Thesis (Ed. D.)--West Virginia University, 2005 / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains x, 193 p. Vita. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 157-170).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1971. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.S.)--Eastern Illinois University, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 140-145).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Ohio University, August, 2003. / Title from PDF t.p. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 186-205)

Thesis (Ed. D.)--Indiana University of Pennsylvania. / Includes bibliographical references.

The Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) and the Governor of Massachusetts have identified the need to strengthen the state’s education system through the development of regional centers of support. In 2007, DESE drafted a proposal for a Massachusetts system of support to improve student performance. The proposal called for the establishment of educational service cooperatives to provide targeted assistance to schools and districts and to serve as intermediaries between the Department and school districts. In 2008, the Governor’s office assembled the Readiness Finance Commission and charged it with presenting a variety of alternative means to achieve sustainable education funding for current and future needs. The Commission recommended strategies that include significant restructuring measures to realize cost savings and efficiencies. These measures specifically delineate the enhanced use of educational collaboratives. This study examines the perceptions of education leaders at the state and local level regarding the current performance of educational collaboratives in Massachusetts and the potential role educational collaboratives could play in state and district efforts to improve educational effectiveness and increase efficiencies. Interviews and the Collaborative Evaluation Survey were used to analyze the programs and services that school districts purchase from educational collaboratives and the perceived quality and cost-effectiveness of collaborative programs. In addition to interviews with school superintendents, data from interviews with collaborative directors, state education agency leaders, and a state legislator were analyzed to explore the potential role that educational collaboratives could play in state and district education improvement efforts. The study found: (1) school districts in Massachusetts continue to use educational collaboratives for the same purposes as they did when collaboratives were first created; (2) the majority of school district leaders have positive perceptions of collaborative programs and services; (3) school district input, perceived cost-effectiveness, and collaborative responsiveness are major factors that influence school district utilization of educational collaboratives; and (4) unstable funding and the absence of a structured statewide network constrain the capacity of educational collaboratives. The study also identified the need for more research on the cost-effectiveness and impact of programs educational collaboratives offer. Without additional research, policy makers in Massachusetts risk creating duplicative regional systems of support. State leaders also risk assuming that collaboratives have the capacity to address problems when evidence may indicate otherwise.

<p> Esta investigaci&oacute;n estudi&oacute; las estrategias de soluci&oacute;n de problemas y estrategias sociales que utilizan estudiantes de nivel elemental cuando resuelven problemas matem&aacute;ticos. Adem&aacute;s, se analiz&oacute; el proceso que siguen los estudiantes al resolver problemas de matem&aacute;ticas. En el estudio participaron seis estudiantes de la Escuela Elemental de la Universidad de Puerto Rico. Cada estudiante resolvi&oacute; cuatro problemas; dos de manera individual y dos en pareja. Se utilizaron tres diferentes fuentes de recopilaci&oacute;n de informaci&oacute;n: los trabajos escritos por los estudiantes, las observaciones directas del investigador y entrevistas a los estudiantes inmediatamente despu&eacute;s de la soluci&oacute;n de los problemas. Algunos de los hallazgos m&aacute;s importantes son: (1) los ni&ntilde;os vieron diferentes estrategias de soluci&oacute;n de problemas y al no encontrar soluci&oacute;n con una cambiaban r&aacute;pidamente a otra, en esto muestran diferencia con los adultos, quienes insiste en la estrategia seleccionada. (2) Las estrategias que m&aacute;s utilizaron los estudiantes al resolver los problemas fueron el uso de operaciones b&aacute;sicas y la asociaci&oacute;n con problemas previos. Se observ&oacute; que frecuentemente los estudiantes integran ambas estrategias para desarrollar un proceso de soluci&oacute;n que le permita obtener la respuesta. La operaci&oacute;n b&aacute;sica que m&aacute;s utilizaron fue la suma, en la modalidad de sumas repetidas. Otras estrategias que utilizaron los estudiantes para resolver problemas fueron: an&aacute;lisis, c&oacute;mputo mental, tanteo y error, representaciones ic&oacute;nicas, patrones, uso de modelos concretos y uso de representaciones visuales. Otros hallazgos fueron: (3) Los estudiantes tienen la capacidad de establecer asociaciones de estrategias que les permiten resolver problemas at&iacute;picos de diferentes formas. (4) Los estudiantes utilizan diversas estrategias sociales al resolver en pareja problemas de matem&aacute;ticas. (5) El proceso t&iacute;pico que sigue el estudiante al resolver problemas es el siguiente: (a) lee y comprende el problema formulado, (b) pone a prueba alguna de las estrategias de soluci&oacute;n que conoce, (c) verifica si el resultado obtenido concuerda con el contexto del problema, (d) si le parece razonable, acepta su resultado, de lo contrario lo rechaza y pone a prueba otra de las estrategias que conoce. A la luz de estos hallazgos se sugiere invertir el proceso de ense&ntilde;anza de forma que el maestro comience la clase con la presentaci&oacute;n de un problema que contenga subyacente los contenidos que se pretenden estudiar. De esta manera el ni&ntilde;o tiene la posibilidad de reflexionar sobre su propio conocimiento y cuando descubra la soluci&oacute;n podr&aacute; hacer, de una manera m&aacute;s sencilla, las conexiones esperadas.</p>

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The focus of this research is what constitutes school ethos for a purposive sample of seven final year students in a Scottish secondary school. A review of existing literature on the topic of school ethos highlighted the importance that policy makers and practitioners in Scotland afford to the notion of a positive school ethos. Yet knowledge of the topic remains limited with only a narrow range of approaches to researching school ethos evident within the literature reviewed. This study begins by considering the ideas of the early twentieth century philosophies of Martin Heidegger (1889 – 1976) and Edith Stein (1891 – 1942). In their ideas about the human person and human relationships the conceptual tools: thrownness; beingwith; care (acts of solicitude); mood; and temporality are identified to investigate school ethos from a different perspective. The hermeneutic phenomenological tradition particularly Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s (1908 – 1961) notion of embodiment and Hans George Gadamer’s (1900 – 2002) ideas of: conversation; fusion of horizons; and the hermeneutic circle provide both the methodology and method to investigate the phenomenon that presents itself as school ethos from the student perspective. Data on the students’ lived experience of secondary school were collected by conversational interview and are presented as participant stories with each story organised around the same five explicative themes. The analysis of the data found that there was little evidence of the school’s declared ethos entering the lifeworld of the participants, rather school ethos is experienced for them as moods which surface from acts of solicitude. Although the small-scale nature of the study precludes wider generalisations from the findings the study highlights issues that may be useful to policy makers and practitioners. In particular, it suggests there is a need to pay greater attention to understanding the lifeworlds of students, to the lived experience of school ethos and on seeking further clarification around what constitutes positive acts of solicitude within the context of school.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hong Kong, 2007. / Title proper from title frame. Also available in printed format.