This applied dissertation was designed to provide this school district with a better understanding of the perceptions of special education teachers who teach students with significant disabilities about self-determination. A survey was distributed to collect data about teachers' perceptions of self-determination skills taught to students,…

Linguistic prominence is defined as words or syllables perceived auditorily as standing out from their environment. It is explored through changes in pitch, duration and loudness. In this study, phonetic realization and perception of prominence among lexical tones in Mandarin Chinese was investigated in two experiments. Experiment 1 explored…

The purpose of this study was to explore and better understand the effect of parent participation on the academic success and well being of students, especially those in the elementary grades. This area of concentration was chosen because extensive research has shown that the early years are the most formative and active interaction by parents can…

This dissertation explores organizational narratives of engagement initiatives involving two comprehensive universities and the larger regional communities they serve. The purpose of this study is to develop a holistic description of engagement initiatives, reflecting data collected through interviews, documents and other artifacts from…

The purpose of this study was to examine the correlates that define relational aggression among middle school girls, the relationships among these factors, and the association between the correlates of relational aggression and the type of relational aggression (e.g., verbal, withdrawal) exhibited among middle school girls. The findings of this…

A study was conducted to investigate the teaching methods valued and used by faculty in Arkansas public higher education institutions at the freshman and sophomore levels. The participants were 336 teachers who responded to a 21 item survey distributed to college teachers in Arkansas. The study sought to collect relevant demographic data and to…

This phenomenological study demonstrates the influence that affective factors have on beginning teachers' ability to enact instructional practices. Through narratives shared in interviews and web log postings, two beginning science teachers' emotional engagement with their instructional practices, especially that of implementing inquiry-based…

This study examined how a rural school district and the communities in which the district belonged collaborated on a community development initiative. This dissertation examined the opportunities and constraints rural communities are facing and the role that a rural school system could play in increasing social and economic sustainability of rural…

As the government aimed to provide appropriate education to all children (No Child Left Behind Act), it is important that the education providers can assess the performance of the students correctly so that they can provide the appropriate education for the students. Profile analysis is a very useful tool to interpret test scores and measure…

The purpose of this study was to examine self-determination and achievement motivation as predictors of successful school performance for high school African American males enrolled in an urban Texas school district. The students (N = 108) were placed into two distinct groups: higher-performing and lower-performing African American males based…

This quantitative study was designed to investigate if there was differences among the following groups: (1) school size, (2) class size, (3) ethnicity, (4) gender, and (5) a teacher's years of experience with respect to fifth grade TAKS math and reading scores when controlling for low socio-economic status for 1404 students at elementary campuses…

Although research indicates a trend toward increased representation of students with psychiatric disabilities in postsecondary education, the experiences of these students tend to be marked by academic failure and social isolation. However, the existing qualitative and quantitative research on this student population largely excludes the…

An investigation of the relationship between job satisfaction and retention among elementary, middle, and high school teachers in a suburban school district in Georgia was addressed in this mixed-methods study. The focus of the study was to determine the level of job satisfaction among the nine subscales of the Teacher Job Satisfaction…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the perceptions of teachers regarding the effects of a character education program on student behavior at a New Jersey public middle school for sixth graders. Specifically, the studied examined student behaviors in the areas of self-awareness, self-management, relationship management and social…

This thesis presents the design and development of an evaluation system for generating audio displays that provide feedback to persons performing navigation tasks. It first develops the need for such a system by describing existing wayfinding solutions, investigating new electronic location-based methods that have the potential of changing these…