No description available.

No description available.

The purpose of this project is to explore the extent of interaction between teachers and foster children's social workers in regard to their education.

The purpose of this study is to encourage intergovernmental cooperation and coordination at the local government level and to foster joint ventures, while hoping to discourage duplication of efforts for unjustified and unwise reasons - WRCOG. Also, being a part will break down barriers to IGC-CALG and limit fierce competition among agencies.

No description available.

This project is a Progam Manual for the International Business Academy of La Sierra High School for at-risk students to show how to successfully run an academy and graduate students in compliance with the California High School Exit Exam.

Individuals and families in poverty face an abundance of barriers to self-sufficiency with the lack of higher education being the most prominent of them. The California Work Opportunity and Responsibility to Kids (CalWORKs) program has been the primary intervention to aid poverty following the welfare reform of 1996. Through their work first approach the CalWORKs program intends to set recipients on the path to self-sufficiency. Although education is the biggest weapon against poverty, CalWORKs recipients face a plethora of barriers while pursuing a college degree, as CalWORKs regulations are rigid and unsupportive toward higher education. Due to the minimal research focusing particularly on CALWORKs recipients, there was a need to further examine the barriers these recipients face while pursuing higher education. This qualitative study explored the barriers hindering CalWORKs recipient’s progression toward college completion. This study administered 11 face to face interviews with active and former CalWORKs recipients in Riverside County, California. The data gathered were transcribed and analyzed to identify recurrent themes regarding barriers toward college completion among CalWORKs recipients. The major themes identified by the study were: lack of knowledge, conflicting roles, lack of self-confidence, and unrealistic requirements by the CalWORKs program. The implications of these findings for CalWORKs stakeholders were discussed.

Various levels of research over the past three decades have concluded that children are harmed by constant changes to where they reside when they are removed from the care of their parents. Regardless of that, minimal research has been conducted to investigate this problem from the perspective of the social worker. This study explores the problem of placement instability among adolescent populations from the perspective of foster family agency social workers in Riverside County, California. Interviews with foster family agency social workers were conducted using a digital voice-recording device. The audio files were transcribed to text and thematically analyzed for relevant commonalities among participants. The data provided more detailed information regarding what the social workers believed to be the factors involved in placement instability. Four main categories were observed and explored in detail; trauma, inter-agency communication, mental health access and foster parent education were consistent themes of the data set. This research provides the groundwork for further research from people who work in a central role that is pivotal to lessening the instances of placement instability.

This study looks at the ways in which middle schooling initiatives (particularly notions such as 'authentic pedagogy') are impacting on teachers' pedagogic choices and practices especially in the area of literacy teaching. There has been no research to date which explores the linkages between curriculum/school reform such as proposed in middle schooling initiatives and choices/practices demonstrated by teachers caught up in this initiative in particular schools. My research attempts to theorise the connection between crucial features of middle school reform, teacher decisions and practices in the classroom and their impact on students' own learning/adolescent literacies. I assume that if the reform is to have continuity and to contribute to higher levels of adolescent engagement and deep learning, it needs to support and facilitate certain kinds of decisions and practices in the school and classroom environments. Where I find evidence of engagement, sustained/substantial conversation across lessons, within lessons and 'deep learning' in transdisciplinary work by students, then it is fair to say that middle schooling is working for students and teachers. Where I find little or no evidence of these things, then it is necessary to apply a critical and constructive reading of reform initiatives. This critical and constructive reading attempts to outline the necessary and sufficient conditions which must be in place in schools if middle schooling is to thrive and to make the difference in young peoples' school lives it claims to make. My research is a contribution to the sustained and substantial conversation that is so necessary to middle schooling reform. Many previous studies surrounding middle schooling have remained at the level of "description". These commentaries either support or oppose the reform initiative. In making a commitment to move beyond description, generated by participant observation and ethnographic conversations, to also involve extensive D/discourse analysis (Gee, 1999; Bernstein, 1990) of pedagogic practice, this thesis sought to develop an awareness of the notion of authentic literacy pedagogy through close analysis of pedagogic choice enacted in three middle school homerooms. A further significance lies in the perspectives that it offers on adolescent literacies. The data collected raised questions about the "actual" impact of the middle school reform initiative at one school, Riverside', how this approach to schooling for young adolescents impacts on the way that teachers and students construct literacies; and whether or not these constructions are mindful of the range of those "private" and "public" literacies found in the multiple life-worlds of adolescents (Phelps, 1998). It challenges some "myths" about literacy pedagogic transformation linked to middle schooling, as well as, highlights those factors, both physical and intrinsic, that impact on reform initiatives and change. Acknowledgement of the need to engage in a theorisation of adolescent literacies that moves beyond the current narrow macro-level D/discourse agenda, which focuses on the "public" school-based literacies, also emerged. This highlights those tensions that exist between the macro, meso and micro educational environments when considering what it means to be "literate" for young adolescents. The study also highlights those disjunctions and tensions found within the progressivist middle school approach. As a result there are a number of implications that emerge. These are linked to the preparation of pre-service teachers; a concern for the physical/material landscape of middle schools; the establishment of Learning Circles as critical in creating the "ferment of change"; the need to continue theorising the notion - adolescent literacies; the need to link professional learning for teachers to those phases of pedagogic change highlighted as part of the reform process; as well as an acknowledgement of the importance of the need to support the development of more authentic pedagogies.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, Riverside, 2009. / Includes abstract. Title from first page of PDF file (viewed January 28, 2010). Available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations. Includes bibliographical references (p. 100-106).