<p> Educators have long been interested in how students react differently to failure experiences. What makes one student expend more effort after an academic failure, but another avoids effort or academic engagement? One avenue of research in this area has examined the influence of students&rsquo; achievement goals on their response to academic success or failure. This study sought to examine how students with various multiple goal profiles react to an imagined failure situation with respect to four outcome-focused achievement emotions (i.e., hope, anxiety, shame, &amp; hopelessness) and effort. A <i>k</i>-means cluster analysis of the four AGQ-R scales produced three multiple goal profiles: Mastery High, High All Goals, and Average All Goals. Findings revealed that students in the Mastery High and High All Goals profiles reported significantly higher intended effort after the imagined failure experience in comparison to students with the Average All Goals profile. The findings appear to highlight overall protective benefit of holding high levels of mastery-approach goals, as high levels of performance-avoidance goals did not have negative effect on effort after a recent failure experience when coupled with high mastery-approach goals. Significant differences in achievement emotions between the cluster groups were not found. The results of this study are integrated with current theory, and implications for theory and practice are addressed.</p>

<p> Native Hawaiian children have been facing challenges in multiple areas and multiple settings comparing to their non-Hawaiian peers. Many of Native Hawaiian children are academically struggling in the schools and have high dropout rates. This qualitative study explores the perceptions of a group of Native Hawaiian high school graduates on the Island of Oahu in regards to how project-based learning impacted their learning to determine whether or not project-based learning is an effective instructional strategy to motivate Native Hawaiian learners. Project-based learning intergrades the learning and psychological theories of intrinsic motivation, experimental, constructive and social learning. This narrative inquiry study confirmed that project-based learning had positively impacted on most of participants&rsquo; learning in the areas of interest of learning, engagement, self- challenged, attitudes towards learning, social and communication skill, learning skills, life skills, Hawaiian culture connection, technology, and curiosity. The importance of teacher-student relationship was identified as a key to achieve a successful PBL. Hands-on projects, community involvement and teamwork were the areas were also considered essential. The implications from this qualitative study were beyond determining whether or not PBL was a motivational tool for Native Hawaiian learners, but some of the causes for lacking of motivation. The participants of this study called for being connected to their cultures, community, place, and school through PBL. The narrative study discovered that Native Hawaiian learners require people who work with them understand Hawaiian culture and establish culture competency in PBL. Successful implementation of PBL can connect Native Hawaiian learners to learning, school, culture, their own identity, and Aloha spirit so that they are motivated to learn.</p>

<p> The following mixed method study examines the servant leadership practices of teacher leaders and their impact on school climate and instructional planning. The researcher sought out the perceptions of both formal and informal teacher leaders as well as their district supervisors in a suburban high school setting. The research uncovered teacher leaders&rsquo; practice of empathy and listening had a significant impact on school climate. Commitment to individual development and empathy were identified by teacher leaders as important influences on instructional planning. The research confirmed servant leadership characteristics are practiced by teacher leaders, and the findings were reinforced by district supervisors&rsquo; observations. This research may aid in providing educational organizations a framework to empower teacher leaders and their utilization of servant leadership. Furthermore, the research may serve as a catalyst for additional inquiry into the effect of servant leadership and teacher leadership on school climate and instructional planning.</p>

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Based on the results of a prior field study, it was determined that an instrument that borrows from Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development could be constructed and reliably used to measure assessor competence in the use of a career counseling assessment instrument in career counselor training. This research further explores the feasibility of validating this instrument. If successful, a training template could be created to provide competency measurement for the remediation of counselors in training and the improvement of counselor training models. The theoretical model upon which the instrument is based is the Piagetian Matrix of Test User Competence (PMTUC). The competency assessment instrument based on this theoretical matrix was named A Measure of Assessor Competence (AMAC). The AMAC produces one global score based on six test items. The long-term intent of this line of research is to promote the utility of the PMTUC in the creation of a variety of measures of competency (AMACs) across many psychological assessments. The PMTUC theory and the resulting AMAC instruments could be applicable to all instruments. The specific intent of this study was to validate the use of the AMAC in the creation of a measure of competency in the use of a career counseling instrument. The instrument selected for this validation research was the Career Thoughts Inventory (CTI) because experts in the use of this instrument were readily available. Therefore, the measure of assessor competency for this specific research study is the AMAC-CTI. Future studies might attempt to build measures of competency in the use of the MMPI-2 (AMAC-MMPI-2), Rorschach (AMAC-Rorschach), or perhaps the WISC-IV (AMAC-WISC-IV). To validate the AMAC-CTI instrument, five studies were conducted. Study 1 involved expert ratings of the importance of the six items in the AMAC-CTI using an Expert Content Rating Form. The experts in the field of counseling and career development were identified by the Director of Clinical Training in a Combined Doctoral Program in Counseling Psychology and School Psychology at a large university in the southeastern United States. For this study, persons were considered experts if they had at least 10 years experience in the field of career counseling, held faculty positions, currently supervised graduate students in career counseling, and had served as a supervisor for the student administration of at least two hundred Career Thoughts Inventories. All five experts agreed that the items on the AMAC-CTI were important to critically important. Studies 2, 3, and 4 involved expert raters, graduate students, and professionals in the field of counseling and career development. The graduate students were enrolled in a Combined Counseling Psychology and School Psychology doctoral program or the Mental Health Counseling masters program at a large southeastern university who have been trained in the use of the CTI. The professionals work in the field of counseling psychology and have also been trained in the use of the CTI. Participants were approached via face-to-face request, e-mail request, or telephone by either the primary investigator of this dissertation or the aforementioned Director of Clinical Training about volunteering for a study of trainee competency using assessments. Once persons agreed to participate, they were contacted via e-mail by the primary investigator and were directed via e-mail to access a web link provided by www.surveymonkey.com. Once participants accessed the link, they were introduced to the survey and presented with an electronic consent form and, upon agreeing to participate, a background questionnaire. Participants provided responded to six open-ended format questions which were assumed to correspond to the 6 primary determinants of test user competence. At the conclusion of the survey collection process, responses to surveys were redacted of personal identification information and given to expert raters to perform ratings using the AMAC-CTI. For Study 2, inter-rater reliability coefficients and measures of internal consistency were derived to confirm the reliability of the instrument. An exploratory factor analysis (EFA) determined that the AMAC-CTI is a uni-dimensional instrument. Study 3 was conducted to examine the difficulty of the instrument. The open-ended portion of the survey required respondents to answer six detailed questions that corresponded to the six items that make up the AMAC-CTI. Based on the results of this research project, the performance tasks were determined to be somewhat difficult. Study 4 assessed convergent validity by asking the student participants' clinical supervisors to rate their respective students' competency in the use of the CTI. Supervisors used the same evaluation criteria as the AMAC-CTI to assess their students. The student participants' overall AMAC-CTI scores were then correlated with the overall ratings provided by their respective clinical supervisors. It was hypothesized that these scores would be correlated, but statistical analyses failed to show a significant relationship. For Study 5, analyses were performed to examine the relationship between AMAC-CTI scores and education and between AMAC-CTI scores and experience in the use of the CTI. AMAC-CTI ratings were positively correlated with experience in the use of the CTI, but were not correlated with education level and the number of assessment courses completed by participants. Implications for further test development and counselor training of assessment skills are discussed. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Educational Psychology and Learning Systems in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Degree Awarded: Summer Semester, 2008. / Date of Defense: July 26, 2007. / Counselor Training, Career Thoughts Inventory, Clinical Training / Includes bibliographical references. / Gary W. Peterson, Professor Directing Dissertation; Richard L. Tate, Outside Committee Member; Briley Proctor, Committee Member; R William English, Committee Member.

While there has been an increase in research concerning female offenders in recent years, there is no current standard for the comprehensive assessment of readiness for transition from a correctional environment into the community for this population. Most of the literature on female offenders focuses on factors contributing to criminal behavior and factors that predict recidivism risk with little focus on assessing readiness for transition from incarceration into society. Assessing and then addressing the special needs of women during incarceration may help them successfully re-enter society, live a quality life, and thus avoid recidivism. This study represents the first steps in the construction of a reliable and valid needs assessment, the Transition Readiness Scale, to pinpoint and target the needs of female inmates and enhance readiness for release. The Transition Readiness Scale was based on a theory of readiness involving two dimensions: complexity and capability (Sampson, Peterson, Reardon, & Lenz, 2000). Complexity refers to readiness factors relating to an individual's environment or circumstances. Capability refers to factors relating to an individual's abilities or competencies. Upon review of the literature concerning female inmates, nine content areas were chosen to represent the most salient readiness areas in female inmates: substance abuse, physical health, mental health, education, employment, support, spirituality, life skills/resources, and parenting. The instrument was developed in three phases. During the first phase, the items on the Transition Readiness Scale were written to assess the domains of complexity and capability across the nine content areas listed above. An average of five items per content area were written to represent each domain of complexity and capability, for a total of one hundred initial items. The items underwent professional critique and serial revisions. Data collection to refine the instrument was conducted utilizing female correctional inmates at a large southeastern federal women's prison. The second phase, Tryout, involved fifty subjects completing the 100-item Transition Readiness Scale. Items on the instrument were eliminated if they did not meet certain inclusion criteria or demonstrate significant statistical variability, resulting in an 85-item instrument. Also during this phase, a team of expert judges was asked to sort the items into the domains of "complexity" and "capability" for the purpose of assessing content validity. During the third phase, Field Trial, three hundred and fifty inmates completed a reduced version of the instrument, producing 324 valid data sets. These subjects also completed a background questionnaire for the purpose of describing the development sample. The data for this phase were analyzed using a confirmatory factor analysis. Background information was compiled and used to describe the sample. The results of this research indicate that the items on the Transition Readiness Scale represent the constructs of capability and complexity. Support was found for many of the content domains to be considered subscales of the measure, but such support was not found for some. The TRS can be considered a screening tool for the assessment of female inmates' capability and complexity needs to promote readiness for release into community living. Further development of the instrument is needed for all content domains to be considered subscales, and further reliability and validity studies need to be conducted. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Educational Psychology and Learning Systems in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Degree Awarded: Spring Semester, 2005. / Date of Defense: February 28, 2005. / Female immates, Female criminals, Female offenders, Feminism / Includes bibliographical references. / R. William English, Professor Co-Directing Dissertation; Gary W. Peterson, Professor Co-Directing Dissertation; Michael Railey, Committee Member; Richard L. Tate, Outside Committee Member.

The purpose of this study was to examine how goal orientations, perceived competence, and strategy training affect college students' use of self-regulated learning strategies and achievement in learning foreign languages. One hundred seventeen undergraduates participated in the study. The students came from 8 introductory Arabic, Chinese, German, and Japanese classes, with 2 classes from each language. Students were categorized as either having task-involved goal orientation or ego-involved goal orientation. A median split method was used to categorize students into either with high perceived competence or with low perceived competence. One of the two classes of the same foreign language was randomly selected to receive self-regulated language learning strategy training. Students' use of self-regulated learning strategies was measured by a strategy inventory for foreign language learning. Students' achievement was measured by course-related tests. The results showed that students with task-involved goal orientation scored significantly higher than students with ego-involved goal orientation on self-regulated strategy use, but there was no significant difference in achievement. No interaction effect was found with student ego-involved goal orientation and perceived competence. The results showed no significant difference between students who received training and those who did not. The reasons for these findings were discussed. Implications of the findings as related to foreign language instruction were discussed. Implications for further research that might yield significant findings were also discussed. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Educational Psychology and Learning Systems in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Degree Awarded: Spring Semester, 2006. / Date of Defense: October 14, 2005. / Task-involved Goals, Self-regulation, Strategy Training, Ego-involved Goals, Goal Orientations, Motivation, Self-regulated Learning Strategy / Includes bibliographical references. / John Keller, Professor Directing Dissertation; Feng Lan, Outside Committee Member; Robert Reiser, Committee Member; Walt Wager, Committee Member.

After firstly investigating the correlations among students' omniscient authority beliefs, students' perceived teacher-directedness, and students' intra-group communication behaviors, this research explored the cultural differences between American students and Chinese students regarding to these variables. A total of 89 Chinese students and 131 American students participated in this research. The results indicated that students' naïve omniscient authority beliefs were positively correlated with their perceptions of higher teacher-directedness and negatively correlated with the mega-cognitive perspective of intra-group communication behavior. Meanwhile, differences were found between Chinese and American cultural groups with regards to students' omniscient authority beliefs, perceived teacher-directedness, and communication behaviors during cooperative learning. Chinese students tended to rely on themselves as the resources of information and knowledge and Chinese students perceived less teacher-directedness compared to American students. As to within-group communication behaviors, Chinese students were more excelled at time management while American students were more excelled at maintaining group affection. / A Thesis submitted to the Department of Educational Psychology and Learning Systems in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Art. / Degree Awarded: Spring Semester, 2007. / Date of Defense: March 2, 2007. / SLA, Epistemological Beliefs, Instruction / Includes bibliographical references. / Jeanine E. Turner, Professor Directing Thesis; John Keller, Committee Member; Susan C. Losh, Committee Member.

Meta-analytic Structural Equation Modeling (MASEM) has drawn interest from many researchers recently. In doing MASEM, researchers usually first synthesize correlation matrices across studies using meta-analysis techniques and then analyze the pooled correlation matrix using structural equation modeling techniques. Several multivariate methods of MASEM have been proposed by the researchers. In this dissertation, I compared the commonly used multivariate methods for meta-analytic path modeling. Specifically, I examined the Generalized Least Squares (GLS) method (Becker, 1992; Becker & Schram, 1994) and the Two-Stage Structural Equation Modeling (TSSEM) method (Cheung, 2002; Cheung & Chan, 2005) using both simulation studies and real data analyses. Both the traditional GLS approach (Becker, 1992) and the modified GLS approaches (Becker & Fahrbach, 1994) were applied and compared with the TSSEM approach. Fixed-effects data and random-effects data were generated to see how these approaches differ at the first and second stages of MASEM. The results shows that the modified GLS approach performs as well as or better than the TSSEM approach in both the first step of synthesizing correlation matrices and the second step estimation of the parameters and standard errors, using both fixed-effects data and random-effects data. The original GLS approach only performs well when the within-study sample size is large enough (of the simulation situations in this dissertation, n ). Both the modified GLS approach and the TSSEM approach produce equivalent parameter estimates across all conditions. However, the standard errors from the TSSEM approach seem to be over-estimates under certain conditions. Overall, both the modified GLS and TSSEM approaches are appropriate for conducting meta-analytic path modeling and the difference in parameter estimates is minimal. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Educational Psychology and Learning Systems in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Degree Awarded: Spring Semester, 2011. / Date of Defense: January 14, 2011. / Meta-analytic SEM, GLS, multivariate / Includes bibliographical references. / Betsy Jane Becker, Professor Directing Dissertation; Yanyun Yang, Professor Co-Directing Dissertation; Xufeng Niu, University Representative; Robert Eklund, Committee Member.

Over the last 30 – 40 years, transitions (e.g. college, marriage, retirement), in general, and their outcomes have gained growing attention (Halamandarus & Power, 1999). Transitions break down habitual patterns of action and force the individual to form new behaviors to fit his or her novel experience (Dornbusch, 2000). Late adolescence is a period marked by numerous developmental changes and novel experiences that the individual needs to conquer in order to prepare for adulthood (Pratt, Bowers, Terzian, Hunsberger, Mackey, Thomas, et al., 2000; Tao, Dong, Pratt, Hunsberger, & Pancer, 2000). One significant juncture for many late adolescents is the entrance into college. Even though some students find the transition into college as a challenge to personal growth, many students are overwhelmed and experience stress (Wintre & Yaffe, 2000). In 1999, approximately 60% of adolescents attended college where as only 15% attended in the 1930s (Steinberg, 1999). Despite this increase in the pursuit of higher education, many college freshmen end up transferring from their original institution or dropping out of college entirely. The current university attrition rate among American and Canadian freshmen is 25% (Wintre, Bowers, Gordner, & Lange, 2006), although, this rate does not include students who transferred to another university or re-entered college at a later point. Several studies have reported the beneficial effects of social support during the transition to college (Pratt et al., 2000; Tao et al., 2000; Hinderlie & Kenny, 2002; Schwitzer, Robbins, & McGovern, 1993; Halamandaris & Power, 1999). In particular, studies have found that peer support significantly affects one's adjustment to college (Hinderlie & Kenny, 2002; Pratt et al., 2000; Giacobbi, Lynn, Wetherington, Jenkins, Bodendorf, & Langley, 2004; Hays & Oxley, 1986; Wiseman 1997). It may be that first-year student-athletes are more fortunate than other students because they enter college with a pre-existing support network of teammates who can aid in their transition. For example, first-year student-athletes have reported in interviews that fellow teammates positively affected their adjustment to college (Giacobbi et al., 2004). Currently, there is limited research on the transition into college for student-athletes. The aim of the present study was to advance the understanding of the impact of social support on student-athletes during their transition into college, and compare this to nonathlete-students. Specifically, the aim of this study was to investigate the impact of team support on adjustment in first-year student-athletes. The results have indicated that student-athletes', both first-year and vii second-year, were similarly adjusted to college than first-year and second-year nonathletestudents. There was a significant difference in network composition between student-athletes and nonathlete-students, indicating that student-athletes rely on the appropriate support providers (i.e. athletes). However, when compared to nonathlete-students, student-athletes did not display higher college adjustment scores. In fact, both groups exhibited normatively typical adjustment scores. Furthermore, results indicated that there was no difference in adjustment scores between first-year and second-year student-athletes. / A Thesis submitted to the Department of Educational Psychology and Learning Systems in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Mater's of Science. / Degree Awarded: Fall Semester, 2008. / Date of Defense: July 31, 2008. / College Adjustment, Student-Athlete, Social Support, Support Network, Transition / Includes bibliographical references. / Robert Eklund, Professor Directing Thesis; Gershon Tenenbaum, Committee Member; Jeannie Turner, Committee Member.