M.Ed. / The writers of the HSRC report on the provision of education in the RSA emphasize the necessity of the introduction of a selection programme which ought to be implemented by every educational authority as standard practice. This study forms part of a team research project of the BUE which deals with some of the factors which may have an influence on the academic achievement of degree-course first-year students in the Rand Afrikaans University. The aim of this study is to determine whether there is a connection between the psychometric variable stress and the academic achievement of degree-course first-year teacher trainees and possibly to make an indirect contribution to the development of a selection mechanism for teacher trainees in the RAU should such a mechanism become a reality. At the hand of a study of literature on the subject the psychometric concept of stress was scrutinised specifically with refence to the definition and measuring of the concept and the connection between stress and academic performance. The most important finding was that there is a slight inverse connection between stress and academic achievement - that is low stress is inclined to go hand in hand with better performance and high stress with poorer performance. In the course of the empirical investigation the post hoc approach was followed and use was made of the BUE data bank to supply the necessary information regarding the 1986 and 1987 degree-course first-year students. The statistical technique was used to determine which differences between successful and unsuccessful student groups may be said to be significant, with reference to the various factors of the IPAT stress scale. Although there were no significant differences in respect of the factors, the following did emerge: the stress levels of all the students in the research group may be said to vary between low and average. This points to a normal society. In respect of total stress counts, the following was found: B, A. (Ed, ) students: There are no statistically significant differences between successful and unsuccessful students in respect of conscious, unconscious or total stress. B. Com, (Ed. ) students: The difference between the successful and the unsuccessful student's experience of unconscious stress was found to be statistically significant, respect of conscious or regarded as significant stress was found to be statistically significant but the differences on the total stress cannot be be regarded as significant. B.Sc.(Ed.) students: The difference in successful and unsuccessful students experience of total stress was found to be statistically significant.

The purpose of this study was to investigate predicting student success on one example of a "high stakes" test, the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills Exit Level Exam. Prediction algorithms for the mathematics, reading, and writing portions of the test were formulated using SPSS® statistical software. Student data available on all 440 students were input to logistic regression to build the algorithms. Approximately 80% of the students' results were predicted correctly by each algorithm. The data that were most predictive were the course related to the subject area of the test the student was taking, and the semester exam grade and semester average in the course related to the test. The standards of success or passing were making a 70% or higher on the mathematics, 88% or higher on the reading, and 76% or higher on the writing portion of the exam. The higher passing standards maintained a pass/fail dichotomy and simulate the standard on the new Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills Exit Level Exam. The use of the algorithms can assist school staff in identifying individual students, not just groups of students, who could benefit from some type of academic intervention.

The purpose of this qualitative study was to identify factors that may have influenced the choice of major and the persistence to graduation of six African American accounting majors who attended and graduated from a private, predominantly white university from the academic years 2003 through 2009. A set of indicators based on several retention studies was selected for the purpose of identifying pre-college, off-campus, and on-campus factors that influenced students' choice of major and persistence to graduate with a major in accounting. The major findings of this study were that early skill development prior to the college experience, family support, and cultural socialization influenced the participants' ability to choose a major associated with their skill set. Their persistence to graduation was attributed to that choice. With regard to future studies, expansion of research on African Americans in higher education will give direction for administrators seeking to increase the number of under-represented students in fields where there is a marketplace need.

The purpose of this study is to determine how accurately the academic success of one hundred and sixty-seven freshmen at North Texas State College could have been predicted by the American Council on Education Psychological examinations. The question studied is: Can freshman success, as indicated by first term freshman grades, be better predicted by psychological examination scores than by analysis of their high school grades? In an attempt to answer this question, the relationships existing between the high school grades, psychological examination scores and first term college grades of the freshman class entering North Texas State College in the fall of 1949 have been studied.

The purpose of this study is to show possible relationships between certain environmental, personality, and scholastic factors and difficulties in written language.

It is the purpose of this study to attempt to discover the nature of the relationship between manifest anxiety and the college learning situation, as indicated by the performance of the subject in the college classroom situation.

L'hypothèse que j'émets au début de cette enquête est la suivante : ce n'est pas l'acte de formation lui-même qui est décisif, mais l'envie de formation. Plus précisément, ce n'est pas l'acte de candidature qui peut à lui seul faire bouger les pratiques mais la formulation par le maître d'un questionnement. Pour étayer ma thèse, j'ai constitué quatre groupes d'enseignants : le premier groupe (GE) est composé de 15 enseignants ayant formulé une demande de formation sur l'exploitation des évaluations nationales et un suivi de cohorte au CE2 avec les mêmes élèves, formation qu'ils ont obtenue ; le groupe témoin 1 rassemble des professeurs qui ont formulé la même demande et qui n'ont pas été retenus ; le groupe témoin 2 se compose de maîtres n'ayant pas souhaité être formés et qui sont inscrits d'office ; le groupe témoin 3 rassemble des enseignants qui ne demandent rien et qui sont exaucés dans leur non demande. Les évaluations de 564 élèves - 140 environ par groupe - à trois moments successifs étalés sur une année m'ont permis de mener une analyse comparative et de tirer quelques conclusions sur l'influence de l'engagement, avec ou sans formation, sur les performances scolaires et les comportements des élèves. / The hypothesis which I would like to bring about at the beginning of this survey is on the following : It is not the training experience which in itself is the deciding factor, but the training drive. To be more precise, it is not the enrollment in a training program which can alter the course of events but the teacher's formulation or teaching staff's questioning. To emphasize my thesis, I have made up four groups of teachers : the first group (Experimental Group) is which made up of fifteen teaching staff having requested a training session on the usage of the national primary school evaluations for eight year olds, following the next school year with the same group of pupils and the above staff succeeding in obtaining their teacher's training education. The second group is made up of teachers who have requested to be enrolled but have not been accepted. The third group is made up of teachers which have not wished to be trained and having nevertheless been officially enrolled in this training session. The fourth group is made up of teachers who have not asked anything and who will not be enrolled. 564 pupils (around 140 per group) have been evaluated at three successive periods, during one year. This has given me to bring about a comparative analysis, and draw some conclusions on the influential commitment with or without training on pupils' scholastic performance.

No description available.

This study provides a rationale for adopting course materials. It demonstrates the relationship between ability to read assigned materials and academic achievement, and that selection of materials creates two groups having different probabilities of success. The sample was selected from a population of all students enrolled in Principles of Economics courses at North Texas State University in the spring semester of 1986. The Nelson-Denny Reading Test was used to determine reading ability. Assigned materials were analyzed for readability. A frustration level was determined and used to divide the sample: the group of interest, those with reading abilities below the frustration level who underwent the treatment of reading materials written above their ability to comprehend; and the comparison group, those with reading abilities above the frustration level who did not undergo the treatment.

This study investigates the predictive value of the high-school-level battery of the Tests of General Educational Development (GED) for two-year college academic performance. Statistical analysis of the data was performed using a variety of statistical techniques including univariate and multivariate correlation methods, t-test, and analysis of variance. Of the thirteen hypotheses formulated and tested in the study, eleven were statistically significant at the .05 level. With the acceptance of the majority of the research hypotheses, it is concluded that the GED is a valid predictor of first semester, two-year college GPA. It is also concluded that the use of the standard scores of individual component subtests of the GED as predictors provides valid and slightly more efficient prediction of first semester, two-year college GPA than the use of only mean GED standard score as a predictor, and that GED Test 4, Interpretation of Literary Materials, is the single most effective GED subtest in predicting this criterion.