The primary purpose of this study was to determine which factors related to adult 4-H volunteer empowerment in 4-H youth development settings. This study examined the relationship of adult 4-H volunteers' perceived leadership styles of Oregon 4-H Youth Development Educators (YDE) to the adult 4-H volunteer sense of empowerment. In addition,…

The purpose of this study is to investigate relevant factors in adolescents' decision-making when presented with opportunities to participate in civic and political activities. Sixty-one CA high school seniors were presented with hypothetical scenarios in which a young person is asked to give up time to participate in activities to address issues…

Adult English as a second language (ESL) students learning English outside of traditional academic settings are an understudied population of second language learners. The purpose of the research reported here is to contribute to meeting the instructional needs of these students more effectively by investigating the relationships between their…

The ultimate goal of physics education research (PER) is to develop a theoretical framework to understand and improve the learning process. In this journey of discovery, assessment serves as our headlamp and alpenstock. It sometimes detects signals in student mental structures, and sometimes presents the difference between expert understanding and…

This study examines from a geographical perspective the factors that impact the performance of public elementary schools in New York City during 2001-2005, a period when its schools were undergoing major reforms at both the local and national level. Education reforms have focused their attention on schools by increasing their responsibility and…

Concern about disruptive and violent behavior has become the focus of the public schools today because of the number of incidents of violence that has occurred in the past few years across the country. The Federal and State of Arkansas legislation have focused on making schools safer by creating rules and guidelines that address policies and…

Objective: This dissertation developed an automatic classification procedure, as an example of a novel tool for an informationist, which extracts information from published abstracts, classifies abstracts into their "fields of study," and then determines the researcher's "field of study" and "level of activity." Method: This dissertation…

The purpose of this study was to compare the impact of reading programs of students who used the Reading Program One, Reading Program Two, and Reading Program Three reading programs and those students who were taught using no basal reading program in North Mississippi. The study also assessed teachers' perceptions of the various reading programs…

The contexts in which language teaching and learning occurs have changed significantly in the last decade. The challenges and opportunities inherent in these shifting contexts necessitate substantive changes in the typical practice of many world language educators. However, the "explain, train, and maintain" approaches commonly used in…

As universities have come to depend increasingly on international, non-native English-speaking graduate students to teach many of the undergraduate courses, they have created International Teaching Assistant (ITA) programs in order to provide ITAs with the cultural, pedagogical, and linguistic skills needed to instruct in an American university…

As the number of electronic services provided by governments to their citizens has increased, so has the need for understanding whether citizens are satisfied with these services. A literature review indicated that, in the United States alone, several government entities, including federal, state, and local governments, have invested large amounts…

College students have been socialized within a patriarchal, male dominated system and have accumulated many life experiences prior to arriving on campus. These experiences could present challenges in communication, may limit the students' ability to develop intimate and meaningful relationships with others, and create struggles during and after…

"Visualization" of chemical phenomena often has been limited in the teaching laboratories to the sense of sight. We have developed chemistry experiments that rely on senses other than eyesight to investigate chemical concepts, make quantitative determinations, and familiarize students with chemical techniques traditionally designed using only…

The purpose of this dissertation was to investigate the differential effects of goal setting and value reappraisal on female students' self-efficacy beliefs, value perceptions, exam performance and continued interest in statistics. It was hypothesized that the Enhanced Goal Setting Intervention (GS-E) would positively impact students'…

Public school educators in the United States are coping with the immigration of families from non-English speaking countries. Teachers are pressed by federal mandates to meet the challenges of increased cultural diversity and language deficiencies of students with new skills. This study explored the effectiveness of journaling between bilingual…