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An independent learner is one who actively takes responsibility for his or her own acquisition of knowledge, skills, and expertise. The capacity to self-regulate one's own learning is a necessity for success in higher education. Researchers have found that characteristics of independent learners begin to emerge in young children and continue to develop throughout childhood and adolescence as students grow into self-governing adults. The purpose of this study is to assess students' levels of independent learning attitudes and behaviors and to examine the relationships among parents' actions, family structure, independent learning, and academic achievement. Using a national sample of 10th grade students from the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002, several statistical analyses were performed in order to answer these research questions: 1. How do parents' actions relate to children's independent learning characteristics? 2. How do students' independent learning behaviors and attitudes correlate with their academic achievement? 3. How are parents' actions associated with their children's academic achievement? 4. Are single-parent children less likely to have developed characteristics of independent learning by grade 10 than children living with both of their parents? Exploratory factor analysis was conducted to arrange the available variables into appropriate subscales to be used in the statistical procedures for this study. Canonical correlations were used to measure the magnitude of relationships between three pairs of concepts: parents' actions and students' independent learning; students' independent learning and academic achievement; and parents' actions and students' academic achievement. Structural equation modeling was employed to test the hypothesized model of relationships among parents' actions, students' independent learning behaviors, and academic achievement. Finally, multivariate analysis of variance was used to compare the independent learning scores of students living in four different family structures to determine if a significant difference in the development of independent learning between groups exists. Results suggest actions that parents can take to help their children develop as independent learners and succeed in the academic realm. / Ph. D.

In the twentieth century, the target market for household technologies was identified and labeled "Mrs. Consumer," and the lifestyle, values, and ideals attributed to her guided household technology marketing throughout the century. Bonnie Fox conducted an investigation into household technology marketing techniques, using advertisements in Ladies Home Journal (LHJ) as her source material. I argue here that, because of the homogenous, mostly-white readership of LHJ, Fox's use of only LHJ advertisements limited some of the conclusions she could draw about Mrs. Consumer's lifestyle, values, and ideals. This thesis studies household technology advertisements in Ebony magazine and current literature about the black American experience to identify the impact of including race in the evaluation of household technology advertising in twentieth century America. In particular, this thesis addresses Mrs. Consumer's extensibility across race; Ebony's household technology advertisements' treatment of segregation, integration, assimilation, and racial pride; and those advertisements' handling of the public opinion that the twentieth century American black family structure was "pathological." This research identifies similarities and differences between the advertisement practices in Ebony and LHJ in those areas of interest, concluding that the black American housewife's home experience was more likely to be divergent from Mrs. Consumer's attributed reality and that Ebony's advertisers tended toward the aspirational when modeling and scripting household technology advertisements. / Master of Science

This paper critiques the state of knowledge concerning the relationship between broken homes and delinquency. It applies a socialist-feminist theoretical framework to the analysis of the study of juvenile delinquency and broken homes. The aim of this paper is to look closely at the possibility of differential law enforcement in perpetuating the flawed perception that juveniles from “broken” homes are more delinquent than juveniles from “intact” homes. Elements include: comparisons of rates of delinquency for juveniles from single-parent and traditional homes as well as comparison of numbers of interactions with the police, judicial system and correctional facilities for juveniles from different family structures. Analysis reveals that while there is no difference in rates of delinquency for juveniles from single-parent homes and traditional homes, there are some differences when family structure is broken down into categories based on reason for father’s absence. Policy implications and areas for future research are explored. / Master of Science

The overall aim of this study was to investigate the association between family structure in childhood and mental health problems in young adulthood. A prospective cohort study was conducted with 481,777 individuals with complete follow-up information, which was obtained from national registers in Sweden. Individuals who were living with only one biological parent at age 17 were compared with those who grew up with two parents with regard to retrieval of prescribed psychotropic drugs at age 35. The association was examined by Cox regression analyses with equal survival time for all individuals included in the analyses. The results demonstrated a higher risk for retrieval of psychotropic medicines among the individuals who grew up with only one parent, with hazard ratio of 1,21 (95%CI: 1,19-1,23). The multivariate analyses showed that a part of the association was explained by familial and individual factors, namely parents’ country of origin, area of residence, parents’ and the individual’s educational attainment, receipt of social benefits and parents’ history of psychiatric disorder. The results indicated that the increased risk of mental health problems among individuals who grew up with only one parent might be accounted for by various psychological, social and economic factors associated to parental separation.

The purpose of this mixed-methods study is to identify major factors that directly affect parental involvement in 21st century schools. This study examined several elements of parental involvement. It calculated the idea of the changing family context and parental involvement, technology and parental involvement, the impact of Cultural Capital and parental involvement, the impact of the Academic Parent Teacher Teams program and parental involvement, and parents’ demographics and parental involvement. Data gathered to inform the research were derived from parent surveys and teachers and administrators interviews. The research examined the relationship between the parental involvement and parents’ perception of the school's accessibility, parents' perception of school's communication, parents’ perception of the school’s climate, parent’s perception of their role in student's learning, teachers’ perceptions of the role of technology, parents’ perceptions of the usefulness of the Academic Parent Teacher Teams (APTT) Program, teachers’ perceptions of the usefulness of the APTT Program, Cultural Capital, and parents’ demographics: level of education, occupation, socioeconomic level, parental structure, ethnicity, and marital status parental. The benefits of the research are to inform educators how to structure programs that will directly assist parents on how to help their children more effectively at home, to reeducate parents on how to unpack standards, and measure the successfulness of a program that helped to bridge the gap between family and school. The surveys and interviews were administered at the elementary school located in Atlanta. The researcher focused this work on studies examining the associations between family, home and school because these associations began emerging as efforts to assess the efficacy of governmental programs and other interventions. In the late 1990s, scholarly attention turned to “community control of schools, especially in the education of low-income children, special education students, and English language learners” (McKenna & Millen, 2013, p. 14). These researchers sought to recommend strategies that would promote parent, family, and community involvement. These areas and these children were considered as the ones that could benefit the most from parental involvement. The results from these studies seek to add more clarity on how educators today can enlighten schools on how to bridge the family and school gap in the 21st century.

Recently, the issue of poverty amongst indigenous people has become a significant topic in literature on social policy and development studies. The literature mainly looks at this issue in terms of an unequal and one-sided relationship between the mainstream society and an indigenous minority group. This thesis seeks insights into the more diversified circumstances and experiences of poverty amongst indigenous people. The following questions are addressed: (1) Why and how is the poverty of indigenous people reproduced over time and space? (2) How can we understand patterns of differentiation between indigenous people? (3) What is the balance between structural opportunity and constraint in the lives of indigenous people? (4) To what extent do people exercise agency to cope with or overcome their poverty situations? The thesis adopts an ethnographic approach, including participant observation and interviews in four villages of Taiwanese indigenous people. It explores the connections between poverty dynamics and diversified patterns of socio-economic action amongst indigenous people. Hogget and Greener's model of agency, which contains the essential theoretical views of Giddens (the ability of agents to act) and Bourdieu (the embedded corporeal disposition of human agents) are used to make sense of this exploration. The thesis finds that the actions of indigenous people as human agents are differentiated. Actions are not only motivated by strategic plans and emotions but are also influenced by the agents' socio-economic positions, such as their occupations and education and those of their parents. The differentiated socio-economic activities of agents, in turn, have a strong effect on the stratification of their living standards.

Maternal or paternal absence in one- or two-parent families, the presence of stepparents, and reasons for the disruption of the original family were analyzed in relation to the self-esteem of 501 males and females in grades 3-6 as measured by Coopersmith's Self-Esteem Inventory. The study provided a review of the broken-home literature followed by the methodology, results, and conclusions pertinent to the investigation. A step-wise multiple regression analysis and two-way and three-way factorial analyses of variance revealed no significant differences in the self esteem levels of children from intact or disrupted families. Conclusions suggested that children from all family structures may have experienced both debilitating and nurturing environments. Recommendations supported parent training.