The fluid power systems equipment industry has shown a 117 percent growth from 1957 to 1968. This impressive growth rate is critically affected by a shortage of competently trained workers. The needs of selected Utah industries for trained personnel in fluid power were studied, and the results were projected from the sample to the state of Utah. The skill levels most in demand were skilled, two-year technician, and semi-skilled. Industries indicated that training to meet their needs could be conducted by on-the-job training, inplant schools, special schools, adult education programs, vocational high school programs, tow-year vocational school programs, two-year university programs, and technical institute programs. Based on the recommendations of Utah industries for training needed and using the Fluid Power Society curriculum as a substructure, recommendations for fluid power instructions in Utah were made.

The aims of this research were to describe the role that coaching plays in the development of educators and to make recommendations for the way in which schools can make use of coaching as an educator human resource development tool at the workplace. According to the findings from the literature review, coaching plays an important role in the success of novice educators. Educators who are coached typically develop a strong self-concept, become consistent in the implementation of policies and procedures, show a greater focus on the teaching and learning purpose within the classroom and display more confidence in themselves, which increases their personal ability and selfefficacy to help and develop learners, and thereby increasing the learners' love for learning and academic achievement. Educators who display the personal traits mentioned in the above paragraph, according to the findings from the literature study, become effective and expert educators who have something to offer to the learners and are recognized as professionals in their field. Various researchers in the reviewed literature stress the need for coaching for its inherent potential of being a panacea for educator attrition and turnover which are always the result of job dissatisfaction. The qualitative research method in the form of focus group interviews was used to elicit primary empirical data from a population sample of eighteen educator participants who were all at post level one. This educator participant population sample was engaged by the researcher on a three-day coaching session in Outcomes-Based Education and Training as a new teaching and learning system in South Africa. After this three-day coaching session, the participants were interviewed to determine the role that coaching plays in the development of educators, with a view to making recommendations for the way in which schools can make use of coaching as an educator human resource development tool at the workplace. The results of the empirical research revealed that educator participants who formed the population sample of this research experienced the three-day coaching session which the researcher conducted as follows: developmental; providing support and guidance; leading to paradigm shifts; setting aside any power differences to offer a relaxed atmosphere; and eventful. Recommendations for educational practice and further research were made. / Thesis (M.Ed.)--North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2006.

Health care reform has been a controversial topic in America since the early 1900s (PBS, 2010). Today, the United States spends more on health care than any other industrialized nation (National Center for Health Statistics, 2011), but despite spending more, the U.S. has 46.3 million citizens who are uninsured (CDC 2009). To date, only two studies were located that analyzed health educators' behaviors related to health policy (Cooper, 1986; Holtrop, Price, & Boardley, 2000) and no studies were found using qualitative research designs to study health educators' experience with and recommendations for any policy issues, including health care reform issues. The purposes of this study were to explore recommendations from health educators for health care reform in relation to the different levels of the determinants of health ecological model and to examine potential new roles for the health education profession in achieving an effective health care system. An interpretive approach was used to gain contextualized, value-laden, specific knowledge from health educators to understand and interpret their perceptions about what needs to be in place on multiple levels for health care reform to be successful, and the Healthy People 2020 determinants of health ecological model (USDHHS, 2011) was used to elicit their perceptions. Twelve online, chat room focus groups and two online, chat room interviews were held with CHES and MCHES certified health educators over a three-week period. Three overarching themes emerged from the data: prevention, health literacy, and a focus on larger levels of the determinants of health ecological model. In addition to the overarching themes, recommendations were made at each level of the determinants of health ecological model, participants suggested an increased role of health educators in the medical and political setting, and responses revealed that participants in this study were involved in many advocacy experiences. Results of this study suggest that this group of health educators wants to see health care become a right for everyone. Participants want prevention and health education to become a social norm in society and a visible component of health care reform policies in the United States. Basically, there is a real need for our health care system to change into a system that does not focus on treatment after people get sick, but one that focuses on preventing illness and promoting wellness throughout the lifecycle and at multiple levels. Recommendations for the health education profession include compiling priority recommendations into a position statement or white paper to influence policy makers and politicians in Washington D.C. If health educators can become an interest group supporting health care reform proposals that include prevention and health education, then maybe they can influence health policies that promote their recommendations and ideals.

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Excerpt: The Institute of Medicine’s (IOM) seminal report, The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health in 2010, addressed recommendations that included increasing the number of baccalaureate and doctoral nursing graduates; allowing advanced practice nurses to practice to the upper limit of their education; allowing nurses to be interprofessional, collaborative leaders; implementing nurse residency programs; providing opportunities for life-long learning; and enabling nurses to assume leadership positions in which the outcome is advancing health and healthcare. In October 2011, prior to the annual Tennessee Nurses Association convention, a preconference was held to discuss this report, the implications of the recommendations for Tennessee, the preliminary findings of a statewide survey on the educational recommendations (results to be published shortly), and the activities in place and/or planned to occur across the state. The nurses of northeast Tennessee have been working on these recommendations prior to this report and continue to do so since the report. This article will review these efforts.

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This qualitative study used a phenomenological approach to understand the experiences of seven parenting coordinators in using parenting coordination practices that they have found to be effective and would recommend to other parenting coordinators to achieve the following goals: educating parents, increasing the quality of parenting and co-parenting, managing conflict, and involving children and other family members in the process of parenting coordination. Data were collected with semi-structured interviews and analyzed using thematic coding. Initial findings suggest that there exists useful practice techniques toward achieving these goals, and supports a practice model informed by the evaluation by parenting coordinators of the efficacy of their chosen methods in the context of their practices. Participants report promoting cooperative co-parenting, stress parental autonomy, and supported parental decision making over parenting coordinator recommendations. Practical implications are discussed. / Master of Science

Yes / Classroom response systems (clickers), in their various forms, are widely used across disciplines, demonstrating effectiveness across a range of different educational settings. However, only a few literature reviews on this technology have been undertaken in general, and no review has yet been performed on this topic in the business and management context. Realising the existing research gap, this article reviews 33 clicker-related studies from the business and management discipline that are largely focused on student perceptions and outcomes. The purpose of this paper is to provide a critical and balanced review of articles from the business and management discipline on various themes such as learner's engagement, performance, learning, participation, satisfaction, feedback, attendance, enjoyability, motivation, and interactivity, to name a few. The review also provides a brief account of lessons learned from the literature published in other disciplines and recommendations provided by studies from the business and management discipline.

Personal learning environment (PLE) solutions aim at empowering learners to design (ICT and web-based) environments for their learning activities, mashingup content and people and apps for different learning contexts. Widely used in other application areas, recommender systems can be very useful for supporting learners in their PLE-based activities, to help discover relevant content, peers sharing similar learning interests or experts on a specific topic. In this paper we examine the utilization of recommender technology for PLEs. However, being confronted by a variety of educational contexts we present three strategies for providing PLE recommendations to learners. Consequently, we compare these recommender strategies by discussing their strengths and weaknesses in general.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Agronomy / Dave Mengel / The Kansas State University Soil Testing Laboratory currently uses the Walkley-Black (WB) method for soil organic matter (SOM) estimations, the Shoemaker-Mclean-Pratt (SMP) buffer for lime recommendations, and bases the soybean phosphorus (P) critical value for P fertilizer recommendations off other crops. Hazardous waste is produced from WB and SMP creating a health hazard for workers, and substantial cost for handling and disposal. The substantial increase in land area devoted to soybean creates the need to validate currently assumed soil test P critical value and check the current P recommendations for that crop. Overarching objectives of this dissertation are to find suitable non-hazardous replacements for WB and SMP, and to find the soybean P critical value in Kansas. Three common methods used to estimate SOM are WB, dry combustion (DC), and loss on ignition (LOI). An experiment was set up using 98 Kansas soils to compare WB, scooped and weighed, LOI scooped, and DC weighed. All methods correlated well to each other with LOI to weighed WB, LOI to DC, and WB weighed to DC, having correlation coefficients of 0.97, 0.98, and 0.98, respectively. The lowest variability was observed with DC, followed by WB weighed, LOI, and then WB scooped with average standard deviations of 0.04, 0.13, 0.17, and 0.24, respectively. Two non-hazardous alternatives to the SMP buffer to determine soil lime requirement are the Sikora buffer, and the modified-Mehlich buffer. Sikora’s buffer is designed to mimic SMP. Buffer values alone or Mehlich’s equation may be used to calculate lime requirements. Thirty seven soils with a pH less than 5.8 were incubated at lime rates 0, 2240, 4480, 8960, and 17920 kg ECC ha[superscript]-1. Amount of lime required to reach pHs 6.0, 6.3, and 6.6 was calculated. Mehlich’s equation better predicted lime requirements for all target pHs and buffers than buffer pH alone. The Sikora buffer with Mehlich’s equation provided a better lime estimation than the Mehlich buffer using Mehlich’s equation. A P correlation and calibration study was conducted with soybeans at 23 sites in Eastern Kansas from 2011 to 2014. Soil Mehlich-3 P available P was compared to relative soybean yield at these sites. Soybean P critical value was found to be between 10 and 15 or 11.6 mg kg[superscript]-1 using Cate-Nelson, and linear-plateau models, respectively. A linear response to P and relative yield was observed on soils testing between 3 and 8 mg kg[superscript]-1, but not on higher testing soils.