Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Education in communism'

Students are coming to school with myriad issues that teachers and schools cannot address alone. ecological systems theory posits that the environments with which a child comes into contact, either directly or indirectly, can impact her or his development (Bronfenbrenner, 1979). With the support of community partner organizations in the local community, community schools can effectively respond to students’ needs and help them navigate the interconnected web of environments. Through interviews, focus groups, and a document review, this cross-site case study explored the practices that are employed by community school leaders (school staff and employees of community partner organizations) at two pilot high schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), to implement six guiding principles of community schools.

The study also captured impacts of these practices through participants’ perceptions, documents, and the application of transformative leadership theory. The findings revealed that the pilot school model is a natural avenue for the community schools strategy, and that intentional practices and a shared vision by all stakeholders can result in transformative impacts on students and the school as a whole. District and school leaders could consider developing processes and systems for implementing a community schools strategy district-wide by providing funding for community school coordinators for school sites, working with school leaders to develop their shared decision-making skills, and leveraging the assets and resources of community partners.

Gambling disorder is a behavioral addiction that disproportionally affects college students as a population group and can disrupt college careers. While gambling disorder has not traditionally been one that institutions of higher education have addressed, the rapid growth of legalized gambling in the United States and the resulting widespread availability and acceptability of gambling in general have led to calls for policies and programs to prevent the negative consequences that even mild to moderate gambling disorder can cause. The purpose of this mixed methods study was to determine the stage of readiness of a university campus community to address the issue of students’ disordered gambling, to identify the barriers and needs of the community prior to the implementation of disordered gambling prevention on campus, and to explore the reliability of using the Community Readiness Tool (Oetting, 2014) as a repeated measure tool over time to appraise changes in levels of community readiness, particularly when re-interviewing the same key informants.

Eleven mid-level university administrators participated in the study. Each participant was interviewed using an adapted version of the CRT. All interviews were audio recorded, transcribed, and scored according to the standard scoring procedures. Grounded theory analysis was used for the purpose of identifying barriers and needs of the community not fully captured by the CRT. The results indicated an overall lack of awareness of problem gambling as a higher education issue. Eight barriers and nine needs emerged from the qualitative analysis. To examine the use of the CRT as a repeated measure, four participants were re-interviewed one year after their initial interview, and scores were compared to both their own original scores and the scores of a second cohort of participants who were interviewed only once but at the same time. There were no significant differences in overall CRT scores from time 1 to time 2, or between the two cohorts of participants. Implications for appropriate prevention programming and future research are discussed.

The purpose of this study was to assess the goal intent and achievement of university students, during the Fall 2011 semester, at Blue Wave University, a high research activity public institution in the southeast United States. This study merged theories of motivation to measure goal setting and goal attainment to examine if students who chose to participate in a learning community program set goals at different levels than the students who chose not to join a learning community program.

This study investigated if there was a difference in motivation, by studying goal intent and goal achievement of Freshman Learning Community participants, Living-Learning community participants, or non-learning community participants at Blue Wave University. Data were collected for 363 students who were eligible and responded to the assessment, College Assessment of Readiness for Entering Students (CARES). CARES was developed by Blue Wave University as a pretest, CARES-I (intended) and posttest, CARES-A (achieved). This study analyzed whether or not students, who are classified as First Time In College (FTIC), in the studied groups, had a difference in their level of intended goals, (responses to CARES-I), achieved goals (responses to CARES-A), and the level of change from goal intent to goal achievement (the change in student responses from CARES-I to CARES-A), during their first semester enrolled at Blue Wave University.

Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to investigate the change from goal intent to goal achievement; results revealed that the level of change was not significantly different for the three groups. All three groups of students achieved fewer goals than they intended. Although the Living-Learning Community participants did not achieve all the goals they set, the ANOVA indicated that the tests were significantly different as Living- Learning Community participants set higher goals and achieved higher goals than the Freshman Learning Community participants or non-learning community participants.

Moderation analyses concluded that none the seven contextual variables (choice of college, ethnicity, gender, high school grade point average, living on-campus, SAT score, and ACT score) moderated the difference in the level of change from goal intent to goal achievement in this study.

The literature differentiates between globalization and internationalization, but views the two phenomena as inextricably linked. Globalization is defined as a set of imposing economic and political forces that demand higher education pursue increased levels of international engagement (Altbach & Knight, 2007, p. 290); and has been explained as a process accelerating the “…flow of people, culture, ideas, values, knowledge, technology, and economy across borders, resulting in a more interconnected and interdependent world” (Knight, 2008, p. x).

Internationalization is a response by higher education to manage the impact of globalization. Approaches for internationalization may involve infusing intercultural perspectives into curriculum, recruiting international students, promoting study abroad, engaging in international development initiatives, and building international partnerships (Knight, 2008, p. xi). Exploring the academic landscape, the capacity to respond to global forces by internationalizing varies considerably. Community colleges are among the institutions failing to respond. International initiatives remain marginalized on most community college campuses (Boggs, 2007; Green, 2007; Raby & Valeau, 2007).

Community colleges educate nearly 50% of U.S. undergraduates and a disproportionate share of minority, first generation, and first time in college students (AACC, 2015c). Given the inevitability of continued globalization (Altbach, 2010, 2015; Altbach & Knight, 2007; Hudzik, 2011, 2015; Knight, 1993, 1994), community college internationalization is an imperative for U.S. higher education.

The purpose of this research study was to understand how presidents assert leadership and create organizational capacity for internationalizing their public community colleges. Qualitative research methods were employed to inform the development of research questions, structure data collection, and frame the data analysis. By design, this study brought together evidence from multiple sources. A minimum of ten interviews were conducted at each site. Relevant documents were collected for analysis.

The presidents and campuses chosen and research methods allowed for a robust, in-depth examination of the president’s role in the internationalization process over a sustained period of time, but in dissimilar geographic, demographic and economic contexts. While they employed different strategies, the three presidents successfully achieved consensus among stakeholders that internationalization was an institutional imperative.

A college degree is vital to the economic and social well-being of the entire nation and its citizens. Yet, community colleges ? which serve half of all students in higher education ? have low graduation rates. Lack of academic preparation, competing personal and work demands, and economic stress make earning a degree difficult for many. As part of a national agenda, community college leaders are searching for new ways to help students succeed. Student success theories have historically provided practitioners with frameworks to understand how students navigate the educational environment. This dissertation analyzed a selection of student success theories and ritual theories to contribute to new ways of thinking about student success through ritual theory and practice. Using Critical Interpretive Synthesis, two common themes emerged: Emplacement and Passage. The concept of Emplacement reflects community college students? need for academic and social challenge while anchored in their communities of origin. The concept of Passage reflects students? need for structured guidance, including the formulation of goals and the celebration of milestones. The dissertation?s product includes a number of recommendations for practitioners in the creation of well-constructed and impactful rituals. Rituals are more likely to be successful if they involve some physical movement, build on existing traditions and calendars, utilize local geography and culture, and serve both practical as well as symbolic functions. Rituals that build community, such as festivals, are particularly important for community college students. Key words: community college, higher education, student success, persistence, retention, graduation, ritual theory, ritual studies, emplacement, passage.

Current research shows that students with a growth mindset are more motivated to learn, want to work harder, are less discouraged by difficulty, use more effective strategies for learning, and have higher academic performance in comparison to students without this mindset. Despite these promising findings, a growth mindset is sometimes not reinforced or is even refuted by classroom conditions. The purpose of this intrinsic case study was to explore how community college educators create classroom environments that foster a growth mindset. The conceptual framework for this study was a social constructivist approach where the interviewer and the participants co-constructed the interpretation of how to influence a growth mindset in the community college classroom. Data were collected through 14 in-depth interviews with community college educators who completed a workshop on influencing a growth mindset. Data were analyzed through categorizing, coding, and identifying themes that answered the research question. The findings of this study indicated that the mindset of the student and the teacher play an important role in academic success at the community college and that faculty desire training in tools and strategies to create classroom environments that foster a growth mindset. Recommendations include an in-depth, experiential professional development program based on research where community college educators from a variety of disciplines can collaborate to gain new knowledge and skills. Training community college educators using the most effective ways of fostering a growth mindset to increase students' motivation, effort, and persistence will lead to greater academic success and degree completion.

Since the 1980s, community leadership development programs (CLDPs) across the United States have been developing the capacities of citizens to become effective local leaders. Generally, CLDPs focus on three key areas: building and enhancing the leadership skills of their participants; increasing participants’ awareness and knowledge about their communities; and cultivating the participants’ relationships with each other and with other community leaders. However, when it comes to evaluation studies about the impact of CLDPs, most of the scholarly work has focused on assessing the change in the leadership skills of the programs’ participants. Only limited research focuses on how CLDPs impact the ability of local leaders to work together over time to achieve collective action.

This research study investigated a type of CLDP, the American Leadership Forum-Great Valley Chapter program (ALF-GVC). Through the lens of social network theory and the relational capacity framework, it examined how relationships that are cultivated during the ALF-GVC program impact the ways in which its senior fellows work together to address community issues. Insights from the collective experience of 30 research participants revealed that the ALF-GVC program does impact the relational capacity of its senior fellows. Specifically, evidence supports that the ALF-GVC program helps create a positive internal working environment for senior fellows. The program was associated with increasing the size, diversity, cooperation, and cohesion of the research participants’ networks. As such, by expanding our understanding of how local leaders build relationships and the ways in which those relationships impact how they work together over time to address community issues, the findings from this research study contribute to the literature and practice, all of which can be used to help sustain and strengthen civic engagement in the United States.

The purpose of this quantitative research project was to add to the body of knowledge of incivility in the class by examining the perceptions of community college instructors in the State of North Carolina. Instructors were asked to identify behaviors they believed to be disruptive or uncivil in their classroom, indicate how frequent these issues occurred, indicate how they handled the disruptions, and whether or not they believed their practices to be effective. Each of the 58 community colleges in North Carolina was invited to participate of that 58, 13 chose to accept the invitation. The sample included 793 instructors who received the email at the 13 colleges and the respond rate was 162 or 20 percent. The instructors in the community college have a variety of students. Instructors have students in the age range of 14 to over 65 that reflect the community in which the college is located. The survey was adapted from Indiana University which ran an incivility survey in 2000. Instructors taking the quantitative survey also had text boxes in which to add their comments. Behaviors such as chewing gum in class or not being prepared where not considered as disruptive to the instructors as cussing the instructor or making threatening comments during class. Findings included no significant between an instructors race and their perceptive of classroom incivility. There was no significance between the instructors' years of teaching and the size of the classroom and their perceptions of incivility. The findings at the community college level mirror the literature and findings at universities and K-12 schools.

This qualitative collective case study explored the experiences of faculty members in the social and behavioral sciences and SLO coordinators at community colleges in California as they engaged in student learning outcomes assessment (SLOA). Semi-structured interviews with eight faculty members and five student learning outcomes coordinators revealed common goals among the participants to use education to inform social change. Engaged student learning outcomes assessment practitioners shared characteristics with Rogers' (2003) early adopters. Participation in SLOA led to an invigoration of the teaching experience. Strategically-integrated dialogue among students in the classroom, faculty within departments, and across divisions within the institutions facilitated institutional change. Engagement in SLOA led to changes in teaching practice that align with research findings on best practices in higher education and participants perceived themselves to be better teachers as a result. However, participants were reluctant to claim responsibility for student learning or to identify improvements in student learning as a result of SLOA. Still, they were willing to consider the potential of SLOA as a tool to close achievement gaps. Recommendations focus on policy, leadership, and institutional strategies for increasing faculty engagement in SLOA.

The study takes its point of departure in the notions of life story, narrativity and context. It is based on extensive life story interviews with well-educated professionals in Poland – academics, teachers, managers, physicians, artists – during the period of transformation (or transition) from ”real socialism” to democracy and a market economy. The aim is to analyse the multilayered process of constructing a personal identity, as the narrators interweave stories about their lives with images of history and society. The central approach is narrative analysis, focusing on the interview interaction as well as the wider cultural, societal and political context in which the self-presentation takes place, and which it simultaneously creates. Concepts of cultural and paradigmatic narratives are combined with a gender perspective and selected terms from Pierre Bourdieus theory of practice. The narrators’ life experiences are shaped and evaluated in an implicit dialogue with cultural narratives of ideal biographies, professional careers, gender roles and family models in Poland during socialism and the transformation. In family background stories, the ancestors’ gendered biographies are depicted in relation to the underlying paradigm of the romantic-patriotic tradition. In childhood stories, the evaluation models used are psychological, social and based on political correctedness. The interviewees often shape their nostalgic, bitter and ambivalent memories against a background of the power relations between the family and the state, using nostalgia, dark rhetorics and a well-established genre of coping strategies during the socialism. In narratives about formal school-education during the socialist period, two paradigms are seen as highly incongruous: the intellectual-elitistic tradition and the socialistic citizen-schooling. Also stories of being a part of both formal and oppositional organisations and networks are told. In narratives about careers and working life, the pride in doing a good work is prevalent, but the narrators also depict complications in the professional paradigm due to the proliferation of politicised and informal power relations; en influence still lasting during the transformation period. The troubled issues of legitimacy, status and economy are discussed. In stories about close relationships, there is an underlying paradigm of love, marrital happiness and being a good parent, even though the stories follow a variety of plots. The evaluations become complex and sometimes contradictory. By presenting their life-experience in a proud, ambivalent, defensive or ironic way, the narrators reproduce, deconstruct and challenge the dominant cultural narratives, shaping their unique personal paradigms.

The California Community Colleges funding model has rich historical, political, and cultural ties embedded in the model foundation. The general funding of the California Community Colleges is enrollment-based and shaped by a long history of legislation based on the K-12 education model. The funding is not tied to performance or outcomes and is driven by how many students are enrolled. Although there has been increased categorical funding in the California Community Colleges over the past 3 years to improve student success and equity, the overall persistence or completion rates of students remains low. Research has demonstrated that many other states are implementing an outcome-based or performance-based funding model to reduce the gaps and improve student success and fiscal sustainability. The purpose of the study was to explore the gaps in the current California Community Colleges funding model and the effect of these gaps on student success and fiscal sustainability for the California Community Colleges. The study additionally investigates effective models in order to design and develop a funding model that will support the mission and outcomes of the California Community Colleges system while planning for fiscal strength.