MacKenzie, Donald G.

The purpose of this study was to determine through
statistical analysis of a survey instrument the extent to
which the 67 public school district superintendents in the
state of Florida perceive the major areas of educational
reform as falling into the same categories as does David
T. Kearns, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Xerox
Corporation, author of "An Education Recovery Plan for
America" in Winning the Brain Race: A Bold Plan to Make
Our Schools Competitive. Factor analysis was used to group the 36 specific
recommendations into their "natural" groupings as
perceived by the responding superintendents. This
technique revealed that the natural psychological
groupings in the eyes of the respondents were not the same
as Kearns asserted. The study shows that the reform
hierarchy, based on the perceptions of the
superintendents, is actually three layers deep with
Kearns' six categories being broken down into a bottom
tier of 14 discrete areas.

This study was designed to determine the current status of school district utilization of part-time certificated personnel in the public schools of Florida for the 1992-1993 school year. The study also examines if there is a difference between urban and rural school districts use of these employees and whether a significant difference exists in where part-time personnel are placed in a school setting. This study was also designed to determine if a significant difference is present in the perceptions of part-time employees and their supervisors as they relate to job commitment and work related communications. A number of research questions were also studied including: the total number of part-time employees in the state and how many districts utilize part-time workers, general demographics of the part-time employee, the advantages of such an employment option to both the employer and employee, and benefits offered to these employees. This study consisted of three questionnaires developed by the researcher. The first questionnaire was directed to the superintendent of each school district in the State of Florida. The second questionnaire was sent to part-time employees and the third questionnaire was directed to the supervisors of the part-time workers. General descriptive statistics were utilized to answer the research questions. In order to determine the relationship between urban and rural school district usage of part-time workers and the district placement of such workers t-tests were performed. T-tests were performed to determine if significant differences occurred between the perceptions of the part-time workers and their supervisors as they pertained to job commitment and communication issues. The findings indicated there was no significant difference in the utilization of part-time workers between urban and rural school districts in the State of Florida. Indications were that there was a significant difference in the utilization of part-time employees when staffing regular education and special education classes. There was no significant difference in the perception of the part-time worker and their supervisor concerning communication issues, but there was a significant difference in their perceptions concerning job commitment.

The purpose of this study was to determine if student athletes at an urban university who participated in a supplemental multiple modalities sensitive instructional program experienced greater academic success at the end of their first semester than a control group of student athletes who received traditional instruction in Introduction to Academic Skills (SLS 1501). The subjects were drawn from the 1997 Summer Orientation and Academic review (S.O.A.R.) enrollment at Florida Atlantic University. The researcher randomly assigned 23 at-risk student athletes to the control group and 27 at-risk student athletes to the treatment group. The treatment group received academic skills instruction supplemented with multiple modalities sensitive instructional techniques congruent with the methodologies and philosophies of accelerated learning. All subjects completed a demographic survey on the first day of class. On the second day of class, the treatment group completed the Learning Style Inventory (LSI)/Productivity Environmental Preferences Survey (PEPS), a comprehensive assessment of an individual's learning style. The results of these surveys, in conjunction with the students' daily program evaluations, were used to determine the best, most conducive plan for classroom activities and teaching techniques. A 2 x 2 factorial ANOVA was performed to determine the existence of a main effect for instructional method on retention, GPA, and fall enrollment. ANCOVA was performed to determine the effect of the variables above the extraneous covariates. Neither procedure resulted in any statistical significance. The discriminant analysis of 50 unweighted cases revealed that the model is overall 86% accurate for both the original grouped cases and the cross-validated cases. The model is 90.7% accurate for predicting group membership for retention and 51.7% accurate for predicting group membership for no retention. This is an initial study which provides adult educators with data and reproducible methodology in order to further explore and improve teaching techniques for student athletes.

This study examines the activities of 17 students and four teachers who participated in a 15 day study tour to South Africa, Zimbabwe and Botswana. It describes how the school staff, who planned and conducted this tour, accomplished their supervising, teaching and facilitating tasks. The study seeks to determine how the students learned during this academic program and how travel to a foreign country affected their learning. The researcher accomplished the study as a participant observer, observing and interviewing students and staff while they were involved with the tour. Other data was collected by reviewing documents and analyzing responses to a questionnaire. Findings concerning the staff's participation are descriptive in nature. The researcher followed an analytic progression to describe actions of the school's board, administration and travel staff during the southern Africa program and describes what the staff's activities caused students to do. The investigation of student activities uses an interpretive approach to the analysis of collected data. It describes their activity and attributes intent to their behavior. Through the descriptions of the staff's activities and the analysis of the students' activities the researcher was able to answer the questions originally posed for the investigation; How do educators facilitate learning during foreign travel studies programs for a secondary school and how do students learn during these tours? The study found that the Lake Worth Christian School's staff developed and implemented the southern Africa program using procedures that were predetermined by school policy and procedures developed specifically for this particular trip and the students who were selected for it. The study found that the school staff utilized both classroom and experiential instruction methodology to prepare students for their encounters and to facilitate their learning in the field. With regard to students' learning activities the study found they accepted and understood the concept of experiential education. Students demonstrated an overwhelming enthusiasm for learning through direct involvement with their subject matter. The study confirmed a dominant social nature of the students' activities and suggested that the convivial atmosphere both attracted the students and enhanced their learning process. The study confirmed that, during the southern Africa program, learning behavior was affected by contrasts and similarities of student characteristics. Students demonstrated wide varieties of interest and significant differences in age and experience. The study also confirmed differences in student and staff approaches to subject matter they encountered within the various historical, cultural and natural sites. It found students approached information gathering differently in these disparate sites.

The purpose of this study was to determine whether significant differences existed between female administrators and female faculty in public higher education in their perceptions of personal self-efficacy and their personal attributes. This was achieved by examining the relationship between the criterion variable, position held by females in higher education and the predictor variables, which included male and female characteristics, general self-efficacy beliefs, and social self-efficacy beliefs. A survey package including a demographics section, Personal Attributes Questionnaire (PAQ) and Self-Efficacy Scale for Adults (SES) was mailed to 200 female administrators and 200 female faculty employed by Florida's State University System. A stratified random selection was employed to obtain the 200 female faculty in order to ensure discipline diversity. The 200 female administrators were selected from the most current data available from the 10 universities' 1995-1996 graduate school catalogs and the 1995-1996 Directory of Women in Educational Leadership in Florida, published jointly from the Office of Postsecondary Education in Florida and Florida State University's Hardee Center for Women in Higher Education. Each scale and subscale was analyzed utilizing the analysis of variance (ANOVA) procedure. Three null hypotheses were tested at the.05 confidence level and then adjusted to the.0125 confidence level by employing the Bonferroni procedure. The employment of the Bonferroni statistical procedure eliminates the rejection of discrepant test outcomes due to Type I errors. Results of the ANOVA test applied to the General Self-Efficacy subscale were statistically significant at the .01 confidence level. Outcomes of this study proved to be significant to the growing body of women's research in that it denoted statistically significant results indicating that female administrators had a higher perception of general self-efficacy than female faculty. General self-efficacy is based on the premise that if an individual has a history of successful outcomes, than that individual will expect more successful outcomes than failures. General self-efficacy (identified as an internal barrier) may in fact be what is hindering more women from seeking administrative positions in higher education.

The purpose of this study was to identity within the workplace sources of satisfaction and sources of dissatisfaction for child care workers in southeast Florida and to develop a predictive model of child care workers' intentions to leave their jobs based on selected work environment variables. The work environment variables selected as predictor variables were administration, communication, compensation, career advancement opportunity, goals and job tasks, children, co-workers, parents, and facility and supplies. The population surveyed consisted of 227 child care workers from 45 licensed child care centers in Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach counties, Florida. Instruments used in this study were the Child Care Director Questionnaire and the Child Care Worker Questionnaire. Results of data analyses revealed a significant relationship between some of the predictor variables and child care workers' intentions to leave their jobs. The strongest correlations with intent to leave were compensation (r = -.461) and career advancement opportunity (r = -.426). The model with the greatest parsimony and ability to predict child care workers' intentions to leave their jobs included the predictor variables of compensation, career advancement opportunity, children, co-workers, facility, and communication. This model accounted for 25.6% of the variance in child care workers' intentions to leave their jobs. Compensation was identified as a source of job dissatisfaction for child care workers in southeast Florida. Administration, communication, parents, co-workers, children, career advancement opportunity, facility, and goals and job tasks were more sources of satisfaction than of dissatisfaction. More child care workers in this study (92.7%) were satisfied or very satisfied with working with children than with any other work environment variable.

The purpose of this study was to develop a model for predicting student success in the Preliminary International Baccalaureate (Pre-IB) course of study at Atlantic and Suncoast Community High Schools in Palm Beach County, Florida. The objective was to examine the relationship of the five predictor variables, previous year's grade point average (INIGPA), scaled scores from the Reading Comprehension (SSREAD) and Total Mathematics (SSMATH) portions of the Stanford Achievement Test, recommendation ratings (RECOM) and the score received on a writing sample (WRITING), with the criterion, which was the student grade point average at the completion of one year in the program (FINALGPA). The study involved 216 students, 135 ninth graders and 81 tenth graders. All data were analyzed separately for each grade level. The multiple regression analyses determined the unique contribution of each independent variable to predicting the criterion. Each grade level sample was divided into subgroups based on race (black and white students) and gender. The results of this study for the ninth grade sample indicated that INIGPA provided the most statistically significant relationship (p <.0001) to FINALGPA. Similar results occurred for the subgroups male, female and white students. Ninth grade black student results indicated a statistically significant relationship of INIGPA (p <.05) with FINALGPA. For the total ninth grade sample, as well as the subgroups white and female students, SSMATH (p <.01) was also a valid predictor. SSMATH was not a valid predictor for ninth grade males or black students. For the tenth grade sample INIGPA was the most valid predictor (p <.0001) of student success. RECOM (p <.05) was also a significant contributor to the variance in the criterion measure. INIGPA (p <.0001) had the greatest statistical significance in its relationship to the criterion for the subgroups male, female and white students. The subgroup, male students, had two other statistically significant predictors, RECOM (p<.01) and SSREAD (p <.05). The tenth grade black student sample was too small to perform multiple regression analyses.

African-American adults have been often studied and categorized, historically, as having low educational achievement. Further, they have not been attending educational offerings available to them to the same extent as other U.S. ethnic groups. This exists despite their needs and not withstanding the fact that such participation stands to greatly increase and enhance their life styles and livelihoods. One reason minority adults (and the many other adults in the general population who do not participate in educational offerings) do not participate can be traced to their perceptions of barriers to attendance. Thomas G. Darkenwald and others conducted research on this concern through the development and use of an original deterrents-to-participation scale (DPS) that was later refined (DPS-G) to identify six barriers to general adult participation in education. DPS-G, as a scale, has been used successfully by many succeeding individuals and groups in similar studies. This study used Darkenwald and Valentine's ALQ instrument, which employed their DPS-G and added demographic questions, to survey a group of Orange County, Florida African-Americans and others. Data obtained supported and provided further verification of validity and reliability of the Darkenwald and Valentine identified factors and procedure. Six hypothesis are incorporated that address the attitudinal differences between African-American adults and others concerning the Darkenwald and Valentine factors. Results showed that the African-Americans expressed stronger concerns for each of the six factors, namely: (a) lack of confidence, (b) lack of course relevance, (c) time constraints, (d) low personal priority, (e) cost factor, and (f) low personal priority. Further, the study showed that African-Americans responded more cohesively and stronger on each and every factor category than did their fellow non-Black others. Study results can be used in further research about minorities' perception of barriers to participation in adult education. Resulting information can also be used in the planning and delivery of adult education programs that attempt to ameliorate or eliminate such barriers to participation in adult education.

Two hundred and two Hispanic and Anglo women from a public and a private university in south Florida, were requested to complete a survey to determine their reasons for departing from the institutions were a function of their ethnicity or the type of institution they attended. These women had been accepted to 4-year degree programs and had not enrolled for courses for at least six academic semesters. The instrument used was the Withdrawing/Nonreturning Student Survey (ESS) by American College Testing (1990). Of the sample, 73 were Hispanic and 129 were Anglo. Forty-seven Hispanics and 57 Anglos were surveyed from the private university and 26 Hispanics and 72 Anglos from the public university. Eighty-four percent of the women were between 21 and 29 years of age, 65.8% were not married, 50% were sophomores at the time of departure and 35.6% planned to go to school and work simultaneously next year. A 2 x 2 factorial MANOVA was utilized to assess the differences among the four groups, across the dependent variables. Reasons for departure reported by individuals were classified as personal, academic, institutional, financial and employment. Results indicate that there were no statistically significant differences among the groups. No differences were found between Hispanics and Anglos from public and private universities, between Hispanics from public and private universities and between Anglos from private and public universities in the reasons reported for their departure from college. Results suggest that the level of acculturation of Hispanic females to the North American society may be a significant explanation for the similar departure responses given by Anglo females. This is consistent with Altman and Snyder's (1970) predictions of ethnic equalization in educational settings for the 1990's in America. Further research is needed to explore subjects' initial choice of the institution they were attending at the time of departure. Recommendations include the creation of an "ombudsman office" for grievances, one-to-one mentoring by professors and upper classmen and for-day care facilities.

This study was conducted among 406 first-time test takers who took the English version of the General Education Development (GED) Test in Dade County, Florida between June and December, 1993. Multiple regression and chi square analyses were used to determine the relationship between native language and performance on the General Education Development (GED) Test and the relationship between certain demographic characteristics and success in passing the GED. The findings of the study indicated, among other things, that (a) a higher percentage of native English speakers than non-native English speakers passed the GED Test, (b) non-native English speakers were outperformed by native English speakers on all the GED subtests except Mathematics, (c) native French speakers (mainly Haitians) were outperformed by the other non-native English speakers on all the subtests, (d) the mean scores of native French speakers were well below the mean scores required to pass the test, and (e) participants who took the GED preparation course were outperformed by those who did not take the GED preparation course. Native language was determined to be significantly related (p <.05) to performance on the GED. The model most helpful in predicting success on the GED comprised native language, number of years participants had learned to read, write, and speak English and had studied in an English speaking country. None of the individual variables showed a high correlation with performance on the GED Test, suggesting that other factors, not included in the data set, might have also contributed to performance on the test. The recommendations include: (a) pretesting examinees to determine their level of literacy in their native language as well as in English to establish the level of instruction necessary, (b) recruiting and training language minority teachers who are more familiar with the culture and educational systems of the countries in which Dade's rapidly increasing adult non-native English speaking groups were born, (c) strengthening the GED classes so that they can adequately remediate non-native English speakers who are in need of basic skills, and (d) conducting research to determine if certain items on the GED Test are biased against non-native English speakers. The findings in this study add to the growing body of research studies indicating that minorities, including linguistic minorities, do not perform well on standardized tests.