Thesis (D. Min.)--Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, 2005. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 229-232).

The aim is to develop an educational program with modifications for secondary schools with an emphasis on environmental theme "Healthy diet" based on the analysis of the role of school meals in the education of pupils and students to sustainable development and to the development of sustainable systems of production, distribution and consumption of food in the country. The theoretical part of the preparatory phase and the creation of an educational program with thematic blocks focusing on healthy eating and local food gathering was held and the study of educational and methodological materials, curricula system in the Czech Republic. The practical part includes a new tutorial called , designed for students of secondary schools and secondary vocational schools suited for environmental theme "Healthy Nutrition". This part further includes the evaluation and evaluation program usability in practice

This thesis examines two topics related to the prevalence of unequal developmental outcomes among children of different socioeconomic backgrounds in Peru. The first topic focuses on the origins of these inequalities by measuring the relative importance of school and early childhood influences for the emergence of cognitive development gaps between urban and rural children. I use rich longitudinal information on cognitive achievement, household and school characteristics, and a novel decomposition strategy. Results reveal that observable school influences occurring between ages 6 and 8, account for a significant share (around 35% and no less than 28%) of the difference in cognitive skill. The share attributable to differences in the early childhood environment is important but no larger than 50%. I also discuss how the proposed decomposition strategy compares to other linear decomposition methods and why it is less prone to biases than those employed so far in the literature. The second topic is related to the effects and mechanisms behind early childhood development interventions that seek to improve the home environment through a change in parental behaviour. I use data on parenting practices and caregiver beliefs regarding the importance of parent-child interactions collected from the control and treatment groups of families randomized for the evaluation of a home-visiting programme recently launched at scale in rural Peru. I find that this intervention produced a positive effect on the quality of the home environment (d = 0.5; p < 0.01) and shifted caregiver behaviour increasing their participation in educational play activities with the child (d = 0.3; p < 0.01). I also explore the constraints that limit caregivers' behavioural change. I find that treatment effects are not significant among the poorest caregivers and that they exhibit a positive wealth gradient. Further, I find evidence suggesting that caregiver beliefs condition their responses to treatment.

This diploma thesis analyses education and development of employees in selected organization. The aim of my thesis is to evaluate the current system of education and development of employees in selected organization. Theoretical part defines the basic terminology, which is more elaborated in practical part. Practical part consists of description of the organization, description of education that is currently being used and also questionnaires for employees, and unstructured interview. Questionnaires include twenty questions, that were given to the employees of selected business. Most of the employees were very willing and helpful. Questionnaire contains questions targeted at education and development of employees. Output of these questionnaires is finding, whether the organization motivates employees enough to increase their education and whether it offers or mediates sufficient amount of methods to increase education. The work is concluded with proposals and suggestions for making the education system more efficient.

The purpose of this qualitative study was to identify the classroom management needs of graduate education students in one college, and develop a seminar that emerged from the research. Researchers have shown that professional development provided for graduate education students typically deals with curriculum and instructional methodologies rather than classroom management. However, graduate education students have expressed the need to learn more effective classroom management skills. The research questions asked what classroom management skills participants said they needed to teach in both collaborative, and special education classrooms. A grounded theory approach and the constructivist paradigm were used in the study. Interviews and focus groups employing a purposive sample of 12 graduate education students were used to determine core phenomena where participants were able to help shape and construct a seminar in classroom management. The results of the codified data concluded that participants lacked skills and wanted to be trained in the meaning of effective teacher engagement with students, collaboration with other professionals, effective use of class rules and procedures, helping students understand consequences for misbehavior, and managing classroom disruptions. The research generated a 3-hour seminar for special education or general education graduate students. The results gathered during the development of the seminar suggest that the content and presentation will help graduate education students foster social change by developing skills to effectively manage their classes. Additionally, the study can contribute to social change by affording participants classroom management skills necessary to create safe and nurturing school environments that have the potential to positively impact student achievement.

Career and technology education (CATE) courses were offered to high school students as an alternative form of education. The research problem at the study site, which is a high school located in southeastern United States was the lack of research-based findings on high school graduates' perceptions of CATE courses. The purpose of this study was to understand the participants' perceptions of the impact of CATE courses on career goals. The research question that guided this study was: What are the perceptions of high school graduates of a CATE program? The conceptual framework was based upon multiple intelligences, differentiated instruction, and the social cognitive theory of self-efficacy. Purposive sampling was used to identify 10 high school graduates who took CATE courses and were interviewed to share their perceptions of those courses. Responses were audio taped and transcribed for content analysis and coding to identify common themes on this topic. The findings indicated that CATE courses provided students with practical applications by which CATE instructors strived to meet the needs of students, indicating that CATE students have been prepared for career opportunities. The findings also indicated that CATE students graduated from high school because students developed technical and academic skills through the program. Implications for positive social change include potentially increased rate of high school graduation of CATE students and the impact of CATE courses on graduate's career goals. The results of this study can be used by CATE teachers and school administrators to support continued advocacy for teacher professional development within the field of CATE courses.

Regular education teachers' self-efficacy may be negatively impacted due to a lack of professional development and experience teaching students with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Research links teacher self-efficacy with increased student academic achievement. The purpose of this study was to examine to what degree training on ASD during and following teacher certification and experience had on overall teacher self-efficacy. This one-shot case study was based upon Bandura's theoretical construct of self-efficacy and secondarily on Tschannen-Moran, Woolfolk Hoy, and Hoy's theory of self-efficacy. The Teachers' Sense of Efficacy Scales (TSES) was used to collect data from regular education teachers with experience teaching students with ASD in 1st through 3rd grades in a Southern California school district. After the data were assessed for accuracy, missing data, and outliers, the analysis was conducted on 36 cases. MANOVAs were conducted to assess differences on overall self-efficacy. Separate ANOVAs were used since the overall self-efficacy and the subscores were highly correlated. Though the sample in this study was small (n = 36) for data analysis, the effect size showed that training experience and grade levels had a moderate to large effect on teacher self-efficacy (.16, .13, .13 respectively). Therefore teacher self-efficacy has a positive impact on student achievement. Implications for positive social change are self-efficacious teachers increase the academic achievement of students with ASD. In this way, such students can become self-sustaining, dynamic members of the work force and community.

This thesis examines my experience of leading leadership development. During the last three years I have been researching my role as Head of Leadership and Organisational Development at the University of Hertfordshire (UH), with a view to making sense of and rethinking leadership and approaches to leadership development more generally. This thesis considers how my own thinking and practice has changed and developed as a consequence of paying attention to and reflecting on personal experience, whilst at the same time locating my sense-making in the broader academic scholarship. Narrative accounts of the significant incidents and interactions that I have participated in during the past three years have been shared verbally with the participants on the programmes that I lead, and explored more extensively in written form with colleagues in the learning community on the Doctorate in Management (DMan) programme at UH, as a means of intensifying my sense-making and its generalisability to a community of engaged enquirers. My research was prompted by disillusionment with the dominant discourse on leadership and leadership development based as it is on theories, frameworks, tools and techniques that privilege a form of autonomous, instrumental rationality and deceptive certainty that did not reflect the social, non-linear, uncertain day-to-day realities faced by me and the managers with whom I worked. In this thesis, I draw on my experiences as a manager, leader of leadership development, and a student of leadership development, to problematise the mainstream managerialist conceptions of leadership and organisation that are now part of the organisational habitus (Bourdieu, 1977) in the UK. The rise and naturalisation of managerialist ideology across the private, public, and charitable sectors in the UK makes it an inordinately difficult perspective to contest without risking some form of exclusion. I contend that my experience of attempting to encourage radical doubt and enquiry rather than the mindless acceptance and application of conventional wisdom contributes to knowledge in the field of leadership and organisational development by providing insight into and an alternative way of thinking about and practising leadership and leadership development. In contesting dominant conceptions, I proffer a more reality congruent alternative to mainstream thought. I draw on the perspective of complex responsive processes of relating (Stacey et al, 2000, Griffin, 2002, Shaw, 2002), critical management studies (Alvesson and Willmott, 1996), social constructionism (Berger et al, 1966), and other thinkers critical of managerialist conceptions of leadership and leadership education (Khurana, 2007) to explore leadership as a social, relational activity where leaders are co-participants, albeit highly influential ones, in the ongoing patterning of relationships that constitute organisation. However, I argue that it is insufficient for management educationalists to snipe critically at managerialism from the sidelines, problematising one perspective and simply replacing it with another (Ford et al, 2007), leaving their participants ill-equipped to navigate the potentially destructive political landscape of day-to-day organisational life. While the dominant discourse on leadership and organisation is flawed, to avoid exclusion managers must still become fluent in the language and practice of managerialism, the ideology that has come to dominate the vast majority of organisational communities in which they find themselves. In this thesis, I argue that it is crucial for managers and leaders of leadership development to engage with a polyphony of perspectives, and develop the reflective and reflexive capacity to continuously explore and answer for themselves the questions who am I, and what am I doing, who are we, and what are we doing?

(in English): The thesis deals with the topic of perception of one's own body and it's connection to selfreflection - especially sensation of one's own personality, in the context of school education. The thesis is an overview study, introducing the so-called education of embodiment. In the second part, the thesis describes main principles of embodied learning and their importance for self-reflection. The thesis utilizes the method of art based research, which confirms the importance of embodied learning for personal development and describes principles, methods and approaches, that allow to implement embodied learning. The thesis is a contribution to the real educational practice in the topic of personal development as a cross- curricular theme personal and social development.

Os atuais contextos educacionais a distância ou híbridos, assentados na internet, introduzem novas formas de estudar e aprender, suscitando questões que precisam ser discutidas acerca da qualidade e efetividade da Educação a Distância (EAD). A presente pesquisa objetivou propor e testar um modelo de avaliação de ações educacionais a distância, visando identificar variáveis preditoras de aprendizagem relacionadas às características da clientela (estratégias de aprendizagem e frequência nos recursos da web) e às reações aos procedimentos instrucionais e ao tutor. A universidade parceira oferece desde 2008 cursos superiores em EAD, sendo as disciplinas semipresenciais Metodologia Científica e Economia, ofertadas a todos os graduandos da instituição. Foram aplicados virtual e presencialmente os questionários de Estratégias de aprendizagem, Reação aos procedimentos instrucionais e Reação ao desempenho do tutor, os quais, anteriormente à coleta de dados, sofreram modificações para se adequarem às especificidades dos contextos de ensino superior (validação semântica e/ou por juízes). Para constatar as evidências de validade dos instrumentos, foram realizadas análises exploratórias fatoriais (Principal Components e Principal Axis Factoring) e de consistência interna (Alfa de Cronbach). Todas as escalas são estatisticamente válidas e confiáveis. A análise de regressão múltipla padrão foi realizada para cumprir o objetivo de testagem do modelo, visando verificar a influência do uso dos recursos da web e das estratégias de aprendizagem, bem como a satisfação dos alunos com os procedimentos instrucionais e tutor, nos resultados de aprendizagem. A frequência de uso das ferramentas da web, as estratégias de aprendizagem autorregulatórias e as reações favoráveis aos procedimentos instrucionais explicaram a ocorrência de aprendizagem. Tais achados apontam para a importância do ambiente virtual de aprendizagem, das trocas de mensagens entre alunos e tutores, e do uso de estratégias que promovem o autogerenciamento da aprendizagem e autorregulação da motivação, ansiedade e atenção, na produção de bons resultados, melhorando o desempenho acadêmico dos alunos que estudam a distância. Mais estudos são necessários para sistematizar conhecimentos sobre a avaliação de aprendizagem no ensino superior mediado por tecnologias e ampliar as discussões acerca da eficácia e aplicabilidade da modalidade EAD. / The current distance or blended educational contexts, supported by Internet, introduce new ways of studying and learning, and raise questions that need to be discussed about the quality and effectiveness of distance learning. This study aimed to propose and test a distance educational assessment model to identify learning predictors related to individual characteristics (learning strategies and frequency of use of web tools) and student satisfaction with the instructional procedures and tutor. The university that participated of it offers higher education distance courses since 2008, and the blended disciplines Scientific Methodology and Economics, are offered to all the institutions undergraduates. The questionnaires of Learning Strategies, Reaction to Instructional Procedures and Reaction to Tutors Performance were applied in person and online; previously to data collection, they were modified (semantic validation and/or by judges) to suit specific higher education contexts. To check the instruments validity evidences, exploratory factor analyzes were performed (Principal Components and Principal Axis Factoring) and internal consistency (Cronbach\'s Alpha). All scales are statistically valid and reliable. Multiple regression analysis was performed to fulfill the purpose of testing the model in order to verify the influence of web resources and learning strategies as well as student satisfaction with the tutor and instructional procedures, in learning outcomes. The frequency of use of web tools, self-regulatory learning strategies and the favorable reactions to the instructional procedures explained the occurrence of learning. These findings point to the importance of the virtual learning environment, the messages sent by students, and the use of strategies that promote self-management learning and self-regulation of motivation, anxiety and attention, in producing good learning results, which improve students academic performance. Further research is needed to systematize knowledge about learning assessment in higher education mediated by technologies and expand the discussions about the e-learning effectiveness and applicability.