One of the major problems of the modern educational system is scholastic under-achievement by talented students. Until recently the typical study had been chiefly concerned with the correlation between level of ability and academic success, while many studies referred to the presumed relationship between emotional stability and academic achievement. On the college level such characteristics as failure to adjust to college life, poor study habits, lack of awareness of his real level of ability on the part of the student, and other such Causes have been tacitly assumed as the explanation for under- achievement

[pt] O currículo escolar de Geografia é um tema complexo e de grande importância, não apenas para a própria Geografia, mas também para outras ciências. Dentre seus múltiplos aspectos inter-relacionados destaca-se seu aspecto ontológico, que, em nosso entender, encontra na disciplina escolar Geografia um importante contributo para a dinâmica hegemônica do modo de produção capitalista por estimular uma relação estranhada entre a sociedade e o espaço. Esta investigação é desenvolvida sob a orientação metodológica do materialismo histórico-dialético, ou seja, parte de pressupostos reais, que são os homens em seu processo de desenvolvimento real, em condições determinadas e empiricamente visíveis. Por seu turno, ao longo de sua história, o ensino de Geografia escolar pautou-se pela preocupação em consolidar o distanciamento entre o sujeito e o espaço. Em primeiro lugar, cabe discutir a tradição filosófica concernente ao desenvolvimento da ontologia, partindo desde os gregos até as formulações ontológicas marxistas. No momento seguinte, toda essa fundamentação filosófica serve de substrato teórico para a abordagem da questão curricular e realizamos uma abordagem de currículo pelo prisma marxista de Antonio Gramsci. Por fim, realizamos um estudo acerca dos principais momentos de organização e estruturação da questão curricular no país, desde o período colonial até o final do século XX. Neste sentido, a partir do século XIX concentramos nosso olhar na disciplina escolar Geografia, justamente para encontrar as raízes ontológicas que marcam esta disciplina. Assim, torna-se mister uma reorganização curricular do ensino de Geografia com vistas a permitir que o espaço seja compreendido enquanto produto da ação de transformação humana e, consequentemente, segundo o pensamento marxista, como transformação de si. / [en] The Geography school curriculum is a complex and very important topic, not only for Geography itself, but also for other sciences. There are several issues that involve the school curriculum, such as politics, economics and pedagogy, which structure a document that explains conceptions and projects. Among its multiple interrelated aspects, its ontological aspect stands out, which, in our view, finds in the Geography school subject an important contribution to the hegemonic dynamics of the capitalist mode of production by stimulating an apparently strange relationship between society and space. This study is developed under the methodological guidance of dialectical materialism, it starts from real premises, which are men in their real development process, under determined and empirically visible conditions. Thus, throughout its history, the teaching of school geography was guided by the concern to consolidate the distance between the subject and space, according to the prerogatives of Cartesian philosophy. In the first place, to discuss the philosophical tradition concerning the development of ontology, starting from the Greeks to the Marxist ontological formulations. In the next moment, all this philosophical foundation serves as a theoretical substrate for the approach to the curriculum issue and we carry out a marxist approach to curriculum by philosopher Antonio Gramsci. Finally, we carried out a study about the main moments of organization and structuring of the curricular issue in the country, from the colonial period to the end of the 20th century. In this sense, from the 19th century onwards, we have focused our attention on the Geography school subject, precisely to find the ontological roots that mark this subject. Thus, it becomes necessary to reorganize the teaching of Geography in the curriculum with a view to allowing space to be understood as a product of the action of human transformation and, consequently, according to Marxist thought, as a transformation of the self.

Each year shows an Increased enrollment in the universities and colleges of California. The compulsory education law has served to keep more students in high school a longer time and upon graduation many of these pupils desire to attend an institution of higher learning. This fact, together with the influx of people into California from all parts of the United States and abroad to make their homes, has added materially to the numbers of prospective college students. It has been the policy of the colleges and universities in the State of California to admit graduates from accredited high schools without examination if the applicant hag the unqualified recommendation of the principal of the high school from which he graduates. This group Is designated as recommended students, a group which in most high schools comprises not more than twenty to fifty per cent of the graduating classes. The majority of the higher institutions of California have allowed the decision as to who should he recommended to remain with the secondary school principal. The College of the Pacific has followed the policy of accepting recommended graduates of accredited high schools who present fifteen entrance units, at least twelve of which must be of recommended grade.

No description available.

A study was conducted at Valencia Community College to determine whether an improved student performance and retention. An orientation, based on the expressed needs of students, was provided to first-time, full-time students. The orientation consisted of an introduction to the institution and its resources, academic skill training, and personal resources management training. There were 22 students who participated for one day, 25 students who participated for two days of orientation, and a control group of 72 students. Although the behavioral outcomes were not generally statistically significant, the trends of all of the dependent measures, i.e., enrollment and withdrawal, were in a positive direction, favoring greater amounts of orientation. The orientation treatment was substantially more effective for students who had a 2.0 GPA or less, than those who had a GPA above 2.0. All of the dependent measures improved for the lower GPA students as the amount of orientation increased, but remained relatively constant for the higher GPA students. Apparently, the orientation is most effective for those students most in need of the improvement.

The purpose of this study was to examine the factors that might be contributing to the high academic success (GPA 3.0 or greater) of certain community college transfer students at a research university. The data for this study were collected in the Spring of 1990 using the population of Maryland community college transfer students enrolling at the University of Maryland, College Park for the Fall, 1988 semester. Discriminant function analysis was used to answer the following question, "What predicts academic success, as defined by grade-point average, of community college transfer students to a research university?" The criterion or dependent variable was group membership determined by grade-point average earned during the first semester of attendance at the University (Dl = GPA 3.0 or greater, DO = GPA less than 3.0). / Ed. D.

The thesis reports an investigation of 1060 freshman admissions to Virginia Polytechnic Institute in fall, 1961. Multiple regression methods were used to produce equations linking college performance with high school rank and College Board verbal and mathematical scores. Analyses were done for males and females, civilians and cadets. The three predictors accounted for only 34 percent of the variation in first year QCA among males. High school rank contributed most to the prediction; verbal score was found to be a very poor predictor. Predictions were more reliable for accumulative year performance than for first quarter only. Prediction error is discussed and expectancy tables constructed. Actual and predicted quality credit averages were used to investigate subgroups of the sample. Differences were found between civilians and cadets, Virginians and Out Of-Staters. Cooperative, drop-out, and trial summer school groups all had distinct characteristics. Curriculum groups differed widely in actual performance, but in most cases, corresponded to prediction. Exceptions are discussed. The same data was subjected to discriminant analysis, using two extra variables, civilian or cadet status, and Virginia or Out Of-State school. The function divided students by a predicted QCA of 1.000, with 28 percent probability of misclassification. Rank alone was found to be more effective in prediction than verbal and mathematical scores combined. Results of investigation into subgroups using discriminant predictions agreed with regression findings, with different exceptions to curriculum non-significance. Prediction is advised by regression rather than by discriminant analysis, but the present results are not recommended for future application, for reasons discussed. / Master of Science

Recent legislative decisions in at least some states have removed the remedial function from the state university and placed it directly at the doorstep of the community college. Such decisions appear to have been made largely for reasons of parsimony or the mere presumption of the effectiveness with which two-year colleges address the needs of high-risk students. However, there are few empirical indicators of the differential effectiveness with which the two- and four-year collegiate sectors are helping high-risk students to attain their goals. Therefore, this study was designed to provide an empirical grounding for the aforementioned policy issue by determining how selected pairs of two- and four-year colleges are contributing to the progress of high-risk students. Multiple methods were used to address the issues central to this investigation. An assessment of the effect of remedial programs and other institutional variables on the progress of underprepared students across chosen two- and four-year collegiate sectors in a two-state region of rural Appalachia was performed. Moreover, the impact of residence status on students' progress was considered. Further, the effect of the remedial approaches at separate two- and four-year institutions on the progress of high risk students was assessed, and a comparison was made of the program orientations preferred by the leaders of participant institutions. The findings indicated that the redemptive practices at selected two-year colleges were generally more effective than those employed by participant four-year institutions, thus offering hope that recent trends to assign the remedial function to community colleges may be justified by the more effective delivery of services. The advantage accorded the remedial programs in the two-year sector was not primarily a result of differences in remedial approach but largely a function of the relationship between remedial practices and other institutional variables. Residence status had little effect on the educational progress of high-risk students. A tendency was observed among selected two- and four-year sectors to devalue the affective dimensions of development that were integral with more recent program designs and return to earlier conceptions of basic skills remediation as the primary means of defining existing programs. / Ed. D.

published_or_final_version / Statistics / Master / Master of Social Sciences

The objective of the research is two-fold. Firstly, the research aims to arrive at a meaningful estimate of child labour in South Africa, and secondly, to establish a link between child labour and scholastic retardation. To establish an understanding of the turf, I take the reader through a detailed analysis of why children work, where they work and whom they work for. The study looks at the problems that have defined child labour for many decades and the steps taken both internationally and locally to enhance the efforts for its elimination. It looks at how, internationally, the campaign against child labour has shifted from children engaged in economic activity, to children engaged in hazardous work and the Worst Forms of child labour, which involves the economic exploitation of children by adults, through child prostitution, pornography, elicit trade, armed conflict etc. The definitional problems that have plagued the estimation of child labour in South Africa are reviewed, and I suggest specific approaches to measurement and estimation of child labour in future. I discuss the pertinent issues that need to be addressed to define child labour in South Africa, and I use the 1999 Survey of Activities of Young People (SAYP) to develop a conceptual framework of estimating child labour in South Africa. This is against the backdrop of the apparent disagreement between the main role-players, on the estimated levels of child labour in the country. I apply my model to the SAYP data set, and I estimate child labour by isolating all children in hazardous work, either by working conditions or environment, effect to child’s health and child’s schooling or by the number of hours for which they worked. I am very aware and mindful of the overwhelming need for children to work, among many South African households, simply for household sustenance. I therefore use the concept of long-hour cut offs, for different age groups of children to clearly establish the difference between ‘unacceptable’ child labour and ‘acceptable’ child work. To obtain the second objective of the study - establishing a link between scholastic progression and child labour, I focus on children who were attending school at the time of the survey, in the households under investigation; and, I choose to use the ‘grade-specific scholastic retardation rate’ as the appropriate measure of scholastic progression. By introducing gender as one of the determinants, I construct nine, different but not necessarily mutually exclusive groups of children with apparent variation in the intensity of the child labour characteristic. Then, among the children in each of the nine groups, I calculate grade-specific scholastic retardation rates (SRR) for children who were enrolled in grades 1 to 6 at the time of the survey. I am then able to graphically compare the SRR for the nine different groups, and graphically demonstrate that there is a link between child labour and scholastic retardation. The results of the research show that children in child labour tend to be more scholastically retarded than those who are not engaged in child labour, and that child labour seems to have more adverse effects on boys than girls enrolled in the same grades. / Dissertation (MA (Demography))--University of Pretoria, 2006. / Sociology / unrestricted