This study was designed to investigate whether a public school adult education centre opened in a low socio-economic, urban neighbourhood attracted those for whom it was intended; that is, people who lived in the area under investigation, and had the low socio-economic characteristics typical of the residents in this target area. The implications of the results are relevant to future adulteducation efforts directed towards reaching people presently unreachable. Data describing the socio-economic and motivational characteristics of 127 participants were collected using a Survey Questionnaire and the Education Participation Scale. These participants were divided according to area of residence with approximately one half residing within the target area and the balance outside. The data were compared, where relevant, with census-tract data, and statistically tested using Pearson's chi square, Analysis of Variance and Pearson Product-Moment Correlation Coefficients. The study showed that the socio-economic characteristics of the participants living in the target area were different from those of the general population of the area, and were similar to the characteristics of participants coming to the new centre from all other parts of the city. Of the characteristics studied, level of education and prestige of occupation, shown in previous research reports to have the greatest influence on whether a person will participate or not, were higher for the participants living in the target area than for the general population of the area. The motivational characteristics of all the participants were similar. From this it was concluded that the new centre, though situated in the midst of a low socioeconomic neighbourhood, was not attracting people living in the area who had the socio-economic characteristics indigenous to the general population of the area. The area participants exhibited elitist characteristics usually associated with adult learners. Suggestions were made for attracting the majority target population. Motivational characteristics of all the participants were studied by sex, age, place of birth, education level and course enrollment. Statistically significant differences were noted for sex, age, education level and course enrollment. / Education, Faculty of / Educational Studies (EDST), Department of / Graduate

Contemporary assessments of management training efforts have generally found such efforts to be wanting, in failing to inculcate enduring changes in skills and capacities. Simultaneously, a variety of management theorists have pointed in the direction of cognitive complexity, sometimes described as "complicated understanding", as the key quality for successful managers. This study is concerned with the contribution that an explicitly developmental perspective can make to a better understanding of the dynamics of managing in an organizational setting. It draws on research conducted over the last two decades by a small group of researchers interested in the nexus of developmental psychology and management and aims to lend additional empirical support to those efforts. This study focuses on the work of developmental psychologist Robert Kegan, who has constructed a theory of stage-related progressions in the development of the self and personal meaning-making over the life course. Kegan's notion that our culture makes mental demands on us that can be understood in stage terms is applied here to the domain of management. The purpose was to explore the possible connections between essential managerial skills and the properties of developmental stages. Sixteen (16) managers in a mid-sized state agency formed the research sample. Each subject was assessed for both developmental stage and managerial stage. The results reported here suggest a strong correlation between stage-functioning and management style. The implications for further theory building and organizational reform in the service of fostering managerial success are discussed in detail.

In 1989, the City of Pittsfield implemented an entrepreneurial education program for the unemployed using federal funding. This study describes the evolution of the educational program and identifies key elements in the entrepreneurial education process. The literature review sets the context of the case study in the new, burgeoning field of entrepreneurial education. The lack of consensus on a definition and the "idiosyncratic" nature of entrepreneurship creates a fluid, volatile climate for this case study. The case study responds to the call for research in the field by providing a seven year in depth analysis of the results of an entrepreneurial educational program for the unemployed. A personal, narrative case study approach reflected my role as a participant/observer and included participant and staff responses. Data analysis also included document review and participant surveys. The key elements that emerged in this case study were: (1) issues of unemployment needed to be addressed in the curriculum design; (2) adult learning strategies provided methodologies that addressed those issues; (3) a staff composed of present or former business owners provided the necessary practical, relevant orientation; (4) networking skills were enhanced by interaction with peers; (5) continual feedback from participants provided essential guidance for curriculum development; and (6) beneficial results beyond business starts need to be included in assessments of entrepreneurial training programs. The case study reports that 264 of the 428 participants included in the study started businesses and almost all of the others secured employment or went on for other training. This study concludes with recommendations for support of future entrepreneurial educational programs for the unemployed as a way to create a climate for small business development in turbulent, changing economies.

We used Kolb's Model of Experiential Learning and learning style (LS) theory to design a group workshop (GW) and correspondence course (CC) to instruct adults on reducing cancer risk through diet. Kolb's model has four stages: having a concrete experience, reflecting on that experience, forming abstract concepts about the experience, and actively experimenting with what has been learned. Individuals prefer one stage of learning and are classified into four LSs: divergers, assimilators, convergers, and accommodators. The purpose of the study was to test the relationship of LS and instructional method to knowledge, attitude, and behavior change; knowledge and attitude maintenance ten weeks after instruction; and course attrition. Through mass media we recruited adults interested in diet and cancer prevention. Subjects completed Kolb's LS Inventory II (an instrument to determine LS), demographic questionnaire, and knowledge, attitude, and behavior pretests. Subjects were randomly assigned, by LS, to the GW, CC, or control group. Following the educational intervention, participants completed posttest measures of knowledge and attitude and delayed posttests of knowledge, attitude, and behavior. Both courses improved knowledge and attitude at posttest. However, knowledge gain was not maintained in either course, but attitude was maintained in the CC. Each course increased self-reported behavior scores, but only the GW values were significantly greater than controls. The CC improved "Yellow and Dark Green Vegetable" intake and lowered fat consumption in those subjects who had high fat intakes before the study began. No relationship was found between LS and knowledge and attitude change or maintenance, self-reported behavior, nutrient intake, nutrient density, or attrition. However, the converger LS had a significant decrease in consumption of citrus fruits at delayed posttest as compared to divergers and accommodators. In addition, convergers attending the GW had decreased fruit and vegetable consumption. The negative outcomes of convergers in the GW may be due to their preference for technical tasks rather than people. Thus, successful knowledge, attitude, and behavior change can result from nutrition education programs designed to reach all learning styles. Further research is needed to compare Kolb's model to other theories of behavior change and maintenance.

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Relationships among education, oppression and class have been presented and explained in distinct and different ways by different social theories, namely, neo-classical and orthodox Marxist determinist, conflationist, and Marxian overdeterminist theories. Human practice, following these different social theories has had, and may continue to produce, different social structures, some of them disastrous, irrespective of whether the disasters are intended or not. Others carry in them seeds of freedom and justice. Determinist theories have contributed to disastrous human practice by being exclusionary in approach, picking either education or oppression as their entry points to which they assigned the privileged position of causality, independent of all other processes. The class process is one of those omitted processes because determinist theories had thought it would be wiped out following changes in education or oppression processes. Conflationist theory has formulated its logic differently, gliding education into oppression, presenting and explaining them to mean the class process. Result: changes have occurred in human practice which are nothing other than continual reformulations of the cultural process of education whose guiding threads are those determinist and conflationist theories. Politics, too, has been reformulated to mean competition for power--a process that tends toward oppression even if unintended. The class process itself has either been denied existence in contemporary society or inessentialized vis-a-vis education and oppression, leaving it untouched in the process of changes in education and oppression. This study rests on an alternative methodological standpoint with respect to how education, oppression and class are related, and how they might be removed. Using alternative Marxian theory, whose logic is overdetermination, I present and explain these three distinct and different processes and their relationships. The method of overdetermination understands the processes of education, oppression, and class to be mutually and contradictorily related. Its political implications, which this thesis tries to accentuate as having a promise in achieving freedom and justice, are that changes must simultaneously occur in education, oppression, and class processes. Following this viewpoint, overdetermination believes a different set of processes will constitute a free and just society. Those processes are politics, classlessness, and non-indoctrinational education.

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