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.

This thesis was written as part of a process to secure funds for developing a "Preparatory Vocational Education" training academy for entry-level "Irrigation Technicians." Research revealed that funding for vocational program development was being awarded to "All-inclusive" or academy-style programs. These programs provide instruction necessary for students with zero experience to compete as entry-level journeymen. This project is based on a partial proposal draft for a U.S. Department of Labor Grant.

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The purpose of this mixed methods research study was to examine factors influencing community college Career Technical Education (CTE) students in their field of study choice. The problem was twofold: (1) Community college CTE performance metrics include earnings goals, but there is little research to inform the performance metric (Harrington, Mbomeda, & Casillas, 2018; Roberts, Leufgen, & Booth, 2018); and (2) CTE students, who are disproportionately economically disadvantaged, pursue fields of study that do not lead to a living wage (Bahr, 2010; Booth & Bahr, 2012; Zhang & Oymak, 2018). For this within-stage mixed model design (Johnson & Onwuegbuzie, 2004), I created an instrument to examine quantitative and qualitative data for CTE field of study choice. The Choice of College Major Survey (CCMS) had three domains: 1) student characteristics, which consisted of the 27 Likert items; 2) sociodemographic, which consisted of the seven demographic items; and 3) six open-ended items, which were the qualitative part of the study. I tested variables within the student characteristics domain and the career integration variable. I found statistically significant (p I used the conceptual model of Hirschy, Bremer, and Castellano (2011) for community college CTE student success. Although I did not set out to propose a new conceptual model, my findings led to a proposed conceptual model for CTE field of study choice, based on the model by Hirschy et al. (2011). My findings indicated a distinction between influencers, which were included in the conceptual model by Hirschy et al. (2011), and purposeful process, which was not included. Because the conceptual model by Hirschy et al. (2011) was designed to explain student attainment of educational goals rather than field of study choice, purposeful process was not relevant in the original model. Further testing and validation of the CCMS and the proposed conceptual model would add to theory and practice. In this paper I make recommendations for policy and practice and suggest further research.

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Compared with students with normal mental abilities, the mentally retarded student in a competency-based vocational education program generally experience much more difficulty learning and retaining the required competencies. Studies have shown that persons who are mentally retarded do not spontaneously apply efficient learning strategies as do persons with average mental abilities. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of remedial cognitive training on the abilities of adolescent mildly retarded students to learn and retain occupational competencies and to determine the effects of selected cognitive teaching strategies on learning and retention. The sample used in the study consisted of 40 subjects randomly selected from approximately 90 tenth grade EMR students of Richmond Public Schools (Virginia). These students entered vocational education training for the first time at the beginning of the 1982-83 school term. The 40 students were further assigned to four subgroups of 10 persons each. The three experimental groups and one control group were subjected to the following treatments: cognitive training plus cognitive teaching (group I), cognitive training plus traditional teaching (group II), no training but cognitive teaching (group III), or no training but traditional teaching (group IV). Pretests and posttests were used to measure knowledge of learning strategies and learning and retention of vocational competencies among the subjects. From these scores, the means and standard deviations were computed for each group and one-way analyses of variance were used to test the hypotheses of interest. The analyses resulting in significant F ratios were then followed by the Scheffé multiple comparison method. It was concluded that the EMR students who had been cognitively trained were superior in their knowledge of learning strategies over those who had not been trained. In the area of skill learning, it was found that cognitive training plus cognitive teaching was significantly more effective than traditional teaching and without cognitive training. Information learning proved superior for EMR subjects provided with cognitive training plus traditional teaching over those provided no training and cognitive teaching. The cognitive training and/or cognitive teaching was not effective in altering significantly learning retention among these subjects in either of the three categories of skill, information or recall of tools and procedures. / Ph. D.