Library: Best sellers

Principals of middle-grade schools in port of entry communities along the Texas-Mexico border were surveyed to learn about the education and preparational experiences these principals believed novice teachers should have before coming to teach in their schools. Demographic data about themselves, teachers, students and middle-grade schools, along with suggestions for improving Texas teacher education programs were also obtained. Mexican Americans were the dominant ethnic group and culture in these schools for principals, teachers and students. Principals were mostly male, well educated, and ...

This study examines the question of whether or not the technology of bullock traction has spread in northern Ghana between 1982/83 and 1993/94 and, furthermore, what factors determine changes in the pattern of the adoption of bullock traction in this area. The introduction to the problem and the objectives of the study in chapter one are followed by a theoretical section in chapter two that focuses on the question why one would have expected a further spread of bullock traction. This chapter explains the direct benefits of bullock traction and reviews the current state of knowledge of this i...

Other investigators have surmised that different types of relationships use diverse maintenance strategies in order to keep the relationship in existence. This study examines relational maintenance strategies that people use specifically in the relationship known as friendship. Five adult friendship couples were interviewed for maintenance strategies they use to sustain their friendship. The discussions were recorded and transcribed. The Constant Comparison method was used to compare and contrast the data in order to discover strategies unique to friendships. Results revealed seven strategi...

A synopsis of eminent computer chess programs reveal that they are designed around a 'brute force' approach. An argument is made that by continuing the 'brute force' search approach, computer chess development is moving away from human evaluation methods. Research is done into studies of evaluation methods, and a discovery is made that humans use a form of intuition, called their 'sense of beauty', to choose the best chess move. A paper by Margulies is cited which formulates principles of beauty which apply to chess. Three versions of a chess program are developed, using no heuristics, standar...

Deliberative democracy can be defined as a political system based on citizens' voluntary and free discussions on public issues. Most scholars have discussed deliberative democracy within normative boundaries. However, based primarily on Katz's interpretation of Tarde, this study finds the concept of public sphere a useful framework for operationalizing the normative concept of deliberative democracy, since the four components of the public sphere-news media use, interpersonal communication, opinion formation, and political participation-provide us with empirically testable categories. This stu...

Dostoevsky's novels have contributed to a conception of man that reverberates in the conclusions of prominent twentieth-century philosophical anthropologists. Max Scheler, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Albert Camus, among others, have admitted that the works of Dostoevsky had an influence on the manner in which they learned to conceive of human nature and the world in which humans live. Our aim in this dissertation is to ask: what is there in the novels of Dostoevsky concerning the nature of man, of which certain philosophers could claim that in their phi...

The purpose of this research paper is to try to clarify and evaluate the major issues and arguments in the debate on Import Substitution Industrialization Strategy (ISI) between the neoclassical economists and the development economists. In particular, it will focus on some basic underlying models employed by the two schools of thought, rather than on specific policy recommendations given by either school. It will conclude that the critiques against ISI from the neoclassical economists are based on a static equilibrium model, which can not fully comprehend the dynamic relationship between grow...

This study presents interviews with American Indian/ Alaska Native alumni who received some or all of their elementary and high school education at the Chemawa Indian Boarding School in Salem, Oregon between 1917 and 1985. A brief summary of Indian history, in particular Indian education, is presented as the context for many of the changes that occurred at Chemawa during its first one hundred years. The purpose of this study is to examine Chemawa alumni recollections of Chemawa within an imposed educational system. My research process included library and archival research, academic...

Based on data on publicly traded insurance firms, the first essay examines questions about the effect of large catastrophic events on insurance firms. Rather than looking at a single event, thirty catastrophic events were aggregated into quintiles and the cumulative abnormal returns around these events were found to be significantly positive over a 25 day trading window. There is no significant evidence that post-catastrophic stock returns are correlated to the magnitude of the catastrophe. The second essay analyzes the effect of a large land grant university, the University of Illinois,...

This thesis proposes a reconceptualization of the "attitude" as a multidimensional latent process, which may be unstable across situations, individuals, and time. A review of the literature in light of this reconceptualization reveals aspects of the survey situation that may systematically influence measures of attitudes, behaviors, and social norms. This suggests that contradictory findings regarding attitude-behavior consistency may be partly due to specific inadequacies of conventional measures. A reflexive research strategy is proposed, which supplements survey methods with both quantitat...