A discrepancy appears to exist between the value placed on reflective journal writing by the writers of journals and the value seen by educators of that same journal writing. In this study, I explored the journal writing of six tutors working in a learning centre at a two-year community college in western Canada. I examined: (1) tutors' perspectives on the journal writing task; (2) the content and reflectivity of tutors' journals; and, (3) the accuracy of the journals in representing tutor thinking initiated by the journal writing task. The initial data collection for the study included observation of weekly in-service training sessions and examination of tutor journal entries. Tutors were interviewed about their perceptions of journal writing and their thinking around issues they wrote about in their journals. The tutor trainer was interviewed about his expectations of tutor journal writing, his reactions to tutors' journals and his perceptions of the journal writing task. After the initial data collection, the participants were given summaries of data collected in the initial phase. Tutors read the summaries and as a group discussed issues raised by the data. I interviewed the trainer about insights he had gained from the summaries. Content choices and levels of reflectivity in the tutors' journals varied widely. Factors affecting the content and levels of reflection in the tutors' journals were affected by tutors’ understanding of the journal writing task, their motivation for journal writing, their feelings of vunerability, their personal histories, their tutoring experience, their preference for writing as a mode of learning, and their purposes for writing journals. Most tutors perceived their journals as useful to them, but the tutor trainer regarded the journals as less useful. This difference in perception of the benefits of journal writing can be attributed, at least in part, to the differing levels of access of the trainer and the tutors to the benefits of journal writing. The trainer based his understanding of the benefits of journal writing on the journals themselves whereas the tutors were aware of benefits that were not apparent from studying the journals. Interviews with the tutors showed that tutors reflected more as a result of the journal writing task than was evident from their journals. The trainer’s view of the reflection initiated by the journal writing task was obscured in tutors’ journals due to the fact, that tutors reported prior reflection, provided incomplete representation of their reflective thinking, made rhetorical choices which masked their levels of reflection, and continued to reflect after completion of journal entries. Implications of the study for educators include the importance of a process approach to journal writing, the risks of assuming that journals provide an accurate picture of the reflection the task initiates, and factors for consideration in the construction of the prompt for journal writing. Implications for researchers focus on the risks of assuming that journals provide an accurate measure of the benefits of the journal writing task. Collaboration with journal writers is seen as essential for any such measure to be achieved.

Tutoring is a rapidly increasing but under-researched component of the education of immigrant students. This study examines one-on-one tutoring of Taiwanese high school immigrant students in Vancouver. Viewing tutoring as a social practice rather than an instructional tool for teaching academic content, this exploratory study attempts to understand how participants construct tutoring in the British Columbian educational context. Factors such as the patterning of tutorials, the participants' perspectives, and the wider educational context have been considered in this study. This study recruited 12 tutor-tutee pairs, 12 parents, and 10 school teachers. Tutoring interactions were tape-recorded over a ten-month period. Combining aspects of discourse analysis and qualitative research, this study used discourse analysis to study tutoring interactions and qualitative interviews to explore the participants' beliefs about tutoring and schooling. This study explored the interaction patterns of tutoring, examined the participants' assumptions and expectations, and investigated the relationship between the tutoring (informal learning) and the schooling (formal learning) process of immigrant students. The varied patterns of tutorials suggested that tutoring went beyond teaching academic content and served multiple functions for the immigrant families. The patterns focused on addressing the needs of parents and students to interact with their schools, and providing emotional and cultural support. In addition, there seemed to be conflicting voices among the participants regarding the tutorial practices. For example, participants expressed strong and opposing views about the goals of tutoring and the quantity of homework, academic content instruction and grammar instruction in tutoring and in schools. These different voices seemed to cause tensions which were explored and negotiated in tutoring interactions. Lastly, the relation between tutoring and its wider educational context was both cooperative and conflictual. For example, while tutoring offered students homework assistance, this assistance caused the school teachers to be concerned with tutor over-helping. Thus, there is a complex and interactive relationship between tutoring and the educational system. To conclude, studying tutoring as a social practice acknowledges the varied tutorial patterns, the conflicts, the dynamics, and the complexity of tutoring interactions.

This research was initiated as a response to a request for assistance from a group of students at the Nelson R Mandela School of Medicine who had reported feeling unprepared to prescribe medicines. This led to an interest in the level of competence shown by students in making prescribing decisions and the extent to which they were confident of their prescribing judgments. Student prescribing competence and confidence were assessed using quantitative and qualitative methods. The quantitative assessment comprised a test where students were asked to rate their confidence in some of their responses. A stratified sample of 10 of these student interviewed, where they were asked to choose treatment for four paper cases. Prescribing skills were found to be lacking, with test results averaging 47%. appropriate treatment selected for only 4 of the total of 40 paper cases. Upon reviewing the literature, it became apparent that poor prescribing skills, leading to the problem of irrational prescribing was a worldwide phenomenon The study aimed to address areas of weak prescribing skill using a short intense intervention comprising of several different learning strategies. Student change in confidence following the course was assessed using an evaluation form where students rated their perceived changes in key competences. Students showed improved confidence for each of the prescribing abilities measured. These findings have been compiled into 3 research publications, the texts of which are bound together as they were submitted together to comply with the research requirement of an M.Ed. The findings are reported in a paper titled Building successful therapeutics into a problembased medical curriculum in Africa in the South African Journal of Higher Education (see Appendices). I was also interested in how prescribing ability builds as students develop new prescribing skills. The student interviews provided an opportunity to explore the variation shown between the students relating to the quality of the treatment they prescribed for a given paper case. A sample of two sets of paper cases were assessed using a phenomenographic method, yielding two different perspectives of student experience. The research outlined above is the focus of the dissertation, which also includes an exploration of the teaching and learning issues which guided the design of the intervention and which I believe led to the positive finding of improved student prescribing confidence. Also included in the dissertation is an analysis of the quantitative assessment according to the cognitive categories of Bloom's Taxonomy, as well as qualitative data gathered from student interviews which revealed an understanding about prescribing abilities which predominated at differing Bloom cognitive levels for different students. In the second paper titled Undergraduate medical students' reasoning with regard to the prescribing process which has been submitted to Medical Teacher, (see Appendices) the range of student cognition associated with prescribing is explored. Each question from the quantitative assessment of prescribing abilities were grouped according to the Bloom Category it had been assigned, student scores according to each Bloom category were calculated. Students scored highest for the lowest cognitive category ('knowledge') and lowest for the highest ranked cognitive categories( 'evaluation' and 'synthesis'). These findings along with the qualitative findings and the phenomenographic assessment were reported here. / Thesis (M.Ed.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2005.

This study centred on factors contributing to the perceived organizational effectiveness within an educational service provider. The guiding assumption of this research was that the general public supports effective organizations because they are perceived as rendering an effective and efficient service. This results in a reciprocal relationship between the organization and its clients. The Kip McGrath Education Centres was studied since it is an organization that has been rendering educational service in South Africa since 1996. There are to date thirty-five centres operating in the country. However, while there has been phenomenal growth in terms of geographical expansion, no studies have been done to establish what has contributed towards this organization's perceived effectiveness. Literature sources informed this study of the indicators that characterize effective organizations. Some of these indicators of effectiveness were used in this research to determine whether the organization under study can be viewed as one such effective organization. The theoretical underpinning of this study is that there are inherent contradictions within models of effective organizations. As such, effectiveness should be determined according to a given model and relevant indicators. This study surveyed perceptions of the major stakeholders on matters pertaining to the organizational effectiveness of the Kip McGrath Education Centres at Newholmes. Both the qualitative and quantitative methodologies were used. That is, questionnaires were used to obtain information from large samples of educational stakeholders and interviews schedules and check-lists were used to collect qualitative data from small samples and observations of facilities and activities at the centre. The findings revealed that the organization under study was rendering an effective service that clients seem to have valued. This consequently led to their support of the organization which led to its growth in size, judged by student numbers. The conclusions derived from these findings were that an effective organization is one that is able to develop because it possesses salient features necessary for delivering an effective and efficient service to its clients, thus ensuring their continued support. A major finding was that parents were willing to pay for the services offered by the Newholmes KMEC because they felt they got their money's worth. This leads to the conclusion that when the public has confidence in an education provider, the public is willing and able to pay for the services. A recommendation arising out of this would be to determine the extent to which perceived effectiveness translates into genuine effectiveness judged by the quality of programmes offered by a number of private education providers. This would offer evidence and support for the role of the private sector in educational provision which can guide government policy and practice. / Thesis (M.Ed.) - University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2001.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Toronto, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 102-105).

Thesis PlanB (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin--Stout, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.S.)--Mississippi State University. Department of Psychology. / Title from title screen. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M. Ed.)--University of Hong Kong, 1996. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 72-75).

Thesis (M.Ed.)--University of Hong Kong, 1996. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 72-75). Also available in print.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Oregon State University, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 57-64). Also available online (PDF file) by a subscription to the set or by purchasing the individual file.