Browsing by Subject "Attrition"

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
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    How Faculty Assessments of Degree Completion Likelihood Shape their Advising Relationship with Doctoral Students
    (2016-08) Kalke, Nancy
    Abstract The issue of doctoral student attrition has been recognized in the literature since the middle of the 20th Century. Although not always described as a problem, and with a change in attribution of the reasons from primarily that of the student to more of an institutional responsibility, the attrition of doctoral students remains at only slightly less than half. Especially concerning is why students, who have successfully passed all their courses and the preliminary examinations that promote them to a doctoral candidate in the final phase of the doctoral program, fail to complete. This qualitative study explored perspectives from 18 tenured members of the graduate faculty from four U. S. doctorate-granting institutions with very high research activity located in the general Midwestern regions that had graduated more than 50 doctorate recipients in one or major fields of the social sciences, focused on their assessment that a particular student will complete his/her degree after passing the preliminary exam and becoming a candidate for the Ph. D. (what is commonly also referred to as “All But Dissertation” (ABD). Two models, Girves and Wemmerus’ (1988) degree progression model, and Tinto’s (1993) three-stage model on doctoral student retention, provided the foundation for the conceptual framework for the study. The results of the study show that a diversity of themes was found that characterized each of the four advisee types and differentially shaped the advising relationship. One of the main salient findings of this study concerned those advisees seen as being “at risk” of non-completion. The descriptions of their “extra efforts,” in some cases, extraordinary time and effort, contribute to the body of literature reviewed that falls into the category of multi-level (institutional, departmental, and individual) approaches that can be taken to propel doctoral students over the finishing line. The implications for practice from the findings of this study may be helpful to faculty advisors, doctoral students, and department administrators.
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    A Post-Intentional Phenomenological Exploration of Educator Emotional Efficacy (E³)
    (2023) VonGrey, Geri
    Research indicates that 40% to 50% of new teachers leave the educational field within their first five years of service (Alliance for Excellent Education, 2014; Education Minnesota, 2021a, 2021b; Liuzzi, 2021). Teachers are experiencing exhaustion, compassion fatigue, and often symptoms of burnout (Shen et al., 2015). These risk factors can manifest themselves in a wide variety of ways, including; a diminished sense of hope, decreased compassion and empathy, adverse changes in work performance, feelings of bitterness towards their job, and a loss of emotional regulation ( Gozali-Lee & Connell, 2019; Hagaman & Casey, 2018; Kyriacou, 2010; Sparks & Malkus, 2011; Domitrovich et al., 2016). The research urges us to pay attention. Many teachers are exhausted and are living on the edge of these realities, and as a result, are simply not thriving. The deteriorating mental and physical health of teachers negatively impacts teachers, but it also erodes the assets that those teachers bring into their classrooms, including; their emotional availability, empathy, hope, presence, self-efficacy, and resilience, all of which contribute to their asset-based strengths (Levine, 2013; Maslach & Leiter, 2005, 2007, 2016; McCarthy et al., 2010; Pines, 1993; Platsidou & Agaliotis, 2017; Shen et al., 2015). Palmer (2007) states, “we must enter, not evade, the tangles of teaching so we can understand them better and negotiate them with more grace, not only to guard our spirits but also to serve our students well” (p. 2). This research project uses a post-intentional phenomenology (PIP) methodology to investigate how the phenomenon of Educator Emotional Efficacy (E³) is produced and provoked in the lived experiences of teachers. E³ is rooted in the belief that an educator can develop the abilities and skill sets needed to constructively respond to the full range of emotions they experience, both positive and challenging emotions, and have the necessary skills to react to these emotions in a way that is aligned with their values and beliefs. Ideally, the development of E³ can work to minimize the negative consequences that can lead to burnout. Therefore, this study explores how teachers' development and awareness of E³ might positively impact teacher identity and their holistic health. More specifically, the phenomenon of educator emotional efficacy (E³) is shaped by the constructs of empathy, mindfulness, hope, and self-compassion and how they might serve to diminish the three manifestations of teacher burnout, which include emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and lack of self-efficacy (Maslach & Leiter, 2005, 2007, 2016).
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    The syntax-pragmatics interface in language loss: covert restructuring of aspect in heritage Russian.
    (2010-05) Laleko, Oksana Vladislavovna
    Heritage grammars, linguistic varieties emerging in the context of intergenerational language loss, are known to diverge from the corresponding full-fledged baseline varieties in principled and systematic ways, as typically illustrated by errors made by heritage speakers in production. This dissertation examines covert restructuring of aspect in heritage Russian, a grammatical reorganization of the perfective-imperfective opposition not manifested in overt errors. The aspectual system instantiated in acrolectal varieties of heritage Russian is shown to exhibit signs of covert divergence from the baseline system at the interface between syntax and discourse-pragmatics, manifested in a reduction of pragmatically-conditioned functions of the imperfective aspect with total single events. This emerging restriction leads to a gradual shift from a privative aspectual opposition in baseline Russian, where imperfective is the unmarked member, to an opposition of the equipollent type. Experimental evidence presented suggests that heritage speakers differ from baseline Russian speakers in their use, acceptability ratings, and accuracy of interpretation of the imperfective aspect. In Russian, both aspects are compatible with completed events; however, aspectual competition is resolved in favor of the imperfective in the presence of discourse-pragmatic triggers that condition the general-factual functions of the imperfective: statement of fact, annulled result, thematicity and backgrounding. Assuming a multi-level approach to aspect, I maintain that the two aspectual systems converge on the level of the verbal predicate, where aspectual values of activities and accomplishments reflect compositional telicity, but diverge on the level of sentential aspect, where the contribution of telicity may be overridden by grammatical aspectual operators and discourse-pragmatic aspectual triggers. The restructuring of aspect in advanced heritage grammars affects the highest level of sentential structure, a domain in which syntactic information is mapped onto discourse-pragmatic information (the C-domain). In addressing the role of linguistic input in heritage language acquisition, the dissertation examines additional data from bilingual Russian-English speakers, including parents of heritage speakers. While bilingual speakers pattern with monolingual controls on comprehension tests, they differ from monolinguals in production of the imperfective with total single events, suggesting that competence divergence in advanced heritage grammars may be linked, across generations, to impoverished performance on C-domain properties.