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Most universities provide many opportunities for students to be leaders (Planety, Hussar, Snyder, Provasnik, Kena, Dinkes, KewalRamani, & Kemp, 2008). Providing student leadership opportunities can positively influence the development of leadership qualities to serve students post-graduation (Dugan & Komives, 2007). By placing students in these positions there exists the potential to create a unique set of challenges. This research focused on the specific realities of the challenges associated with leading peers on a university campus as they exist for the participants and desired an understanding of the social and cultural context in which these challenges exist. The problem that this study addresses is, "what are the challenges undergraduate students assigned to leadership positions face when leading peers?" The two primary research questions are, "In what ways are participant student leaders able to identify and describe their experiences leading their peers, and in what ways are participant student leaders able to identify specific challenges in peer leadership?" For students who experience peer leadership firsthand, the realities of the challenges of their work are multiple and relative, and student leaders define the reality of their challenges as subjective. This was a basic field study using ethnographic techniques, collecting data through focus groups and interviews, where student leader participants discussed the experiences of leading peers. Four types of student leaders participated: Sports Team Captains, Resident Assistants, Academic Mentors and SGA Officers. The data revealed three themes: Theme One -- Construct of Peer Leadership, or "this is how I think about peer leadership"; Theme Two -- Understanding Leader Work, or "this is what I understand about doing my job as student leader"; and Theme Three -- Leader-Life Convergence, or "I am a leader but I am also a student." These themes revealed challenges student leaders faced and that student leaders thought about and functioned within their leader roles in different ways, indicating that perhaps student leaders understand the concept of peer leadership within the context of their assigned roles. Two types of student leaders emerged: Community Builders (Resident Assistants and Sports Team Captains) and Campus Bureaucrats (Academic Mentors and SGA Officers). [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

The growing demand placed upon educators has taken a toll on the profession (Walker, 2014). Teacher burnout, stress, and unhappiness may be predestined unless administrators recognize how to prevent these from happening (Elias, 2012). The intent of this quantitative study was to survey teachers in southwest Missouri to determine their level of job satisfaction as it relates to student performance on state-mandated assessments. The survey included items designed to collect data on overall level of teacher job satisfaction in relation to demographic areas of age range, gender, level of education, years of teaching experience, subject areas taught, and salary range. The first research question was designed to determine the correlation between high school teacher job satisfaction and high school student achievement. Based on this research, there was a relationship between teacher job satisfaction and Missouri Performance Index scores. The second research question was designed to determine the correlation between teacher job satisfaction and years of experience, salary, age, level of education, and gender. Based on the data collected, there was a correlation between teacher job satisfaction and years of experience and between teacher job satisfaction and the age of the educator. However, there was no correlation between teacher job satisfaction and level of education, nor between teacher job satisfaction and gender. Research question three was posed to determine if there was a difference in teacher job satisfaction between those teachers required to administer end-of-course (EOC) exams and teachers who were not required to administer EOC exams. The research determined there was no difference in job satisfaction between the two groups. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

Does the Internet facilitate anti-regime dissent within authoritarian states? I argue that the Internet fosters dissent mobilization through three factors: distance, decentralization and interaction. First, the Internet fosters dissent mobilization by allowing protesters to communicate relatively cheaply and instantaneously over great distances. While other communication mediums also reduce distance costs, the second factor, decentralization, allows dissenters to use the Internet to evade state controls and reduces the state's ability to restrict information flows. Third, the Internet's Interactive nature allows users to both become consumers and producers of information. Interactivity also fosters trust between users that can evolve into offline action. However, the empirical record consists almost entirely of open source news reporting and qualitative studies, and there are few clear theoretical links between the traditional dissent and repression literatures and recent Internet mobilization theories. My goal in this project is to place a generalizable theory of Internet-mediated dissent within traditional mobilization context and more recent communication, computer science and legal literatures. I frame my theory of Internet mediated dissent through three components. The first component is Internet access as a mobilizing structure, in which I posit that Internet access creates conditions for social mobilization that are difficult for regimes to counter. The second component is the effect of Internet censorship on Internet-facilitated dissent. For the third theoretical component, I assess that despite the type of censorship, increased Internet use eventually overwhelms the regime's capacity to censor information. I test my theoretical components through a series of large N cross national time series negative binomial regressions spanning 1999-2010. In the first test, I find that increased Internet access increased the likelihood of protest in non-democratic states. Results of the second tests are mixed: technical censorship has no effect on protest, soft controls decreased incidence of protest, and combined technical and soft programs increase the likelihood of protest, albeit the substantive effect is slight. In the third test, I hypothesize that Internet use eventually crosses a user threshold after which censorship is no longer effective. The results of the third test suggest that censorship is not effective regardless of Internet access levels. However, the influence of Internet use on protest tapers off once a specific threshold is reached. The dissertation proceeds as follows: in Chapter 2, I present literature review that frames my research question within previous empirical work. Next, in Chapter 3 I propose and illustrate my theory of Internet-mediated dissent. In Chapter 4, I test whether or not incidents of anti-regime protest increase as Internet use increases inside non-democratic states. I build on these results in Chapter 5, in which I test whether technical filters, soft controls or a combination of methods decrease the likelihood of protest inside non-democratic states, followed by a test for whether increasing Internet use overwhelms censorship programs. Finally, in chapter 6 I summarize my findings, discuss data complications, offer ideas for future research, and discuss the implications of this project. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

This document reports the procedure and outcomes associated with a project focusing on educational research and development (R&D) based resources in the essential components of school improvement systems. Yet, the dissemination of and access to these R&D resources can be a complicated process. Access to educational resources and information about successful practices can assist school improvement teams to plan, implement, and assess their school improvement efforts. The objective of the project was to provide a vehicle by which school improvement teams could access information about R&D resources focusing on culture, leadership, professional development, and school environment were in place and where to find information on those characteristics. Initially, the team reviewed literature about school effectiveness. The constructs were defined and characteristics were identified. These were reviewed by practicing school district superintendents and their feedback was used by the project team to refine their work. The development of an educational practitioners' resource access manual and website for use by school improvement teams, was the culminating result of the project. The Educational Practitioner Resource Access Manual for School Improvement Planning is a tool designed to be applied in a practical manner offering easy access to high quality educational resources and information for school improvement planning teams when planning activities for improving student achievement. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

Both spatial theories of voting and our intuitions lead us to expect that political parties' ideological positions should affect individuals' turnout decisions. Contrary to these expectations, existing research finds that neither feelings of alienation--that no party adequately represents an individual's ideological position--nor indifference--that multiple parties adequately represent an individual's ideological position--have much of an effect on the rate at which individuals turn out to vote. Considering the contradiction between our expectations and existing research, a critical question, then, is why are the effects of alienation and indifference so small? Here, I offer two reasons. The first involves measurement. Invalid measurement of either alienation or indifference would attenuate estimates of their effects on turnout. Since I find that no previous research uses the most valid combination of measures, invalid measurement is one possible explanation for why we find such a small effect. The second reason involves individuals' predispositions for voting. There is evidence that some individuals vote in every election and others abstain in every election. Such predisposed individuals should not be affected by feelings of alienation and indifference because they are predisposed to turn out, or not, at each election. Meanwhile, individuals lacking predispositions should be strongly affected by their feelings of alienation and indifference. As a result, previous researchers, who ignored individuals' predispositions for voting, potentially overestimated the effects of alienation and indifference for those with predispositions and underestimated their effects for those without them. I test these two claims using a combination of experimental and survey data and find that both partially explain the small effects that alienation and indifference are found to have on turnout in previous research. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]