Students who are engaged in their high school environment have higher graduation rates, fewer discipline problems, and lower delinquency rates. In addition, students who are connected to teachers and involved in extracurricular activities consistently experience positive outcomes. However, although the benefits of school resources such as extra-curricular activities and connections to supportive individuals during high school have been well documented, the factors influencing utilization of these resources have not yet been established. Given the known benefits of activity participation and connection to supportive individuals in school settings, and the voluntary nature of their utilization, it is important to investigate factors influencing students' decision to use these resources. The current study investigated potential barriers and facilitating factors for high school students' activity involvement and support seeking from school personnel. Survey data were collected from 1522, 9-12th grade students in four Pinellas County high schools. Questions regarding students' school, family, and social relationships were assessed via psychometrically valid scales, district records, and items created collaboratively with school district administrators for this specific project. Results were analyzed using bivariate correlations and hierarchical multiple regression. Race, free/reduced lunch status, parent involvement and psychological distress were among the strongest correlates with the support seeking outcomes whereas gender, race, free/reduced lunch status, global self worth, self esteem, antisocial peer group, and perceived school support were among the variables most strongly correlated with the activity involvement outcomes. All significant relationships found were in the predicted direction with barrier variables leading to lower levels of school engagement and facilitating factors leading to higher levels of school engagement. Contrary to the hypotheses, the selected barriers and facilitating factors did not contribute to a significant amount of variance above that accounted for by gender, race, and free/reduced lunch status. In general, males, students receiving free/reduced lunch, and black students had the lowest rates of school engagement. The current results add to existing literature by showing that students who would benefit most from positive assets such as support seeking from adults at school and activity involvement are least likely to engage in the behaviors.

The importance of a positive, caring relationship with students in the classroom is under-researched in mathematics education. Research shows that a positive student-teacher relationship can have many long-term positive results for the student. Many of these results directly impact a student's productive disposition towards mathematics. At-risk students are in greater need of positive relationships and an increase in productive disposition. Using Joan Tronto's (1993) elements of care, I examine the student perspective of these kinds of relationships and how the student sees development of their own productive disposition.

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Young children face unique social challenges, and they need social and emotional resilience skills in order to navigate their way through school. Many of the children who need the most help are in family situations where parents are not able to teach these skills. Students can become more resilient through social and emotional learning (SEL) in the classroom. SEL teaches children to identify the emotions of themselves and others, to communicate their emotions in a nonviolent way, and to be good friends. By teaching SEL at a young age, teachers can help children become more adept as they make friends and learn how to interact in social situations, thus bolstering their relationships with friends and adults. Improved social and emotional skills help students succeed in academics and with their peers as they form social connections. Strong Start Pre-K, a social and emotional learning curriculum, was evaluated in a local preschool program. Using a nonequivalent control group design, two preschool teachers taught the curriculum in their classrooms, and a third classroom was the control. Both before and after the implementation of the curriculum, data were gathered from classroom teachers on their students' emotional regulation, internalizing behaviors, and the teachers' perceived relationships with their students. Results indicated a slight increase in emotional regulation and a significant decrease in internalizing behaviors in the treatment groups. Student-teacher relationships improved, specifically with a decrease on the subscale of Conflict. Treatment fidelity indicated that teachers were able to implement most or all of the components of each lesson 90% of the time. Social validity measurements indicated that the teachers would recommend the curriculum to other educators.

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal.

This study captures the narrative of the lived experiences of four teachers as they developed effective classroom environments in a high school looping program in an Eastern Tennessee school district. The study examined the stories and reflections of the participants in order to discover teacher perception, behaviors, and attitudes that help to establish teacher-student relational involvement which produces positive academic, behavioral, and socio-emotional student outcomes. The stories collected during the narrative study provide real-life, contextual data with which other practitioners might reflect upon their own teaching experiences and practices. The study also adds to the discussion on the potential impact of looping programs as a structure for improving student-teacher relationships and maximizing responsive teaching in secondary schools in order address student engagement and motivation.

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal

This qualitative case study combined teacher and student interviews with observations of one physical education class to facilitate understandings of physical education learning communities. Watkins’ (2005) definition of a learning community was used as a framework to conceptualise the study. I found that physical education teachers in this study do actively develop their classes as learning communities. Five key findings are discussed. Physical education learning communities exist in a number of different forms that can be related to a learning community continuum. The learning community’s positioning on the continuum is directly related to student agency in learning. It was found that student agency is promoted through a discourse of inquiry. In this study inquiry is a central tenet of a learning community as learning is viewed as a cognitive and socio-cultural constructivist function resulting in knowledge generation (Brown, 1997 cited in Alton Lee 2003; Sewell, 2006; Watkins, 2005). As inquiry learning is a social process in a learning community, it is concurrently supported by a discourse of community, promoting students’ ability to work altruistically and collaboratively, learning together. It was found that the explicit teaching of socio-moral outcomes through socio-cultural pedagogies enhance positive peer relationships and is essential to the promotion of an altruistic discourse of community. The discourses of community and inquiry are dialectically related and communicate clear messages to students about the expectations of behaviour and learning within an altruistic community. The early stages of a physical education learning community are based on the genuine and altruistic student-teacher relationships which provide a springboard to allow opportunities for teachers to have further conversations about learning. Finally, evidence in the study suggests that philosophy plays a significant role in both the growth and oppression of the evolution of a learning community. This study suggests that the relationship between the philosophy of the New Zealand Curriculum (2007), the physical education teachers and the economic neoliberal context influences the development of learning communities in physical education.

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No description available.