This study was designed to accomplish three main objectives. The first objective was to test the hypothesis that school engagement is a multidimensional construct with three factors: behavioral, emotional, and cognitive or academic engagement. The second objective was to test for invariance of the measurement and factorial structures of school engagement across white and African-American students. And the third objective of the study was to test for invariance of the latent mean structures of school engagement across white and African-American students. In order to accomplish the objectives of the study a step by step approached, using structural equation modeling, was followed. First, the best fitting model of school engagement for both white and African American students were identified. Second, invariance of the number of underlying factors of school engagement across white and African-American students was tested. Third, invariance of factor loadings across the two racial/ethnic groups was tested. Fourth, invariance of the factor variances and covariances was tested. Fifth, latent mean structures of school engagement between white and African-American were compared. Finally, the results of the calibrating sample were cross-validated with the second half of the sample. Results from this study produced consistent support for a three-factor model of school engagement and without cross-loadings to other dimensions of school engagement. However, some parameters including factor loadings, factor variances and latent means were found non-invariant across white and African American students. African American students rated themselves statistically significantly higher on emotional engagement than white students. In addition, weaknesses in the measurement model especially the reliability coefficients of observed indicators and variance accounted for by the latent factors were identified. Cognitive engagement proved to be the most difficult to measure among all three dimensions of school engagement. Finally, analysis of the cross-validating sample produced some important differences which included one additional non-invariant factor loading, one factor covariance, and one additional latent mean difference between white and African American students. / Ph. D.

Employee Engagement is a critical business issue for the pharmaceutical industry especially owing to the highly competitive nature of this industry. This research postulates that factors can be identified that promote employee engagement in the pharmaceutical manufacturing industry. The purpose of the study is to research the factors that contribute to employee engagement in the pharmaceutical industry and to make recommendations in line with the results obtained that may be appropriate and significant to assist the pharmaceutical industry / Graduate School of Business Leadership / (M.B.A.)

Au Québec, la complexification progressive du travail enseignant due, entre autres, à un accroissement de la charge de travail ainsi qu’à la précarité d’emploi persistante a engendré un désintéressement à la profession enseignante. Pour certaines enseignantes et certains enseignants, particulièrement au secondaire, cela a pu mener à des remises en question de la carrière, voire à l'abandon de la profession (Mukamurera et Balleux, 2013). Malgré ces difficultés, près de 80 % du personnel enseignant du Québec persévère et se considère assez ou très engagé dans l’enseignement (Houlfort et Sauvé, 2010). Considérant l'importance de l'engagement professionnel enseignant dans la réussite des élèves et l'efficacité des écoles (Mkumbo, 2012; Rosenholtz 1985), nous nous intéressons à la compréhension de la nature de cet engagement chez les enseignants du secondaire au Québec, à ses manifestations ainsi qu’aux facteurs qui l’influencent. Pour éclairer ce phénomène, des entrevues ont été menées auprès de 10 enseignantes et enseignants du secondaire. Les résultats montrent que l’engagement professionnel enseignant est de nature multidimensionnelle et que ses manifestations débordent des frontières de la salle de classe. La réussite scolaire et personnelle de l’élève se situe au cœur du sens et de l’expression que les enseignants attribuent à leur engagement professionnel. Il s’enracine principalement dans une forme d’attachement psychologique à l’enseignement comme métier de contacts avec les jeunes, de relations d’aide et de transmission des connaissances. Par ailleurs, une tension apparaît entre les facteurs favorables et les facteurs défavorables à cet engagement quant aux aspects qui touchent le rapport personnel au métier, l’organisation du travail, les rapports de collaboration avec les collègues et les parents, le comportement des élèves et la valorisation sociale de la profession. La possibilité de s’investir pleinement et la volonté de poursuivre la pratique de la profession enseignante dans une perspective de long terme s’accroissent ou décroissent en fonction du vécu par rapport à ces divers facteurs.

Unlike fields in the humanities and social sciences, mathematics is traditionally taught through lectures in which students are expected to passively learn material. Research has shown that this didactic method leaves students with little conceptual understanding and discourages them mathematically. The Calculus Concept Inventory (CCI) is an exam which was developed to determine the impact of different teaching methodologies on students' conceptual understanding. The results have demonstrated that teaching methods which fall under the category of Interactive Engagement have the largest positive impact on conceptual knowledge. These methods actively engage students through social interactions with their peers and instructors in addition to providing immediate feedback and time for second attempts. The purpose of this report is to describe the current status of calculus reform and the ways in which the CCI is affecting mathematics pedagogy. For example, the University of Texas at Austin Mathematics Department has implemented flipping, an interactive engagement method delivering instruction on-line outside of class and bringing homework into the classroom. / text

Theoretical and ‘real world’ research into democratic engagment concentrates on larger-scale contexts. There is an accompanying tendency to focus on participation, neglecting other aspects of engagement. The thesis rethinks the notion of democratic engagement by dividing it into three analytically distinct, but interwoven, aspects namely communication, participation and representation, and drawing attention to small-scale or micro-level contexts. Understanding the communicative, participative and representative aspects of engagment in micro-level settings favours a case study approach and a research strategy designed to capture the minutiae of experiences of engagement. ‘Mossbank’, a neighbourhood in a small-to-medium sized Scottish town, has been chosen as an appropriate case. Mossbank is undergoing a physical and social regeneration initiative that has created new sites of democratic activity centred on Mossbank-related issues. It is also a setting where democratic engagement is likely to be constrained. A flexible mixed methods approach to data collection has been adopted using questionnaires, interviews, documentary analysis and non-participative observation, enabling the generation of ‘rich’ and ‘thick’ data. A theoretically informed analytical framework is used to explore the different aspects of democratic engagement in Mossbank. Here, Iris Marion Young’s theorising on communication in deliberative settings has been particularly influential. Democratic engagement in Mossbank is dominated and constrained by formal, familiar and broadly conventional institutions, processes and roles ‘imported’ from established larger-scale democratic settings. Less visible, context-specific factors also have an influence. ‘Messy’ practices and asymmetry affect the ‘quality’ of communication. Participation in democratic processes has its own particular constraining characteristics related to individual motivations and abilities to ‘fit in’ and ‘succeed’ within pre-existing processes. Representation in Mossbank is distant and sporadic, culminating in the evolution of an increasingly brokered approach to the relationship, administered by an intermediary. The thesis contributes to ‘empirical’ debates relating to the scope and nature of democratic engagement. This is especially relevant given the continued growth and development of micro-level democratic institutions and processes in developed democracies. The thesis also contributes to debates concerning the nature and extent of the ‘dialogue’ between normative ideals of democracy and engagement, and research into ‘real world’ democratic engagement.

As a high school English Language Arts teacher and literary magazine staff advisor, I have witnessed a difference in the degree of enthusiasm and engagement with which students approach writing for their classes, and writing for the their own purposes. Typically, students are more authentically engaged in their self-initiated writing. This study uses a grounded theory approach to explore how and why avid young writers write to discover ways in which classroom writing programs can be made more authentic. Through interviews with five young writers who were actively writing outside of school, I was able to discover key findings about the identities and practices of these young writers and the implications of these findings for the teaching of writing in high school English Language Arts classes. / February 2017

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship of student-faculty interactions, student-staff interactions, and student-peer interactions of Latino students to their intent to persist toward graduation in community colleges in Texas. Parental educational level (for both mother and father), first generation status, gender, and English as a second language served as additional predictor variables. The existing data used for this investigation were collected by the Center for Community College Student Engagement and included longitudinal data from the years 2012, 2011, and 2010. Data from 12,488 randomly selected Latino students enrolled in Texas community colleges were obtained and used for the study. The research design method was non-experimental using extant data. To assess the relationships between student engagement variables and Latino student intent to persist, correlations and logistic regression were used. Though no relationship was found between intent to persist and student-faculty interactions (r = -.017, p = .066, n= 11,824) or student peer interactions, (r = -.012, p = .208, n = 11,766), a positive relationship was found between intent to persist and student-staff interaction (r = .048, p = .000, n = 10,794) with an extremely small effect size (r2 = .002). Among the variables of parental level of education, first generation college student status, gender, and English as a second language status, only mother's educational level emerged as a significant predictor for intent to persist, R2 = .048, ?2 (8, N = 7,862) = 62.606, p < .0001. The findings suggest the possibility that staff availability and accessibility is important for Latino student persistence. In order to retain Latino community college students, knowledgeable staff able to facilitate students' successful navigation of the educational system is recommended to be a part of the community college's student success strategies. In addition the findings regarding parental education indicate that community colleges would be well advised to offer programs that engage and include parents as students proceed toward achieving their academic goals.

Abstract Employee engagement refers to what takes place when people are interested in a positive way and when they are excited about their jobs, exercise discretionary behaviour and are motivated to achieve high levels of performance. The present research therefore examined employee engagement of the academic staff in the Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) Colleges in South Africa. A quantitative design was used. In total, 2 054 academic staff completed the questionnaire. A self-administered 4-point Likert-type scale questionnaire was developed. The data was gathered and then analysed by using the Statistical Packages for the Social Sciences (SPSS). Descriptive statistics were used to present the findings. An employee engagement framework, which incorporates the main ideas of the article, suggests a new perspective about how to foster and manage employee engagement in today’s workplace is presented.

Thesis advisor: Karen D. Arnold / Master's education is the largest segment of graduate education in the United States yet there is a paucity of research about how master's students experience their programs. Empirical research on student engagement - defined as the time and effort students devote to activities that are linked to educational outcomes and what institutions do to promote student participation in these activities - is discussed in the literature as a mostly undergraduate phenomenon (Kuh, 2001; 2003; Kuh et al., 2007a). This quantitative study extended engagement research to master's students using an instrument called the Master's Survey of Student Engagement (MSSE), which was adapted from the Law School Survey of Student Engagement. The MSSE was administered to 1,539 students enrolled in a master's program in arts and sciences, business, or education at a mid-sized research University in the Northeast. An exploratory factor analysis was conducted to examine the internal structure of the MSSE. Following the factor analysis, five multiple regression analyses were conducted; each multiple regression analysis examined the relationship between a particular engagement dimension (as the dependent variable) and the student characteristics of academic discipline, gender, age, enrollment status, children status, marital status, and international status (as the independent variables). While the findings suggest at least five dimensions of engagement for master's students, three of these dimensions are more strongly associated with student characteristics, including academic discipline. The findings also showed that master's students in business and education are more likely to experience a supportive campus environment than are students in arts and sciences. The findings also suggested that arts and sciences students have a more rigorous intellectual experience and engage more with faculty than do students in education or business. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2012. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Educational Leadership and Higher Education.

Cette recherche, appliquée au contexte du service, a pour objet de mettre la lumière sur les relations entre les différents acteurs de la relation commerciale à travers le construit de l’engagement. Notre revue de littérature s’intéresse aux concepts d’engagement organisationnel (EO) et d’engagement à la marque (EM) ainsi qu’aux concepts et mécanismes relatifs à la relation salariés-clients. Empiriquement, nous avons choisi d’étudier les relations entre l’engagement des salariés et l’engagement des clients dans le secteur bancaire. Pour ce faire, nous utilisons une modélisation structurelle pour étudier la possible influence de l’engagement des salariés sur l’engagement des clients. Les résultats montrent, qu’au sein des agences de la banque étudiée, l’influence de l’engagement global des salariés sur l’engagement global des clients est toujours vérifiée. En revanche, l’influence des composantes de l’EO sur les composantes de l’EM n’est pas toujours vérifiée. Ces résultats viennent enrichir les connaissances sur la relation client-entreprise dans le cas du marché français. Ce travail présente néanmoins certaines limites inhérentes à la méthodologie choisie et au contexte de l’étude. Enfin, cette étude propose des perspectives d’amélioration pour des recherches futures. / This research, which is applied to the service industry context, aim to highlight the relationships between the business relationship protagonists, though the commitment construct. Thus, our literature review is dedicated to organisational commitment (OC) and brand commitment (BC) concepts as well as other concepts related to employees-customers relationship. Empirically, we chose to study relationships between employees’ commitment and customers’ commitment in banking sector. To do so, we used a structural model to study the possible influence of employees’ commitment on customers’ commitment. The results of this research emphasize an influence of employees’ commitment on customers’ commitment in the context of the bank agencies of the bank we studied. Nevertheless, the influence of the OC components on the BC components is not always validated. These results contribute to the current body of knowledge on the customer-company relationship though a case in the French market. This research presents few limitations inherent to the adopted methodology and to the study context. Based upon these results, it is possible to identify several contributions. Therefore, some improvements are suggested for further research.