Library: Education

Frontline employees represent the bloodline of an organization. This applied dissertation focused on development of a training program to improve skills necessary for quality student-customer service. Six research questions were answered. First, what skills are required to enhance customer service satisfaction? Second, what are employees' perception of attitudes and expectations relative to delivery of goods and services? Third, what action is required to improve employees' performance to effect customer satisfaction? Fourth, what content-- knowledge, skills, and procedures--are necessary f...

This ex post facto study was used to compare community college transcripts of African American students who participated in a developmental reading course at a multi-campus, urban community college and those who declined to participate in the developmental reading program. The study examined 513 records to determine if participation in a developmental reading course in a community college improved achievement and persistence for African American college students. Results discuss the positive relationship of overall and third semester achievement to enrollment in a developmental reading cours...

Success Stories of African Americans in the Nonprofit Sector presents the stories of 6 executives whose stories define African-American business success. Thriving in spite of multiple obstacles, they have enjoyed extraordinary careers at (and helped build the fortunes of) nonprofit organizations. In remarkably candid interviews, these exemplary professionals reveal not only the secrets of their successes, but the sources of their fears, their most difficult challenges, and their hopes for the future. Their experiences are presented according to what they rev...

Since 1991, the Russian Federation has dealt with extreme political, economic, and social change. On the national level and at the local level, opponents of democratic reforms have retained their control of many important offices. This has resulted in contradictions and confusion in regards to national and local laws and policies, and has had little impact on local educational policies and practices. Added to this general crisis of Russian education reform is the inability of so-called Western education experts to comprehend the complexities and cultural differences of Russia and its educat...

The present study aims to illuminate the way participant learning in adventure experiences intersects with broader social, cultural and institutional contexts, and was guided by the following questions: How is participant experience constructed in a facilitated, small group adventure setting? How is the construction of the adventure experience related to the intentions and orchestrations of the trainer? How is the construction of the adventure experience related to the institutional and social context in which it occurs? This study used grounded theory methodology (Strauss & Corbin, 1998) and...

This study describes data that was gathered in 2004 from fieldwork conducted by students from four schools in Singapore, around tasks of wayfinding and debate. The fieldwork tasks were designed specifically to permit participants to exercise their powers of observation, as opposed to more traditional tasks of collection of empirical data. To this end, the study was constructed such that students were given opportunities to collaboratively explore and navigate unfamiliar environments using text- and picture-messaging, as well as to engage in debate, and use multimedia evidence recorded in the ...

The philosophy of lifelong learning is not a new concept, and for many decades governments, worldwide, have debated what form a policy and resourcing framework should take that would help people raise their skill levels to meet the challenges presented to society entering the 21st century. New Zealand is no different. The introduction of the Tertiary Education Strategy in 2002 sought to create that framework by developing six strategic priorities that would raise skill levels, improve quality of provision, cater for the more disadvantaged and provide New Zealand with strong economic and soci...

This study investigated the distribution of Reactive Tokens in natural conversation by male and female speakers of Japanese. According to Clancy et al. a reactive token (RT) is “a short utterance produced by an interlocutor who is playing a listener’s role during the other interlocutor’s speakership” (1996, p. 355). Clancy et al. classify RTs into five types: backchannels, reactive expressions, collaborative finishes, repetitions, and resumptive openers. This study investigated the distribution of these five types of RTs. In particular, it studied their use in turn management and their distrib...

The Priority Method evolved from theories from first and second language acquisition and child language development. Along with error analysis theories, technical advances in equipment have allowed the Priority Method to offer a complete language diagnostic, analysis and training format. Its significant variation from all previous SLA pedagogy is that it concentrates on areas of weakness, prioritizing common areas of transitional errors from L1 to L2, that commonly occur in the phonetic production and delivery of the ESL student, and focuses on the key areas that have significant sociolinguist...

The purpose of the study was to examine, through narrative, contributing factors which lead to burnout in three Hispanic middle school teachers in a school in South Texas that is predominantly Hispanic. Burnout, in this work, was understood to be the experience of excessive stress and anxiety which accompanies teachers’ inabilities to cope with environmental stressors present in their workplaces. While this term served to introduce the study, the participants defined their experiences of burnout in their own words (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000; Merriam, 1998). While the exact impact of teacher b...