by Li Shing Sun. / Thesis (M.A.Ed.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1987. / Bibliography: leaves 111-113.

This study evaluated the effectiveness of a multi-component intervention composed of (a) one-on-one teacher-student interaction, (b) teacher provided process praise, and (c) family-teacher good news phone calls on problem behavior among students in elementary school. A single-subject multiple baseline design was utilized to examine the functional relation between the intervention and student outcomes. Participants were two teachers and three students with high levels of problem behavior as well as low quality relationships with their teachers. Students met individually with teachers one time per week to develop and discuss student centered goals. Teachers provided students with specific process praise and made weekly good news phone calls to the students' families. These components were predicted to improve student levels of academic engagement and reduce disruptive behavior through increasing relationship quality. Results suggested the intervention shows promise in decreasing disruptive behavior. No relationship was found between the intervention and academic engagement. Teacher reports provided descriptions of their perceptions of increased relationship quality and social validity.

Currently, in the United States, there is an urgency to address the perceived failure of contemporary public schools to educate diverse populations. This sense of failure is propped up by performance discrepancies between White, middle-class youth and low-income, including most often, youth of color. This disparity, frequently referred to as "the achievement gap," drives mandatory school improvement policies and practices designed to improve outcomes for underperforming, sub-categorically, school populations. Amid these interrelated policies and practices, all of which are dependent upon assumptions requiring predictability, generalizability, and stability as characteristics of sub-populations and their constituent subjects, the racial divide and the economic gap have been re-coded in terms of differences in exam scores (Taubman, 2009, p. 154). One significant implication of populational reasoning as recently deployed in contemporary U.S. public schools is that teachers-frequently White, middle-class women-are increasingly attributed with a categorical bias that "has increasingly served as a possible explanation [emphasis added] for the 'achievement gap,'" rather than as a contributing factor embedded in "demographic factors … far more complex than [previously] indicated" in education research (Farkas 2004, as cited in Takei & Shouse, 2007, p. 368; Ferguson, 1998; Perry, 2003). In this way, the frequent failures and non-proficiencies of both teachers and students, key components of crisis discourses, are often attributed to simplistically applied and unexamined "racial asymmetry" (p. 368) and undesirably framed within a "cultural and demographic mismatch" (Grant & Gibson, 2011, p. 25). In order to trouble commonsensical conceptualizations of this mismatch, this conceptual study works toward re-theorizing the mismatch as both a concept and as a subject-glomming "hub" in schools and society in ways that articulate difference differently. By diffracting feminist, new materialist and poststructural theories of subjectivity through the material discursive fields surrounding a contemporary work of art and a post-industrial city, notions of diffraction, as both a methodological tool and as a concept, are developed. Experimenting with the notion of concept as method, "mismatched" subjects are re-presented as non-individuated subjectivities that emerge within ever-changing material/discursive fields.

Achieving science education goals by teaching a breadth of science is possible, but it requires verbal pedagogies which require trust. However, the lack of trust in teachers is an international problem, leading to suboptimal school performance and other issues. Research concerning the importance of trust in science education is found wanting. To determine which trust factors affected achievement of which science education goals, 96 female yeshiva students in grades 7, 8, 9, and 12 filled out a survey and questionnaire that asked about their perceptions of the effects of their trust-in-teachers factors on their achievement of science education goals. Regardless of subgroup (tier [group of school grades] or learning style), the following science education goals were statistically significantly perceived by participants to be achieved with the presence of the listed trust factors: • Learning Classroom Science: Role, Transferring Knowledge, and Character. • Science Literacy: Transferring Knowledge. • Future Science: Role and Transferring Knowledge. For the following subgroups, the listed trust factors were also valued: Students who learn best by “listening to [their] teacher”: Expertise and Support; students who learn best by “exploring and doing things with [their] physical hands”: Emotional Relationship and Guidance; middle schoolers: Meritorious Service and Emotional Relationship; high schoolers: Guidance. It was also found that age has less predictive power than learning styles or “school blocs” (elementary school, middle school, high school) which are socially-constructed and ignore learning styles. Because of verbal methods’ more ubiquitous application than strictly science-educate-minded pedagogies, if repeated with modification, the Shade Report instrument introduced in this study has implications for students of different demographics (including ethnicities/cultures, sex, school type, and grade), additional learning styles, different science education goals, control factors or intimacy factors rather than trust factors, and teachers if they indicate how students can be more effective students. The present study has provided information regarding which trust factors are perceived by students to achieve specific science education goals. The next possible research step is to more fully examine through appropriate research design how to achieve each of the required trust factors.

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Bullying victimization within the context of friendships is a complex phenomenon that is commonly experienced among youth, yet is insufficiently understood. Current psychosocial research examining bullying is often devoid of descriptions of the relationship that exists between those who bullied or are bullied (i.e., are they friends, enemies, former friends?), and there continues to be limited consideration of the underlying social dynamics and negotiations that occur within friendships containing bullying. Furthermore, there is a clear need for bullying research to consider how wider macro-level forces (e.g., social processes, power relations, and cultural discourses) can influence the bullying within friendship experience. Guided by a social-ecological framework, this dissertation reports on the findings from two empirical studies that investigated adolescents' experiences of bullying victimization within friendship. These studies involved interviewing previously victimized adolescents and young women; the analytical approaches were guided by thematic analysis and constructivist grounded theory. The results indicate that friendship victimization is a hurtful relational experience that involves painful emotions and carries significant interpersonal risks for adolescents. Furthermore, participants’ responses to their friend’s bullying behaviours were constrained by a number of barriers, such as depictions of bullying that individualize the problem, discourses of resistance that privilege overt responses, and gender expectations. Finally, the dissertation considers how teacher-student relationships influence peer bullying experiences and reemphasizes how teachers can be influential allies for bullying prevention and intervention.

Thesis (M.Dev.) --University of Limpopo, 2006. / The purpose of this study was to determine the impact that alternatives to corporal punishment had on the culture of teaching and learning at Lepato High School in the Limpopo Province. The methods used for data collection involved the use of questionnaires, personal interviews and participation observation. The findings indicated that implementing alternatives to corporal punishment without proper support from all stakeholders in education was disastrous for this school. This study further revealed that parental involvement in education is necessary for the successful application of alternatives to corporal punishment in schools. The study findings will make a positive contribution to the improvement of the handling of disciplinary problems in various schools especially in the Limpopo Province and South Africa in general.

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Thesis (M.Ed.)--University of Hong Kong, 1981. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 391-398). Also available in print.