The public's continued disappointment with public education and the call for both teacher and student accountability is requiring a response from educators. School divisions in the state of Virginia are developing educational policies that address the state's Standards of Learning Objectives. Administrators and teachers continue to search for innovative ways to adapt the curriculum to guarantee individual student and school success for meeting accreditation requirements in the 2006-2007 school term. This demand for both student and teacher success has created an intense anxiousness among all persons involved in the educational process. The focus of this study was to determine what makes one school more successful in promoting student achievement on the Virginia Standards of Learning assessment than another comparable school. The exploration of a school's organizational structure, leadership practices, teaching behaviors of instructional personnel, school culture, and parent support were studied to determine their effect on student performance on the Standards of Learning assessments. The researcher was concerned with understanding of educational practices that would enrich the thinking of principals, teachers, and parents as they continue to accomplish Virginia's prescribed SOL benchmarks. Data was collected through classroom and school observations and interviews with the principals, teachers, and parents of the two schools. A cross-case comparison of the targeted schools was performed to check for commonalties and differences. Several variables emerged from the data that have implications for educators who desire to improve the effectiveness of their organizations and student achievement. An environment that promotes a sense of professional community, teacher efficacy, and a common commitment among stakeholders enhances teacher and student achievement. Principals willing to share leadership with teachers and parents have effective schools. They inspire and motivate teachers. Effective principals have high-energy levels. They listen to the people they serve. A school culture that encourages and rewards risk-taking serves to enhance teacher and student performance. Effective schools have positive, relaxed work environments. Principals that develop strong interpersonal relationships inside and outside the school positively influence student achievement and performance. / Ed. D.

Submitted in accordance with the requirement for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of IsiZulu Namagugu at the University of Zululand, 2002. / Ululation is a folklore practise that is performed all over the world. In Europe for instance it signifies cries of pain. Among Arabic peoples it indicates an expression of joy. In Africa the practice of ululation is common in most cultures. It is common in most cultures of the South African people too. Ululation is gender specific in the sense that solely women perform it. During ululation spontaneous and shriek sounds are produced by women who act like they are possessed by evil spirits. People who do not come from ululating cultures do not understand ululation. They see nothing but disruption when people ululate. Hence white priests in churches discouraged it. The reason was that they thought it to be chaotic.

A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Arts in fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Social Work at the University of Zululand, 2017 / An analysis of the social service practitioners’ practice tools in Africa towards the enhancement of professional responsibility to the client system is essential including investigating the ethical dilemmas experienced by the practitioners daily. These tools serve as sources of evaluating social work practice and administration that spur practitioners to provide a virtuous professional service and as enlightenment for the effective, efficient and reflective practice. The National Association of Social Workers (2008) and the South African Council of Social Service Professional (SACSSP, 2005) and their ethical values and principles served as this study principal document that directed this research venture. The researcher sought to understand the nature and extent of the challenges facing social work practitioners and administrators and compared their experiences within two different geo-political zones of Africa. Hence, the research philosophy engaged the “diamond metaphor,”in the sense it is multifaceted and within a blended research paradigm. It depicts the uniqueness and value of each study area. The study employed the comparison-evaluative approach depicting a Multi-Phase-Transformative mixed methods research design characterised by a six way dimensionalapproach of explorative, evaluative, descriptive, comparative, qualitative and quantitative approaches in order to reconnoiter the experiences of social work practitioners 135 and 47 administrators which in total 182 respondents from three different regions namely: KwaZulu-Natal (South Africa) and Lagos State and Imo State (Nigeria). Each setting for data collection differs within a multi-level mode and each data including the tested hypotheses were refined to actualise the subject situation and the analytical discussion of the methodology components. Data that was gleaned from the dispersed research tools used for the study were analysed by the utilisation of descriptive statistics, multiple comparisons and post hoc test correlations in testing the stated hypotheses with the Statistical Programme for Social Sciences (SPSS Version 21.0). However, the thematic gleaning of the responses was deciphered through discourse analysis (Soini and Birkeland, 2014:215-216; Gross, Alba, Glass, Schellenberg and Obrist, 2012:3). The findings of the study revealed that rural social work interventions are directly weakened by a poor support system that the social workers experience, thus, the lack of proper literacy and qualification levels in the rural areas largely contributes to weaker social work interventions in both Nigeria and South Africa. Furthermore, the study revealed that administrators avail themselves to more continuous professional development than the social workers do, while the overall qualification attributes for the respondents needed upgrading to cater for specialised areas. The study revealed that the lack of the analysed and aligned training needs of individual practitioners serves in fact to clog personal development plans which the subsequently affects the development of work plans and the signing of performance agreement job descriptions, thus, the policies are not then applied. The study’s results indicated that the administrators’ gendered pattern impacted significantly on the ethical code outcome in the study areas. Outcome analysis confirmed that thesocial workers’ understanding of ethical code application has significantly correlated with their integer years of practice experience, whereas, the perceived difficulties presumably had partial correlations within the study areas. Moreover, the ethics concerning the integrity of profession, the professional responsibility, the service delivery and the competence/confidentiality explained for the integer years of practice experience. Furthermore, the integer years significantly ensure that social workers are coping with ethical dilemmas on familiarity and their professed complaint anxieties on the Ethical Code in the three study areas. Conversely, the study advocated for the assimilation of interactional justice approach that would enhance advocacy on social justice, human rights and professional accountability as well as stimulate competence within the bucolic social worker’s career. Social justice cognizance should be visible within the equity on performance. The study’s recommendations included advocating for quality rural social work interventional support and improvement on qualification and literacy level in the rural areas; also that there should be the recognition of a greater prioritisation of NASW/SACSSP ethical codes. As such, experienced practitioners should mentor newer practitioners to enhance effective and efficient professional responsibility with client-systems. Additional studies should explore the professional responsibility of practitioners amid the Service Charter for Victims of Crime (victims’ charter) designed to uphold social justice and to nurture a human rights philosophy in guaranteeing the material, psychosocial and emotional needs of victims. Hence, further research on utilising the study’s finding models for urban domain and proper professional training, adherence to these models and awareness of legal ethics is recommended. Further studies should focus on examining administrators-practitioners relationship outcome to policies regulations as they are geared towards the Code; likewise to inspect social entrepreneurial activity using the Service Delivery Model to re-bolster industrial social work.

Many lower socioeconomic status (SES) students at the middle school level in a school district were not achieving academically, and many of their parents were not involved in the school. To assist these parents, this qualitative case study examined the perspectives of lower SES parents of middle school students who were experiencing academic success. The intent of this investigation was to illuminate the parenting practices and involvement that appeared to be effective for this subpopulation. The theoretical framework was Bandura's self-efficacy theory. Research questions focused on lower SES parents' practices that supported their child's academic success. Data were collected through individual interviews with 10 lower SES parents of academically successful middle school students, as indicated by their grade point averages. Data were coded and common themes were identified as keeping clear lines of communication with school, providing encouragement, and keeping parent involvement consistent and persistent. These themes were not unique to this group of parents as anticipated, but they supported findings from the literature. Findings support general recommendations for the local school district for developing a comprehensive plan to encourage consistency and persistence of parental involvement and for training of teachers on increasing parental involvement opportunities. Implications for social change include parents supporting student learning and success and teachers becoming more effective in working with parents on strategies that can support their children academically.

The decade from 1953 to 1963 was one of drastic change for the egg industry in Utah. A study conducted at Utah State University shows that in 1952, slightly more than 40 percent of local egg production was s old in distant markets while in 1964, import data gathered from egg handlers in the State indicate that 20 to 25 percent of the eggs consumed in Utah were imported.

No description available.

No description available.

Female and minority innovators raise fewer resources from investors for novel ideas, even when their ventures are similar or identical to those of all white male teams. This disparity is concerning for investors aiming to identify value-creating opportunities. Evaluating the potential of innovation requires making decisions on innovators and their ideas in conditions of uncertainty where information on past performance is unavailable. Under these conditions, evaluators typically rely on easily-accessible ascriptive characteristics to make decisions – which perpetuates demographic disparities in innovation contexts. Extant research has examined mitigation strategies focused on the resource-seeker – how resource-seekers can pitch their ideas to overcome investor biases. Few have examined the system itself: how investment organizations’ collective evaluation processes shape the diversity of founders that receive venture investment. How do the evaluation processes investment organizations use shape the demographic diversity of innovators funded? To examine this overarching question, I conducted field research and two field experiments with one global VC fund/accelerator hybrid organization, and its broad, global, co-investor network across different phases. I produced a dataset of over 170 hours of observational data, interviews with 98 investors, and experimental data with close to 3,000 investment decisions on startups in which $320,000 was invested. Leveraging this data, I identified moments in investment organizations’ evaluation processes that inhibited commensuration across startups, and produced demographic disparities in collective investment decisions. I theorize the importance of the role of investor inquiry during evaluation, and test how changes to organizations’ evaluation templates can affect both individual investor’s processes of inquiry and real investment decisions. I identified a causal link between tiny tweaks to investment organizations’ evaluation templates and increased investments in startups with female founders. Rather than focus on how to prepare startups for evaluation, which can produce short-term outcomes that may be only relevant to a specific set of investors, my research explores a more systemic question: how can organizations change their systems of evaluation? These contributions are relevant not to only entrepreneurship theory and practice, but also to organizational scholars interested in cultivating diversity, equity and inclusion. I unpack the role that organizations play in designing, executing and perpetuating systems that evaluate innovators heterogeneously, based on their demographic characteristics. It is also relevant to any organization considering how to evaluate innovators. / 2025-05-30T00:00:00Z

Since the introduction of cloud computing as a standard solution for data storage and software hosting, new security measures have been developed, and data laws and compliance regulations have become more stringent. In this thesis, the exploration of compliance and regulatory documents, interviews of industry professionals, and thematic analysis of interview data  uncover some industry-preferred implementation practices that will help to ensure compliance and cloud security for applications and data storage on the cloud. Industry professionals' opinions are put into context and compared to compliance regulations. Key findings include a list of implementation practices through thematic analysis of interview data put into themes. These include encryption, security controls, life-cycle management, and audits. The findings' importance is a list of practices or actions that any developer can proactively adapt for the cloud and know that it is a viable implementation to remain secure. The limitations and scope is related to cloud systems and software engineering, and the list extracted from the interview data is not an all-encompassing solution for cloud security.  Furthermore, the raw interview data will assist future research into this topic.

The goal of the Mississippi State University Extension Service (MSU-ES) is to improve the quality of life for all Mississippians. One specific group that agricultural change agents work with at the county level is beef producers. Grazing lands have received much attention over the last few years regarding environmental concerns and Best Management Practices (BMPs) for beef cattle operations. The adoption of these practices was voluntary during the time this study was conducted, however; adoption was highly encouraged by the MSU-ES and the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS). By knowing the level of adoption of BMPs that Mississippi beef producers have implemented, change agents can more effectively plan educational programming efforts for producers to better understand the importance of BMP adoption. The purpose of this study was to describe the adopter categories of Mississippi beef producers as determined by Rogers (2003) adopter characteristics generalizations based on their (1) socioeconomic status, (2) personality values and communication behavior, and (3) opinions. It also examined the correlations between the adopter categories to predict the level of the three BMPs being studied. The adopter categories were innovator, early adopter, early majority, late majority, and laggard. The three BMPs that were the focus of the study were rotation grazing, riparian buffers, and pasture renovation. The results of the study indicated that Mississippi beef producers could be correctly identified in the adopter categories. By identifying the adopter categories of the Mississippi beef producers and then examining the correlations among the variables, prediction of BMP adoption of rotational grazing and riparian buffers was possible. The relationships between MSU-ES agents and their programming efforts, as well as the relationships between NRCS district conservationist and their programs, were studied. Nonoption, though not an adopter category, was also examined and the reasons for it were cited.