Strategies for Motivating Middle School Students

The study analyzed the strategies that were effective for motivating and engaging adolescent aged students. The study was conducted in a middle school located in a suburban school district in upstate New York. I interviewed twenty general and special education teachers, three school counselors, and one school social worker. This study illustrates that there is an array of strategies that educators and other school professionals can implement to motivate and engage adolescent learners in their classrooms. This study found that goal setting, growth mindset, student belonging and creating a positive classroom environment are among some strategies considered to be effective for motivating middle school students. Therefore, the strategies discussed in this study can be applied to middle school classrooms and can be used by teachers, counselors, and other professionals who work in middle school settings to encourage and foster an environment that motivates adolescent aged learners

What Factors Will Transform the Contemporary Work Environment and Characterize the Future of Work?

There is an overwhelming consensus among researchers that the contemporary work environment is transforming at a rapid pace. Advanced technology, increasing globalization, and the influx of a new generation of workers are all factors that will change the structures that govern the contemporary workplace. To prepare for the future of work, an organization must comprehend the manner in which each of these factors will engender changes in the evaluation of skillsets, the employer value proposition, and the available labor force

Chinese and Japanese: The Changing Values of "Flexible Capital"

Our project hinged on the ability of the undergraduate advanced Chinese and Japanese students at the UIUC to describe, during short interviews, the value of their respective languages in economic terms. We found that the undergraduate students involved in learning third-year Chinese and Japanese were very well aware of the changing economic reasons for learning their languages. Our hypothesis that Japanese students were more motivated by popular Japanese media while the Chinese students were more motivated by economic reasons was borne out by our findings, though to say that our hypothesis was perfect would be a gross generalization not cognizant of the outlying data and the limitations of our project.unpublishe

Missing Market in Labor Quality: The Role of Quality Markets in Transition

This paper characterizes a key feature of the classic socialist economy and state-owned enterprise, namely that of missing markets in labor quality. Under the socialist regime in which students and workers were assigned to work units, the rights of managers to monitor and reward workers were limited. The exchange of labor services was based more on measures of quantity rather than quality. Workers who performed functions broadly consistent with that of their assigned occupations for the duration of the designated workweek received the standard wage. With the reassignment of property rights, this situation has changed. Students and workers have resumed control over the accumulation of their human capital the trade of skill and effort. Managers have acquired greater authority to monitor labor - to discriminate in setting wages and bonuses and to hire and fire - as well as stronger incentives to use this authority to raise efficiency and profits. The result is an emerging market in labor quality.A 1995 cross section of enterprise data spanning 10 ownership types is used to test the hypothesis of an emerging labor quality market. The results show that certain non-state forms of ownership, in which the rights of managers to monitor and reward skill and effort are presumed to be relatively well developed, encourage labor quality, most notably training, which raises productivity. The relative inability of state enterprises to monitor and reward high quality labor is likely to create an adverse selection problem in which the most skilled and motivated workers exit from the state sector, so as to cause a "hollowing" of skilled workers and weakened enterprise performance. The theoretical contribution of this paper is to generalize Coase's analysis of the critical role of property rights in creating resource markets to the creation and exchange of quality in all goods. Analytically, the conditions for a missing market in labor quality are equivalent to those for a missing market in pollution abatement and water quality. The analysis underscores the importance of property rights in creating the conditions for the accumulation and efficient exchange of human capital.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39645/3/wp260.pd

Why High School Students Learn So Little And What Can Be Done About It

[Excerpt] The National Commission on Excellence in Education has stated, Learning is the indispensable investment required for success in the information age we are entering. The high American standard of living has always depended on the high quality of American workers. There is no way unskilled American manufacturing workers can compete with the millions of unskilled workers of India, China and Latin America. The watchword in American manufacturing is now AUTOMATE, MIGRATE, OR EVAPORATE. Automation, however, requires a highly skilled and flexible work force. Skilled workers are essential for the design, introduction and maintenance of the advanced manufacturing technologies that must be adopted if we are to maintain our high standard of living

Increasing Food Safety Compliance With Online Resources

Presented to the Faculty of the University of Alaska Anchorage in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of MASTER OF SCIENCEFood-borne illness is a top concern for public policy and public health in the U.S., causing nearly 48 million incidents yearly. The number of confirmed food-borne illness outbreaks has declined over recent years as regulation and control measures of the Food and Drug Administration have increased. However, despite increased regulations and decreased outbreaks, there are still a large number of food safety violations, and it is imperative that food service employers continue to encourage good food safety practices. Mandated training has produced varying results on the improved inspection scores of restaurant establishments, but understanding the barriers to food safety and employing food safety intervention measures has had positive results on improving the employees’ food safety compliance behaviors. There is an opportunity to explore new interventions and mediums to increase safe food handling behaviors. This project describes the development of a food safety resource, FoodSafetyKmowledge.org. The site exists as a singular location for managers to find all of the necessary safety and sanitation resources in one accessible and convenient place. The discussion and analysis includes feedback from other food service professionals, and I offer recommendations to improve the site for future use.Signature Page / Title Page / Abstract / List of Figures / Acknowledgements / Introduction / Literature Review / Method / Discussion / Conclusion / Reference

A Third Class of Worker: The Dependent Contractor

The following research paper is intended to address the worker classification issue that has intensified due to the rise of the gig economy. After reviewing the current literature on the subject, it will be made clear that a change must be made to the binary classification system that is used in the United States, and to the methods used to categorize workers within the system. This paper proposes the addition of a ‘dependent contractor’ category, which would be a subcategory of employee, and would fall between independent contractor and employee in terms of what benefits they would be entitled to. In addition, a modified version of The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) test would be the only test used to classify workers. This would effectively limit the confusion that presently exists due to the use of multiple classification tests. Prior to any of these systematic changes being made, it is also proposed that a ‘safe harbor’ period be implemented to allow organizations the opportunity to prepare for any burden that they may face due to the changes that are eventually made, and for some dependent contractor benefits to naturally emerge

Values Generation: Turning Values into Wealth

Much of management behavior is focused on increasing benefits (usually thought of — in terms of Utilitarian ethics — as maximizing utility). Good, in terms of what increases benefits; thus, what is preferred by business is defined as the ability to motivate individuals in a way that increases desired outcomes (or that enhances organizational performance). This talent (referred to as the art of persuasion or the art of management) is valued because it facilitates achieving the desired results. Managers with such persuasive or motivational skills are highly regarded because of their ability to increase personal wealth, improve performance, and contribute to increasing stakeholder satisfaction. However, as was made clear by Aristotle’s socio-economic ethics, a leader’s ability to generate higher levels of excellence is based on a character trait defined by Aristotle as magnanimous. Developing such a character is important because it is the key to enabling a person to get more of what he or she wants out of life and with such a character a manager/leader is able to motivate an organization to have improved performance. This article highlights the dynamics that are connected with how such characters contribute to enhancing organizational performance, how an individual obtains such character traits, and why such characters contribute to the prosperity of other individuals and of society

EDUCATIONAL BUSINESS IN INDONESIA: ITS SCIENTIFIC QUALITY AND PROFESSIONAL BUSINESS CHALLENGE

This study discovers concept and principles to become new theories regarding educational business, study business theories with regard to educational business format, business planning, strategic management, marketing management, financial management and educational business ethics. Some educational business success in Indonesia has executed well by formal and informal organization in university level, study group and courses. This is implicative scientific development and educational business new theories. Practically the theories would directive for educational business entrepreneur to have such new business, increasing professional capability in order managing such organization to improve business survival lucratively. Academically, the existence of educational business has creating new scientific chapter. Professional community of educational business is merely a new entity, educational business quality should be responsible academic and professionally. The educational faculty and university developing science should not only create educators but educational business entrepreneur, economy, management master who would have more lucrative future business prospects.Education, scientific business, professional business, quality, business ethics.

Applying work motivation theories to articulate the challenges of providing effective doctoral supervision

Universities in the United Kingdom face numerous demands regarding provision of quality research education to increasing numbers of doctoral students. One challenge is the recruitment of suitably qualified, skilled academics to take on their supervision and subsequently provide a high quality student experience. Understanding what motivates supervisors is central to facing this challenge. However, little theory underpins the supervision processes and even less pertain specifically to the issues of supervisor motivation. The paper addresses this short fall by exploring and applying work motivation theories to the higher education postgraduate context. It considers goal setting and social cognitive theory, as used in the wider area of work social-psychology, to lay a new theoretical approach that enables motivation to supervise to be better articulated and assessed. The content of the paper resides within the theme “Theoretical frameworks of learning and teaching in higher education. In taking this novel approach to understanding supervision in higher education, the paper will inform academic developers facing the current challenges in strategic decision making that relate to research education and student supervision. It will interest to those participants involved in academic supervisor training in terms of programme content and it has relevance for post graduate supervisors, at all levels, in terms of their own performance and career objectives. Finally, it has an application for policy makers as the work fits into the new and emerging political landscape surrounding doctoral/research education in the UK and internationally