The purpose of this study is to investigate the factors that are related to students&rsquo / science achievement in TIMSS-R. Basically instructional activities, affective characteristics of students and socioeconomic status (SES) were taken as the variables of the model proposed within the Linear Structural Modeling (LSM) framework. This study examined the TIMSS data for Turkish students with the sample size of 7841 through the analysis of Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). Resulting path diagram showed that the largest relationship existed between science achievement and SES of students. It was also observed that students&rsquo / enjoyment of science did not seem to have a significant contribution on science achievement. In addition, science achievement had a negative relationship with the classroom activities considered as student-centered. On the other hand, the activities considered as teacher-centered had a positive impact on the science achievement scores of the TIMSS tests. It was also observed that science achievement and perception of success/failure in science were highly related with each other. The results were interpreted within the framework of Turkish educational system, and some suggestions for future research studies were proposed.

Teachers are percived as primary role in a students&#039 / learning process. To adequately perform this role, certain teacher characteristics are potentially more valuable for encouraging student learning. In an attempt to discern those charactersitics related to student learning and teacher behavior in the science classroom, numerous studies have beenconducted. The aim of this study is modeling the relationship between the teacher characteristics abd the student science achievement. Modeling analysis was carried out by using the data collected for the Third Internatioal Mathematics and Science Study (TIMS, 1999) for Turkey with Science Teacher Background Questionnaire and students&#039 / achievement test scores. For the analysis LISREL package program was used. The results show that the students of teachers who prefer student-centered learning activities got low scores from science achievement test in TIMSS. Also teachers believe that disruptive and uninterested students in the class negatively affect sciecne achievement. Moreover, there is a positive significant relationship between the science achievement and the tasks that includes anlayze relationship, explain reasoning, and work on problems. In the present study you can find an analysis about the contradiction of the some of the results of the study with the current literature in the field of education.

The purpose of the present study is to assess the potential individual characteristics and environmental protective factors that promote academic resilience among impoverished eighth grade elementary school students in Turkey. The sample consisted of 872 (439 girls, 433 boys) students enrolled in 6 low SES inner-city public elementary schools in Ankara. Five instruments, Demographic Data Form, Resilience and Youth Development Module (RYDM), Scholastic Competence Scale (SCS), Beck Hopelessness Scale (BHS), and Nowicki-Strickland Locus of Control Scale (N-SLCS) were used in the present study. Grade point averages (6th, 7th and 8th grades) of students were used as the measure of Academic Achievement. Exploratory factor analysis and structural equation modeling were used to analyze the data. The results of the present study revealed that home high expectations, school caring relationships and high expectations, along with the peer caring relationships were the prominent external protective factors that predicted academic resilience for the adolescents in poverty. Considering the internal protective factors, having positive self-perceptions about one&rsquo / s academic abilities, high educational aspirations, having empathic understanding, internal locus of control and being hopeful for the future were positively linked with the academic resilience of adolescents in poverty. Conversely, the external factors of home caring relationships, community caring relationships and high expectations, and peer high expectations, and internal factor of problem solving ability were negatively linked with academic resilience. These factors seem to be vulnerability factors for impoverished Turkish adolescents although they are generally accepted as the protective ones.

Trust between team members is important: Research has shown that teams with higher levels of trust have a propensity to be higher performers. This study built on contemporary trust theory by examining initial interpersonal trust development between a new team member and a newly formed work-team using experimental rather than correlation-based survey methods. Undergraduate students from a metropolitan Australian university participated in a vignette experiment examining the effect of teams with varying levels of Ability, Benevolence and Integrity on trust development. It was hypothesised that these antecedents of trust do not have similar effect on our Intention to Trust as is currently depicted in Mayer, Davis and Schoorman's (1995) integrative model of organisational trust. Their model is developed by hypothesising that the type and magnitude of the information we receive about a trustee moderates the relationship between our Intention to Trust and its antecedents. Initial examination of the traditional scales identified overlaps that needed clarification. This was completed by informing existing scales and the vignette manipulations with the context specific information that emerged from the thematic analysis of structured interviews. Subsequent analyses of the questionnaire data used ANOVA and Structural Equation Modelling techniques. In testing the hypotheses, Ability was found to be most salient in the development of Intention to Trust. This research contributes methodologically by developing a vignette-based experimental method that improves the reliability of existing trust scales. The study contributes theoretically by further explaining the salience of the trust antecedents and practically by identifying that the judgment and decision-making of new workteam members can be distorted by halo bias wherein they ignore the Benevolence traits of team members of a group that exhibits high levels of Ability.

In today’s technological environment, organizational capabilities for managing change are regarded as important for business survival and growth. In particular, dynamic organizational capabilities have attracted considerable research interest over the past decade. Recently several studies have suggested that dynamic capabilities may be associated with a concept termed organizational fitness. What is not clear in this emerging research stream is whether firms with superior organizational fitness are more likely to prosper than unfit firms. In addition, relatively little attention has been directed toward creating a systemic model of dynamic capabilities that explains organizational fitness. The nature of fitness has been intensively debated in the biological sciences over a period of several decades. A confusing variety of fitness definitions have emerged from this literature. The lack of an agreed definition of fitness has resulted in several streams of research on organizational fitness. As a result of this fragmentation, there has been little progress toward answering the question of how to measure organizational fitness. The fragmentation in organizational fitness literature is problematic, because research into the relationship between organizational fitness and firm performance is not well-advanced. In this study, organizational fitness is defined in terms of organizational capability to produce variation. By defining fitness in this way, the tautological criticisms leveled against existing concepts of fitness are avoided. The definition of fitness proposed here accommodates both an evolutionary learning perspective and a perspective of strategic management, and thus reflects an integrative approach to the concept. A notable feature of the literature exploring organizational fitness is that it has been focused on large corporations. However, a growing body of literature suggests that SMEs are different from large firms and need to be examined in their own right. SMEs are important contributors to business in most countries throughout the world. This study addresses that perceived gap in the literature and asks: What relationship, if any, is there between organizational fitness and business performance for SMEs? Theory is developed and tested here by means of a large sample of SMEs in New Zealand. Two distinct aspects of organizational fitness are identified for SMEs. First, survival fitness is associated with generic combinative capabilities. Second, growth fitness is associated with knowledge assimilation and transformation. SME growth fitness and survival fitness are each found to be positively related to business performance under a variety of contexts. Further, an increase of growth fitness and survival fitness provides a means of alleviating selection pressures for SMEs. That is, dynamic capabilities of knowledge assimilation and integration are found to be positively associated with SME business performance. In contrast to studies that advocate SME development of context-dependent capabilities, the findings of this study suggest an alternative perspective: variable selection pressures can be influenced by SMEs with a high level of survival and growth fitness.

Little is known about the spatial distribution and abundance of tree holes in New Zealand’s native forests, or the invertebrate communities that they support. I found that tree holes were common on five endemic tree species, belonging to the families Fagaceae and Podocarpaceae in the mixed broadleaf-podocarp rainforest of Orikaka Ecological Area, Buller District, New Zealand. However, tree holes were not uniformly distributed throughout the forest, with more holes found on the three podocarp species, Prumnopitys ferruginea, P. taxifolia and Dacrycarpus dacrydioides, than on Nothofagus fusca or N. menziesii. Nevertheless, Nothofagus fusca had the largest holes of any of the tree species sampled and larger trees generally had larger holes. Large, hole-bearing Nothofagus fusca trees support a specialist hole-dwelling vertebrate fauna in New Zealand and worldwide, tree holes provide habitat for a range of invertebrate species. Using specially-designed emergence traps, I collected invertebrates emerging from naturally-occurring dry tree holes and compared this assemblage with invertebrates inhabiting leaf litter on the forest floor and those dispersing aerially throughout the study area. At the higher taxonomic resolution (i.e., Order or Class), community composition within the tree holes was highly variable, and there was no strong distinction between invertebrates from tree holes, leaf litter or Malaise traps. Moreover, although some beetle species emerging from tree holes were found exclusively in tree holes, most of these were represented by a single individual. Consequently, only minor differences in species composition were detected between beetle assemblages from tree holes, leaf-litter and those aerially dispersing throughout the forest. In contrast, the aquatic invertebrate assemblage within water-filled tree holes was highly distinctive from that in ground-based freshwater ecosystems, with only six aquatic taxa in common between all freshwater habitats. Using experimental water-filled tree-hole microcosms, I found that species richness and community composition within these microcosms were primarily driven by resource concentration, although habitat quality (i.e., water chemistry parameters) was also an important determinant of the identity and composition of colonising species. Overall, my study has shown that tree holes are common in the study area, and are likely to be more abundant in New Zealand’s indigenous forests than previously thought. Moreover, these generally small, discrete forest ecosystems support a diverse array of terrestrial invertebrates as well as a distinctive aquatic invertebrate community that is primarily structured by organic matter resource availability. These findings not only represent an important advance in our knowledge of New Zealand’s freshwater invertebrate biodiversity, but also highlight the need for further investigation into these unique forest canopy habitats which may well be at risk from deforestation and land use change.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego and San Diego State University, 2008. / Title from first page of PDF file (viewed June 16, 2008). Available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 84-94).

Thesis (M. Com.)--University of Canterbury, 2009. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 121-131). Also available via the World Wide Web.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2005. / Available online via OhioLINK's ETD Center; full text release delayed at author's request until 2006 Jul 29.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego and San Diego State University, 2006. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 103-116).