The advantages of postsecondary education are numerous and serve as a gateway to increased opportunity. Benefits include improved employment opportunities, lifetime earnings, job satisfaction, access to healthcare and preventative care, and overall better quality of life. In addition, valuable life skills development, including; building new social skills and relationships, developing critical thinking, personal development, how to overcome challenges, time management and organization, and deeper knowledge and understanding of the world. Enrollment rates in postsecondary education are predicted to continue to rise for students with and without disabilities. Students are often underprepared for the transition to college and the levels of self-regulation required to be self-directed learners. Executive function skills are the foundation for intentional planning and self-regulation necessary to adjust as needed to reach goals in all areas of life. Executive function skills are relied on heavily in novel situations such as the transition to college. Students with deficits in executive function lack the skills required for adjustment to college life. Development is based on experiences, highly variable, and often not fully developed until early adulthood. Coaching has shown promise as a means to help support these skills for increased persistence and degree obtainment. This dissertation aims to use three publishable articles to illustrate the potential coaching possesses in supporting all students with executive function deficits to increase their levels of success. The chapters include evidence of coaching as a solution, an in-depth literature review, a practitioner example, and a mixed- methods investigation. Overall, results demonstrate the need for executive function support for students with deficits and the potential value of coaching programs to answer this need.

Nontraditional students are increasingly more common in higher education but have lower persistence rates than their traditional peers. While educational researchers have developed several models to predict college persistence using both cognitive (e.g. entrance exam scores) and noncognitive (e.g. academic motivation) factors, most of these models were created for traditional students. The psychosociocultural (PSC) model was created to better predict academic outcomes specifically for underrepresented students using psychological, social, and cultural factors. However, the PSC model has never been used to study nontraditional students. To address these limitations, this study used the PSC model to predict the persistence of traditional and nontraditional undergraduate students at a large public research university. Students were considered nontraditional if they were 25 or older; worked an average of 30 or more hours a week; had children; or were enrolled part-time for the majority of the spring, summer, and fall semesters in 2019. It was hypothesized that (1) nontraditional students will have lower rates of persistence than traditional students; (2a) psychological, social, and cultural dimensions will predict persistence among all students; (2b) nontraditional students will have stronger relationships between the three PSC dimensions and persistence than traditional students; (3a) loneliness, self-efficacy, support from family and friends, comfort on campus, and sense of belonging will predict persistence among all students; and (3b) nontraditional students will have stronger relationships between the six variables of the PSC model and persistence than traditional students. Hypothesis 1 was tested using a chi square test of independence, and hypotheses 2 and 3 were tested using a binominal logistic regression. Preliminary analyses tested the data to determine the internal reliability for each instrument used as well as to determine whether the assumptions of the statistical tests were met. Data analysis revealed that none of the hypothesis were supported. No difference in persistence was found between nontraditional and traditional students. Neither the three PSC dimensions nor the six PSC variables were significant predictors of persistence for the undergraduate participants. Finally, student status did not moderate the relationship between the three PSC dimensions and persistence or the six PSC variables and persistence. While this study did not find that the PSC Model was useful for predicting differences in persistence between nontraditional and traditional students, the lack of significant findings was likely due to a high persistence rate among all students. While the hypotheses could not be supported, the high internal reliability of the instruments suggested that the six instruments used in this study were particularly useful for understanding nontraditional students' experiences on campus. Additionally, this study measured nontraditional and traditional students' perceived experiences on campus, which may inform outreach and services provided by student service staff. Future studies on nontraditional students might consider using these instruments to gauge students' experiences on campus at other institutions. In gathering information about students' perceptions and experiences, institutions will be better able to make informed decisions about how their policies and practice meet the needs of various student groups on campus.

As the healthcare system has continued to change in the 21st century, the creation of a more collaborative practice-ready workforce is necessary. Interprofessional education (IPE) is an accepted mechanism to cultivate interprofessional collaborative practice in health care providers to improve quality of care and address workforce needs. Development of interprofessional collaborative practice requires synergies of the health care and education systems to develop and deliver an effective IPE curriculum. This study examined the impact of an IPE curriculum on the clinical practice of physical therapy doctoral students through a mixed-methods approach. The IPE curriculum was rooted in the established Interprofessional Learning Continuum and linked to core competencies from the Interprofessional Education Collaborative. Quantitative procedures examined student clinical performance in the immediate internship following completion of the curriculum, and these criteria were compared to historical norms. Qualitative procedures sought to determine if areas of clinical performance were influenced by the curriculum and examine how students translated learning into the clinical environment. The results of this study identified numerous areas of significant impact of interprofessional learning on patient care in the clinical environment, although none of the quantitative measures identified significant differences. Several salient themes were identified which recognize the multidimensional nature of patient care in the complex clinical environment, involving an interplay of communication, experience, role understanding, and interprofessional interactions all being strongly developed within the IPE curriculum. These findings contribute to the literature calling for mixed methods analyses of influences of IPE of health care students on clinical practice in order to better understand and further develop interprofessional practice.

This dissertation demonstrates how avant-garde methods can be employed as pedagogical methods in the undergraduate Humanities classroom to promote student engagement and interdisciplinary thinking. The study first addresses pedagogy and avant-garde art within their historical contexts as separate, but related disciplines. Subsequently the study fuses pedagogy and avant-garde art and provides examples of in-class activities and out-of-class assignments that illustrate the ways in which avant-garde methods function as practical teaching and learning methods. Further, the study presents artist Nam June Paik, whose work exemplifies the theoretical and practical underpinnings of avant-garde art as pedagogy. The dissertation champions the pedagogy of John Dewey, who called for a progressive educational system. It also argues for Paulo Freire's critical pedagogy and the Jesuits' Ignatian pedagogical paradigm, both of which serve as necessary complements in achieving Dewey's goal of an experiential educational environment. Dewey believed education should co-exist with life and should not be treated as a preparation for it, and thus his theories on aesthetics, in particular, argued that art is not severed from life, an idea shared by four avant-garde movements discussed in this study: Futurism, Dada, Surrealism, and Fluxus. Each of these movements sought to change the political and cultural environment, while maintaining that art and life are on equal ground. These pedagogies, aided by avant-garde methods, encourage and challenge students to engage with and think critically about the world around them.

The increasing number of first-generation Black women enrolling in college is accompanied by educational disparities that could potentially hinder their future career aspirations. The intersection of race, gender, and being a first-generation student poses numerous obstacles and challenges, rendering the journey towards college and career success more difficult in comparison to their peers. This study adapted a transcendental phenomenological approach using a humanistic stance to investigate the lived experiences of 12 first-time-in-college (FTIC) students who were first-generation Black women, aiming to give a voice to the individuality of each participant. Its purpose was to explore how these participants interpreted their experiences of academic success and career readiness. Participants completed two virtual, semi-structured interviews. The interview data were analyzed using Colaizzi's (1978) seven-step process, as described by Sanders (2003). Six themes emerged from the analysis: (a) family and cultural values provide motivation to work hard and be successful; (b) the pressure from family and marginalized identities leads to depression and anxiety; (c) extrinsic motivation influences academic and college success, and both extrinsic and intrinsic motivation guided career success beliefs and goals; (d) participants experienced professional limitations as well as shifts in career readiness; (e) intersecting identities have overlapping and cumulative disadvantages; and (f) the merging of identities and positive experiences contributed to increased feelings of pride, honor, and accomplishment. Overall, the analyses revealed that mastery experiences had a positive impact on participants' self-efficacy, subsequently influencing their intrinsic and extrinsic motivations for success. However, academic performance pressures, racial and gender stereotypes and biases, a lack of guidance, and limited resources adversely impacted their college and career-related experiences, mental health, and perceptions of career success, which created uncertainty. This study benefits practitioners and administrators of higher education seeking to understand the experiences of this unique population and improve services and programs to further support efforts to make education more equitable for college success and beyond for all students.

The problem which motivated this research was the lack of chemistry practical work in many Mozambican junior secondary schools. This problem is so critical that quite often learners finish the three years of junior secondary school without performing even one experiment. In an attempt to contribute to the solution to the problem, the microchemistry kits are introduced. For this purpose a study of the influence of kits on the teaching and learning of chemistry in a Mozambican context was conducted. The study involved four out of five public secondary schools in the city of Beira, the second largest city in Mozambique. Two schools were chosen to be the experimental group, in which chemistry was taught using the RADMASTE microchemistry kits. Two other schools, in which chemistry lessons were taught normally, were chosen to be the comparison group. In each school one Grade 9 class was used for the study. Before starting the study, 18 secondary chemistry teachers of the four schools answered a questionnaire and 163 Grade 9 learners answered another questionnaire. These were used to determine teachers’ and learners’ opinions about the importance and aims of practical work. Before the intervention a pretest was administered to 181 Grade 9 learners within the four classes. After eight weeks of intervention, the same post-test was administered to 171 learners from the same classes. A questionnaire was also administered to the two teachers of the experimental group and another questionnaire was administered to 86 learners from the experimental group. Both questionnaires were used to find out teachers’ and learners’ opinions about the microchemistry kits. Practical work is viewed as an important method for teaching and learning chemistry, mainly to link theory and practice or use practical work to support theory. There was a statistically significant difference between the pre-test and the posttest scores in all four schools. But, learners from the experimental group performed better than learners from the comparison group in the questions which required conceptual understanding and in laboratory-based knowledge questions. The practical work also contributed to increase learners’ interest towards chemistry. It is recommended that the microchemistry kits be implemented in chemistry teaching in Mozambique, both in schools with laboratories and schools without laboratories, and that further studies should be carried out to identify effective ways of doing this.

Bush and Glover (2003) argue that, in order for principals and other leaders to focus on the management of teaching and learning, they need to be instructional leaders. Instructional leadership focuses on teaching and learning in a school, with a major emphasis on the man-agement of teaching and learning as a key activity of the principal. This research is, however, underpinned by Lambert‟s argument (2000), cited in MacNiel and McClanahan (2005:1), that one administrator cannot serve as the instructional leader for an entire school and that the par-ticipation of all other educators is necessary. This sharing and participation is necessitated by the fact that the task of management of teaching and learning is too huge a task for one per-son to accomplish. Furthermore, Elmore, cited in Harris (2004), points out that teaching and learning is a „knowledge-intensive enterprise‟ involving many complex tasks that cannot be performed without distributing the responsibility for leadership amongst others in the school. The inception of the new democratic dispensation in South Africa in 1994 has been associ-ated with a move to a decentralized system of schooling – a site-based education system. Thurlow (2003:27) has argued that inherent in this new model is a move towards institutional autonomy, to a more school - based management system (SBM). SBM involves the devolu-tion of power and responsibilities to principals, the empowerment of educators and increased participation of parents in the decision making process. This new system is vastly different from the „control‟ model of school leadership during the Apartheid era (Chisholm 1999), cited in Moloi (2007:466). Within the SBM system it becomes necessary for the school prin-cipal to share and distribute his/her leadership role in order to cope. Rutherford (2006), cited in Khumalo and Grant (2008:3) points out that the decentralizing of management in schools lends itself to the distribution of leadership throughout a school. Distributive leadership in-volves the view that leadership can be distributed or shared among those not only in formal leadership positions but those members of staff not in leadership positions. The movement towards a decentralized or school based management system falls within the transformation agenda of education in the new South Africa, which is committed to building democracy in schools by emphasizing the sharing or distribution of school management. This study entailed a small scale purposeful case study of two secondary schools in Gauteng, investigating the role of the principal in managing teaching and learning. It examined how vi and to whom principals distributed the management of teaching and learning in schools. Various qualitative research methods and approaches were used to collect relevant informa-tion on the role of the principal in the management of teaching and learning, and on how the management of teaching and learning was distributed in the two schools. Questionnaires and structured interviews were used to collect relevant data from Principals, deputies and HODs. The research findings revealed that the principal‟s role in managing teaching and learning is to create the necessary environment that will enable effective teaching and learning to take place. Principals therefore ensure that educators have all the necessary resources to teach, that educators are in class, that discipline is maintained and that educators are prepared to teach. It can therefore be argued, as Kruger did (2003:209), that the principal‟s role in managing teaching and learning is an indirect and supportive role. The study did, however, show that the task of managing teaching and learning was predomi-nantly that of the HODs. They were involved in monitoring of educators‟ work through learner‟s books, conducting class visits on a regular basis to observe educators teaching, en-suring that educators planned for lessons and had the necessary resources to teach. The study revealed that the leadership distribution in both schools was based either on the hierarchy of the school or distributed among staff as a whole. An important criterion for choosing who would be involved in sharing tasks was the skills and knowledge of the staff. Both schools tended to distribute tasks among those staff that had the necessary skills and knowledge to complete tasks successfully.

As various stakeholders examine the value and quality of higher education, a greater emphasis is being put on educational outcomes. There is constant focus on improving the quality of undergraduate education and one of the keys to this is understanding what makes a good instructor. Effective instructors rely on a variety of tools and techniques to engage their students and help them learn. One common tool that instructors in higher education rely on in the classroom is humor. The primary research question this study is attempting to answer is: In what ways, if any, does humor infused instruction promote high levels of affective, cognitive, and participant perceptions of behavioral engagement among college students? The researcher's hypothesis is that college students who view video clips of humor infused instruction will be significantly more affectively, cognitively, and behaviorally engaged than students who view video clips of the same instructional content without humor. In order to test whether instructor use of humor in class increases student engagement, students were randomly assigned to one of two groups. One group watched a lecture on fallacies that includes humorous illustrations and examples while the other group watched a lecture that does not include these humorous illustrations and examples. Immediately after watching the lecture students were asked to complete an 18-item questionnaire that measured their engagement.

Thesis (M.ED (Language Education)) --University of Limpopo, 2010 / This research study investigated subtractive bilingualism in teaching and learning through the medium of English without the support of the mother tongue. The aim was to investigate if it is possible for learners to acquire a second language (English) without totally losing their home language. This was done through: probing the reasons why the language policy is difficult to implement in schools as outlined by the constitution of South Africa; determining the causes of subtractive bilingualism in the school settings and; an emphasis of the rights and responsibilities of educators and parents to make a positive difference in the lives of bilingual and bicultural learners. This research was grounded on Cummins (1991) theory of second language acquisition. The literature review examined other theories of second language acquisition and learning (Krashen 1981). In particular, emphasis was placed on the following broad areas in the literature review: mother tongue development; language shift and language loss; language planning and language policy; language and culture; language and identity, attitudes and equity; language in education; the National Language Policy Framework; and multilingualism. This research was conducted using the qualitative research methodology. A case study design was employed. Three instruments were used for collecting of the data. These were: questionnaires, interviews and classroom observations. The data analysis strategy used in this research was interaction analysis which was done through transcriptions of observations and video and audio recordings of interviews and classroom observations. The following were some of the findings from this research study: learners were not happy with their educators who unduly force them to communicate in English as the educators themselves are also not proficient in the language; learners are afraid to take risks of communicating in English for fear of other learners intimidating them; and many learners now communicate only in English and cannot understand the greater details of their mother tongue. The recommendations of this study are: to reduce the extent of language loss, parents should establish a strong home language policy and provide ample opportunities for children to expand the functions for which they use the mother tongue; parents and care-givers should spend time with their children and tell stories or discuss issues with them in a way that develops their mother tongue vocabulary and concepts so that children come to school prepared to learn the second language successfully without being distracted; funding and resources must be made available for additional language acquisition; well-trained and dedicated teachers with similar linguistic backgrounds to the learners should be hired; and the new language policy should be adopted

Assessment is one of the key strategies that, if used correctly, can effectively enhance student learning. This study explores senior ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) students' experiences of and attitudes towards formative assessment in the mainstream classroom. The purpose of this study was to investigate how formative assessment might be used effectively to enhance ESOL students' learning from the perspective of senior ESOL students. Data were collected using mixed methods including questionnaires and follow-up interviews with a range of participants from different ethnic backgrounds. One hundred ESOL students participated in the questionnaire and 22 were subsequently interviewed. The questionnaire provided data on the majority ESOL students' experiences and attitudes. Then the interviews allowed participants to describe their experiences and attitudes in more detail. The qualitative methodology used also provided the opportunity for the participants to explain any possible reasons for their attitudes. This study revealed that all the participants had some experiences in some of the formative assessment activities used in classroom. The participants' perspectives also indicated that ESOL students' high expectations for their academic achievement relied on teachers' understanding of their needs as well as effective classroom practice. Feedback was the most favoured formative assessment method by the ESOL students because the students could find out what they had done correctly and where they had gone wrong. Questioning was not liked by the participants, partly because of the language barrier limiting their understanding of the questions, partly because of the way teachers asked the questions (i.e. no wait-time), and partly because of cultural sensitivity (i.e. not wanting to draw attention to oneself). However, the value of questioning as a formative assessment method was recognised by a number of the participants. Self-assessment was liked and found to be useful by some participants. Peer assessment was not liked because of the students' mistrust of their peers' ability to mark their work correctly. Sharing learning objectives and assessment criteria was regarded as an important way to enhance learning as long as teachers provided clear explanations. The study raises questions about the effectiveness of existing formative assessment activities used in classroom and suggests some specific strategies that may help ESOL students learn more effectively. This study clearly indicates that not all formative assessments are equally effective to students of different backgrounds. The choice of formative assessment methods and the way they are administered in class are both important in determining their success for the participants. ESOL students have their own characteristics and needs (e.g. language limitations) and these should to be taken into consideration when choosing and implementing formative assessment methods. The study is of interest in particular to those who teach ESOL students in mainstream classrooms but also has strong links to the field of cross cultural communication, and to the study of effective teaching and learning.