' s highly politicized public education arena. However, effective leadership is necessary in order to ensure a fair and equitable education for all students. This dissertation described and explained one school board member's perspective of his career as a lens from which to view and assess public educational policy making in Miami-Dade County. Now retired after thirty-eight years of service, G. Holmes Braddock is the longest serving, contemporary, urban school board member in the country. Spanning nearly four decades, his perspective provides a comprehensive view of urban education both locally and nationally. The significance of his longevity and the impact of his leadership on educational policy-making was the focus of indepth interviews with Mr. Braddock and other key educational "influentials.'' From this transcript data, recurring themes were revealed and categorized. Five elements of his perspective, i.e., teacher professionalization~ desegregation~ athletics~ bilingual education; and his comprehensive leadership role, were identified and analyzed, as were five variables of his perspective, i.e., fairness; integrity; honesty; courage; and the situational context. Other secondary source material, such as excerpts from newspaper articles, school board minutes, and items from Mr. Braddock's own personal effects further augmented and triangulated the data. Given that the purpose of this study was to describe and explain Mr. Braddock's perspective of his school board career, the findings can be understood from two different viewpoints. The elements of Mr. Braddock's perspective describe or characterize his career and represent the significant policy issues in which he demonstrated exceptional vision and leadership. However, taken alone, these elements cannot fully explain his distinguished career. Rather, an analysis of the variables of Mr. Braddock's perspective provides an explanation for the effectiveness of his leadership role. Personality traits such as fairness, integrity, honesty and courage and the impact of the situational context were factors that strongly influenced Mr. Braddock's decision-making. Thus, Mr. Braddock's school board career can be holistically understood as the intersection of person, place and time with significant public education policy issues. The results of this study provide a unique and historical perspective of school board politics in Miami-Dade County. From Mr. Braddock's perspective, we are able to view one individual's leadership role over time and its impact on local public education policy.

The purpose of this research study was to investigate the legal knowledge of Florida's public elementary classroom teachers in the area of tort liability for negligence. A second purpose of the study was to assess the knowledge of school law in the area of negligence according to specific variables to determine if significant differences in knowledge existed among groups of teachers classified by: years of teaching experience, whether or not teachers took a school law course or inservice, college degree held and whether or not teachers had administrative experience. A validated survey instrument consisting of 22 scenarios based on decided court cases in the United States was utilized. These cases included court decisions ranging from 1938-1994, and represented the categories of duty and standard of care, proper instruction, proper supervision, proper maintenance, field trips, and post-injury treatment. A random sample of 420 elementary classroom teachers were sent the survey instrument to complete, and a total of 309 surveys were returned producing a return rate of 77%. The results of this research study revealed that the overall level of legal knowledge of public elementary classroom teachers in the State of Florida produced a mean percent correct of 53%. The range of scores varied from 18%-82%, with the approximate average of correct answers of 12 out of 22. The category of proper instruction produced the lowest mean percent correct of 35%, and the area of post-injury treatment yielded the highest mean percent correct of 78%. The findings of this study emphasize the necessity of preparing teachers regarding their legal rights, duties and responsibilities. The need for teachers to receive training at the preservice and inservice levels has become clear by this study.

Trust in the workplace has been linked to higher levels of organizational performance and competitiveness. The imperative of variants of trust among a spectrum of institutional types, including colleges and universities, has been deemed to be considered essential for organizational effectiveness, stability and continuity. One variant, organizational trust, may be a particularly important factor during periods of exigency where exogenous forces may function to punctuate organizational equilibrium. This study focuses on organizational trust and associated variables (empowerment, resistance to change, support for innovation, interpersonal conflict, and demographics) as perceived by faculty in the work environment of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). HBCUs and their faculties have received minor attention in terms of research related to the focal variables in this study. The study depended on an existing database that included perceived responses of faculty at HBCUs to structured items included in survey measures. Selected variables included in the study model were considered. Some 3,070 faculty members working in 73 HBCUs throughout the United States provided the data included in this study. Secondary analyses revealed that higher levels of empowerment, higher levels of support for innovation, and lower levels of interpersonal conflict were associated with higher levels of organizational trust. The relationship between perceptions of empowerment and organizational trust, moreover, was influenced significantly by levels of resistance to change and support for innovation. Implementable strategies associated with study findings were commended for initiatives designed to strengthen organizational trust in the HBCU context.

For decades, higher education institutions have been increasingly reliant upon part-time faculty. As the role of part-time faculty in colleges and universities has evolved and gained prominence, it is increasingly important to gain a deeper understanding of their perceptions of job involvement considered as potential predictor of turnover and absenteeism. There are very few studies focusing on part-time faculty. Available research tends to be concerned with inequality in terms of income, benefits, working conditions, and opportunities for career advancement compared to full-time faculty, while perceptions of how distributive justice among part-time faculty members might be associated with their perceived levels of job involvement remain comparatively neglected. This study focused on exploring relationships between job involvement and other job-related variables, including perceived levels of distributive justice; whether or not part-time work status was voluntary or involuntary, or the position was primary or non-primary. Perceived levels of overqualified underemployment and perception of empowerment were also considered. The study population was drawn from an existing database. The target population of the study was 165 part-time faculty members in the continuing education field at higher education institutions in the United States. OLS regression, ANOVA, and path analysis were utilized to explore the relationships between job involvement and the other job-related variables among part-time faculty in the study. The analyses revealed that whether or not part-time work was voluntary, and the position was primary or non-primary did not significantly influence levels of job involvement. Furthermore, perceived distributive justice did not affect part-time faculty job involvement significantly. Levels of perceived distributive justice among part-time faculty members only influenced job involvement through empowerment. Empowering part-time faculty appears to be an essential element in efforts to enhance perceived levels of job involvement among part-time faculty.

Purpose Since the Utah Governmental Immunity Act went into effect on July 1, 1966, the experience of Utah's school districts under the law was not known. For the purpose of determining the experience of Utah's districts in administering the law and to determine the adequacy of the law, this study was undertaken. Procedures To accomplish the purpose of this study, a questionnaire was sent to each of Utah's 40 school districts. Instructions were sent with the questionnaire indicating that the writer would be making contact either by telephone or a personal interview to assist in filling out the questionnaire. A personal interview was conducted with 15 districts, and telephone contact was made with the remaining 25 districts. Additional information which could not be obtained from Utah's school systems was obtained from insurance agents, legal advisors, and various other related sources.