There is no abstract available for this dissertation.

The purpose of the study was to determine whether participationin major curriculum revision was perceived as a job enriching experience by nurse educators in National League for Nursing accredited baccalaureate nursing programs in the Midwest Alliance in Nursing geographic area. Degree of participation was evaluated in relationship to perceived enrichment. Age and length of service were moderating variables. The Job Diagnostic Survey was the instrument utilized for sampling the perceptions of respondents about job enrichment.FindingsThe first three findings pertain to comparisons between faculty participating in curriculum revision and faculty not participating in curriculum revision, while the final two pertain to amount of participation in curriculum revision.1. Faculty in nursing programs undergoing no major curriculum revision perceived the job as more enriched than faculty undergoing major curriculum revision. However, when age and length of service were controlled, such differences were no longer observed.2. Age was not observed as a significant factor in undergoing major curriculum revision.3. Faculties with shorter mean lengths of service and fewer tenured faculty members were involved in major curriculum revision. 4. Degree of participation in curriculum revision was not found to be correlated with either age or length of service of faculty members. Increases in perceived job enrichment were found to accompany increased participation in curriculum revision. However, when age and length of service were controlled, the relationship disappeared.ConclusionsThe following conclusions were drawn for the population of the study:1. Major curriculum revision is not perceived as a job enriching experience for nursing faculty.2. Age of faculty is not a predictor of degree of involvementin major curriculum revision.3. Faculty with shorter length of service are more likely tobe involved in curriculum revision.4. Age or length of service are not factors in predicting degreeof participation in major curriculum revision.5. Job enrichment does not increase with amount of participation when age and experience are held constant.

The purpose of the study was to develop a model for articulating selected courses between a two year vocational technical college and a four year academic university. More specifically, the study tested the feasibility of the use of locally developed competency instruments as a vehicle for administrative decisions about inter-institutional course articulation.One instructor in the electricity/electronics departments at Ball State University (BSU) and one at Indiana Vocational Technical College - Region 6 (IVTC) were asked to construct a competency based examination. Subject matter for the examination was identified as material taught at both institutions in an introductory course. An examination was developed using the format of domain-referenced instrument construction. A competency test was developed by defining tasks, and cognitive and psychomotor variables that a student must demcnstrate to perform the stated tasks.Students enrolled in the introductory electricity/ electronics course at each institution during spring quarter 1978 were asked to take the written examination. Thirty-eight students from Ball State University and forty-three from Indiana Vocational Technical College volunteered to participate. Six of the volunteers from each institution agreed to take the practical portion of the examination. The examinations were administered by the respective instructor. Answer sheets and rating sheets were coded to insure student anonymity.Tables were developed to show rank-order and frequency distribution of scores as well as the mean scores of all students by each institution. An item analysis was conducted and Kuder-Richardson Formula 20 was used to measure reliability. Scores were analyzed by: 1) cognitive and psychomotor competency on each task, 2) cognitive competency on each task, 3) psychomotor competency on each task, 4) cognitive competency on all tasks, 5) psychomotor competency on all tasks, and 6) cognitive and psychomotor competencies on all tasks.Reliability of the 92 item written examination was 0.9234 using Kuder-Richardson Formula 20. Approximately 70 percent of the students from IVTC scored higher than all students from BSU on the written examination. The mean score on the written examination for students from IVTC was 66.0, or 22.1 points higher than the mean score of 43.9 for students willing to participate in the practical as well as the written examination. The sum of the mean scores for students from IVTC was 78.5 as compared to 55.2 for students from BSU.Data were analyzed and the fo1lowing three conclusions were drawn:The data provided by the Kuder-Richardson estimate of reliability indicated that instructors from a separate college and university can jointly develop reliable competency measurement instruments.Locally developed reliable competency measurement instruments provide administrators with data regarding compatibility and incompatibility of selected courses with which administrators can feasibly make objective decisions about inter-institutional course articulation.Data from reliable competency measurement instruments provide administrators more quantifiable information than presently exists in college catalog descriptions, course objectives and oral descriptions of courses for making a more specific decision on course articulation.

In our current education system learning is organized as a series of sequential steps and the curriculum is constituted by a set of independent objects. Here students are not encouraged to make connections between subjects or between the subjects and their own personal lives. In this positivistic view of reality teaching is reduced to technique. This thesis is a reflection on the nature and importance of a more holistic and interconnected education. Using the concept of "non-linear learning" as an organizing principle, it outlines the various components of an alternative paradigm.

M.Ed. / According to government reports in the White Paper education must be accessible to the total population of the Republic of South Africa. Statistics indicate that a vast number of citizens have no qualification at all and a major part of the remainder only have a basic qualification. It is therefore vital that education be available to all, and the most effective way of providing education is by means of istance education. In order to solve the education crisis by means of distance education, one has to address the variety of problems that will be encountered. This study was intended to clarify some specific educational and personal problems encountered in distance education. With four of the problems identified i~ mind, a relevant literature study was done. From the insight gained by means of the literature study a questionnaire was formulated and distributed to ascertain the views of 7000 students. The students were all students at Technisa, the only technical college in distance education in the Republic of South Africa. After the acquired information was analysed, an interpretation of the data was done. The findings produced the following important information:- Students require study material with adequate information to enable them to work at an individual pace. Examples in the study material should be market related, and very clear step-by-step procedures should be provided. Lecturers should bear in mind that the students study on a part time basis, being employed during the day. For this reason unneccesary information is superfluous. Students also need extended time to finish a course. The language should be comprehensible at the level the students have enrolled at, t .e. NI-level terms and concepts shou1d be used for an NI student .. Alecturer should be able to express himsel f on paper and should provi de all the wri tten support needed by the student. This support and motivation should be fed back in the shortest time possible so that the student will not be left in the dark with long time delays between submitting an assignment and receiving it back again. Students need seminars/workshops by Technisa to enable them to put quest ions and queri es to their 1ecturer and to make contact with their fellow students. Such contact will mot ivate the students and ensure that they do not feel alone or left in the dark by Technisa. The questionnaire also brought to light that the majority of students were first time correspondence/distance education students, and this proves that distance education should adapt to di fferent student I s needs to study and succeed through distance education.

Sexuality education is a contested arena in which multiple sexual discourses compete for dominance. These discourses have the potential to empower or marginalize students (and teachers) based on constructed social identity categories. The purpose of this study was twofold: to determine which sexual discourses are reflected in British Columbia's secondary-level instructional resource packages (IRPs) that address sexuality issues, and a selection of their recommended learning resources; and to explore how the sexual discourses inherent in these documents construct or perpetuate social inequalities through the positioning of sexual subjects according to gender, sexual orientation, age, race, class and physical (dis)ability. The selected IRPs were Career and Personal Planning, 8-12; Science 8- 10; Biology, 11-12; Home Economics, 8-10; and Home Economics 11-12. The selected recommended learning resources were AIDS: Allie's Story (video); Biology: The Unity and Diversity of Life, Eighth Edition (textbook); and The Living Family: A Canadian Perspective (textbook). The relevant curricula were subjected to a critical discourse analysis informed by both critical feminism and a pragmatic, Foucauldian theory of discourse. This analysis was carried out using sexual discourse categories developed by Alexander McKay (1998) and a set of open-ended questions derived from several sources. The results of the analysis suggest that the selected curricula and recommended learning resources adhere for the most part to Romanticist and/or Progressive sexual discourses, employing sub-discourses of danger, control and individual responsibility. Related to these discourses is the texts' marginalization of the reader or viewer, primarily on the basis of sexual orientation and gender, but also significantly on the basis of age, race, class and physical disability. It is argued that the documents examined have the potential for perpetuating stereotypical identity constructions and social inequalities through the lens of sexuality. Recommendations for future curriculum development are included. / Arts, Faculty of / Sociology, Department of / Graduate

Researchers have discovered that native speakers (NSs) and non-native speakers (NNSs) of Mandarin Chinese use different strategies in recalling visual-based texts. Since written Chinese can be represented in logograph, syllabary, and alphabet, it is important to know how and to what extent a representational system (RS) will affect the processing of Chinese texts by both NSs and NNSs. The two surveys in this study explored the effects of RSs on text processing by NSs and NNSs of Chinese. Native groups consisted of subjects from Taiwan and China and were asked in the first survey to match Chinese vocabulary items in pinyin and in characters to their closest English equivalents in meaning. Subjects in the second survey, which included two native and one non-native groups, identified Chinese syllables in either pinyin or zhuyin version, discriminated the differences of sounds of identical characters, and chose the right words to fit in the phrase-level contexts. Two conceptual hypotheses were proposed and tested: (1) NSs of Chinese will demonstrate better performance than NNSs in comprehending texts represented in Chinese characters, and (2) NNSs of Chinese will demonstrate better performances than NSs in comprehending texts represented in pinyin in terms of accuracy and speed. The findings show that (1) Beginning and intermediate non-native learners of Mandarin Chinese benefited from alphabetic representation of the Chinese language in terms of processing speed and accuracy rate--requiring less time and achieving higher performances; and (2) Native Chinese who learned either zhuyin or pinyin as a primer demonstrated lower performances in processing texts represented in either zhuyin or pinyin in terms of speed and accuracy. The findings suggest that logographic representation might provide more rapid and precise access than syllabic and alphabetical representations for text processing at the advanced level. One particular pattern is apparent: An RS which is more efficient at the beginning level will become less efficient at the advanced level and vice versa. This implies that instructors should teach both RSs, logographic plus syllabic or alphabetic systems, to beginning readers, and switch to logographic representation once the learning of the two systems become balanced.

Historically, the dominant approach to instruction has been for teachers to break down information and present singular facts and behaviors to receptive students. An instructional environment where the teacher disseminates information portrays the learner as a passive agent in the learning process. Conversely, educational researchers have described a complex ecology when teachers, students and tasks interact to complete academic work (Doyle, 1977, 1983). While much attention has been directed at how teachers and students interact as the learning ecology evolves, less attention has been dedicated to the examination of the interaction between learning tasks or experiences and students (content-embedded accountability) in the evolution of this complex ecology (a program of action). The purpose of this qualitative case study was twofold. First, was to examine the learning ecology created throughout an adventure education unit in the physical education curriculum. Second, was to examine the role of content-embedded accountability in the developing program of action. Participants included Ivana, a 23 year veteran physical education teacher and her physical education class (N=19). Data were collected throughout an adventure education unit (N=8 classes) using qualitative research techniques (e.g. field notes, formal interviews, informal conversations). Data were inductively coded through a method of constant comparison. Multiple processes of open and axial coding were completed to develop major themes and supporting categories. Overall, the strong program of action (PoA) was co-created by Ivana and her students. Structures within the adventure education model provided a framework that allowed the teacher to align content, instruction and assessment and students to focus on their learning to be civil and self-directed. Ivana was influenced by structures in the adventure education (AE) model to (a) bridge the global school initiative for teaching civility with student learning, (b) select activities based on student engagement with relevant content, (c) implement instructional methods that included students' social participation and (d) align assessment with the content and her instructional methods. A significant feature in this ecology was the role of content-embedded accountability, which helped to shape the PoA. Ivana's role as a facilitator and structures in the adventure model for learning tasks held students accountable for their self-directed engagement with the content espoused in the AE model. The structure of content embedded in learning tasks eventually defined how Ivana facilitated student learning. Instructional models such as AE can assist teachers to define content, align instructional methods and create learning tasks that initiate a system of accountability. Future researchers could benefit from considering the connection between a teacher seen as a "technical virtuoso" and the instructional model from which they operate.

A study of two hundred and fifty (250) public school teachers employed in a partial regional school district was conducted in order to examine their attitudes toward various forms of parent participation with the schools. Teachers were asked to respond to a fifty (50) statement survey investigating seven categories of parent involvement. These categories included: parent and teacher relationships; parents as supporters; parents as an audience; parents as decision makers; parents as advocates; parents as tutors for their children; and parents as learners. The purpose of the study was to determine if any differences in attitude existed among these teachers concerning parent participation in the schools. Comparisons were made among the teachers according to grade level, educational background, age, family status, formal training for parent involvement, years of service, and gender. Several interesting patterns emerged from this investigation. The results indicated that there are significant differences among teachers at the elementary, junior high, and high school levels toward parent involvement with the schools. Elementary school teachers revealed more positive attitudes toward parent involvement than junior high and high school teachers in the areas of parent and teacher relationships, parents as supporters of the schools, and parents as tutors assisting their children with school related activities. Significant differences surfaced between elementary school and the junior high teachers concerning parents as an audience for school activities. High school and junior high teachers disagreed concerning the role of parents as learners in the schools. Other factors also influenced teacher attitudes toward parent participation. A significant difference surfaced between teachers who had received training for parent involvement activities and those who had not participated in any training programs. Teachers who are parents also held views that differed from those who are not parents concerning parent involvement. Examination of the teacher responses by gender revealed that the attitudes of male and female teachers differed concerning parent participation with the schools. Age, years of experience, and educational background did not significantly affect the attitudes of the teachers toward parent involvement with the schools.

Students need creative thinking, problem solving skills, and knowledge about the future to equip them to deal with our rapidly changing world. At the same time, Proposition 2$1\over2$ and a decrease in state aid are causing school systems to seriously tighten their budgets. Any programs considered "extras" are being eliminated or reduced, especially those targeted for our most able students, the gifted. One of these affected programs is the Future Problem Solving Program (FPSP). There is an unfortunate lack of information about the program and the impact it has on its participants. Although it has been implemented in various schools in Massachusetts since 1979, no studies have been undertaken about the FPSP in this state. Therefore, for this dissertation, an investigation was conducted into the roots, history, and impact of the program. Questionnaires were sent to all adults who had registered as coaches for the FPSP in Massachusetts for the 1988-89 school year. Students who participated during the same year were sent questionnaires through their coaches. Forty-six coaches (43.4%) and 513 students (75.66%) from grades four through twelve participated in the study. The questions in the surveys addressed information about demographics, perceptions of the impact of the FPSP on the student skills that the FPSP aims to develop, and the opinions and reactions of the coaches and students to the FPSP itself and their participation in it. The respondees reported an increase in students' critical and creative thinking, communication skills, awareness of the future, and teamwork due to the FPSP. Research skills were also affected but to a lesser degree. A variety of statistical tests were run on the collected data. Trends were noted and discussed such as the reported advantage in attainment of some skills by females and the positive impact of being on a FPSP team. The FPSP was shown to fulfill its objectives in its participants in Massachusetts and should continue to be offered through the schools.