Thesis (M.Ed.(Educational Psychology)--University of the Witwatersrand, 1990.

For several reasons, Guilford's psychological theory, "The Structure-of-Intellect" (SI), seems a good candidate for relating to the learning of mathematics. The general purposes of this study were to identify SI factors which would be significantly related to achievement in a junior-college mathematics course for non-science, non-mathematics majors and to determine whether semantic factors would be better predictors than symbolic for students classified as having high verbal ability. The two topics in the mathematics course which were selected for study were (1) numeration in other bases and (2) finite systems. / Typescript. / "August, 1975." / "Submitted to the Area of Instructional Design and Personnel Development, Program of Mathematics Education, in partial fulfillment of the requirements of Doctor of Philosophy." / Advisor: Eugene D. Nichols, Professor Directing Dissertation. / Vita. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 151-153).

What is the effect of the above procedures upon the emotional development of the school child? Do they affect his adjustment and school learning? Does his failure in school affect his adjustment outside of school, in his home, and in his community? In the development of this paper the literature will be surveyed for the opinions of educators and investigators in this field as to the emotional effects which follow the present day procedures in dealing with failures, and for any objective investigations which throw light upon the effect of failure. / Typescript. / "July 21, 1944." / "Submitted to the Graduate Committee of Florida State College for Women in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts." / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 36-39).

Thesis advisor: Laura M. O'Dwyer / The purpose of this study was to inform future policy regarding school leadership practices through examining the relationship between reported decision making at the school level and student achievement. The study utilized a mixed methods design, and examined three main components. The first component involved a qualitative analysis of 14 countries' school leadership polices, as described in country background reports submitted to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The second component used hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) to examine the relationship between principal reported school decision making and student achievement in mathematics and reading on the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) in the same 14 countries. The final component of this study connected the results from the policy analysis to the results of the HLM analysis to determine if there were patterns between a country's policies and the relationship between school-level decision making and student achievement. The study found that out of 14 countries included in the analysis, six countries were identified as having polices that were highly decentralized, three countries had policies that were highly centralized and five countries had policies that were somewhere in between the two extremes. The quantitative results showed that school-level decision making variables were limited in their utility as predictors of student achievement. Finally, an examination of the combined qualitative and quantitative results did not reveal any obvious patterns. However, the findings did highlight the importance of context in examining countries' policies and the relationship between leadership practices in the form of school decision making and student achievement. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2011. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Educational Research, Measurement, and Evaluation.

Thesis advisor: Irwin Blumer / This study examines the perceived impact of a parental empowerment project on parents of students of color transitioning into high school. The overarching problem addressed is the achievement gap. The study is an investigation of a means to increase the involvement of parents of color at an important transition. This is a gap closing measure because research dictates that this type of intervention can lead to higher academic achievement for minority students. To this end, seven participants constitute the sample group. Each sample member is treated as an individual case in keeping with the study's design as a qualitative case study. This study seeks to determine how these seven parents had their attitudes and behaviors shifted as a result of their participation in the aforementioned project, and which factors supported and inhibited their involvement as their children transitioned into high school. The researcher finds that all of the sample members perceived some benefit from their participation. These benefits for the parents include fostering a greater role understanding, increased ability to hold their children accountable, and an increased understanding of the high school curriculum. The monthly parent meetings, one of the three elements comprising the empowerment program, were most helpful for parents. Whereas, the scheduling of meetings made it difficult for members of the sample to be as involved as they wanted to be. Ultimately, the study concludes that a program which involves parents during their children's high school transition can help them increase their own sense of efficacy. It suggests opportunities for further research to be done on the impact of such a program on the actual academic performance of students. / Thesis (EdD) — Boston College, 2009. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Educational Administration.

Thesis advisor: Ina V. S. Mullis / Turkey is expected to be a full member of the European Union (EU) by 2013. In the course of its integration into the EU, Turkey has been simultaneously facing access, quality, and equity issues in education. Over the past decade, substantial progress has been made on increasing the access. However, improving the country's low level of education quality and achieving equity in quality education across the regions continue to be a monumental challenge in Turkey. Most recently, results from the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) 2007 indicated that Turkey's educational achievement at the eighth grade, the end of compulsory primary education in Turkey, was far below that of other countries in the EU. Considering Turkey's long standing socioeconomic disparities between the western and eastern parts of the country, the challenges of improving overall education quality are coupled with the challenges of achieving equity in learning outcomes for students across the regions. This dissertation used data from TIMSS 2007 to document the extent of Turkey's regional differences in science achievement at the eighth grade and to investigate factors associated with these differences. Findings from a series of analyses using hierarchical linear models suggested that attempts to increase Turkish students' achievement and close the achievement gaps between regions should target the students in the undeveloped regions, particularly in Southeastern Anatolia and Eastern Anatolia. Designing interventions to improve competency in Turkish and to compensate for the shortcomings of insufficient parental education, limited home educational resources, poor school climate for academic achievement, and inadequate instructional equipment and facilities might be expected to close the regional achievement gaps as well as raise the overall achievement level in Turkey. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2009. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Educational Research, Measurement, and Evaluation.

Thesis advisor: Vincent Cho / District leaders are under tremendous pressure to narrow persisting achievement disparities with a dearth of guidance from existing literature. Rorrer, Skrla, and Scheurich (2008) proposed a theory that district leaders enact four essential roles when engaging in systemic reform that improves achievement and equity: (1) providing instructional leadership which consists of building capacity and generating will, (2) reorienting the organization, (3) establishing policy coherence, and (4) maintaining an equity focus. However, these roles are not well understood. Therefore, this qualitative case study contributed to research and practice by exploring how leaders in a Massachusetts public school district that made gains in improving achievement and equity attempted to generate will, defined as intrinsic motivation, when enacting the role of instructional leadership. Drawing upon semi-structured interviews and a review of documents, this study concluded that leaders enacted the role to varying degrees in ways that were consistent with Rorrer, et al. (2008). Data revealed that leaders attempted to act as transformational leaders and distribute leadership in a manner that connected with individual’s values, beliefs, and desires. Furthermore, when enacting these leadership constructs, leaders attempted to use extrinsic motivators, including recognition, data, and resources such as time for collaboration and professional learning, to promote autonomy and self- determination. Recommendations include how district leaders can enact this role in a more informed, proactive and deliberate manner. / Thesis (EdD) — Boston College, 2016. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Educational Leadership and Higher Education.

Thesis advisor: Eric Dearing / Longitudinal structural equation models of parent educational involvement (PEI) and student mathematics and literacy achievement were examined for 1364 students, followed from 54 months through 8th grade. Path analyses revealed evidence of bi directionality between PEI and achievement and moderation by economic risk. Specifically, two pathways of association were analyzed: parent socialization and child evocative effects. Parent socialization pathways confirmed the positive association of PEI with both math and literacy achievement -increased parent involvement was significantly associated with increased achievement across development. No evidence of child evocative pathways was found for the full sample. Additionally, economic risk was found to moderate pathways of parent socialization between PEI and achievement. Parent socialization pathways suggested involvement was most strongly and positively associated with high achievement for children with greatest levels of economic risk across childhood. These results underscore the argument that parent educational involvement should be an important goal of practice and policy aimed at closing the achievement gap between lower and higher income children. Indeed, PEI does matter more for some children than others. National policies and school procedures should be geared towards promoting PEI early among the low income parents of underperforming children, for these children not only have the most to gain from having their parents engaged in their education, but also have the most to lose. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2011. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Counseling, Developmental, and Educational Psychology.

Singapore educational context contains some of the most provocative and ideological features in a mature education system – school choice, selectivity and tracking. The facts that schools follow the same curriculum, students take standardized examination and teachers have similar pre-service training makes Singapore a suitable case to study peer effects. The policy to give an option to a small group of students, who missed the cutoff for an academically more demanding, to decide their educational track allows me to study the impact of peer quality. Specifically, students at the margin of the cutoffs have a choice to study with better peers at an accelerated learning pace at the expense of a low rank order in class i.e. ‘Second in Rome’ effect or study with weaker peers at a slower learning pace and longer duration but enjoy a high rank order in class i.e. ‘First in Village’ effect. In both settings, students are exposed to the same curriculum albeit at a difference pace with the ‘Second in Rome’ completing the curriculum in 4 years while the ‘First in Village’ group complete theirs in 5 years. I applied the regression discontinuity strategy to compare the performance of students at the margin of the thresholds.

Reading interest is a significant predictor of reading achievement, with effects on both reading comprehension and vocabulary. We measured students’ interest in reading as an estimate of duration of observable reading using whole intervals of silent-reading time. In Experiment 1, we assessed associations among interest in reading (i.e., reinforcement value of reading) and the reading comprehension and vocabulary of 34 second-grade students. There were significant correlations between reading interest and these dependent measures. In Experiment 2, we simultaneously conducted a combined preintervention and postintervention design with multiple probe logic to test the effect of the establishment of a high interest in reading (i.e., conditioned reinforcement for reading) via a collaborative shared reading procedure with a teacher on reading comprehension and vocabulary. This procedure involved periods of reciprocal reading and related collaborative reading activities designed to increase students’ interest in reading. The establishment of a high interest in reading for 7 of the participants resulted in grade-level increases from 0.1 to 2.2 grades on various measures of reading achievement in less than 9 sessions (315 min). In Experiment 3, we implemented a combined small-n experimental-control simultaneous treatment design and a single-case multiple-probe design with multiple-probe logic. We tested and compared the effects of the establishment of conditioned reinforcement for reading, via the collaborative shared reading procedure with a teacher versus a peer, on participants’ gains in reading comprehension and vocabulary. All participants for whom conditioned reinforcement for reading was established in Experiment 3 (n = 7) demonstrated gains in reading achievement after a maximum of nine sessions (412 min), with grade-level increases between 0.2 and 2.5 on measures of reading comprehension and 0.3 to 3.1 on measures of vocabulary. Based on a comparison of the dependent variables included in both Experiments 2 and 3, the modified teacher-yoked collaborative shared reading procedure in Experiment 2 resulted in greatest relative average gains in reading achievement for participants who acquired conditioned reinforcement for reading (n = 3). However, the modified collaborative shared reading procedure with a peer required the least amount of teacher mediation and may be more viable for teachers. This trans-disciplinary effort proposes an account of motivation to read as conditioned reinforcement for reading content and its effects on reading achievement, with the educationally-significant goal of establishing reinforcers for continued learning.