Exploring Whether and When: A Longitudinal Study of College Time-to-Completion

Ph.D

College Ready Expectations and Reality: Best Practices for High School Counselors and Teachers in the San Juaquin Valley of California

Students from the San Joaquin Valley region of California present unique challenges to educators and administrators in these school districts, due to poverty and low income levels inherent to the area and subsequently result in severe gaps in achievement in comparison to the rest of California and the United States. While the students of the San Joaquin Valley struggle academically, there are multitudes of students with the talent and potential to continue their education at the university level. Career counselors, guidance counselors, and college preparatory advisors are challenged to provide these students with the tools to continue their education. The purpose of the survey was to discover what the counselors and teachers consider best practices in working with low income college bound students from the San Joaquin Valley of California. Data was collected from a college counselor on his perspective of best practices used on students from low income families to encourage them to apply and attend college. The online survey was emailed as a link to college counselors in both private and public high schools in the San Joaquin Valley of California. One counselor agreed to participate after an initial request asking for their participation and was encouraged to forward the email survey to any colleagues who also work with the student population being studied. Findings indicated that enthusiasm for the job and development both professionally and personally was crucial to the success of the college counselor in assisting their students continue on to college

Attitudes, Motivations and Beliefs about L2 Reading in the Filipino Secondary School Classroom: A Mixed-methods Study

This study is a two-part investigation. The first part focuses on ESL learners' attitudes and motivations for reading in the target language. The second part deals with ESL teachers' beliefs about motivating L2 learners to read. The study involved 100 ESL learners (N=100) and 30 teachers (N=30) from rural schools in Mindanao, the Philippines. All the participants were recruited through convenience sampling. In other words, participants were selected based on their convenient accessibility and proximity. The current study is a mixed-methods project. Both quantitative and qualitative methods were employed to collect different types of data. The instruments used were: a L2 reading attitude survey, a questionnaire dealing with motivations for L2 reading, a survey on beliefs about motivating L2 learners to read in English, a semi-structured interview and a L2-reading-lesson observation. The quantitative data were statistically analysed. Whenever appropriate, the data were presented in tables and on graphs. The qualitative data were analysed through thematic coding and used to support the quantitative data. The findings show that students have both positive and negative attitudes towards various aspects of L2 reading. They also have different levels of motivation for reading in English, with female participants having higher scores than male participants. The teachers, on the other hand, hold diverse beliefs about motivating learners to read in English. No significant correlation was found between teacher beliefs and students' motivations for reading in English. After the findings have been described, implications for teacher education and instructional practice are offered.