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Class of 2017 Abstract / Objectives: To determine if the use of RxSkills effectively improves student scores on the North American Pharmacist Licensure Examination (NAPLEX)-based questions among third and fourth-year pharmacy students at the University of Arizona (UA) College of Pharmacy. Methods: This is a pre-post interventional study using a survey of volunteer students from the classes of 2016 and 2017 at the UA College of Pharmacy. An email calling for volunteers was sent using the listserv to students providing information regarding the study. Once the pre-test was completed, instructions for downloading the mobile application were sent to the students. After six weeks of RxSkills use, a link to the post-test was sent to the students for completion. Student scores on the NAPLEX-based questions, use of the application (frequency and duration) and helpfulness, and demographic data were collected. Results: The number of participants in the study from each class was similar with 15 students from the Class of 2016 (52%) and 14 from the Class of 2017 (48%). There was no correlation between how often RxSkills was used and improvement in scores. Overall, student score on the NAPLEX-based questions were significantly improved post-RxSkills use (mean 10.48, SD 2.49) compared to pre-RxSkills use (mean 9.68, SD 2.24) with a p-value of 0.03. Conclusions: The use of RxSkills resulted in an improvement in student scores on the NAPLEX-based questions, indicating its usefulness in studying for the NAPLEX. Students would benefit from using the application when studying for this exam.

Over the past few decades thousands of special education teachers have been teaching students with disabilities on emergency or temporary certificates (Barnes, Crow, & Schaefer, 2007). The majority of these teachers entered the field of education with little to no preparation. Most of these under qualified teachers were hired in rural areas. Prior to the establishment of the cohort between the Tennessee Department of Education and East Tennessee State University-Sevier County Schools in 2000, there had been little to no planning in addressing the challenge of teacher shortage, specifically teacher attrition, in East Tennessee for special education teachers (East Tennessee State University, 2009; State of Tennessee, Office of Research and Education Accountability, 2006). The challenge of teacher shortage is secondary to teacher attrition for many school systems. Reasons teachers leave the profession are family or personal reasons, school staffing issues including layoffs, school closings, reorganizations, and retirement (Shakrani, 2008). The cost of high teacher attrition is felt in many ways. Examples include loss of outlays from states and local school districts, the challenge school districts face searching for replacements; and most of all, the cost to the student (Carroll, 2007). This qualitative study investigated the experiences of 12 paraprofessionals who completed the first East Tennessee State University-Sevier County Special Education Cohort to earn special education teaching certification. The 2000 ETSU-Sevier County Cohort started with 16 3 members. Currently 13 are teaching in special education, one cohort member is deceased, and two cohort members moved so that the other members do not know of their status. Cohort members received a 100% grant subsidy to participate in the program of study. The goal of the grant was “to improve the quality of instruction to students with disabilities from birth to 21 by increasing the number of appropriately endorsed special education teachers in Tennessee” (ETSU Special Education Institute, 2010, p. 2). The most dominant findings were the experience and background of paraprofessionals as they made their way to becoming certified teachers. These experiences were helpful in a variety of ways. Examples include completing course work, developing instructional strategies, behavior management, coteaching, and providing training for their paraprofessionals. Another finding and a major theme was group bonding among the cohorts. This bonding provided a support group in meeting the course work demands. Having access to local administrators who were their instructors and mentors was a consistent theme. Members of the cohort were supported by a 100% grant that provided the financial support necessary to make their journey possible; the necessity of that support was a common theme. The increased stress level, additional paper work, and responsibilities of being a certified teacher were other emerging themes. Time management was a prevalent theme throughout their experience. Finally, the support and admiration from their colleges, professors, and family members were major themes in their completing the cohort and becoming certified teachers.

Using archival sources, this dissertation argues that ideas and norms about disability shaped the experiences and careers of every city teacher and every prospective teacher in New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Detroit between 1930 and 1970. This work contributes both to the historiography of disability in U.S. education and to the historiography of U.S. teachers with two assertions. First, historians of education need to reconsider the ways in which we approach, analyze, and write about disability. Second, by adding a discussion of teachers’ bodies and disability to the historiography of teachers, we can better understand teachers’ experiences and the ways in which school leaders attempted to define and enforce standards of normality. After the first chapter of this dissertation establishes the work’s argument and contributions to the historiography, Chapter 2 explores how a bevy of research on teachers’ maladjustment and health, published between 1930 and 1970, undergirded educational leaders’ ideas about teachers and disability. The analysis of these studies reveals four themes: the idea that women with inherent personality defects and deviations were attracted to the teaching profession, a concern that these unbalanced women would irreparably harm their students, a reliance on unsubstantiated data and subjective measures or claims, and a focus on a woman’s physical appearance or beauty as emblematic of her teaching ability. Chapter 3 is an analysis of how boards of education and board officials in New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit, and a number of southern cities linked disability with teacher incompetence and granted medical doctors an enormous amount of power in determining which candidates were fit to teach. Chapter 4 contains an analysis of how these city boards of education appropriated disability discourses for their own agendas, using the language of the eugenics movement and linking age with disability to weaken tenure and pension protections. Boards of education also associated speech “defects” with other disqualifying disabilities in order to justify racist and xenophobic hiring practices. Chapter 5 examines the agency of individual teachers and missed opportunities for group agency. This chapter is an analysis of the tactics teachers, professional organizations, and teachers’ unions used to counter or, more often, to indirectly enforce medical examinations and disability policies. Chapter 6 concludes the dissertation with a cursory look at how Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 forced the Los Angeles Board of Education to amend its disability policies and a call for further analysis of how disability discourses have shaped the U.S. education system. The conclusion also reiterates this dissertation’s overarching argument: while disability rules and regulations most affected the teachers school officials identified as disabled, all teachers had to establish their competence through proving their lack of disability at various points throughout their careers. Thus, fears and stereotypes about disability affected all teachers—disabled and nondisabled—in these particular city schools between 1930 and 1970.

Students who graduate from a practitioner program in prosthetics & orthotics must achieve certification in order to obtain licensure and practice independently in 16 states. In states where licensure is not mandatory, graduates may choose to pursue certification in order assure patients that they are practicing at the highest level as well as to differentiate themselves from competitors. While studies have been carried out extensively regarding predictors of success on the certification exams in other professions, no such study has been carried out to date in prosthetics. The American Board for Certification in Prosthetics, Orthotics, & Pedorthics (ABC), established in 1948, historically has been the organization whose standards states adopt when wishing to implement licensure law. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to determine if statistically significant relations exist the ABC prosthetics certification pass or fail rates as well as the 3 exams which comprise certification based on specific predictor variables: gender, Carnegie ranking of the institution from where the candidate received the degree, and whether the candidate is extending credential. As it specifically relates to this study, credential extension refers to adding the certified prosthetist (CP) credential after already possessing the certified orthotist (CO) credential. A quantitative, retrospective, secondary data analysis of de-identified prosthetic resident data provided by the American Board for Certification in Prosthetics, Orthotics, & Pedorthics (ABC) and the National Commission on Orthotic & Prosthetic Education (NCOPE) was used to test the following research questions: Is there a relationship between gender, institution type, and/or credential extension and (1) success in achieving ABC prosthetics practitioner certification, (2) performance on the ABC prosthetics Written Multiple Choice exam, (3) performance on the ABC prosthetics Written Simulation exam, and (4) performance on the ABC Clinical Patient Management practical exam? Chi-square analysis, independent t-tests and logistic regression were used for data analysis in question 1. In research questions 2, 3, and 4 independent t-tests were used for analysis with two-level categorical independent variables and ANOVA was used for the three-level categorical independent variable, institution type. Linear regression was used for the models in research questions 2, 3, and 4. Statistically significant relations were found in each research question between the credential extension predictor variable and the dependent variables, with candidates who were extending credential performing better on each of the three examinations and, thus, greater success obtaining certification. This study was the first of its kind conducted regarding predictors of success in prosthetics certification, conducted with the variables of interest currently available. It served as a first step in filling the existing gap regarding this topic in the prosthetics literature. It informed the profession of the relationship between available predictors and variables of interest related to the ABC prosthetics certification exam. Further, it informed the profession of its status concerning collecting additional variables of interest that would permit analysis of more robust information, including grades on specific courses of interest, various GPAs and time between residency completion and exam date. Additionally, it informed the profession of its status concerning such research compared to other health professions with which it seeks to keep pace. Repeating this study with additional variables and an expanded sample size could potentially produce significant results, as has occurred in other professions. Further, additional analysis following stabilization of the new Master's degree and accreditation standards is warranted. This line of research has the potential to inform practice and policy in prosthetics education and certification. Finally, it will help the prosthetics profession keep pace with the other health professions and become a leader in best educational and clinical practices in managing patients who utilize prosthetic technologies.

The first purpose of the study was to assess burnout in pre-licensed counselors who are working towards licensure compared to burnout in counselors who are already licensed. The second purpose of the study was to assess what factors contribute to burnout in pre-licensed counselors. Counselors working towards licensure were an under-studied population at risk for burnout. Further, burnout of counselors working to gain their licensure had not been studied previously. A total of 2,400 pre-licensed and licensed counselors in Florida and Louisiana were emailed the quantitative survey. The instrument included a researcher designed demographic survey and the Maslach’s Burnout Inventory for Human Services (MBI-HSS). Using descriptive statistic ANOVA, inferential statistic Levene’s test and non-parametric tests including Spearman’s rho, and Kruskall-Wallis were calculated to measure the degree of burnout and to compare burnout scores of licensed counselors and pre-licensed counselors working toward licensure. Results of this study indicate that pre-licensed counselors experienced high levels of burnout in emotional exhaustion, moderate levels of burnout in depersonalization, and inversely high levels of personal accomplishment. Licensed counselors exhibited moderate levels of emotional exhaustion and depersonalization and inversely high levels of personal accomplishment. In addition, the following demographics were found statistically significant in burnout of pre-licensed counselors: age, weekly supervision, work setting, and client population.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 2006. / Title from PDF title page screen. Advisor: Richard Luecht; submitted to the School of Education. Includes bibliographical references (p. 89-94).

The beginning of this study is from sociology of occupations and depends on various viewpoints of functionalism, postmodernism, exchange theory and motivation theory to discuss the developing processes of professionalism and the licensure in the modern society; moreover, to reorganize all different kinds of views to the licensure. Secondly, researchers explain differences of the licensure and social work licensure of each country from America, Japan, Taiwan, and Hong Kong etc. In addition, according to the literature review result, it affects external environmental factors of carrying out Taiwan social work license system and describes developing veins of Taiwan social work licensure. The study is through the qualitative research methods of interviews guide and focused group. Collecting all information of twenty-two social service workers to attitude of the social work licensure in southern Taiwan, and from the data we can conclude that we can offer to social workers a stigma or the glory from the social license examination. Besides, we also can provide function or anti-function, and an order or disorder of the social work license. Furthermore, the examination and teaching which is the first step of the social work licensure or in the educational field. Moreover, the impact or a response and a transition or an existence of the social work license examination and practical field. Professionalization or deprofessionalization of the social work license, starting or re-starting of the professional association, and working circumstances or labor conditions of the social work licensure and professional organization. In terms of the conclusion, researchers provide suggestions differently to ministry of examination, practical field, educational field and specialized association.

Thesis (Ed.D.)--University of West Florida, 2009. / Submitted to the Dept. of Professional and Community Leadership. Title from title page of source document. Document formatted into pages; contains 85 pages. Includes bibliographical references.

The purpose of the study was to evaluate demographic, pre-admission, and academic variables of nursing students to identify the best predictors of success on the NCLEX-RN. A convenience sample of 237 students from Indiana Wesleyan University comprised the population for the study. User-oriented evaluation provided the conceptual framework for the study.Multiple regression analyses were used to determine relationships between the variables and success on the NCLEX-RN. Relationships were studied between variables and scores on the NCLEX-RN prior to 1988 (NCLEX 1) and success on the NCLEX-RN for the total sample (NCLEX 2).Demographic variables included age, race, marital status, and the number of semesters required to complete the program. The findings of the study evidenced no significant relationship between demographic variables and NCLEX-RN scores (NCLEX 1).Pre-admission variables included high school grade point average, Scholastic Aptitude Test math and verbal scores, advanced placement credit, and college credit prior to admission. Pre-admission variablesaverage, and scores on the National Comprehensive Nursing Achievementaccounted for 19% of the variance in scores on the NCLEX-RN.Academic variables included grade point averages in science courses, humanities courses, nursing courses, at the end of each year of study, scores on National League for Nursing Achievement Tests, and the Mosby Assess Test. Grade point averages in physical and biological sciences, in sophomore nursing courses, at the end of the freshman year, and scores on the Mosby Assess Test had a significant relationship with scores on the NCLEX-RN. Scores on the Mosby Assess Test accounted for 25% of the variance in NCLEX-RN scores. The highest prediction equation, accounting for 49% of the variance of NCLEX-RN scores, included a weighted linear composite of Scholastic Aptitude Test math scores, Mosby Assess Test scores, junior nursing course grade point League for Nursing Test.Multiple regression analyses of all variables with success on the NCLEX-RN for the total population (NCLEX 2) demonstrated no significant relationships. All findings were communicated to faculty at Indiana Wesleyan University applying the theoretical framework chosen for the study. / School of Nursing