This thesis explores the aspirations of black South Africans who were born after the end of apartheid. These young people are controversially referred to as the ‘born free' generation. They were born into a democracy that officially offers them equal opportunities but continues to grapple with a legacy of racial discrimination, spatial segregation and unequal educational provision. Despite the majority of ‘born frees' experiencing poor educational attainment and high levels of unemployment, existing research indicates that those in this category hold ambitious future aspirations, although these rarely come to fruition. The focus of my work is the aspirations of rural youth and draws upon ten months of ethnographic data collected within a township in Mpumalanga province. It analyses selected curriculum content, observations, focus groups and interviews with two groups of young people – those in their last year of schooling and those two years out of school. Through ethnographic observations in one secondary school in particular, I elucidate how students' schooling environments relay particular discourses concerning what constitutes a ‘good education' and what it means to aspire towards a ‘good life.' Integrating insights from feminist, poststructural and postcolonial theories, I consider how the discourses of the ‘new South Africa' are transmitted within the schooling environments, homes and wider social and political arenas which these young people occupy, thereby creating and structuring ways for them to speak and think about their futures. My analysis engages with the shifting attachments that shape how South Africans living in a rural area construct their narratives of the future and demonstrates how these young people's performances of identity are both spatially constructed and affectively negotiated. By considering the silences and contradictions in their imaginaries, this thesis shows how the discourses through which these imaginaries are constructed create boundaries around ways of being and becoming that are deemed valuable and those that are not. In problematising an understanding of aspiration as an individual disposition, my research demonstrates that the hopes of young, black South Africans are rooted in social and spatial inequalities.

The first school reported ever to have been held in Marathon was held in a box car when Flagler was building his famous overseas extension of the Florida East Coast Railroad. Mrs. R. H. Miller, the teacher of this first school, visited in the community a few months ago. Her story of the early difficulties encountered was most interesting and enlightening. Following the "box-car school", teaching of three children was carried on in the private home of W. A. Parrish, now known as the "daddy" of Marathon and conducted by Charles Albury who is now teaching in the new, modern Coral Shores school, the only other school on the Florida Keys. Reference to the Keys" is in keeping with local usage of the term since Key West people speak often about the two "Key schools" and about "going up on the Keys." / "August, 1953." / Typescript. / "Submitted to the Graduate Council of Florida State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts." / Advisor: W. Edwards, Professor Directing Paper. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 25).

This thesis gathers research on three impact evaluations of interventions at the school and student level in Mexico. The first chapter evaluates the effects of a School Breakfast Program (SBP) on children's outcomes such as cognitive skills, illness, height and weight and grade repetition in the period 2002 to 2005. Quasi-experimental estimations provide evidence of positive effects on children's weight; however, such gains push children over their 'ideal' standardized average causing them overweight. This effect is significantly higher in the case of poorer children. The second chapter evaluates a Full-Time Primary Schools Program implemented in 2007, to work out if changing the time pupils spend at school can enhance skills in language and mathematics. Differences in Differences regressions point to a significant improvement of 0.11 standard deviations in mathematics and Spanish test scores after four years of treatment. These gains are three times higher in schools located in deprived areas and do not seem to be driven by students self-selection. The last chapter focuses on an exogenous policy change in Mexico which eliminates enforced grade repetition for all first to third grade students. This reform helped schools to reduce repetition rates from varying higher levels to almost zero in one academic year. Estimations coming from two-way fixed effects models using a panel of schools show an average reduction in dropout rates after reform implementation of 0.3% points along with no seeming effects on pupil's performance. General findings from the three chapters are of strong significance when placed into the broader debate about what works best in schools for improving children's academic performance and general education outcomes in Mexico.

This thesis explores the dialectical relationship between gender and international student mobility (ISM). The focus is on the experiences of Indian students across three space-time locations: before the students left India; while abroad in Toronto; and their return to New Delhi. The value of this research is two-fold. Firstly, my research helps to fill the lacuna in ISM research that examines the phenomenon through a gender optic. Secondly, there is increasing interest in Canada and other countries – evident in the media and government policy – in international students from India. The study is located at the nexus of gender and mobility scholarship; it adopts Gendered Geographies of Power as a foundational framework. The research employed a multi-sited, mixed-methods approach to data collection. The data collection in the field sites of Toronto, Canada and New Delhi, India consisted of in-depth semi-structured interviews and participant observations. An online survey was mounted for the duration of the fieldwork to gather data on the broader population of Indian students abroad. The results of this survey provide context for the discussion in three empirical chapters. The first of the three empirical chapters explores the impact of gender relations in shaping motivations to study abroad. The second chapter examines how relations of power in and across multiple spaces (re)shape the students‟ performances of gender identities in everyday life in Toronto. The final empirical chapter examines the students‟ experience of return mobility as they attempt to adapt to a different (but familiar) gender context again. My research contributes to the growing body of scholarship on ISM as well as that on gender and migration. By employing a gendered perspective, the indepth interviews as well as ethnographic research reveals the shifting subjectivities of the migrants as they simultaneously negotiate multiple ethnic and kinship interactions in their everyday lived experiences. Secondly, the online survey presents the gendered class configurations of the socio-economic background of the Indian international students. Lastly, the „return‟ experiences of the students are differentiated by gender: more women than men found it harder to (re)negotiate their gender-expected performances in New Delhi. Furthermore, the „return mobility‟ of men appears to be more permanent than the return mobility of women.

No description available.

No description available.

The central research question is the extent to which gifted programming affects student academic outcomes of gifted as compared to not-gifted students and how this differs by race/ethnicity and/or poverty status. Since the identification of elementary school students as gifted is not random, propensity score matching is used to remove this bias in the estimates of the effects. A matched sample of North Carolina middle school students based on individual level data of both gifted and not-gifted students of varied racial/ethnic groups and income levels is used for this analysis. This enables a comparison of sixth, seventh, and eighth grade student achievement to determine the extent to which participating in gifted programming differentiates effects by race/ethnicity and poverty status. I show the additional test score gain, if any, from being in gifted programming compared to students not participating in gifted programs. Variations in gifted program effects across race/ethnicity and income are assessed. This research adds empirical evidence to the more qualitatively focused gifted debate by analyzing differences in student outcomes between gifted and not-gifted students in North Carolina. Since black and lower income students are less likely to participate in gifted programs, they disproportionately encounter less experienced teachers, lower expectations, and fewer resources. The extent to which these additional learning supports translate to differences in student outcomes are analyzed.

This investigation is an analysis of the educational levels of the labor force from 1966 to 1972. The distribution of the employed who are educated by a major group of economic activities and occupations are studied. The educational levels of the employed by main classes of workers are analyzed. The unemployed by educational categories of the labor force in different areas of the country are also analyzed. Data are for Iran, 1966-1972.

The purpose of this study was to determine if significant variances exist among the attitudes of educational leaders in West Virginia toward collective bargaining and what influences certain demographic variables might have as predictors of attitudes. Eight categories of educational leaders were included in this study, with membership determined by employment or organizational position held. Twenty-one items concerning demographic information were included to gather pertinent background material. Data were collected by mail survey using a Likert Scale. The data were analyzed as follows: differences across categories of leaders were tested using the one-way analysis of variance, and predictors of attitudes were sought with a multiple regression and a Scheffe test. The results indicated that there were significant differences between groups in relation to attitudes toward collective bargaining and certain demographic variables at the .05 level of significance. / Ed. D. / incomplete_metadata

The purpose of this study was to answer several questions concerning distribution of student financial aid in the proprietary school sector. The study was conducted in the Spring of 1989 using a Fall, 1986, nationally representative sample of 3,837 students attending less than two-year and two-year proprietary schools in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. The sample was drawn as part of the National Postsecondary Student Aid Survey (NPSAS) conducted by the National Center for Educational Statistics in the 1986/87 academic year. Data came from edited NPSAS tapes dated May 12, 1988. Several statistical procedures from the Statistical Analysis System (SAS) and Lotus 1-2-3 were used to answer research questions related to (1) types of educational services provided by proprietary schools, (2) types of students receiving financial aid; and, (3) types of aid packages distributed in these schools. Several of the major results are: (1) Proprietary schools provided short-term, high-cost vocational training leading to relatively low-paying entry-level jobs. (2) Over four-fifths (84%) of the students received financial aid. The majority of these students were unmarried (74%), female (67%), less than 23 years of age (52%), lived off-campus (98%) and attended school on a full—time basis (81%). Nearly one-half (48%) of dependent and 70 percent of independent recipients had incomes of less than $20,000. About 30 percent lacked a high school diploma. Almost 43% percent were from minority backgrounds with over 70 percent having incomes under $11,000. (3) Nearly 80 percent of the recipients received either a single source of aid or two sources of aid in their aid packages. About 88 percent of this aid came from the federal government with the Guaranteed Student Loan and Pell Grant programs the predominate sources. / Ed. D.