Abstract Corporate managers are constantly looking for more cost-effective ways to deliver training to their employees. E-learning is less expensive than traditional classroom instruction. In addition, many expenses-booking training facilities, travel costs for employees, plus employee time away from the job- are greatly reduced. Distance learning has existed for a long time. When computers became available, educators were tempted by this new means to deliver education at a distance. Today, what was once an obscure sidebar to education has become big business. This is what people now are talking about e-learning. The value of the computer may seem to be its ability to deliver information anytime and anywhere, but its value in education is potentially much more important. E-learning is fueling efforts to integrate distributed learning systems in organization. The purpose of this study is to examine the some factors that determine intention to adopt e-learning in Kaohsiung Rapid Transit Corporation. The studied system enables online or web-based learning, which has grown in popularity in the new millennium as an innovative and useful enterprising training tool. This paper takes a social, organizational, and technical approach in its investigation to identify the factors that affect intention to adopt e-learning. Regression Analysis was used to assess the relationships in the constructs. The paper presents some findings on e-learning adoption intention determinants in order to giving some suggestions to KRTC for future implementing e-learning training system.

The primary purpose of this study was to describe: 1) the predominant types of interaction behaviors encountered in a foreign language video program; and 2) the types of teacher-student interaction features that resulted from use of the instructional video in elementary school classrooms. Based on the findings, the second purpose of the study was to examine how these interaction behaviors shaped amount of teacher and student talk in the two sources of data. The researcher examined two sources of data: the language video program and elementary level language classes in two schools in Southeastern United States. The examination of interaction behaviors involved the description of interaction behaviors between all the players in the video program and those in the classroom scene. F or the description of interaction behaviors in the video program, twenty-five video lessons were analyzed and coded (N=3,269 behaviors) using The Observational System for Instructional Analysis (AOSIA) (Hough & Duncan, 1970). In order to examine features of classroom interaction, twenty-four groups of elementary level language classrooms in grades K through five were videotaped during their twenty-minute language lessons on one occasion each during a four-week period (N=3,223 behaviors). Classroom behaviors were also coded using the OSIA system. / Ph. D.

Two major questions guide this study: How are different on-line teaching styles related to classroom participation; does the on-line classroom generate a more gender-neutral environment? The data source for this study was a classroom instruction and performance program at a mid-size university in the Northwest. Included in this study were 59 students (38 males and 21 females) with 75 separate course records from six classes. Each academic discussion conference transcript was coded by message to record message traffic flow for each instructor and student. There were four actions that instructors used that influenced the participation performances of their class. The organization of the conferences influenced participation performance. The two discussion conference model out performed the single conference model in message traffic. Instructor guidance, which was issued by message, had a profound affect on student performance. Although each instructor assigned a percent of the final grade based on participation, this guidance appears to have been relegated low on the students' priority. Guidance given in a prepared syllabus which the students received both in paper and electronic form did not have the same impact as a personal instructor message. At the start of the study, it was assumed the instructors would provide most of the on-line encouragement to students to participate. During the coding process it became obvious that fellow students provided most of the positive social encouragement to participate. Not only did these students conduct student-centered discussions but they also self-motivated the group to participate more. Does the on-line classroom foster a more gender-neutral environment? The results of this study are mixed, but very encouraging. There was no flaming or questionable innuendoes detected in any of the messages. The t-tests did not show a significant difference between male and female participation performance except for length of message. Females were encouraged by their peers to participate and their messages were valued. Since one did not have to wait a turn to speak in these on-line classrooms, there was more air time for all. In these on-line courses the verbose did not silence the rest. / Ed. D.

This study was conducted to measure the effects of classroom instruction entitled Citizenship curriculum Training on high school discipline. Data for this study were collected and analyzed for fifty-eight ninth-grade students who had been referred to the principal's office three or more times the semester prior to the experimental treatment. An experimental group of twenty-nine students received citizenship curriculum instruction. The control group of twenty-nine students received only the school's traditional curriculum during second period class. Two teachers presented the citizenship curriculum training which included instructional units on beliefs, attitudes, emotions, anger, decision-making, communications, confrontation, positive attention, stress, peer pressure, authority figures, getting along in school, and the society game. Data were collected relative to grade-point average, absences, discipline referrals, and attitude toward high school as measured by the Remitters High School Attitude Scale. T-tests for correlated samples and analysis of covariance examined the effects of the Citizenship Curriculum Training on the four variables measured. The .05 level of significance was used to test the four hypotheses. The results of the study indicate that Citizenship Curriculum Training does not improve the students' gradepoint averages, absentee rate, lower the number of discipline referrals, and does not improve students' attitude as measured by the Remitters High School Attitude Scale. It is recommended that similar studies be conducted to address the problems of grade-point average, number of discipline referrals to the office, high absentee rate, and attitudes toward high school by teaching discipline students in small classes with a curriculum that aims at improving these specific problems. Future studies should collect the posttest data the first grading period following the experimental treatment to test for immediate results.

This study is inspired by a desire to revisit Anyon's Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work (1980) in a more contemporary context, one that responds to calls in the research on the socioeconomic achievement gap for deeper investigation into the heterogeneity of the middle class. More specifically, the research examines five middle class American high schools in Massachusetts, and asks the question, 'How is classroom 'work' different across these schools, thirty years after Anyon's study'? This study employs several methods of analysis including Anyon's ethnographic observational analysis and a corpus linguistic analysis. It also uses reflexive interviews to review initial findings and integrate participant input into the data itself. I also draw upon the data in light of previous frameworks to develop a new framework for looking at smaller differences in teacher talk, lessons and classroom instruction that is more fit for purpose. Through these ethnographic observations and reflexive interviews, this study reveals that even across schools that are considered to belong to the same socioeconomic class - the middle class - differences in instruction and lessons can be clearly observed. The body of literature discussing the middle class, in terms of the diversity within it, is very small, this extensive study contributes to this knowledge, and hopefully creates avenues for further research. Using Anyon's approach of observing 'work' across social class in classrooms this research builds on Anyon's findings in a contemporary context. Insight into the ways in which difference manifests in smaller ways in the classroom may be fundamental in understanding how small differences compound across the socioeconomic spectrum. The impact of this research on the socioeconomic achievement gap is a better, more complete, look at the picture of how the distribution of resources across the socioeconomic spectrum plays a role in classroom differences.

This essay explores the issue of organizing mathematics education by means of syllogism. Two aspects turn out to be particularly significant. One is the syllogistic analysis while the other is the cunning of reason. Thus the exploration is directed towards gathering evidence of their existence and showing by examples their usefulness within mathematics education. The syllogistic analysis and the cunning of reason shed also new light on Chevallard's theory of didactic transposition. According to the latter, each piece of mathematical knowledge used inside school is a didactic transposition of some other knowledge produced outside school, but the theory itself does not indicate any way of transposing, and this empty space can be filled with the former. A weak prototype of syllogism considered here is Freudenthal's change of perspective. Some of the major difficulties in mathematics learning are connected with the inability of performing change of perspective. Consequently, to ease the difficulties becomes a significant issue in mathematics teaching. The syllogistic analysis and the cunning of reason developed in this essay are the contributions to the said issue.

Web-based training (WBT) and classroom instruction (CI) constitute two training media that are commonly employed by organizations. Although the effectiveness of one medium relative to the other depends on a number of factors (e.g., Sitzmann, Kraiger, Stewart, & Wisher, 2006) this study aims to address several methodological issues common in the extant media research and investigate the moderating role of training content complexity on the relationship between media and important training outcomes. Utilizing a 2x2 experimental design, one hundred forty-two undergraduate students were randomly assigned to one of four training courses. Each training course involved a PowerPoint 2007 training tutorial in which trainees were presented with information about certain PowerPoint functions. The CI training courses included three instructors who presented course material to trainees in a predetermined time frame while the WBT courses gave trainees substantial control over their allocation of time during the training course. Results suggest that trainees in the CI courses spent substantially more time on course-related activities than those in the WBT courses, which led to less knowledge acquisition when trainees in the WBT course were presented with relatively complex training material. These findings suggest that although learner control is generally considered a positive aspect of WBT (e.g., Kinzie & Sullivan, 1989) it can lead to less time-on-task and ultimately less learning and less effective transfer when the training content is complex in nature. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are also discussed.

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This research involves three separate studies with the goal of investigating learner increases in the pragmatic awareness when exposed to various degrees of sustained, explicit instruction. Operationalized as a composite construct in the theory of communicative competence, pragmatic awareness includes knowledge of pragmalinguistic forms and sociopragmatic features, with sequential action events representing the former and relationship status categories the latter. Research questions for each study focus on gains learners revealed on a video-based pragmatic awareness assessment instrument delivered in pretest-posttest format. Data collection occurred from fall semester 2013 to spring semester 2015 in one single-sex junior/senior high school and two co-educational universities, one with a first-year focus group and the other with a second-year group, with participates across the contexts enrolled in 1 of 12 intact classes ranging in size from 23 to 33. At each site, data collection included response behaviors for comparison counterfactual groups. Data for the primary analyses of each study were subjected to a one-way ANCOVA. Results revealed a significant difference between the treatment group performances compared to a counterfactual group from each institution: Study 1, F(1,152) = 5.86, p = 0.02; Study 2, F(34, 115.28) = 5.71, p = 0.02; and Study 3, F(3, 77.30) = 8.04, p < 0.00. Relationship strength between the factor levels and the dependent variable, as measured in partial eta squared, accounted for 4%, 14%, and 16% of the variance, respectively. In Study 3 a Bayesian confirmatory analysis revealed that the least explicit treatment, one involving only a focus on pragmalinguistic input, showed the greatest gains. Implications for the three studies are: (a) pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic categories reveal difficulty hierarchies, with particular sequential action events and relationship status categories consistently more challenging than others; (b) learners display differential awareness of pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic sub-constructs, with the former registered as more difficult; and (c) explicit instruction on a limited number of pragmalinguistic categories might result in spillover learning effects to other, untaught categories. / Applied Linguistics

My goal in undertaking this research was to contribute to strengthening kindergarten educational practices in Kuwait with particular focus on literacy development. I was interested in the instructional techniques, tools, methods, language activities that would make sense to Arabic kindergartners and help them learn the formal, written register (i.e., formal literary Arabic) required in Kuwait. To this end, I used part of my graduate studies in education visiting and observing several kindergarten classes in the United States. During those visits, I noted that storybook reading was given a great deal of attention. Storybook reading is the process by which the teacher shares the content of storybooks with students, while at the same time encouraging social interaction (reading, showing illustrations, and encouraging student participation and conversation). This early exposure to storybook reading appears to support early literacy for American school children. My aim in undertaking this study was to develop an appropriate and effective literacy program for young children in my country. Specifically, I wanted a case of literacy development and storybook reading that might reveal important patterns in teaching early literacy. I planned four research objectives: (1) to document and analyze a Head Start teacher's verbal explanation of literacy teaching and storybook reading; (2) to observe the teacher's practices with respect to literacy teaching and storybook reading; and (3) to examine the extent and nature of students' participation in classroom literacy activities including storybook reading. My method of data collection was ethnographic, incorporating participant observation and verbal exchanges. I used the two methods simultaneously. Participant observation (including field notes, jot notes, reflective journal, audio-tapes, video-tapes, pictures, and artifacts) gave me richer access to the internal dynamics of the storybook reading event. Verbal exchanges, including in-depth interviews and informal discussions, enabled me to examine the participants' perceptions of literacy and literacy events. In-depth interviews enabled me to probe for participants' explanation of any unusual observations. Informal discussion enabled me to probe certain situations that I did not anticipate, ask for explanations of things that just cropped up, and give the teacher and the students opportunities to share with me things they felt I should know. The Head Start teacher explained that literacy spans most other activities and is a part of every day life. According to her, literacy occurs naturally while children are engaged in everyday routines at home, school, or in the community. She added that children learn reading and writing long before formal instruction and that there is a connection between print and the visual symbols that surround it. The use of storybook reading, she said, helps children to develop a positive attitude to books and a global sense of the world. To help children acquire literacy, the teacher provides an appropriate physical environment, including storybook reading, interaction with others, extensive involvement in literacy activities, and a generous display of print. The teacher used a multi-method approach and stimuli before, during, and after reading the story. Storybook reading was used to increase children's access to books, introduce the children to book conventions, integrate literacy and other curricular activities, encourage and empower students to actively participate in their learning, and to encourage cultural appreciation, and intercultural sensitivity. The students played several important roles during storybook reading: listening, conversing, collaborating, making decisions, choosing the books to be read, making seating arrangements, and helping the teacher. The four focal children manifested different reading characteristics including play reading, reading awareness, reading skills, reading development, writing and art, writing play, writing awareness, and writing skills. The findings of this study indicate that storybook reading is not only a source of enjoyment but an important stepping-stone to other language skills and a great stimulus for creativity in young children. To extend the insights that I have gained from the study to my country, and as instructor in the Kindergarten Curriculum Instruction Department of the Kuwait Basic College of Education, I plan to model some of the most significant findings of the study in my teaching and teacher training activities. Aspects of the findings that I plan to model are: (a) integrated learning; (b) learner-centered education; (c) collaborative learning; (d) variations in method; and (e) student empowerment. In addition, I plan to implement a follow-up action research enabling my students to develop and implement a more child-centered, and more meaningful instructional practices in Kuwaiti kindergarten classrooms. Another way in which I plan to extend the benefits of this research to my country and other Arab-speaking countries is to publish this study in Arabic. / Ph. D.