Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Communism and education (North)'

Women have historically been underrepresented in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM fields). The underrepresentation of women in STEM may be attributable to a variety of factors. These may include different choices men and women typically make in response to incentives in STEM education. For example, STEM career paths may be less accommodating to people who are less resilient. Another factor may be that there are relatively few female STEM role models. Perhaps strong gender stereotypes discourage women from pursuing STEM education and STEM jobs. The factors that contribute to success and the barriers that impeded success must be identified before any steps can be taken to improve the educational outcomes for women in STEM disciplines. Consequently, relatively little is known about the role of resilience in academically successful adult women in rural community colleges enrolled in STEM disciplines and the mechanisms that underlie the performance deficits that occur as a result of stereotype threat effect. This mixed method study addressed those knowledge gaps by determining: (1) if high resilience is positively correlated to high grade point average for women enrolled in STEM disciplines in rural community colleges in North Carolina, and (2) if stereotype threat effect is a risk factor for these women. Quantitative data were collected by using "The Resilience Scale" (Wagnild & Young, 1987) and through examination of grade point average of students from Datatel data management software. Qualitative data were collected through semi-structured focus group interviews. Findings from this study indicate high resilience is positively correlated to high grade point average for women enrolled in STEM disciplines in rural community colleges in North Carolina, and stereotype threat effect was a risk factor for low-scoring women (i.e. those women who reported resilience scores less than 121 and grade point averages lower than 2.70) and was not a risk factor for high-scoring women (i.e. those women who reported resilience scores of 147 or higher and grade point averages of 2.70 or higher). Overall, qualitative data analysis revealed both high-scoring and low-scoring women in STEM disciplines were affected by stereotype threat effect. However, low-scoring women were negatively impacted by stereotype threat and high-scoring women were able to use pressures associated with stereotype threat as motivation for success. Based on results from this study four principal factors were found that influence the success of women in STEM disciplines. These factors include elimination of stereotype threat, enhancement of resilience of female students, expansion of female gender representation on community college campuses, and development of positive instructor-student and advisor-student relationships. While this study does not, and cannot, explain why gender differences in STEM exist, it does provide data and insight that will enable more informed policymaking for community college administrators in order to increase success of women in STEM disciplines. The findings provide definitive evidence of a need to encourage and support women in STEM education with a goal of gender parity.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the extent to which secondary students, aged 14-21 with intellectual disabilities in North Dakota (ND) engage in community-based work experience (CBWE). Perceived barriers to implementing CBWE were examined and a comparison was made between rural and urban communities. A quantitative, cross-sectional design was used to survey professionals responsible for implementing CBWE in ND secondary schools. Data obtained from the study showed that 60.01% of students with ID are engaged in CBWE and there was no difference between rural and urban communities in percentage of students engaged in this practice. There was no significant difference between these communities in types of jobs in which students were engaged. Professionals were asked to agree or disagree to a list of perceived barriers to implementing CBWE and, there was little difference between rural and urban communities. Professionals identified child labor laws, parental concerns, and requirements to align instruction to academic standards as common barriers to implementing CBWE.

The purpose of this study was to assess the extent to which policies and behavioral assessment teams exist at North Carolina community colleges, to determine the perceived ability levels of North Carolina community college counselors when dealing with students in crisis, and to identify the characteristics of community colleges in North Carolina who have implemented policies for the assessment of students in potential crisis. Research Question One sought to analyze policy implementation for the assessment of students in crisis and the implementation of behavioral assessment teams at community colleges in North Carolina. Research Question Two used descriptive data to report the levels of the counselors’ perceived confidence when assessing risk and what they perceive as needs to address crisis intervention and management at community colleges in North Carolina. Research Question Three had the purpose of determining if a relationship is present between the five levels of risk (Sokolow et al., 2009) and the perception of confidence as reported by community college counselors in North Carolina. Research Question Four explored what type of relationship exists between North Carolina community college demographic characteristics and policy implementation level.

The methodology implemented was a mixed-methods design. A purposeful sample of counselors employed at community colleges in North Carolina was used for this study. A survey was developed and was distributed to the sample to collect both quantitative and qualitative data.

SHARPLES, RUSSELL HORTON. The Importance of Leadership Competencies: Perceptions of North Carolina Community College Presidents. (Under the direction of George A. Baker III) This research investigated the relationship between certain institutional characteristics and perceptions of North Carolina community college presidents about the importance of leadership roles, values and emotions, and skills. Those characteristics were the size of the institution, the growth rate of the institution, and the geographic setting of the institution. The perceptions of three groups of presidents were studied. One group consisted of the presidents of large community colleges and the presidents of small community colleges. The second group consisted of the presidents of high enrollment growth colleges and the presidents of low enrollment growth colleges. The final group was comprised of presidents of urban community colleges and rural community colleges. Fifty-one of the 58 presidents participated in the study, a participation rate of 87.93 percent. The participants completed the Leadership Competencies Assessment Instrument, responding to 30 specific leadership competencies by estimating the degree of energy they expended in addressing each competency, and by estimating their effectiveness in addressing that competency. The means of responses from the first set of presidents in each group was compared to the means of responses from the second set of presidents in each group using the t-test for the difference between means. It was hypothesized that, for each of the three groups, there were no differences in perceptions about the importance of leadership roles, leadership values and emotions, or leadership skills. The results of the tests indicated that there were no differences in perceptions in any of three groups about which leadership roles, values and emotions, and skills were most important. It was recommended that future research address expanding the study population to include other community college systems; conducting future studies using different methodologies in order to increase validity; and additional study of individual leadership competencies and how they affect presidential leadership perceptions.

This study examines relationships of African-American high school equivalency (HSE) students' sense of belonging to their peers, faculty, and community college environment. A sense of belonging is an important factor in understanding students’ internal and external motivations, perceptions, desires, and academic successes. For many African-American HSE students, community colleges are the pathways chosen to enhance their skills for a better education, potential income increase, and possible advancement in the workforce. A sense of belonging, socioeconomic desires, and cultural influences can promote adult learners’ return to the classroom in pursuit of a high school diploma. The purpose of this study was to examine and gain in-sight on a sense of belonging, educational attainment, and gender gaps of African-American high school equivalency female and male students’ experiences in quest of a higher education. This mixed-method research study recorded students’ shared experiences and insight in regards to a sense of belonging; as a result, the findings from this study have implications to change policy, curriculum, and program structure. The significance of this study was to make a contribution to the knowledge on African-American students’ sense of belonging with peers, faculty, and the community college environment.

This final project report set out to design a peer-led learning model that would assist pastors in building competencies and strengthening peer relationships among Presbyterian pastors in northern New Jersey. The project addressed a national trend that reveals an increasing number of pastors are leaving Christian ministry today because of inadequate support and their lack of varied and specialized skills to serve congregations. However, some of the most recent research by the U. S. Congregational Life Survey (US CLS Wave Two), the Sustaining Pastoral Excellence (SPE) project, and the Faith Communities Today (FACT) survey confirmed pastors and their congregations benefit by pastors participating in peer learning.

Grounded in the theology that Christian ministry is nurtured by communities that embody and practice what they believe, and by theories that enduring learning takes place in association with others, this project drew from Presbyterian ecclesiology, the company of pastors (Calvin), a community of practice (Wenger), self-directed learning (Knowles), group theory (Johnsons), and the areas of learning pastors volunteered to lead. There were no attending costs and the monthly format was simple: pastors shared a meal and fellowship followed by worship and relevant teaching led by the pastors themselves.

Twenty-five pastors, representing one-fifth of the congregations in three regional bodies, attended one or more of the nine gatherings. A large part of the report concentrated on the more active twelve mature, highly stressed, and highly motivated pastors who represented different urban and suburban communities, genders, races, and sexual orientations. The report evaluated what facilitated and hindered this project's objectives. Its conclusion provided seven insights for pastors and seminarians, denominational agencies and regional body leaders, seminaries and foundations concerned about pastoral preparation for the rigors and challenges of congregational ministry.

This dissertation investigates the normative construction of a politics of language and community in north-west Wales (United Kingdom). It is based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted primarily between January 2007 and April 2008, with central participant-observation settings in primary-level state schools and in the teaching-spaces and hallways of a university. Its primary finding is an account of the gap between the national visibility and the cultural (in)visibility communities of speakers of the indigenous language of Wales (Cymraeg, or “Welsh”). With one exception, no public discourse has yet emerged in Wales that provides an explicit framework or vocabulary for describing the cultural community that is anchored in Cymraeg. One has to live those meanings even to know about them. The range of social categories for living those meanings tends to be constructed in ordinary conversations as some form of nationalism, whether political, cultural, or language nationalism. Further, the negatively valenced category of nationalism current in English-speaking Britain is in tension with the positively valenced category of nationalism current among many who move within Cymraeg-speaking communities. Thus, the very politics of identity are themselves political since the line between what is political and what is not, is itself subject to controversy. The result is what I call the “submergence” of Cymraeg-oriented cultural communities: People who would say Cymraeg is an essential part of their personality and communities mark out cultural space for their sense of continuity (to the past, to others) in ways that do not require or enable them to make any substantive cultural claims.

Within these settings of a modalized Welsh culture—always only partially expressed— indigeneity and ethnic difference are symbolized by the emblematic and lived importance of Cymraeg, while the significance of Cymraeg tends to be implicitly conveyed by means of overt references to “Welshness”.

This cultural submergence of the resources for Cymraeg-centered identity seems motivated and sustained by the fact that it produces a haven from holiday-goers and English patriots who do not value Welsh cultural features as highly as do those who take pride in the Cymraeg-centered cultural community. In light of these features of local life, I suggest several terms of art—including “language demesne” and “language corridor”—because they are more fitting of local politics than is the idea of a (global) language community.

This dissertation also contributes a theoretical basis for examining the pragmatics of language communities, which requires differentiating phenomenal-level semiotic analyses from investigations of the dynamics of cultural discourse. The “obvious” empirical situation in Wales—as analyzed using a Peircean-phenomenological semiotics—runs contrary to the relatively opaque and counter-empirical cultural dynamics in Wales. As a result, this account of the tensions between semiotic descriptions and cultural dynamics signals a wrinkle in received theories of metapragmatics. Conventionally, metapragmatics makes sense of the text–discourse relation, but not the relations between discourse and consciousness because theories of metapragmatics apply only to the former. Unless the relationship of text-and-discourse to consciousness is explicated at the epistemological level of analysis, ethnographic descriptions of locales within language communities—particularly those rife with language politics—can take on the appearance of an ontology of human kinds. Given this condition, any broad account of the cultural dynamics of language and community must take an analytic position regarding the relationship between the surface-level of semiotics and the historical and cultural processes of community constitution.

My approach engages directly with the neglected conflict between the strategy of primordialist essentialism and that of constructivism. The analytic strategy and theoretical perspective of this dissertation avoids the scholarly tendency to treat certain local conceptions as misconstruals of sociocultural life. Instead, they are treated as locally valid and proper constitutings of divisible community. Academics would be no less inclined to reject analogous conceptual entailments in their cultural worlds despite their commitment to the view that sociocultural realities are constructed. The position adopted here underwrites an account that denaturalizes without denaturing the essentializing claims (e.g., of language activists) in north-west Wales.

In engaging with current analytic strategies in linguistic anthropology, my “inferentialist” and pragmatistic strategy frames the politicizing of language and community in north-west Wales using an alternative to linguistic indexes or icons, which are grounded in an empirical sense of necessity. The framework adopted here envisions an empirical field organized not only by necessary principles of Welsh belonging that are practiced or not, but by tensions among many different “modal” types of constraints—normative principles that are inferable from community-specific ways of enacting belonging to a particular sociocultural imaginary that owes its coherence to language affinity. Consequently, this dissertation treats languages themselves as inhabitable and provides a theoretical justification for doing so.

Metcalf, Ronald Carroll. Certified Nursing Assistants in long-term care facilities: Perceptions of their initial training program. (Under the direction of John M. Pettitt) Throughout the country, long-term care (LTC) facilities are faced with the challenge of providing residents with the essential care that this growing population deserves. One of the biggest challenges is the critical shortage of certified nursing assistants (CNAs) within the LTC industry. These essential frontline workers provide 90% of the care needed by residents living within these facilities. CNA training programs struggle to provide the LTC industry with well qualified care providers. This critical shortage is compounded by a career track that has maintained an excessively high turnover rate. Effective training programs could have a positive impact on this situation by preparing individuals with quality, realistic experiences during their initial training. Therefore, educators and regulatory agencies must be aware of the connection between the entire learning experience and the development of the CNA?s clinical care skills.Following an extensive literature review, a 45-item questionnaire was developed to determine if a relationship exists in the perceptions by the CNA of their initial training program and (1) the number of months since graduation; (2) the county they were employed; and (3) the type of state-approved training program they attended. The questionnaire was administered to 222 CNAs in eight LTC facilities within four counties of Western North Carolina.CNAs identified the instructor as having an important role related to the elements of effective teaching/learning. Interestingly, some CNAs felt that the length of the training program was ?too short? in relation to the skills needed to care for residents living in LTC facilities. Other CNAs reported that the ?clinical skills? was of most value to them, as related to the number of months since graduation. CNAs also identified components related to overall job satisfaction and the highest-ranking item was the ?ability to work as a team?; followed by the ?number of residents I care for each day?. This study will provide a foundation for future research in using an established questionnaire regarding CNA?s perceptions of their initial training and will provide individuals with the needed information to address job satisfaction for CNAs working in LTC facilities.

From the evolution of the first colleges, residence halls have been viewed as more than a place to eat and sleep. The Oxford and Cambridge models offered residential settings where students and faculty lived, ate, and studied together (Rowe, 1981). The living-learning residential model emerged from the present day American university?s desire to practice learning as a part of living.

The Educational Resources Information Center defines living-learning programs as "Residential facilities of higher education institutions designed to enhance students ' educational experiences by enabling them to integrate their academic activities with their ordinary living activities "(ERIC, 1982, p. 143). Riker (1965) and Rowe (1981) created eight components that give living-learning program administrators a broad based foundation on which to build living-learning program curricula.

Twenty living-learning program administrators listed how their programs incorporate Riker (1965) and Rowe's (1981) components and then prioritized the curricula on these lists. A three round Delphi surveying technique was used to structure this process. In the first round of the process administrators generated lists of program curricula that exist at established programs across the country. Rounds two and three of the process were a tool for building consensus on the most heavily valued living-learning program curricula.

Results indicate that curricula providing opportunities for students to pursue an academic life style were most valued by the group of twenty administrators. Specific curricula that were valued include active learning experiences, student involvement and participation in programs, student accessibility to faculty, and spaces that facilitate discussion and study.

The purpose of this study was to assess the effect that different North Carolina state legislation had upon overall student engagement and success in dual enrollment Huskins, Learn and Earn Online, and Concurrent enrollment in comparison to the later Career and College Promise (CCP) dual enrollment program within North Carolina community colleges.

The questions researched in this study were the following: a. Was there a difference in completion between students who were dually enrolled in North Carolina community college programs in 2008 compared to 2012, as measured by the awarding of a certificate, diploma, or degree, three years from initial enrollment? b. Was there a difference in cumulative grade point average (GPA), total college credits earned, and total courses completed between dually enrolled students in North Carolina community colleges in 2008 compared to 2012, three years from initial enrollment? c. Was there a difference in success indicators specific to gender and minority status between dually enrolled students in North Carolina community colleges in 2008 and in 2012, three years from initial enrollment?

Dual enrollment student data including student GPA, course completion rates and cumulative course completion, level of credential awarded (certificate, diploma, or degree), gender, and minority status, were retrieved from state-wide student records contained in the Data Warehouse at the North Carolina Community College System Office. Data were analyzed using a combination of chi-squared and t-test statistical tests for significance testing (Mead, 2009). The results suggest that there were higher completion rates and higher GPAs for students who participated in Career and College Promise dual enrollment over earlier programs. It appears that minority students were not negatively impacted by CCP policies, in fact, Hispanic students showed marked improvement in several areas.