The purpose of the present study was to examine 1) the effect of achievement information on evaluations of males and females, 2) male and female expectations of discrepancies between their opposite sex and themselves in evaluating achievement.

The purpose of the present study is to further investigate whether or not those children who are highly accepted by their peers differ in scholastic achievement from those who are not accepted by their peers.

The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship of a programmed study skills unit to the academic achievement of a selected group of eighth grade students.

This study was designed to determine the effect upon reading achievement of students who choose an elective course in either life science, creative writing, or accelerated reading in lieu of regular reading classes.

The problem in this study was to determine whether the availability of reading material in the home and a child 's socio-economic classification were sufficiently significant to be utilized in helping to predict the reading readiness and reading achievement of first-grade children.

A number of investigations of pupil progress in school have definitely shown that the percentage of failure in the first grade is much higher than in the other grades. In the light of these investigations, it is safe to assume that there must be a number of contributing factors to this failure in grade progress. The nature of these factors and what the school can do, if anything, to mitigate their influence on pupil progress in the first grade constitute a challenge to educational research. The present study undertakes an investigation along these lines. The purpose of this study is threefold: (1) to investigate the need for a pre-school program; (2) to study the reported values of such a program; and (3) to survey a certain number of schools to determine the extent and nature of preschool programs if any.

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PRINCIPALS’ SENSE OF ACHIEVEMENT AND TEACHERS’ PERCEPTIONS OF THEIR PRINCIPALS’ LEADERSHIP BEHAVIORS By Javaid Siddiqi, Ph.D. A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Virginia Commonwealth University. Virginia Commonwealth University, 2012 Major Director: Cheryl Magill, Ph.D. Assistant Professor, Department of Educational Leadership School of Education The purpose of the study was to examine the relationship between principals’ sense of achievement and teachers’ perceptions of their principals’ leadership behaviors. This was determined by examining job satisfaction of principals and leadership style using the Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire (MSQ) and the School District’s Climate Survey. The population for this study was teachers and principals in a large suburban school district in the Richmond, VA area. Participating schools were selected using a convenience sample based upon those in the school district’s annual school climate survey rotation. Of the district schools scheduled for the climate survey, only those that had their principal in place for a minimum of 1 year were chosen to participate. There were nine schools on the cycle for the 2011-2012 school year that met this criteria, yielding 9 principals and approximately 500 teachers. Data were collected from 5 elementary schools, 2 middle schools, and 2 high schools. The principals were asked to complete the Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire Sense of Achievement subscale survey. Teachers in the selected schools had recently participated in the School District’s Climate Survey. Data for this study came from the Leadership subscale of the survey. Descriptive statistical analysis revealed that principals generally are satisfied with the sense of achievement they have in their jobs. Data suggest they are most satisfied with having the opportunity to do something worthwhile and less satisfied with seeing the results of their work. Descriptive statistical analysis revealed that teachers generally are satisfied with their principals’ leadership behaviors. A Pearson correlation was run to determine the relationship between the mean scores of the principals’ sense of achievement and the teachers’ perceptions of their principals’ leadership behaviors. The data revealed that there was no statistically significant relationship between teachers’ perceptions of their principals’ leadership behaviors and principals’ sense of achievement. While no significant relationship between the two data sets was found, analysis supports the need for principals to be satisfied with their jobs in order to create the open climate necessary for teachers to cultivate a collaborative approach to their craft. Teachers in an open climate are more likely to cooperate and are more committed to their job and each other.

M. Ed. / Many higher education institutions face the loss of subsidy due to the high attrition rate of students. Despite the many advantages of alternate access programmes documented in literature, numerous Engineering Faculty members and members of the management of the University of Johannesburg believed that first time applicants with A and B symbols on their senior certificate were stronger students than those students who had completed an alternate access programme. Furthermore, they felt that the alternate access students took up the places which should have been given to those students with excellent senior certificate results. While many studies have been conducted on alternate access programmes there appears to be no evidence of the academic benefits that students derive from them. This generic qualitative study focused on what students perceive to be the academic benefits of alternate access programmes for their mainstream study. Purposeful sampling was used to select Engineering students from the 2005 and 2006 cohort to participate in focus group interviews and the data gathered during the interviews were analysed and interpreted using an Interpretivist lens. The themes that emerged from the study confirmed that students found the programmes to be beneficial but that they became aware of most of the academic benefits only once they joined the mainstream students in their second year of study. This study revealed the alternate access students were of the opinion that there are a number of academic benefits that they had derived from the alternate access programmes. They were in agreement that these benefits had helped to prepare them for mainstream study and they concluded that the benefits had contributed to their academic success in their mainstream studies. The findings of this study suggest that alternate access programmes have an important role to play in providing students with access, support and success in mainstream studies which in turn leads to the increased throughput of students and higher education institutions retaining subsidy.

This study examined the direct and indirect associations of the perceived coach-created motivational climate, athletes' implicit theory, and athletes' achievement goal orientation in relation to their levels of grit. Five hundred twenty-three Division I and II collegiate student-athletes (male = 246, female = 277) from five institutions across the south-central and southeast areas of the United States completed self-report measures assessing the previously described constructs. The measurement model fit the data well (SRMR = .055; CFI = .938; RMSEA = .067) and demonstrated invariance across the male and female athletes. The structural model demonstrated adequate fit (SRMR = .088; CFI = .918; RMSEA = .068). All direct and indirect paths in the model were significant in the expected direction, with the exception of the direct path from entity theory to ego goal orientation and the indirect path from ego-involving climate to ego goal orientation through entity theory, which were both non-significant. The mastery-incremental constructs accounted for 65% of the variance in grit. Results indicate that achievement motivation theory is an appropriate framework through which to examine grit, and achievement motivation constructs may be significant antecedents of grit's development. Limitations and future directions are discussed.

A Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Science, University of the Witwatersrand, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science Johannesburg, 2012 / The Internet is a technology that has become a big part of people’s daily living. Through its ability to act as a support medium in the different functions for which people use it, the Internet was introduced to academic institutions as a tool to enhance students’ academic experience in the mid 1990s. Today, the Internet plays a major role in the classroom, from course materials being available online to larger ranges of academic resources being a few clicks away, the influence of the Internet on campus is incontestably felt. This dissertation looks at finding evidence of an association between Internet usage and academic performance among university students. It addresses the need to evaluate whether the Internet is fulfilling the role it was initially brought on campus for. In this dissertation, a qualitative and a quantitative study were developed to measure students’ Internet usage on campus, the reasons for which they use it and how the Internet influences their academic grades. 389 3rd year students from different academic disciplines participated in this study. In summary, the results of this study show that the Internet exerts some influence on students’ academic performance but no link of causality between the two could be established.