This thesis reports on barriers and enablers to participation within Further Education from the perspective of the student voice. It is based on the work of Veronica McGivney (1993) who reported on research undertaken by Cross (1981) which divided deterrents to participation into three categories, namely, Situational, Institutional and Dispositional. McGivney reports these categories to be “oversimplified”. Student participation/non-participation is explored via the opinions/perspectives of learners on the Access to Higher Education Programme within a traditional mining community which is in the process of redefining its identity following the closure of local coal mines within the last few decades. To accommodate the complexity that arose from this research, the discourses of both ‘individual needs’ and ‘student voice’ have been problematised. Quantitative and qualitative survey methods are drawn upon including data from questionnaires, focus group and college Management Information Systems. Nine emergent themes that may act as sub-layers to the themes of Situational, Institutional and Dispositional categories reported by McGivney and one meta-theme (Opportunity) are discussed. High levels of interrelatedness between emergent themes point to a fluid dynamic within the decision-making process of prospective participants. The research concludes with a practical ‘framework for participation’ that attempts to reflect this fluidity.

This thesis explores experiences of college-based higher education (CBHE) in England, positioning this type of provision within the national and local geographies of English higher education. Focusing on institutions located in higher education 'cold spots', the thesis situates these institutions within local and policy narratives of both lack of and need for educational opportunity. The case study research design examines two case institutions, and involves documentary analysis and interviews with higher education directors, tutors and final year students on two degree courses in each college, as well as interviews with key figures in national Further Education policy. Data analysis deploys the concept of possible selves in an original, sociologically-oriented dialogue with de Certeau's 'spatial story' to produce accounts of placed possible selves. The key contributions of the thesis are, firstly, that shared and homogenous societal narratives of university higher education dominate even in places and for educational subjects without university education. Secondly, the thesis challenges reductive binary understandings of student mobilities, in which mobility and privilege are diametrically opposed to immobility and disadvantage. Finally, the concept of local capital offers a way of understanding social, cultural and economic commitments to place that moves beyond a language of deficit.

The aim of this thesis was to investigate some of the processes that contribute to the effective comprehension of text in an adult population. The thesis begins with an assessment of component skills that are of theoretical relevance to reading comprehension skill. Experiment One explored the relation between gist-based memory processes and reading comprehension skill. Weaknesses in semantic processing have been shown to contribute to comprehension difficulties both in childhood (e.g. Nation & Snowling, 1999), and adulthood (e.g. Perfetti, Yang & Schmalhoffer, 2007). Weekes, Hamilton, Oakhill & Holliday (2008) used the false memory (DRM) paradigm developed by Deese (1959); Roediger and McDermott (1995) to assess the relation between reading comprehension and memory processes in children. In the DRM, subjects memorise lists of semantically related words (e.g. bed, rest, awake) for later recall. During recall, it is typical to see intrusions of semantically related but non-presented items (e.g. ‘sleep' is often falsely recalled following presentation of the above). Weekes et al. (2008) found that children with comprehension difficulties produced fewer such intrusions than did good comprehenders, suggesting that poor comprehenders have difficulty extracting the central theme or ‘gist' from the word lists, a deficit that was attributed to weakness in semantic processing and memory. Experiment One demonstrated that this effect was not replicable in an adult population. Although there is evidence that deficits in semantic processing contribute to reading comprehension difficulties in adulthood, these appear to be too subtle to manifest themselves in the DRM paradigm. In Experiment Two, measures of vocabulary, word-level skills (orthography and decoding), working memory and verbal IQ were taken from a population of young adult readers. These measures were used as predictors of comprehension skill in multiple regression analyses. Moderate support for the Verbal Efficiency/Lexical Quality Hypothesis (Perfetti, 1985; 2007) was obtained, in that word-level skills and vocabulary size accounted for unique portions of variance in comprehension skill. Experiments Three and Four explored the processes involved in on-line reading comprehension and, specifically, in a comprehension task that demanded integration. In both experiments, subjects took part in a coherence judgement task (Ferstl, Guthke & von Cramon, 2002; Ferstl, 2006) in which they had to verify whether two sentences cohered with one another or not. Four conditions that resulted from crossing coherence and cohesion (i.e. the presence of a lexical connection), were used: Coherent and cohesive (where sentences cohered, and a cohesive tie made their coherence explicit); coherent and incohesive (where sentences cohered, but coherence had to be inferred on the basis of pragmatic information rather than lexical cohesion); incoherent and cohesive (where sentences that do not cohere were erroneously linked with a cohesive tie); and incoherent and incohesive (where sentences did not cohere, and were not erroneously linked with a cohesive tie). Typically, the paradigm elicits an interaction between coherence and cohesion in reading times for the second (target) sentence: Targets in coherent and cohesive trials are read more quickly than targets in coherent and incohesive trials; and targets in incoherent and incohesive trials are read more quickly than are targets in incoherent and cohesive trials. Experiment Three replicated this interaction, and demonstrated that variance in its size was predicted by working memory capacity, with high working memory readers showing larger interaction effect sizes than low capacity readers. The interaction was interpreted as a monitoring effect that was triggered by target sentences in the atypical conditions (i.e. incoherent and cohesive; coherent and incohesive). It was proposed that high capacity readers were better able to engage in this monitoring. Experiment Four sought to explore the semantic deficit hypothesis in relation to this effect, with the proposal that efficient semantic processes, rather than working memory capacity, contributed to variance in the size of the interaction. Performance on a semantic fluency task was found to predict unique variance in the size of the interaction effect, over and above that accounted for by working memory capacity. This finding suggests that the effect is better explained by semantic processing than by working memory capacity, and that the interaction may be better described as a semantic elaboration effect rather than a comprehension monitoring effect. The conclusion of this thesis is that reading comprehension in adult readers relies upon efficient and accurate lexical access, comprising both lower-level processes such as accurate word recognition and decoding skill, and higher-level processes of semantic elaboration and integration.

The purpose of this study was to survey selected existing facilities and to develop guidelines for planning facilities for the adult learner. The following subproblems were identified in order to adequately treat the problem: (1) To describe selected facilities for the adult learner; (2) To identify those elements considered essential, highly desirable, and significant in planning a facility for the adult learner. Four research questions were considered to be relevant to this study: (1) What were the most prevalent needs of the adult learner? (2) What facilities for the adult learner are in existence now? (3) What recommendations are given for planning a facility for the adult learner? (4) Will the total responses obtained by on-site visitations be consistent with the total responses of the mailed questionnaire? Through the review of literature, a list of thirty selected existing facilities was compiled. The participants in the study were limited to twelve randomly selected facilities for the adult learner. In addition, three selected facilities were visited. A questionnaire was developed and field tested to assess those guideline elements considered essential, highly desirable, and significant in planning facilities for the adult learner. A total of thirteen sources responded to the questionnaire. Three directors of facilities where on-site visitations were conducted participated in the study. Ten directors of facilities for the adult learner in various geographical locations in the United States participated in the study. From the analysis of the data from the questionnaire responses, ninety-six elements were found to be essential, highly desirable, or significant. These elements were arrayed from essential through significant and presented as guidelines for developing facilities for the adult learner. Recommendations based on the findings were given.

The purpose of this study was to survey selected existing facilities and to develop guidelines for planning facilities for the adult learner. The following subproblems were identified in order to adequately treat the problem: (1) To describe selected facilities for the adult learner; (2) To identify those elements considered essential, highly desirable, and significant in planning a facility for the adult learner. Four research questions were considered to be relevant to this study: (1) What were the most prevalent needs of the adult learner? (2) What facilities for the adult learner are in existence now? (3) What recommendations are given for planning a facility for the adult learner? (4) Will the total responses obtained by on-site visitations be consistent with the total responses of the mailed questionnaire? Through the review of literature, a list of thirty selected existing facilities was compiled. The participants in the study were limited to twelve randomly selected facilities for the adult learner. In addition, three selected facilities were visited. A questionnaire was developed and field tested to assess those guideline elements considered essential, highly desirable, and significant in planning facilities for the adult learner. A total of thirteen sources responded to the questionnaire. Three directors of facilities where on-site visitations were conducted participated in the study. Ten directors of facilities for the adult learner in various geographical locations in the United States participated in the study. From the analysis of the data from the questionnaire responses, ninety-six elements were found to be essential, highly desirable, or significant. These elements were arrayed from essential through significant and presented as guidelines for developing facilities for the adult learner. Recommendations based on the findings were given.

The problem of this study was that no data existed on characteristics of life style management as related to persisters and dropouts among adult high school students in the state of Tennessee. The purpose of the study was to determine the characteristic life style approaches most prevalent among persistent enrollees, graduates, and dropouts of selected adult high school programs in Tennessee. Five hundred fifty-nine persisters and 868 dropouts were surveyed by mail, by telephone, or by school site visits. There were 419 participants in the study, 311 persisters and 108 dropouts. The research was descriptive in nature and utilized data gathered from a survey instrument entitled, Life Style Approaches (LSA) Scale. The instrument was developed by Williams and Long (1991) based on a collection of self-management strategies. Six self-management strategies were identified in the 22 item instrument, and respondents were asked to report to what degree each item was or was not similar to their life styles. The instrument was piloted on 50 adult high school students in Hamblen and Greene Counties who were not in the study sample. Pilot results indicated that reading and comprehension levels were adequate for the students surveyed. Findings were divided into two categories, demographics and the findings as a result of hypothesis testing. Seventy-three percent of respondents were born after 1960, 88% were Caucasian, and 52% lacked one year or less to graduate. An equal number were married and single, and 55% were employed. Incomes of respondents ranged from less than $5,000 to \$40,000; however, 31% of them earned less than $5,000. With regard to hypothesis testing, no significant differences were found between dropouts and persisters in the demographic areas of age gender, race, marital status, or occupational status. There was a significant difference between dropouts and persisters in the number of years needed to graduate. Of the self-management practices (performance focus and efficiency, goal directedness, timeliness of task accomplishment, organization of physical space, written plans for change, and verbal support for self-management), only performance focus and efficiency was found to be significantly different between dropouts and persisters. The performance focus and efficiency factor is closely related to self-efficacy, and persisters had a greater degree of self-efficacy than did the dropouts reported in this study.

The problem of this study was to determine the growth and development of the community education program in North Carolina and to determine if this development was reflected by public awareness and response to the program. In reviewing the literature and searching manuals of survey instruments, a questionnaire was not found which would answer the specific questions necessary for the study. A questionnaire was designed and field tested utilizing graduate students and participants in a community education workshop sponsored by National Center for Community Education from Flint, Michigan. The validation was completed by leading authorities in the field of community education and community schools. Demographic data and information for comparing the program at the present time to the second year after the program was established by the North Carolina Legislature in 1977 were collected. The 11 hypotheses were stated in null format. The comparison data pertained to numbers of programs, numbers of participants, numbers of full-time and part-time director/coordinators, utilization of volunteers, recruiting of instructors, efficiency of the advisory committees, and developing of public awareness. The information requested in the demographic survey included the age, sex, formal preparation, initial certification, length of time employed in current position, type of community being served, and the percent of work time given to community education task. They were also asked to list responsibilities and, if hired part-time, to give their title in the public school system. All director/coordinators in North Carolina were included in the study and were surveyed for pertinent information. A 73% return was obtained. The analyses of those data were presented in both tabular and narrative form.

Low socioeconomic students represent a population in public schools which is underrepresented and underserved in the talented and gifted programs. Part of the problem may be due to teachers' and parents' abilities to recognize giftedness in economically disadvantaged potentially gifted students and to nominate them for a gifted screening.;The present study attempted to determine if a training program for teachers and parents would increase the valid referral rate of potentially gifted economically disadvantaged students. Teachers at one school received an oral presentation and written summation of economically disadvantaged potentially gifted student characteristics. Teachers at a second school received the written summation only, while third school served as the control.;Results indicate a significant improvement in the teachers' understanding and awareness of traditional, nontraditional, and parent/home characteristics in general. Teachers from the oral and written presentation group showed a significant improvement in their ability to accurately refer economically disadvantaged potentially gifted students following intervention.;Teachers and parents from the treatment schools referred more economically disadvantaged students following treatment than from the control school, although not to a significant degree. However, these students continued to have difficulty meeting the eligibility criteria of the gifted program requirements, resulting in few new students following the intervention.

Using period newspapers and books, mercantile correspondence, Spanish imperial archives, and the colonial records of the Caracas City Council, Consulado, and Venezuelan Intendancy, this dissertation highlights the enterprises of those who profited from sustaining the Spanish Empire in its frail and debilitated state. Whether they had prospered from or merely survived the commercial revolutions that shook the Atlantic World after 1789, all merchants and traders calculated the economic consequences of South American independence and encouraged their contemporaries to do so too.

As the shift in demographics and the aging population of the United States make their presence felt, colleges and universities throughout the country must address the question of supporting the goals of the non-traditional student in higher education. While it is difficult to characterize a "typical non-traditional student," it is important to analyze the role that certain demographic factors play in the student's decision to go to college.;We hypothesize that the non-traditional student's decision to attend college is influenced by several factors that, in broad, general terms, include family background characteristics, the student's demographic profile and aptitude, and external economic conditions and labor demand.;The influence of family background is incorporated in our model through variables that describe the environment in which a student has grown up. Parental educational attainment, in particular, serves as a proxy for the attitudes toward education that may have shaped the student's perceptions toward higher education. Other factors such as parental income, the father's Duncan socio-economic index, the number of siblings, and the birth order, describe the family's capacity to invest in higher education. In short, the factors hypothesized to influence student enrollment were indeed shown to have the predicted effects.;By understanding non-traditional students and what influences their enrollment decisions, we will have a better understanding of how to serve this growing segment of the population within higher education. In particular, by determining the type of institutions that these students enroll in, institutions themselves can be made more aware of the particular needs of these students so as to better able to meet them.