Please read the abstract in the section 00front of this document / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2007. / Curriculum Studies / PhD / Unrestricted

Please read the abstract in the section, 00front, of this document / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2008. / Education Management and Policy Studies / unrestricted

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The next American School Initiative plans to benefit low income minorities or below average achievers to excel in career choices by following occupational clusters and job shadowing to promote careers in applied technology.

The purpose of this project was to explore the benefits of how students who are exposed to outdoor activities can enhance their attention span, learning, and understanding of the content subjects.

Bibliography: leaves [114] - 124. / The study investigates the response of a former white Model C school to externally imposed educational reforms contained in the Education White Paper (1995); the South African Schools' Bill (1996) and the South African School's Act (1996). The study examines the path of policy - making after legislation. Drawing on the work of Bowe et al. (1996) as a key text, the study investigates the dynamics of the policy process within the school. The study uses as a conceptual framework Bowe et al.'s (ibid.) argument that the policy text is multiple, and that the legislated policy text is one of a number of representations of the policy. As such, the study seeks to identify the sites of text generation and the dynamics involved in the formation and maintenance of the dominant representations of the legislated policy texts. The research examines the impact of perceptions of the external policy changes and of the institution on the manner in which the school responds to the change. The relationship between power and policy-making referred to by researchers such as Ball (1994) and Blackmore et al. (1994) is clearly evident in the response of the executive of the school to challenges to the dominant discourse. The dominant discourse is described as a discourse of "Model C" schooling: predominantly white, and relatively progressive in so far as selected black students are permitted to attend the school. Linguistic exclusivity and the limited agency in the policy process are the two main strategies used to protect this dominant discourse. The study examines the strategies of resistance to this dominance and the ways in which these dissenting voices are marginalised. The study identifies the response of the school as "adaptive accommodation" whereby the school not merely reshapes the legislated policy to fit the structure of the school, but physically restructures the school so that anticipated policy change can be contained. The study concludes that the legislated policy has failed to challenge the policy paradigm of the previous education system.

The problem of the study was to examine the effects of Texas legislated basic skills testing as the effects relate to teachers, administrators, and local school districts. Questionnaires consisting of thirty questions were mailed to a stratified random sample of 120 educators from all twenty Regional Service Centers in Texas. Both teachers and administrators were included in the sample. Factual information and personal opinions were solicited to determine how educators and local school districts have been responding to the testing reform directives. Responses of educational groups and demographic types were compared using the chi-square test and presented in descriptive and tabular form.. Nine findings, nine conclusions, and six recommendations resulted from the study.

In the frontier days of America, the school and the community supplemented one another. Frontier life as simple and the requirements for existence on the frontier were, more often than not, a strong back rather than a strong mind. The task of the school, therefore, was relatively simple. The school amply fulfilled its duties if it provided "Reading" with which one might read from the bible, "Ritin" so that simple letter might be written and records kept, and "Rithmetic" which could be used to keep account and make measurements. / "A Paper." / Typescript. / "Submitted to the Graduate Council of Florida State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science." / Advisor: H. W. Dean, Professor Directing Paper. / Includes bibliographical references.

Traditional teaching practices in undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) courses have failed to support student success, causing many students to leave STEM fields and disproportionately affecting women and students of color. Although much is known about effective STEM teaching practices, many faculty continue to adhere to traditional methods, such as lecture. In this study, we investigated the factors that affect STEM faculty members' instructional decisions about evidence-based instructional practices (EBIPs). We performed a qualitative analysis of semistructured interviews with faculty members from the Colleges of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Life Sciences, and Engineering who took part in the STEM Faculty Institute (STEMFI) professional development program at the university. We also observed the participants' teaching behaviors using the Classroom Observation Protocol for Undergraduate STEM (COPUS) and investigated the relationship between faculty teaching behaviors and the individual, social, and contextual factors identified from the interview data. We found that internal factors, including attitudes and self-efficacy, were significantly correlated with student-centered teaching behaviors, while social and contextual factors were not significantly correlated with teaching behaviors. This result suggests that in addition to promoting positive teaching cultures and reducing barriers, efforts to support faculty change should emphasize changing faculty attitudes.

How do teachers respond to being told by the state what to teach? Whilst some suggest prescription can be instrumental in rapid system improvements, others believe that it has a deleterious effect on the profession. In this study, I firstly look at whether South Africa can be classified as a system increasing its levels of prescription and secondly consider how such an approach may affect teachers. Detailed investigation of policy documents finds that South African primary mathematics is an example of ‘unprescribed prescription’, typified by documents with hugely detailed teaching and learning practices but which are never made sufficiently mandatory. Studies of teachers’ responses to prescriptive educational reform are hindered by stereotypes, often based around teachers’ unwillingness to change. In-depth interviews allow the study to explore the positive and negative effects which teachers’ professional identities have upon decisions regarding policy reform. Equally, far from being passive in their reception of change, teachers displayed highly-ordered and well-reasoned viewpoints on how educational change should be successful. This allowed me to place teachers into four discrete categories according to their response to prescription and the implications of these categories for policy makers are put forward.