Individuals have different implicit theories. They may hold an incremental theory and believe traits are malleable or an entity theory and believe traits are fixed. In past research implicit theories have been linked to achievement goals. The present study extends this research by investigating the relationship between implicit theories and personal goals. An experimental design was used to examine if priming individuals with a specific implicit theory impacts their goal prioritization. It was expected that individuals primed with an entity theory would place greater importance on intrinsic goals while individuals primed with an incremental theory would place greater importance on extrinsic goals. It was found that female participants rated the importance of financial success higher in the Entity condition compared to the Incremental condition and rated the importance of community feeling higher in the Incremental condition compared to the Entity condition. No significant differences were found with male participants. / Graduate

This study crafts a schema for understanding the relationship between what organisations say they do and the way they operationalise what they think: the premise-to-received practice. The study navigates its way through an exhaustive volume of relevant work on organisation and organising. The case is argued for adoption of the symbolic interpretive paradigmatic perspective. It is particularly suitable for investigating enacted premise and received practice contexts. A research design is applied in putting these paradigmatic assumptions into motion. The study reports on interpretations emerging from analysis of 'lived experiences' from the two organisational contexts under investigation.A focus for the study was the Public Sector (Western Australia) reform strategy, known as 'customer focus'. The study's title 'Customer Focus: Enacted premise and received practice', locates interest in the relationship between organisational intentions and actions using customer focus as the lens for grounding organisational experiences. This study investigates the apparent reified social construct of organisation though a customer focus lens.Similar studies have focused on interpretation schemata in order to understand key organisational events that support the methodology and assumptions used in this, study. Such studies owes allegiance to the constructivist ontology, based on the' belief of the existence of multiple realities whereby the research act is epistemologically interpretive, aimed at generating understanding.Following the tenets of constructivist and interpretive knowledge, a qualitative methodology was used. Viewing organising as explicitly communicative, the research strategy adopted a symbolic interpretive theoretical perspective. Consistent with hermeneutics and grounded theory principles (not methods), the study sought further understanding of the relationship ++ / between organisational intentions and actions. The research design emphasised an interpretive approach by eliciting data from individual points of view within the work setting. A sample of six organisations was selected, and sixty-one interviews were conducted. Focus interviews were conducted with Top Management Teams. Individual interviews were conducted with Workers.Two sets of meanings were construed. One, Top Management Teams, enacted involvement, commitment, communication and relationships. This was related to Top Management Teams practice of control. The other, Workers, enacted the same meanings in the customer focus strategy, involvement, commitment, communication and relationships. This was related to Workers received practice of equivocality.This study reports on two major findings. First, there was harmony in the enacted thinking on the meaning for customer focus across Top Management Teams and Workers. Second, the harmony in the enacted thinking on the meanings for customer focus across the two groups were discordant with the way respondents operationalise what they report they think. Top Management Teams were unaware of the discord between the way they say they think (involvement, commitment, communication and relationships) and the way they operationalise what they think (practices of control). The discord between premise and practice in Top Management Teams was received in practice by Workers as equivocality. Equivocality emerged as discordant with Worker premise taken for customer focus as meaning to create shared understanding.The study emerged a non-alignment between what organisations say they do (Top Management Team enacted premise) and the way they operationalise what they think (Worker received practice).

Although academic motivation and school belonging positively influence student adjustment and experiences in school, early adolescence marks a time when motivation, belonging, and success in school tend to decline. Research has investigated ways that teachers and peers can support school success and student adjustment. However, there is less research on the role that parents play in supporting students’ success, motivation, and belonging in middle school. Additionally, most research examining the role of parents has focused on parenting styles rather than parenting practices (e.g., parental involvement and parental monitoring). Our understanding of the ways that specific parenting practices may support success, academic motivation, and school belonging is incomplete. Furthermore, studies rarely take into account adolescents’ own voices when studying the influence of parenting practices on student success, academic motivation, and school belonging. The purpose of this study was to explore which parenting practices adolescents at one large, urban, ethnically diverse middle school perceived as currently supporting and having the potential to increase their success in school, academic motivation, and school belonging. A secondary qualitative analysis of individual interviews with 18 middle school students who self-reported different levels of academic motivation was completed using the hybrid process of inductive and deductive thematic analysis (Fereday & Muir-Cochrane, 2006). This analysis process allowed for the use a priori codes and for the integration of emergent codes. The Contextual Model of Parenting; which incorporates parental involvement, parental motivation, and parental socialization goals; was used as the basis of the a priori codes. The findings indicated that participants perceived specific parenting practices as currently supportive and/or had the potential to increase their success, motivation, and belonging in school. Specifically, social-emotional monitoring emerged as a theme as currently supporting and most likely to increase participants’ academic motivation. Participants viewed the parental value, making school a priority, as currently supporting their success in school. Although participants did not identify any specific parenting practices that currently supported their school belonging, peer-based monitoring practices were perceived as ways parents could potentially increase school belonging. Some differences emerged among the different self-reported motivation levels, particularly for how parents supported motivation. Students with self-reported low levels of motivation reported that parents providing or withholding positive items or activities supported their motivation. Students with medium motivation voiced having their parents act as role models was supportive of motivation. Highly motivated students stated that words of support and encouragement from parents was a supportive practice for their motivation. Results demonstrated the need for further investigation into the role of social-emotional monitoring practices in supporting students’ success, motivation, and school belonging. In addition, result indicated the need for parents to be mindful of the social-emotional wellbeing of their children.

This study reports on an investigation of the effects of two methods of teacher evaluation on the attitudes of teachers and principals concerning the method of teacher evaluation in which each subject participated. The data indicate several broad implications. Teachers who were evaluated by the CT method had a significantly more positive feeling that teacher evaluation is more likely to be used for the improvement of instruction than teachers who were evaluated by the ADT method. CT teachers also had a more positive attitude toward their evaluation as a professional process. CT teachers had a generally more positive attitude toward evaluation, Department Chairpersons/Lead Teachers, and the principal as an instructional leader than did the ADT teachers. However, these latter differences were not significant and represented only a general attitude. Principals showed no significant difference in their attitudes as affected by the two methods of teacher evaluation. Principals who had used both methods felt that the CT method provided them more opportunity to provide instructional leadership for their teachers. The findings indicate that, although the method of teacher evaluation may have no major impact on teacher attitudes, administrators who believe that teacher evaluation should be used to improve instruction need to consider using a team approach to the establishing of instructional goals for the purpose of evaluating teachers. Administrators who want their teachers to feel that teacher evaluation is a professional process would be better served by the Collegial Technique.

This case study research investigated the formative assessment practices of four Year One teachers in one local education authority, and the influences which have shaped their skills. School-level contextual factors such as the role of colleagues, the head teacher, and experience in the classroom were investigated through interview and questionnaire. External influences on teacher practice, most specifically the influence of the National Curriculum and its assessment requirements, were also examined. The findings identified experience in the classroom and colleagues as key sources of influence on practice. The study reviewed the current understanding of formative assessment from social-constructivist perspective on learning. Research has illustrated specific elements of formative assessment practice, including the development of learning goals, communicating criteria, feedback, and the role of discourse. In this research, questioning emerged as a vital formative assessment skill. Underpinning the practice of the teachers who demonstrated the widest range of strategies were three key features. These teachers were reflective about their own daily practice, and demonstrated a problem-solving approach to teaching and learning. Lastly, they had established a collegial relationship of shared power in which pupil and teacher thinking processes and ideas could be expressed and exchanged. Theory has pointed to formative assessment as a teacher practice embedded in planning, teaching and assessing. Case study data were analysed to describe the practices of the teachers and to understand the ways in which formative assessment strategies might be linked together. A model of integrated practice is developed from the analysis, useful for teacher development and further research.

Magister Administrationis - MAdmin / This study explores the relationship between companies and society with regards to companies’ social responsibilities. A number of concepts such as Corporate Citizenship (CC), Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Corporate Social Investment (CSI), articulate the role of companies in society. While these concepts are often used interchangeably, the main argument advanced in this study is that the concept of CC has more political currency than other concepts as CC confers duties and rights to companies in communities where they operate. In developing countries, CC is concerned with the role played by companies in administering the socio-economic rights of people living in communities where they operate. The study seeks to provide an overview of corporations’ obligations towards the socio-economic rights of people through CC, proposing the use of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) as a way to find a normative framework for CC.

Parenting is one of the most influential as well as modifiable factors influencing healthy child development (Grusec, 2011; Sanders, 2012). This dissertation includes two studies that were designed to broaden our understanding of parenting in developmental periods widely recognized to present parenting challenges: Study 1 focused on the toddler and preschool years (Crnic & Low, 2002; Kwon, Han, Jeon, & Bingham, 2013) and Study 2 focused on adolescence (Eisenberg et al., 2008; Laursen & Collins, 2009). Both studies involve analysis of data on self-reported parenting responses and parenting goals, as well as parent-rated child adjustment from community samples of mothers and fathers. In the first study parenting similarity in the parenting responses and parenting goals of mothers and fathers of toddlers and preschoolers were examined. As well, I examined whether these were linked to parents’ ratings of their children’s adjustment on the Child Behavior Checklist Preschool form (Achenbach & Rescorla, 2000). In addition, I examined whether there were differences between parenting situations involving child misbehaviour and child withdrawn behaviour. Participants were 148 families of children aged between 18 months and 60 months. Parenting similarity was found both for parenting responses and for parenting goals. However, neither similarity in parenting responses or parenting goals differed for situations involving child misbehaviour versus child withdrawn behaviour. Furthermore, parenting similarity in parenting responses and parenting goals were not found to be related to each other or to child adjustment. The second study was conducted with mothers and fathers of adolescents and was designed to extend on the work of Hastings and Grusec (1998). In this study I also examined parenting similarity in parenting responses and parenting goals. Participants were 285 parents of adolescents aged 14 to 17 years old (mothers n = 213, fathers n = 68, dyads n = 43). Parenting goals were influenced by characteristics of the situation, but not by parent or adolescent gender. Parenting goals were not related to parents’ ratings of their adolescent children’s adjustment on the Child Behavior Checklist School Age form (Achenbach & Rescorla, 2001). As in the first study, I found parenting similarity for parenting responses and parenting similarity for parenting goals, but the two types of similarity were not related to each other. The findings with respect to parenting goals indicate that there is insufficient evidence to justify future parenting goals studies given the limitations of the extant methodology for measuring them. Future parenting similarity studies that use statistical analyses, such as cluster analyses, that allow for the examination of the links between specific parenting similarity (e.g., having two parents that are authoritative vs. two that are authoritarian) and child adjustment hold promise for informing clinical practice with families.

Class of 2006 Abstract / Background: Patients with a medication adherence rate of 80-90 % have the highest incidence of developing drug resistance Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV). The optimal adherence rate of 95% is believed to be necessary to prevent resistance to medication therapy in HIV infected patients. This level of adherence can be difficult to achieve because of the complications and complexity of medication regimens currently available for HIV treatment. Objectives: To determine if therapeutic goals set by the patient by having interventional meetings with a pharmacist improved their medication compliance rate and laboratory monitoring. Study Design: A retrospective chart review. Setting: One HIV clinic with two sites. Patients: The estimated population of the clinic was 150 patients. Only data from 14 patients met the criteria of the study and was available for collection. Intervention: Patients met initially with a pharmacist and made medication therapy goals. The patients then returned to the pharmacist at least once in a six-month period to evaluate if the goals were achieved. Measurements: CD4+ counts and viral loads from 6 months before the start of the intervention, at the beginning of intervention, and at least 6 months after the intervention were collected for analysis. Self-reports of achieving goals and self reported compliance were also collected. Results: The results showed there was no significant change in the CD+4 count in either the pre vs. baseline (p=0.0.967) or baseline vs. post- (p=0.551). There was also no significant change in the viral load in either the pre vs. baseline (p=0.388) or baseline vs. post (p=0.344). The mean (± SD) number of pharmacist visits was 2.93 (± 1.77). There was no significant improvement in viral loads (p=0.359) and CD4+ counts (p=0.268) between patient who reported missing medications and those who reported not missing doses. The same was true for patients who reported they met self-goals and those who reported they did not meet their goals (viral load p= 0.421 and CD4+ p=0.411). Conclusions: This study found no significant association between patients who set their own therapeutic goals and visited with a pharmacist and those who did not. However, an important limitation is that only 14 patients met the inclusion criteria for the study and had the required data available. Additional research is needed to more fully evaluate this intervention.

This thesis is a comparison and result evaluation of arithmetic, handwriting, spelling, and reading goals by students in the second grade at Sam Houston Elementary School in Denton, Texas.

No description available.