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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at El Paso, 2008. / Title from title screen. Vita. CD-ROM. Includes bibliographical references. Also available online.

Thesis (Ed. D.)--Illinois State University, 1974. / Title from title page screen, viewed Nov. 3, 2004. Dissertation Committee: J.H. McGrath (chair), Eugene Fitzpatrick, Ronald Laymon, Clinton Bunke, Elwood Egelston. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 102-107) and abstract.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1968. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliography.

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Thesis (Ed. D.)--Illinois State University, 1995. / Title from title page screen, viewed May 10, 2006. Dissertation Committee: Larry Kennedy (chair), John Godbold, John Goeldi, William Tolone. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 115-123) and abstract. Also available in print.

It may be argued that there are fewer sporting environments where politics and sport are so intertwined, however having undergone significant socio-political changes and development, South Africa (SA) remains a strong sporting nation with a rich and complex sporting history. After 28 years of sporting isolation, following SA's re-entry to international competition in 1992, the country has since competed at international level and immediately reasserted itself as one of the top cricketing nations in the world. With very little non-politicised literature on the subject, the question of what SA's talent development environment looks like in order to produce internationally competitive teams, after 28 years of isolation, remains relatively un-reviewed. In light of this, the SA cricket development environment offers a unique opportunity to explore one of SA's oldest and most established sports. The focus of this thesis will provide a pragmatic and holistic picture of the South African cricket development environment across four features, Organisational Culture, Structural Change, Coach Development and Coach-Administrator Relationships. Consequently, the aims of this thesis are fourfold: 1. To explore the use of an existing organisational framework, the Cultural Web, from the domain of organisational culture management to investigate organisational culture within SA cricket development environment. 2. To gather an understanding of the development pathway of SA cricketers and investigate if the changes made to the provincial structure in 2004 have impacted on the pre-2004 development trajectory of a SA cricketer. 3. To explore the learning and development environment of SA cricket coaches and their career progression. 4. To explore and illuminate the operational relationship between the coach and the administration within the context of SA cricket.

The purpose of this study was to investigate effective administrative support for successful teachers of urban at-risk students. The main difficulty in studying administrative support is that it comes in so many ways. Johnson’s (1990) theory of workplace variables and Butterworth's (1981) social exchange theory were the basis for this study. Failures of at-risk students threaten the well being of public schools and have become a generally recognized social problem of national priority. This study explores how principals act to influence the success of teachers as they work with at-risk students. It is grounded in the following four assumptions: 1. Administrators significantly influence workplace satisfaction (Butterworth, 1981; Sergiovani, 1991). 2. Workplace satisfaction directly affects quality of performance (Johnson, 1990; Lortie, 1975). 3. Teachers have a moral right to a satisfying workplace (Goodlad, 1984). 4. At-risk students are, in important ways, unique in their educational needs (Capuzzi & Gross, 1989; Chenoweth, 1993). Collection, analysis, and evaluation of data were guided by three research questions focusing on how uncommonly successful teachers of urban at-risk students perceive their administrative support, what these teachers recommend regarding administrative support and what these teachers recommend regarding preparation for teachers to teach at-risk students. The teachers were deemed successful by a combination of parental, student, teacher, and administrator evaluations (Peterson, Bennet, & Sherman, 1991). Thirty-nine teachers who had been recommended by their peers, parents, students, and building and central office administrators were sent letters inviting them to participate in this study. The first 18 who responded were interviewed using a 15 item protocol. Three were elementary teachers, 10 were middle school teachers, and 5 were high school teachers. Four of the 10 middle school teachers were from one middle school but the others were from a variety of schools. The elite interview technique proposed by Marshall and Rossman (1989) was used because it was felt that surveys do not elicit the depth of information desired and a single case study would not give enough breadth. The interview responses were analyzed both as individual documents and also an analysis by item was conducted. Twenty-two recommendations for aspiring and practicing administrators are listed and the eight main themes are listed. The results show specific kinds of support that can help teachers of at-risk students succeed: personal support, peer support, and training for both teachers and administrators. In general, the successful teachers felt that they did not receive adequate administrative support even though when asked the question “do you feel supported by your administrators?" some said "yes." The results also indicate that administrators need further training in both interpersonal skills and communication skills.

The debate over the effective preparation of pre-service teachers is not new. Often this debate concerns what might be considered successful methods for all pre-service teachers. However, preparation for career and technical education (CTE) teachers could look quite different than that of academic teachers, whether they are prepared through traditional or alternative routes to education. In this qualitative study, the researcher examined two iterations of the alternative-route program designed to prepare new CTE teachers in Mississippi and considered the level of self-efficacy of the teacher participants, the perceived effectiveness of the specific elements of each program, and the perceived significance of teacher/administrator and teacher/mentor relationships. The results of this study indicate that participants in the most recent iteration of the alternative-route program have a higher level of self-efficacy in teaching. The study also found that the specific elements of the newer version of the program are perceived as more relevant than those of the older version of the program and that teacher/administrator and teacher/mentor relationships play a key role in self-efficacy and job satisfaction among new CTE teachers. The results of this study also revealed that new CTE teachers desire opportunities to grow their pedagogical content knowledge by interacting and learning from veteran teachers in their respective content areas. Additionally, some of the more effective teachers who participated in this study rated themselves lower than their less effective colleagues on a self-efficacy survey and vice versa, indicating the presence of the Dunning-Kruger effect, which posits that, when an individual is unskilled in a certain task, they not only make poor choices in that area but also lack the metacognitive ability to realize it.