Description: This study looked at leadership development at top performing nuclear plants in the United States. The examination of leadership development as actually practiced in the nuclear energy industry lead to the development of a best practice model. The nuclear industry is self-regulated through the Institute for Nuclear Power Operations (INPO). INPO has been evaluating nuclear plants over the past 15 years. Recently they have identified supervisor performance as a key factor in poor plant performance. INPO created a model for leadership development called Growing Industry Leaders. The nuclear industry has identified its aging workforce and subsequent loss of leadership as an emerging issue facing the nuclear industry in the next five to ten years. This initiative was aimed at both the supervisor shortfalls identified through plant evaluations and the state of the workforce within the nuclear industry. This research evaluated the elements of this model and compared them to a model of best practice. This research answered the following questions: What elements of leadership development should be included in leadership development programs? What would a model of best practice in leadership development look like? Data was collected from nine out of 103 top performing plants. Development activities were categorized by ...

Description: This report analyses the NHES: 2005 data to present the state of American education in reference to “adult” participation in education. Psychosocial interaction theory is applied to the social event of attaining adulthood to analyze and report the propensity of American adults to participate in non-compulsory adult education. The review of the literature of perceptual demographic variables of adult attainment: age, prior education, subordinate responsibility, child-age dependent care, marital status, job stability, and home ownership. The analysis compares the data of participants and non-participants of non-compulsory adult education using binomial logistic regression analysis with tests, for a 95% confidence level and .05 significance. Included is a discussion of how appropriately aligned development opportunities and experiences may further increase education effectiveness and performance outcomes.

Description: Self-concept, discussed as a scholarly topic since the time of Socrates and Plato, is an important theoretical construct in education because self-concept is considered to be a desirable trait and a facilitator of positive future behavior. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between the characteristics of students enrolled in career and technical education (CTE) programs and students' self-concept scores as measured by specific subscales from the Self-Description Questionnaire (SDQ). A total of 196 male and 89 female secondary students (Grades 9-12) enrolled in arts, audio/video technology and communications cluster courses in North Central Texas school districts participated in the study. Student characteristic variables of interest were age, gender, CTE program enrollment, and participation in CTE. The self-concept subscales analyzed were General, Academic, Verbal, Math, and Problem Solving. A canonical correlation analysis was conducted using the four student characteristic variables as predictors of the five self-concept variables to evaluate the multivariate shared relationship between the two variable sets. The full model across all functions explained about 23% of the variance between the variable sets. Function 1 explained 15% of the shared variance and Function 2 explained 7% of the variance that remained. This study detected a relationship ...

Description: The primary purpose of this study was to test the theory of experiential learning by measuring to what extent work experience predicts the work ethic characteristics of students in baccalaureate nursing programs at three regional universities in Texas, including Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls, Tarleton State University in Stephenville, and West Texas A&M University in Canyon. Work experience is the amount full-time or part-time on-the-job experience. Work ethic attributes are referred to as considerate, ambitious, dependable, and cooperative. Results generated in this study failed to reject the null hypotheses, which means that work experience, does not provide evidence of the ability to predict the development of work ethic characteristics in baccalaureate nursing students who participated in this research study. Knowledge generated in this study provided alternative directions for future research with respect to the relationship between work experiences and work ethic characteristics in nursing students. Such research may be useful to nursing educators and trainers in the design and delivery phases of the educational process for nurses.

Description: The study sample was composed of 110 teaching faculty at Vernon College, a multi-campus northwest Texas community college in Wichita Falls, TX. Participants completed two surveys: the Socio-communicative Orientation Scale (SCO) and the Teacher Satisfaction Scale (SAT). Demographic information was collected as well for generalizability purposes. As measured by the SCO, communicator style is a multi-dimensional concept including aspects of assertiveness and responsiveness communication behaviors; the assertiveness and responsiveness dimensions acted as independent variables. Instructor job satisfaction acted as the independent variable. The strength of the independent variables was measured separately in ratio to job satisfaction. Regression analysis results demonstrated that the assertiveness dimension of instructor communicator style is not a statistically significant contributor to instructor satisfaction. However, the responsiveness dimension can explain 12% of the variance in instructor job satisfaction. Beta weight and structure coefficient analysis confirmed the initial regression results for both independent variables. Further, commonality analysis clarified that the two independent variables within the study are in fact orthogonal in nature, meaning that they do not overlap and are not correlated. Hence, the responsiveness dimension of instructor communicator style is directly related to relationship building in an educational context and may be considered in professional development activities. ...