published_or_final_version / abstract / Education / Doctoral / Doctor of Education

published_or_final_version / Education / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / Linguistics / Master / Master of Arts in Applied Linguistics

published_or_final_version / Education / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / Real Estate and Construction / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

The purpose of this exploratory case study was to describe the culture of clinical teaching through a symbolic interactionist framework, by identifying the rituals, faculty behaviors, and student behaviors and characteristics valued by faculty instructing in clinical settings, using content analysis, interviews and observation. Five faculty, one from each clinical specialty, were chosen using specific criteria. College of Nursing archives were content analyzed to ascertain written valued student behaviors and characteristics and faculty were interviewed to learn their stated beliefs. Faculty/student clinical interactions were observed to assess if faculty written and verbalized beliefs were enacted, and twelve students were interviewed for verification of transmission of the values. Peer debriefing, member checking and an audit trail ensured trustworthiness of the data. Faculty used eight rituals: Preparation, Tracking, Discourse, Closet, Repast, Selection, Maneuver, and Documentation, and three types of actions: Teaching, Role Modeling, and Caretaking to transmit their values. Teaching was utilized 55 percent of the time and involved questioning, instructing, guiding, correcting and observing. Role Modeling, used 22 percent, embodied promoting independence, helping, intervening, kidding and admitting fallibility. Caretaking was evidenced 23 percent of the instructor's time and included caring, praising, diffusing anger, allowing mistakes and sharing self. Over one hundred student behaviors and characteristics that faculty valued were identified and collapsed into six descriptors, listed in descending order: assertive, therapeutic, compliant, knowledgeable, disciplined, and skillful. Faculty placed emphasis on human, interactive skills versus knowledge and psychomotor skills, and responded to students with very caring behaviors. They utilized compassion as a way of effecting conformity, and their use of caring behaviors for the exercise of their power was evident.

The purpose of this study was to assess the extent of discovery learning opportunities in Arizona secondary chemistry classrooms and to determine their relationship to performance in selected areas of freshman college chemistry at the University of Arizona. For the purpose of this study two questionnaires were developed, one to gather data relating to students' participation in discovery learning activities in high school chemistry and the other to assess their use of learning resources at the University of Arizona. Interviews were conducted with 15 volunteers from the subjects of this study. The information provided by these volunteers concerning their high school chemistry background was consistent with information obtained from the questionnaires. Examination and laboratory scores were obtained from the records of the chemistry department, to assess student performance in lecture and laboratory. The students' responses on the Learning Activities Questionnaire were used to form a discovery index score, which was correlated with college chemistry examination scores, college laboratory scores, and student-reported use of learning resources. The lack of relationship between the discovery index scores and college chemistry examination scores was indicated by a partial correlation of -.10 which was not statistically significant at the .05 level. A statistically significant partial correlation of .20 indicated the discovery index scores were related to college laboratory scores. No significant relationship was found between discovery index scores and students' use of learning resources at the University as indicated by the Pearson correlation of .15, which was not significant at the .05 level.

The purpose of the study wass to describe the professional and personal development of nursing students who were placed at the Saartjie Baartman Centre for Abused Women and Children for the service-learning trial run of this Gender-Based Violence module i

This study explored the provision of entrepreneurship education at higher education institutions in Rwanda with special reference to the levels of provision, support mechanisms, course objectives, contents, teaching and assessment methods to ascertain whether they are appropriately developed to prepare students for entrepreneurship as a career option.

Abstract not available. / Thesis (M.Ed.)-University of Kwazulu-Natal, 2008.