<p>Underachievement in gifted students is a problem often overlooked in the school system; up to 50% of gifted students achieve below their potential abilities (Morisano & Shore, 2010). However, gifted students are not considered at-risk and do not always receive educational experiences aimed to meet their needs (Ritchotte, Matthews, & Flowers, 2014). The risk of gifted underachievement is a problem for educators and a loss to society (Ritchotte et al., 2014; Steenbergen-Hu & Olszewski-Kubilius, 2016). In this quantitative study, survey responses from gifted achievers and underachievers were analyzed to determine differences in educational experiences and attitudes toward school and learning. Additionally, data from teachers were analyzed to determine if they perceive themselves as properly trained to meet the affective and academic needs of gifted students. The Mann-Whitney U test was used to understand whether the perceived value of educational experiences and attitudes toward school and learning differed among achieving and underachieving gifted students. The test showed no statistically significant difference between the two groups. Frequency distribution indicated the mode of responses to the teacher surveys. While some teachers use effective strategies in their classrooms to meet the needs of gifted students, other do not. Most teachers admitted to having limited training in gifted education. With lack of specialized teacher training and underachievement of the nation?s brightest students, a problem exists which needs to be addressed by educational systems to provide appropriate educational experiences to students with the potential for successful futures to benefit society.

<p> Competency-based education (CBE), a learning model focused on demonstrated proficiency in well-defined competencies rather than on the amount of time students spend in the classroom, influenced niche higher education markets in the United States for decades. However, the lack of a consensus definition limited CBE&rsquo;s widespread acceptance by the traditional academic community. In the early 21st century, concerns about accessibility and affordability led to renewed interest in and experimentation with CBE models in higher education. Despite this resurgence of interest, defining CBE as a concept remained problematic and underscored the need to clarify the conceptual use and understanding of CBE. Settings for the research included the ERIC online library, resource libraries of three national CBE initiatives, and official policymaker websites. Rodgers&rsquo; evolutionary approach to concept analysis, emphasizing the evolution of concepts, shaped the research design of this qualitative study. Documents published in 1973&ndash;1983 and 2005&ndash;2015, 2 eras of intense postsecondary CBE experimentation, comprised the purposive sample. Using the described method, CBE characteristics were categorized in stakeholder and temporal contexts and common characteristics identified. Although this study confirmed a lack of consensus definition, it also revealed three characteristics fundamental to CBE. At its&rsquo; core, CBE is a learning model with (a) explicitly stated competencies; (b) progression determined by demonstrated performance; and (c) an individualized instruction framework well suited to mature learners with life and work experience beyond school. These core characteristics support an adaptable framework providing a foundation for CBE&rsquo;s enduring presence in the higher education landscape of the United States in the 20th and 21st centuries.</p><p>

This study investigated challenges encountered by schools in the implementation of inclusive education in the Eastern Cape. It was a Survey Study carried out in Ngcobo District. School principals of randomly-sampled mainstream schools and special schools participated in this research project. The key research question that the study sought to answer was: What are the challenges encountered by schools in the implementation of Inclusive Education in the Ngcobo District of the Eastern Cape Province? The following were the sub-research questions: (a). How does the lack of specialized or in-service, trained human resource personnel challenge or hinder the implementation of Inclusive Education? (b). How is the implementation of Inclusive Education affected by available infra-structure? (c). How do the attitudes of stake holders such as learners, educators (ILST) and parents (SGB) affect the implementation of inclusive education? The findings of the study revealed that: There is a gross shortage of educators qualified in inclusive education or related streams, and in some schools none at all. Institution Level Support Teams (ILSTs) in some schools have not been established and some of those that are established are not functional. Needed specialists such as psychologists and occupational therapists are not available in special schools. Workshops or in-service training for educators generally are held for to ILSTs only instead of all educators and SMTs. School buildings and toilets have not been adapted for when inclusion is to be implemented and there are no specific, funded departmental projects to rectify this. Assistive devices for learners experiencing barriers to teaching, learning and development are rarely found. There are no clear departmental budgets to ensure the policy is implemented in ordinary schools. Negative attitudes of some parents, teachers and learners toward inclusion still exist. The following recommendations were made for consideration in order to facilitate the smooth implementation of Inclusive Education in the schools. There should be adequate provision of human resource training and development Educators have to further their studies in Inclusive Education. There should be provision of a specific budget for buildings. Maintenance funds ought to be used to renovate school buildings so as to be Inclusive Education friendly. Advocacy and awareness programmes for different stakeholders should be conducted.

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As a fairly new and emergent construct, there remain many gaps in our knowledge about how to integrate notions of culture and cultural context into evaluation theory and practice, as well as gaps in our knowledge about how to conduct and implement evaluations in immigrant and indigenous communities. This research explores how culture influences the evaluation and the program setting, and how it mediates the relationship between evaluators and diverse community stakeholders. Through an interconnected three-phase study (a comprehensive literature review, interviews with scholars and practitioners and focus groups with community-based program managers), this research develops a six dimensional framework (relational, ecological, methodological, organizational, political, and personal) depicting the inter-related dimensions and components that surface in interactions between evaluators and community-based stakeholders in cross-cultural program and evaluation contexts. The findings suggest that culture and cultural context influence every dimension of the evaluation, including the relationships we develop with stakeholders, the evaluation and program context, the methodologies and methods that we select, the politics and power dimensions surrounding the program and evaluation setting, the organizational constraints, and the evaluator's personal values and biases. The findings also suggest that relationships have far-reaching consequences, particularly given the predominant use of participatory and collaborative approaches in cross-cultural settings. While the findings also suggest that a participatory approach to evaluation cannot alter the broader social, economic, political and cultural systems that continue to create and sustain inequities in our society, understanding the dynamic, unfolding and ongoing connections and relations between evaluators and stakeholders is essential.

Numerous not-for-profit organizations are developing and implementing social marketing programs that aim to address important social issues. Sponsorship has become an important tool to obtain necessary funds to run these programs. However, in today’s competitive environment, organizations have to compete for very limited sponsorship opportunities. To maintain and improve sponsorship relationships, organizations need to be able to evaluate sponsorships using efficient, proven methods. Thus, evaluation of social marketing sponsorship becomes an important component for both scholars and practitioners. However, this area still remains largely under-researched, especially in an empirical setting. This thesis fills this gap by evaluating Coca-Cola Canada sponsorship of the ParticipACTION Teen Challenge program. The results indicate that partners in sponsorship have successfully achieved their shared social marketing objectives by collaborating positively in delivering the program and by creating opportunities for participants to benefit from the program. The research highlights main factors that impact effective sponsorship implementation and evaluation.

Introduction: An injury surveillance system was piloted in 2011 to monitor injuries in Canadian Forces. This evaluation of the key system attributes examined system performance. Methods: A retrospective chart review, a coding reliability study, a completeness of forms study and a key informant interview. Results: Sensitivity was 0.36 (95% CI: 0.28, 0.46). The system was missing patients over age 35. Kappa coefficients over 0.80 demonstrated good agreement. Completeness of forms study demonstrated high percentages of response for most questions and lower rates for questions related to using protective equipment, and consent for information sharing. Interviews proved acceptability to stakeholders, usefulness for identifying clusters and trends, simple and complete data collection, and flexibility. Conclusion: The injury surveillance system had good potential for several reasons: data collection did not require additional work in clinics; the system was well accepted and partially proved usefulness and timeliness in identifying unusual injury events.

The purpose of this study was to describe counsellors' perceptions of their collaboration experiences with psychiatrists working in the context of a community mental health team. Specifically, perceptions of facilitating and impeding factors that influence collaboration were identified. Interpretive description (Thorne, Kirkham, & McDonald-Ernes, 1997), a qualitative methodology, was selected as the means of attaining descriptions of the collaboration process that would depict the commonalities among the participant sample while maintaining the unique experience of each individual. Participants included four female and four male Caucasian counsellors between the ages of 38 and 57 who possessed either an M.A. or M.Ed. degree and were currently working in a mental health team. The counsellors engaged in open-ended interviews in which they read an orienting statement and responded to the following directive: Talk about some of the particular collaboration experiences you have had with psychiatrists. Aspects of collaboration experiences fit into one of three general categories: 1) external-structural factors stemming from the work setting; 2) internal cognitive factors pertaining to counsellors' perceptions of psychiatrists and themselves; or 3) social-relational factors arising from communication styles and ways of interacting. The findings suggest that much of the quality of a collaborative interaction arises from the actual quality of the professional relationship. Findings are considered in relation to previous and future research, existing ethical codes, and counsellor training. / Education, Faculty of / Educational and Counselling Psychology, and Special Education (ECPS), Department of / Graduate

This study investigated young children's construction of meaning for number and explored ways to more comprehensively assess and portray the development of number sense in young children. Greeno's (1991) conceptualization of number sense as situated knowing in a conceptual domain was used to consider both the mathematical tools available to the child and the extent to which the child makes use of these tools. The data consisted of four videotaped interviews for each of sixteen children between the ages of six and eight. Each of the four interviews involved a different number context: doubling, finding missing parts, sharing, and working with money. Each context involved a task presented in a series of increasingly difficult items, with number size predominantly determining the difficulty level. A dynamic interview format was used to encourage children to work beyond their independent level, or "number comfort zone." Cues and scaffolds were provided to support children's construction of meaning within their "number construction zone" and towards the outer limits of their understanding. Analysis focused on the strategies children used to make sense of each item, and the cognitive, affective and contextual aspects which enhanced or constrained their mathematical activity within the number construction zone. Results were reported two ways. The first, specific task performance across children, provided a means of describing the diversity of developmentally appropriate ways children made sense of the different tasks and provided a frame of reference for considering individual performance. The second approach to reporting results considered individual children's performance across tasks, and provided a means of focusing on characteristics of emerging competence. Results of this study illustrate how the nature and use of children's reasoning strategies can provide an indication of developing competence. Results highlight specific conceptual, procedural, functional, and affective characteristics that most directly affected children's capacity to make sense of number situations. No single characteristic alone accounted for children's success or lack of success, rather the inter-relationships of the different characteristics was apparent, with strengths in one area compensating for weaknesses in another. Though conceptual and procedural abilities appeared to shape to a great extent the nature of the number knowledge available to children, affective considerations and functional competence played a major role in shaping the extent to which children drew on this existing knowledge. Issues of context influenced both aspects of number sense: available knowledge and the nature of its use. Number size, context of the tasks, and presentation of tasks influenced children's mathematical activity in important ways. Children's personal number contexts were considered in terms of how they influenced their approaches to tasks. Overall, dynamic assessment techniques proved to offer a viable alternative for exploring the limits of children's ability to make sense of number situations, and for considering children's construction of meaning for number in developmental terms. / Education, Faculty of / Curriculum and Pedagogy (EDCP), Department of / Graduate

Although computers have long been studied in terms of their changing price/performance ratio, the issue of accounting for performance in computer systems has not been adequately addressed. This paper addresses the topic in three ways. First, a survey of IS Managers and business "power-users" of personal computers was conducted to empirically determine the attributes of computer systems that provide value to users; these results guide subsequent choices regarding the operationalisation of user value. Second, an index of system performance was developed from published performance benchmarks and used as a direct measure of performance in the hedonic function. Third, a set of technical proxies was shown to adequately reproduce the performance index derived above, and was used in an alternate specification of the hedonic function. Using data on IBM-PC compatible laptop and desktop systems, price indexes were constructed using both approaches to performance measurement. The results demonstrated that both approaches yielded good explanatory power and nearly identical estimates of the rate of quality adjusted price change in PC systems. Thus, the set of technical proxies could be used to operationalise performance in a larger data set for which direct performance measures are unavailable. For the 1990s, laptop PCs were found to have decreased in quality adjusted price at an average of 39% per year while the corresponding figure for desktop PCs was 35% per year. / Business, Sauder School of / Graduate