Thesis (Ed.M.)--Boston University

Thesis (Ed.M.)--Boston University

Thesis (Ed.D.)--Boston University / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / This study investigated the concept of syntactic awareness as a reading strategy for complex sentence comprehension and the relationship between instruction in syntactic awareness and improved reading comprehension among mainstream high school students. When given the insight that sentences are important and when given simple rules to map syntactic structures onto thematic roles, with discussion and practice in simplification and restructuring of complex sentences, 91h and lth grade students demonstrated that they could significantly improve their reading comprehension abilities. The results support the concept that many high school students default to simple reading heuristics which work well on canonical sentence types, but which can fail with complex content-area texts. Sixty-three eleventh grade and forty-seven ninth grade mainstream students participated in a study in which one group of ninth and one group of eleventh graders, the experimental groups, were given a sentence comprehension strategy to help them when confronted with text that they block on, in many cases typical texts that are part of the high school curriculum. The control groups were given regular instruction in reading comprehension skills and strategies. Eleventh grade students who were enrolled in a SAT Preparation elective class were pre-tested and post-tested using both Real SAT tests from The College Board and the Stanford Diagnostic Reading Test (SDRT). A third group, the maturation group, was pre-tested and post-tested using the SDRT to control for normal academic growth. Ninth grade students who were enrolled in a reading elective course were pre-tested and post-tested using the SDRT. For the Eleventh Grade Experiment results were significant at the .01 level for the SDRT and at the .01 level for the SAT. The difference between the maturation group and the intervention group was significant at the .01 level but was not significant between the control and maturation group. The Ninth Grade Experiment results were significant at the .05 level for the SDRT. / 2031-01-02

Thesis (Ed.D.)--Boston University. / It is the purpose of this objective study, primarily to contribute specifically to what is known relative to the factors which aided or impeded the school-district-reorganization process in Massachusetts from the passage of the regional-school law in 1949 to January 25, 1956, and, incidentally, to contribute in a general way to all the problem areas of school-district reorganization.

Thesis (Ed.D.)--Boston University / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / There is little doubt that successful football coaches have tremendous amounts of tactical and technical expertise, but are the coaches also expert communicators? This study aimed at developing a greater understanding of mistake-contingent coach/player interactions and sought to identify and explore specific patterns and recurring themes in the subsequent reactive coaching behavior and communication that occurred within the dynamics of the natural setting as experienced by male high school football players and their elite coach. The participants for this systematic observational study included two "elite" high school football (n=2) with career records of 286-72-4 and 219-35-2 and respective career winning percentages of .790 and .827. The findings reveal that the coaches addressed a total of 5,053 mistakes over the course of a single week of practice and one game. There were three different types of errors that emerged from the data: tactical error (2191), technical error (1156), and effort error (1106). The findings also reveal that 13 different categories of feedback type emerged from the 7781 utterances of individual feedback identified in the data. The categories of feedback were: technical instruction (540), tactical instruction (804), general instruction (1240), criticism (722), modeling the right way (483), modeling the wrong way (317), hustles (450), rationale (510), scolds (618), praise (444), challenge (311), questions (860), and OK/Alright (482). The two main categories of voice power emerged from the data and were elevated, and neutral/even. The importance of this finding was twofold. First, it supported the hypothesis that these two great football coaches did in fact use concrete communication strategies with their players by revealing that even the power of the voice they used to deliver feedback may not have been the product of a spontaneous reaction to a specific event, but was actually rooted in a pre-determined feedback strategy that consistently emerged across all categories of error type. Second, this finding supports the idea that it voice power is a teaching tool in the hands of these great communicators. They do not just yell to be authoritative; but use the volume of their voice as a stimulus to strategically direct, reinforce, or extinguish a particular behavior. / 2031-01-01

This thesis investigates the history of two Liberal Studies curricula in Hong Kong: Advanced Supplementary Level Liberal Studies (ASL LS) and New Senior Secondary Liberal Studies (NSS LS), which were introduced under two successive academic structures. The former follows the English Britain academic structure, with five-year junior and senior secondary, two further secondary years for matriculation, and a three-year undergraduate higher education. The latter resembles the Chinese academic structure with three years' junior secondary, three years' senior secondary and four year of undergraduate higher education. ASL LS formed part of the matriculation education curriculum and lasted for two years under the old academic structure; NSS LS is a component of a three-year senior secondary education under the new academic structure. The shift of academic structures in Hong Kong took place between 2009 and 2012, during which transition period both academic structures existed in parallel. This research has two main purposes. The first is to examine the history of the two Liberal Studies curricula. The second is to find out the key factors shaping the two curricula. The results and findings are mainly based mainly on documentary analysis supplemented by interviews with men and women who played significant parts in shaping the Liberal Studies curriculum. This historical research identifies three key overlapping stages in the development of Liberal Studies. The first stage relates to the formation and implementation of the ASL LS from 1992 to 2012. The second stage, beginning in September 2001, covers the consultation over and implementation (up to August 2014) of NSS LS. The third and comparatively short stage covers September to December 2014. This was initiated by the 79 day 'Occupy Central' and the 'Umbrella' movements in support of universal suffrage for the Legislative Council Election in 2016 and Chief Executive Election in 2017. While the predominant view in the academic literature locates the origins of Liberal Studies in the Sino-British Joint Declaration of 1984, Legislative Council records show that ideas about liberal studies began to emerge as early as 1978. Factors shaping the Liberal Studies curriculum are also identified at international, regional and local levels. The Liberal Studies curricula is seen as resulting from the interplay of factors at all three levels, with local level factors played the decisive role.

There are established notions about the importance of distributed leadership in school leadership practice. Theory and research on this currently popular leadership model mostly emanate from western contexts, notably Australia, UK and the USA. It has been portrayed as an emergent model, with professionals choosing to initiate leadership in schools and classrooms. It is closely linked to teacher leadership, because distribution invariably involves teachers. This thesis focuses on leadership practice in selected secondary schools in Nigeria, from a distributed perspective. It is based on research in Edo state, using a multiple case study design. Nigeria has a centralised education system and schools tend to have a typical hierarchical structure. This raises the question about whether and how distributed leadership can operate in such a hierarchical context. The findings show that distribution occurs in the four case study schools but that it is largely allocative, rather than emergent, with school principals allocating tasks and, to a lesser extent, roles, to teachers and leaders. The case studies indicate that hierarchical distribution of school leadership can be accomplished through such allocative distributed leadership, with distribution occurring to those who occupy both formal and informal leadership roles. The research raises questions about the differences between this mode of distribution and established notions of delegation and explores this distinction. The thesis examines a globally significant leadership model and applies it to the under-published context of Nigerian secondary schools. The research is likely to be relevant to other centralised systems considering whether and how to adapt their leadership and management practice.

Transition into first-time headship is a challenge, as the new leader lets go of their former role as a teacher/deputy and at the same time prepares to adopt a new professional persona. This research explores the nature of transition as experienced by six deputies moving to be heads of independent schools which are new to them. It identifies what is distinctive about the experience and what can be learnt which may be of benefit to future generations of new headteachers and the schools they join. It focusses on the challenges inherent in making this transition, and the strategies these fledgling heads adopt as they navigate the process. Six research participants are tracked through the final months of their deputy headship and into the early months of their first headship. They simultaneously let go of their deputy role, paving the way for their successors in that role, while preparing to take on the professional responsibilities of the headteacher. Socialisation into this new role is reciprocal, as the new head affects, and is affected by, the school community they join. The new heads negotiate the tension, and attempt to find balance, between inheriting the role from their predecessor and inhabiting this role and making it their own. The time in between being appointed to headship and formally assuming the position offers these heads-elect the opportunity to begin to divest themselves of their deputy role and take on the mantle of the school leader. During this lead-in period these incoming heads devise strategies, access support, explore and experiment as they continue the process of formulating and articulating their conception of the head they hope to be, and begin their tentative steps towards realising that vision. In addition to data from semi-structured interviews, shadowing these deputies/new heads and discussion with those who worked most closely with them, and who knew them best, opened up a wider perspective on the two-way socialisation process and the nature of transition to headship.

Thesis. 1976. B.S.--Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Physics. / Microfiche copy available in Archives and Science. / Bibliography: leaves 36-37. / B.S.

Metal oxides containing ruthenium have a surprisingly varied range of low-temperature physical properties including the superconductor Sr2RuO4 and the metallic ferromagnet SrRuO3. The exceptionally broad manifold of itinerate and localised electronic phenomena is derived from broad Ru 4d bands and a wide number of Ru and O containing crystallographic structures. High-pressure is a powerful tool for manipulating crystal structures and tuning the associated electronic and magnetic properties. In this body of work, pressure has been utilised in two roles for the study of ternary ruthenates with perovskite and pyrochlore structures; as a synthetic method and for in situ studies (crystallographic or physical) of existing compounds. Chapter 3 details pressure dependent changes in the crystal structure of the perovskite PbRuO3 by powder x-ray diffraction up to 46 GPa and down to 20 K. PbRuO3 transformed on cooling, from orthorhombic spacegroup (Pnma) to an orbitally ordered low temperature phase, which is also an orthorhombic space group (Imma) and applied pressure reduced the critical temperature totally inhibiting the transition at 5.5 GPa. Additionally PbRuO3 was found to undergo a reversible pressure induced structural phase transition at 30 GPa and 290 K with a 10 % reduction in unit-cell volume. Indexing indicated an orthorhombic symmetry with a Pnna spacegroup. Pnna is not a spacegroup associated with perovskite or related perovskite structures despite the √2 x 2 x √2 perovskite superstructure being maintained across the transition. high-pressure resistivity and Raman measurements indicated that a metal-insulator transition accompanied the structural transition. In Chapter 4 high-pressure high-temperature (HP-HT) synthesis has been used to isolate dense phases that could not be produced at ambient pressure. The ortho-perovskite LaRuO3 with space group Pnma (# 62) was synthesised by conventional solid state methods. However to extend the series by substituting the smaller rare-earth cations, Ln3+ on the A-site of the same perovskite structure HP-HT (10 GPa and 1200° C) conditions were required. A powder diffraction study confirmed the Pnma structure of LnRuO3 where, Ln = Pr, Nd, Sm, Eu, Gd, Dy and Ho, of which the later rare-earth compounds, where Ln = Sm to Ho have not been synthesised before. Neutron powder diffraction studies of LnRuO3 where Ln = La, Pr and Nd down to 7 K suggests a ~ 10 % non-stoichiometry on the Ru site, leading to the adjusted formula LnRu0.9O3 with an unusually low Ru3.3+ valency. A possible exception to the low Ru oxidation state is EuRuO3, which has a larger unit-cell, suggesting a Eu2+Ru4+O3 charge distribution with the more common Ru4+, however, this is not concordant with magnetisation measurements. Additionally neutron diffraction suggests that the RuO6 octahedra are distorted by spin-orbit coupling. Magnetometry and resistivity measurements indicate that the compounds are semiconducting paramagnets down to 7 K. Finally in Chapter 5 is presented the analysis of a high-pressure powder x-ray diffraction experiment of the pyrochlore Tl2Ru2O7. Carried out at synchrotron facilities, we have extended the pressure-temperature phase diagram to 3.7 GPa and 25 K. Previously it had been reported that, when cooled, Tl2Ru2O7 undergoes a structural phase transition from a cubic (Fd-3m) phase to a low temperature, orthorhombic (Pnma) phase that forms Haldane chains - an unusual one-dimensional orbital ordering. As for PbRuO3 high-pressure conditions are found to inhibit the orbital ordering, to reduce the critical temperature and to suppress the transition at pressures exceeding 3.0 GPa.