This naturalistic study focused on the perceptions of leadership and student performance in science from campus leaders in three purposefully selected secondary campuses of ninth through twelfth grades. Each school had experienced an improvement in student passing rates on the science TAKS test that exceeded the state?s percent improvement in passing rates for the past three years and had a record of improving science TAKS scores for the period of 2003 to 2008 exceeding fifteen percentage points. The qualitative research technique of multi-case studies design was used. Data was collected through semi-structured, in-depth interviews with four campus leaders from each of the selected schools. These campus leaders included campus administrators, science department chairs, and grade-level team leaders. A framework of transformational leadership was utilized in the analysis of the data generated from the interviews. The perception from the campus leaders was that leadership has a positive impact on student success in science. The findings indicated perceptions of leadership from the campus leaders had certain leadership practices in common. These included (a) clear vision and goals from the campus principal, (b) high performance expectations for teachers and students from administrators and science department leaders, (c) encouragement and support from campus administrators and science department leaders to develop new programs to address problem areas, (d) emphasis on collaborative teams, and (e) open door policy from administrators.

The main purpose of this dissertation was to relate a study within the framework of Peer Student Group Research to the basic Process-Product Paradigm for Research on Teaching. Information about previous research within this field was given in the chapter on background. A total of 287 peer students at the Department of Education, Umeå University and at the teacher training colleges at Umeå and Luleå participated in this study. Thirty-one students worked individually and constituted a control group. The remaining 256 students were divided into 64 groups. Each group consisted of four students and was videoed during the problem-solving phase (60 minutes). The task dealt with a discipline case in the Swedish compulsory school. This case was discussed on the basis of four different psychological theories. A 2(Content, Group vs. Individual Content) X 2(Cohesiveness, High vs. Low Cohesiveness) X 2(Credit, Group vs. Individual Credit) design was used. A mediating model, i.e. Contribution(Analytical vs. Structural Contribution) X Persistence(Task Persistent vs. Task Non-Persistent Contribution) was used to observe the processes. Two of the videoed groups were analysed naturalistically. The results were measured psychometrically by means of an ANOVA. The ANOVA analysed main effects and interactions between the factors for the four process variables and for the product variable. The results of this study revealed the importance of studying Educational Productivity, i.e. both the process and the product. Furthermore, the study demonstrated that interactions could be discovered with psychometric methods but not with naturalistic methods. On the other hand, the naturalistic method revealed more sensitively how the group members worked and how they attempted to solve their task. The traditional assumption of group work vs. individual work was falsified. Individuals did better than groups on this type of problem. The results were discussed in both psychometric and naturalistic terms. / <p>Diss. Umeå : Umeå universitet, 1996</p> / digitalisering@umu

Drivers overtaking cyclists on rural roads create a hazardous scenario due to the potentially high impact speeds and, therefore, severe consequences in case of a crash [1]. Díaz Fernández et al. analyzed crashes between cyclists and motorized vehicles from various data sources, including insurance reports and crash databases, and concluded that this scenario is particularly dangerous and new safety countermeasures are needed [2]. Other studies have shown that particularly the side-swipe risk through. aerodynamic forces due to low lateral clearance and high overtaking speed affects both the objective and subjective safety of the cyclist [3], [4]. Furthermore, recent work by Gildea et al. showed through a self-reported survey among cyclists that a significant amount of side-swipe crashes and near-crashes with lower severity of injuries remains unreported [ 5]. This underlines the importance of investigating further in what situations the side-swipe risk for cyclists increases and how it can be decreased effectively. Previous research investigated how driver behavior in overtaking is influenced by infrastructural elements such as lane widths [6], road markings [6], [7], parked cars [7], and the presence of road crossings. However, the effect of sight distance on driver behavior has not gained much attention yet. Therefore, this work analyzed the influence of sight distance on driver behavior and the resulting safety implications for the overtaken cyclist.

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