This descriptive study explored Latino parental involvement strategies implemented in selected Virginia school districts. Randomly selected teachers from elementary, middle, and high schools whose student population is 10% or greater Latino were surveyed. Exploratory data analysis was utilized to examine the perceptions and opinions of selected teachers on the involvement of Latino parents in selected schools. Implications of the research findings are discussed and future research topics are recommended. / Ph. D.

This quantitative descriptive study investigated the attitudes of educational supervisors (i.e., head teachers) in Kuwaiti middle schools toward the involvement of families in the education of their adolescent children. Joyce Epstein's model of family involvement (1996c) provided the theoretical framework. A survey instrument, Supervisor's Attitudes toward Family Involvement in Kuwait Middle Schools, was adapted and translated into the Arabic language to collect data from male and female Kuwaiti middle schools supervisors in the six school districts. As anticipated, the results of this study identified (a) any significant differences, by gender and district, in attitudes about family involvement among Kuwaiti middle school supervisors; (b) the level of responsibility for encouraging family-school relationships among administrators, teachers, parents, and students; (c) the level of importance of different types of family involvement; (d) the barriers preventing families from being more involved in their children's middle schools in Kuwait; and (e) the degree of importance of each type of educational involvement for family participation during their children's middle school years. Independent sample t-tests were conducted to compare the mean scores by gender for supervisors' attitudes. One–way ANOVA was conducted to determine whether there were significant differences in the mean scores by district. The results indicated there were no significant differences in supervisors' attitudes by geographical district. There were some significant differences in supervisors' attitudes toward family involvement by gender. These findings might be related to traditional culture that affects women in Arabic societies, including the Kuwaiti community. Frequency distributions were calculated to determine the participants' responses to the subsequent research questions. The results indicated that administrators and families were perceived as more responsible for initiating family involvement than supervisors, teachers, and students. All six types of family involvement in Epstein's model (1996c) were important to the supervisors. Lack of time was a serious barrier to family involvement for both teachers and parents and the perceived problem of parent-adolescent conflict during later childhood was an additional barrier. Providing a home environment that supported learning, regular communication with teachers and administrators, and assisting students at home were considered to be highly important. / Ph. D.

Researchers, policy makers, and educators have recently drawn attention to parental involvement as an important predictor of mathematics achievement among U.S. students. Despite evidence proclaiming parental involvement's positive effect on younger students' academic achievement, inconsistencies in sparse research on older students seem the norm. The purpose of this research is to examine the effects of parental involvement on older children as they progress from eighth to twelfth grade in a specific area of achievement, mathematics achievement. Data from a large nationally representative sample of students and their parents who participated in the National Educational Longitudinal Study of 1988 base-year, first follow-up, and second follow-up were analyzed using latent structural equations analyses. The results suggest that parental involvement in students' academic lives is indeed a powerful influence on student mathematics achievement at eighth, tenth, and twelfth grade. Findings also suggest that conscious efforts to improve parent/child communication concerning school related matters and increased efforts to communicate parental aspirations for their child's future educational attainment can act as a useful tool to help increase mathematics achievement at the secondary school level. / Ph. D.

Three decades of research have shown that family involvement improves children's learning. Schools that help families feel welcome and show them how to improve learning both at school and at home are likely to have more support from parents and the community. It was the intent of this study to examine how exemplary family involvement programs and initiatives were put into place in an elementary school in Virginia. The sources of evidence collected in the course of the 20 visits in this study were interviews, direct observations, and documentation. The research was conducted within components describing: (1) ways to get families from all social and ethnic backgrounds in the local community to participate in the school and at home, (2) the impact of policies on family involvement practices, (3) the effects of family involvement, (4) resources needed to promote and enhance family involvement initiatives, and (5) leadership in promoting family involvement in the school. People representing different segments of the population were identified and interviewed. Administrators, teachers, parents, and community members who were knowledgeable about family involvement were interviewed. Separate sets of framing questions were formulated for central office administrative staff and the principal, teachers, parents and community members. All interviews were audio taped and transcribed. The investigator also attended and observed family involvement events in the school and reviewed documents related to family involvement during the data collection period. Interview transcripts and observational notes were corroborated with evidence from document reviews. The investigator used a text management program, ASKSAM, to facilitate the identification and generation of themes in this study. The investigator integrated the computer-based and manual data analyses so that the advantages of each method were used. The results of this study indicated that when the principal, with the cooperation of teachers, provided the type of school culture that made parents feel welcome in the school, the parents could provide the essential leadership that would lead to improvements in educational opportunities for their children. Resources, in terms of funding and staffing, were a prerequisite to getting "hard-to-reach" parents to participate in their children's education. The findings of this study also indicated that family involvement at the governance and decision-making level is relatively low. / Ph. D.

Public involvement and participation in Forest Service decision-making is a contentious issue attended by charges and countercharges, unsubstantiated accusations and counterclaims, and value-based arguments by all entities involved. Yet, the numbers of studies to substantiate the debate is relatively minimal and tend to be sporadic, reoccurring during times of national forest management crises, which is inappropriate and shortsighted. Moreover, the studies tend to be quantitative or anecdotal in nature and have largely failed to identify or resolve the problems associated with public involvement and participation in Forest Service decision-making, as well as litigation, and yet researchers continue to advocate for comprehensive, systematic, empirical examinations without considering the possible benefits that comprehensive, systematic, qualitative research could contribute to identifying and possibly resolving such problems. Thus, a comprehensive, systematic, in-depth, qualitative analysis of public comments, administrative appeals, and legal arguments from 12 Forest Service project-level activities, and their seven associated lawsuits, on the George Washington and Jefferson National Forests, was conducted. The results suggest that there is an interested and vocal minority of individuals and environmental special-interest groups that dominate project-level public involvement and participation processes on the George Washington and Jefferson National Forests, and that these public involvement and participation processes work in reverse, providing incentives for post-decisional challenges and discouraging pre-decisional information-sharing, collaboration, and compromise. Therefore, the public, the academic community, the Forest Service, and Congress, must challenge the status quo and make needed changes to ensure that public involvement and participation processes are truly democratic and to reduce incentives for post-decisional challenges. / Master of Science

This study examined attitudes and behavioral responses to a social marketing campaign's video messages. Independent variables in the study were the regulatory framing of the campaign message, personal involvement, and collective efficacy. Results revealed main effects of both collective efficacy and personal involvement on attitude toward the brand, attitude toward the issues, and behavioral intentions. Significant interactions between collective efficacy and the regulatory frame of the video were found to affect the dependent variables. Gender was also found to significantly moderate the findings. Theoretical implications and practical implications are discussed. / Master of Arts

Yes / Introduction: There are risks to the safety of medicines management when patient care is transferred between healthcare organisations, for example when a patient is discharged from hospital. Using the theoretical concept of resilience in healthcare, this study aimed to better understand the proactive role that patients can play in creating a safer, resilient medicines management at a common transition of care. Methods: Qualitative interviews with 60 cardiology patients six weeks after their discharge from two UK hospitals explored patients’ experiences with their discharge medicines. Data were initially subjected to an inductive thematic analysis and a subsequent theory-guided deductive analysis. Results: During interviews twenty-three patients described medicines management resilience strategies in two main themes: identifying system vulnerabilities; and establishing self-management strategies. Patients could anticipate problems in the system that supplied them with medicines and took specific actions to prevent them. They also identified when errors had occurred both before and after medicines had been supplied and took corrective action to avoid harm. Some reported how they had not foreseen problems or experienced patient safety incidents. Patients recounted how they ensured information about medicines changes was correctly communicated and acted upon, and identified their strategies to enhance their own reliability in adherence and resource management. Conclusion: Patients experience the impact of vulnerabilities in the medicines management system across the secondary-primary care transition but many are able to enhance system resilience through developing strategies to reduce the risk of medicines errors occurring. Consequently, there are opportunities – with caveats – to elicit, develop and formalise patients’ capabilities which would contribute to safer patient care and more effective medicines management.

This dissertation seeks to examine the schooling experiences of African American males attending predominately White independent schools in California. Using Critical Race Theory as a theoretical framework and the factors contributing to schooling experiences, this qualitative research explores the role of student self-perception, teacher expectations, and parent involvement as contributing factors to participants overall schooling experiences. Utilizing counterstorytelling as a means of capturing the rich narratives shared by the participants, data analysis included holistic content coding based on themes that emerged from narrative examination. Findings indicate how parent involvement became the overarching critical component that was most significant in positive schooling experiences for Black males. These findings also support the need to continue to examine the shortage of literature examining the schooling experiences of Black males in predominately White independent schools.

No / There are few today who can claim that the US occupation of Iraq has been a success, for Iraq or the US. A War Too Far takes this on by looking back on the many unanswered questions about the invasion itself. What was the real reason for the Iraq War? Did George Bush ever have a strategy to confront al-Qaida in one arena? How does the invasion alter Iraq's relationship with Iran? And what does this mean for the future? World-renowned security expert Paul Rogers tackles these questions, offering a uniquely insightful analysis of events during and after the war. Examining the delicate balance of power in Iraq, he explores the options for a US exit strategy, and how the invasion affects America's relationship with Iran. Paul Rogers predicted in 2000 that the US would experience a terrorist attack on its own soil. Subsequent events proved how accurate he was. This book is required reading for students, journalists, policy-makers and anyone interested in getting the whole story about the dangerous consequences of the latest American venture in the Middle East. Paul Rogers explores: ¿ The neo-conservative vision of a US-dominated Middle East ¿ The oil link ¿ Iraq's significance in energy geopolitics ¿ Links with Israel ¿ the development of close military cooperation between the US and Israeli military ¿ The growing possibility of a war on Iran and its potential repercussions.

External and internal stakeholders in higher education are asking for accountability about what takes place in the classroom (Alexander, Clinton, and Kean, 1986; Hart Research Associates, 2010; Spellings, 2006). They want to be assured that the learning institutions claim is occurring on campus is in fact happening (Alexander, 2000). In response, academic leaders have produced information about active learning strategies in classrooms (Seifert, Pascarella, Wolniak, and Cruce, 2006; Tsui, 2002; Umbach and Wawrzynski, 2005), student approaches to learning (Biggs, Kember, and Leung, 2001), and faculty-student interaction that lead to increased use of higher order thinking skills (Kuh, 1995; Pascarella and Terenzini, 1991; Reason, Terenzini and Domingo, 2007). Although there is extensive literature on learning that occurs in academic settings on college campuses, data on whether students are engaging in higher order thinking skills in non-academic settings are less prevalent. This study sought to understand whether students' higher order thinking skills (HOTs) are influenced by their involvement in non-academic activities (NAIs). I analyzed data from college seniors who completed the 2010 National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) to address two questions. First, I explored what factors emerged from the items about non-academic involvement (NAI) on the NSSE. Second, multiple regression models were employed to determine the extent to which variance in HOTs could be explained by these NAI factors. There were 14 items on the 2010 NSSE that, based on literature, measured frequency with which students engaged in NAIs. Exploratory factor analysis revealed two independent factors consisting of 7 items: Relationships (3 items) and Diverse Perspectives (4 items). These two factors explained 21% of variance in students' higher order thinking skills. Students who are exposed to diversity and develop close relationships use HOT skills more frequently. This suggests implications for those who work in admissions, student affairs, and human resources, among others. The findings also inform policies related to promotion and tenure as well as student involvement. / Ph. D.