There has been much research conducted regarding high school dropout prevention and identifying risk factors that influence those who choose to leave school early. Although research shows that life can become very difficult economically and socially for high school dropouts, some adults decide to return to further their education after many years away from a school setting. The following study was conducted in order to answer the following question: How do former high school dropouts view the reasons they dropped out and the reasons they returned? The purpose of this qualitative research study was to gain an understanding of the motivations of those adults who have dropped out of high school and have decided to return to further their education in an adult school setting. The method of conducting this study from a qualitative angle was interviewing individuals who are currently enrolled in an adult education program. Although not conclusive, personal experience is important to gaining an understanding of this population and their views on the reasons that led them to drop out of high school. The results of this study correlated with existing literature that there are many factors that lead to high school dropouts. Because this was a qualitative study, the individual reasons given for dropping out of high school support the statistics and research already in existence.

Most stay-at-home mothers wish to return to the workplace; yet, the majority are not successful. There is a looming labor shortage and increasing organizational initiatives to increase female participation at most levels, providing opportunity for this talent pool. The purpose of this descriptive study was to examine the reentry strategies of networking, volunteerism, additional education, and additional training upon the reentry success for highly educated, stay-at-home mothers. In conjunction with the theoretical framework of the social cognitive career theory, self-efficacy, as measured by the New General Self-Efficacy Scale, was also examined as a reentry strategy. Survey research was used to gather data from previous stay-at-home mothers who had successfully reentered and stay-at-home mothers currently in the job search process (N=157). Logistic regressions and Pearson correlations were used to determine significant relationships between network size and self-efficacy upon reentry success; however, network size was negatively correlated with reentry success. The results of this study can be used by highly educated, stay-at-home mothers contemplating workplace reentry as well as vocational counselors who assist this group of job seekers. Highly educated, stay-at-home mothers can use the results of this study to improve their chances of effectively transitioning back into the workplace while also altering the perception of the traditional, stay-at-home mother.

Over the past several decades, childhood obesity has continued to rank as an epidemic, particularly in rural, impoverished areas in the United States. Therefore, researchers have affirmed the necessity of exploring solutions to the epidemic, including the need to develop and implement programs that target at-risk behaviors of childhood obesity. In this quantitative, quasi-experimental study, the focus was to determine whether public school-based programs teaching nutrition, physical education, and dietary choices could increase the nutritional knowledge, physical activities, and dietary behaviors of students attending second and third grade in rural, impoverished communities of West Virginia. The theories that served as the foundation for this study were the health belief model, and the social ecological model. Archival pretest and posttest data regarding nutrition, physical activity, and dietary behavior was provided by three public schools in rural, impoverished communities that implemented the programs over a 6-week period. Data regarding students' nutritional, physical, and dietary knowledge and behaviors were collected before and after exposure to school-based exercise and nutrition programs. Results of paired samples t tests showed a significant increase in students' nutritional and physical education knowledge, their dietary behaviors, and improvement in 4 out of the 5 areas of physical activity that were measured. Overall, the results of this study offer insight about how school-based programs can be used to develop effective school-based nutrition, dietary, and physical activity programs for students who are at-risk for obesity, especially in rural, impoverished communities.

At-risk and special education students in the 7th and 8th grades in a rural middle school in western Alabama, in the years following the introduction of the No Child Left Behind federal legislation in 2002, failed to achieve adequate yearly progress in reading. School districts are increasingly implementing flexible computer-based intervention programs to improve their students' reading achievement. Using a between-group design, the purpose of this study was to determine whether NovaNET, a newly adopted reading intervention program, enhanced the reading attainment of at-risk and special education students. Guided by constructivist theory, archived reading achievement data from the 2009-2013 Alabama Reading and Mathematics Test were analyzed for 3 consecutive cohorts of special education and at-risk students who did (n = 76) or did not (n = 73) participate in the NovaNET program. With dependent variables of reading achievement at the end of 7th and 8th grade, with independent variables of experimental-control group, gender, and general-special education status, and a covariate of reading achievement at the end of 6th grade, a multivariate analysis of covariance indicated a significant main effect associated with participation in the program (F = 4.13, df = 2, p < .02), whereas significant higher-order interaction effects pointed to differential program benefits for specific subgroups of students. Although overall effect sizes were small to modest, the results indicated that NovaNET can increase educational attainment for at-risk and special education students who are struggling with reading. This study may contribute to positive social change by providing educators with scientific data about a flexible, technology-enhanced program to promote reading instruction and achievement for at-risk general education and special-education students entering middle school.

This study involved analyses of an existing database conducted for the purposes of identifying and understanding factors that are associated with the delivery of school-based mental health services by school psychologists. The study examined the average number of hours per week in which school psychologists engage in mental health services and the types of mental health services in which they engage. Factors such as training, desire to deliver mental health services, time available and support for mental health services were investigated. The database that served as the basis for these analyses had been created by mailing a survey to 1000 randomly selected practicing school psychologists who were Regular Members of the National Association of School Psychologists. The survey asked for responses to questions relating to a range of issues about the delivery of school-based mental health services. Training and support for mental health services were also identified by school psychologists as major factors in their ability to deliver such services to students and families. The implications of the findings are discussed.

The interrogation of T cell signaling over the past fifty years has led to the discovery of amazingly intricate cascade networks and elaborate descriptions of individual proteins' domains and functions. A complex landscape has been rendered in which proteins relay messages from the extracellular ligation of the TCR by a cognate peptide loaded MHC via changes in sub-cellular location, phosphorylation, and binding affinities and partners to enact nuclear localization of three key transcription factors required for cellular effector function and proliferation: AP-1, NF-AT, and NF-κB. Dogma has favored activation of each of these transcription regulating elements to be a linear and parallel activity, thus very little interaction between pathways has been highlighted by previous findings in the molecular immunology community. The focus of this dissertation explores the role of NF-κB in T cell signaling with emphasis on subunits p50, cRel, IκBα, and IKKβ, and with respect to NF-κB’s ability to modulate calcium and NF-AT signaling, proximal TCR phosphorylation, and CRAC and purinergic calcium channel proteins. The role of NF-κB in T cells can be a difficult thing to establish, as this thirteen member family innervates almost every cellular process from homeostasis to activation, and even functions in the opposing processes of survival and apoptosis. To convolute the investigation further, many family members also fulfill redundant tasks, as a result of their high evolutionarily conserved sequence homology. To this end, we discovered the best way to evaluate the function of NF-κB in the activation of T cells was to knockdown two family members: p50 and cRel. In doing this, we rendered mice that were viable (unlike knockdown of RelA) and fertile, but possessed T cells that were highly unresponsive to strong stimulation (anti CD3/CD28) or foreign antigen (OVA) presented to mice bearing the correct transgenic TCRs (OT-1) by professional antigen presenting cells (APC). Through in vitro assays, we discovered that in addition to the specific defects in NF-κB activation, NF-AT signaling was also greatly disrupted in these cells, sequela to retarded calcium influx and signaling. This was of great interest, as while several studies have shown that calcium signaling has the ability to amplify and fine tune NF-κB activation, there is a dearth of studies and publications highlighting the effect of an activated NF-κB pathway on calcium influx and signaling leading to the activation of NF- AT. Another fascinating discovery, that explicated the calcium reduction and NF-AT inhibition, was that ablation of p50 and cRel led to decreases in mRNA and protein levels of two additional NF-κB family members: IKKβ and IKKγ. The results presented here suggest that it is the reduction in IKKβ and IKKγ that leads to impaired phosphorylation of the key TCR proximal proteins: Zap70 and PLC&gamma1, and it is the decrease in activated PLCγ1 that renders less IP3 and ultimately abrogates calcium signaling. Overall, this thesis highlights the ability of IKKβ to enhance general proximal TCR protein phosphorylation (and specifically Zap70) leading to a greater influx of calcium (perhaps aided by IKKβ also augmenting the function of the CRAC protein, STIM1) which leads to superior activation of NF- AT, and amplifies downstream cellular effector functions such as IL-2 production and proliferation. Moreover, this work demonstrates that NF-κB subunits likely form supermolecular clusters, and ablation of certain subunits (i.e. p50 and cRel) can lead to instability and decreased levels of other family members (i.e. IKKβ and IKKγ.)

The prevalence of conduct problems in children impacts upon families, educational settings, and broader society within Australia. Conduct problems develop early in an individual's life and can lead to more serious problems including substance abuse and delinquency in adolescence and adulthood. Given the high incidence of conduct problems in children, the need for prevention and early intervention strategies to target the onset and development of this phenomenon is paramount. This thesis focuses on early intervention strategies for reducing the incidence of conduct problems in children and explores a multi-modal early intervention and prevention program targeting children and families at-risk of the development of conduct problems. A randomised controlled trial involving 455 children was conducted to evaluate the efficacy of this program. Participants were drawn from ten Education Queensland primary schools in the Mount Gravatt district of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. The 455 children were randomly assigned to either experimental or control conditions for the purposes of the program's evaluation. From this initial cohort, an indicated sample of 1 52 participants was identified through a universal screening process. This sample included children who were considered more at-risk of conduct problems. Participants designated to experimental conditions engaged in the school component of the program, with 66 of the experimental group receiving an additional indicated component facilitated in the school setting. Further, a selection of parents of children in the experimental group participated in the home component of the intervention. The retention rate for families engaged in the study was high with 96% of participants remaining engaged in the study throughout the evaluation process. The findings that emerged from the study revealed significant differences between participants who engaged in the intervention program compared with those designated to control conditions. Positive changes in the behaviour of students reported at the school level were statistically significant. However, while some changes were identified in the home setting, the treatment effects of the program were not significant. These findings were sustained at the six-month follow up period. Conclusions drawn from this study were conceptualised within the framework of current advances in the social science literature that focus on conduct problems and early intervention and prevention. The outcomes of the research emphasise the significance of comprehensive interventions programs for children and families at-risk that focus on both school and home settings and that are easily implemented in, and cost-effective to, community populations. Recommendations from this research serve to inform ftiture research agendas in early intervention and prevention and specialists in the fields of psychology and education.

This work relates to the automated parallel manipulation of parts at sub-millimeter scale and is a part of EU funded GOLEM Project. The main challenge at this scale is to develop novel methods for high throughput parallel assembly of components of a few hundreds of micrometers. At this scale, a serial approach would be extremely limited by the requirements on precision, speed ans especially by the particularities of physics. The proposed approach in this work is opto-fluidic, based on the Marangoni effect, a convective fluidic phenomena. The Marangoni effect is explored and analyzed both theoretically and experimentally. An experimental set-up is designed and constructed in this purpose. These studies show the advantages of the proposed approach for high speed manipulation of microcomponents in different sizes and geometries. The manipulation set-up is also entirely automated in order to show the parallel manipulation capabilities of this novel assembly technique. The first chapter gives an overview of contactless manipulation techniques at microscale, such as optical tweezers, electric field, dielectrophoresis, acoustic waves and thermal motion based techniques. A comparison of the techniques points Marangoni effect as a viable solution. The second chapter deals with the theoretical analysis of two convection phenomena: free convection and B'enard-Marangoni convection. This through a multi-physics finite elements based modeling. The governing equations for these phenomena are presented based on the fluid dynamics laws. A Proposed model is applied on a simple case of natural convection for initial analysis. Several simulations and their experimental validations are presented. Different parameters are analyzed such as water depth, temperature distribution and velocity field. Finally, a comparison between these phenomena is presented to know which mechanism predominates and is more suitable in our case. The Marangoni effect is presented as a promising method to drag micro-objects immersed in liquid media using only an IR laser beam as a heat source. This analysis allowed us to define the parameters for a conception of an experimental set-up for non-contact manipulation. The third chapter describes the design of this above mentioned robotic platform. This platform is composed of several components: an optical microscope, a laser source as local thermal source, a scanner to address the laser with precision and other electronics. A vision system, using a high speed camera is also implemented. A calibration of this vision system is established in order to define the available precision of the overall system, dimensions and measurable velocities of manipulated parts by experimental analysis. This approach also allows to measure instantaneous acceleration values and leads to the estimation of the force applied to manipulated objects. The fourth chapter deals with the automation of the manipulation process. The aim is to show that the proposed system is able to displace several microparts to predefined positions without user interaction. Particularly, the control of the Marangoni effect through the control of the position of the local heat source is demonstrated. The motion of this local thermal source is supplied by reflecting a laser beam on a mirror controlled by a high speed scanner. The implemented automation allows for a real time and high speed control hence it is possible to act simultaneously on several parts. The control loop is closed with vision feedback which is able to track at high frequency and sufficient precision all the involved parts at different form and dimensions. An experimental validation of parallel manipulation is describes and shows the originality of the proposed approach.

The intent of this research is to determine the impact of a peer mentoring/tutoring program on parent perceptions of school climate and connectedness and standardized test scores, report card grades and attendance of at risk elementary students. Peer mentoring has been found to be effective in addressing some of the concerns regarding at risk student performance in the school environment and eventual school outcomes. This study uses quantitative methods to determine the effect of this intervention on this population. A school climate/connectedness survey completed by parents of the students participants in a Cross Age Peer Mentoring Program (CAPM Program) and standardized test scores, report card grades and attendance patterns were examined prior to and following student participation in the program. Subjects included 32 elementary students with n=10 for first grade, n=6 for second, n=8 for fourth and n=8 for fifth. The students were cross age paired, primary with intermediate to participate in a mentoring program. Parents of participating students were asked to complete the Comprehensive School Climate Inventory prior to and following their child's participation in the program to determine if perceptions of school climate and connectedness changed as a result of their child's participation in the program. Analysis of the survey result, pre and post participation was accomplished using dependent sample t-tests to discern differences in the mean scores for the survey factors, including Safety, Teaching and Learning, Relationships and Institutional Environment and the Unified Scale. Teaching and Learning items were combined to obtain a Climate score and Interpersonal Relationships and Institutional Environment provided a Connectedness measure Climate and Connectedness. The null hypothesis was rejected, with results of the dependent t-tests showing significant differences in all but the Safety and Institutional Environment factors. <br>Attendance variables were found to be significant for all participants, mentees and a group identified as at risk for attendance. Academic variable for mentors included standardized test results and grade percentages, pre and post for both. Analysis of these scores and grade outcomes provided mixed results, with significant differences noted in standardized test scores, but no difference in the means of grade percentages. / School of Education / Interdisciplinary Doctoral Program for Education Leaders (IDPEL) / EdD / Dissertation

Thesis (Ph.D. (Risk Management))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2007.