Best Selling Books by E. Knight

The history of a building that has gone from being a high school to a junior high school to an elementary school in Winchester, Massachusetts.

The academic and commercial community continues to search for a leadership training theory that will provide consistent results and improve leadership praxis. This study aims to determine through empirical analysis if the new contextual prescriptive model as developed by Zigarmi, Lyles, and Fowler (2007) and taught to groups of students provides a statistically significant impact to leadership outcomes. To date, only one organization, the Catholic Leadership Institute, has developed and implemented a system of training using this model. The model proposes five practices and five contexts. This study focuses on the foundational context of self-leadership and the five practices. The Solomon four-group design was used in this study, to provide for isolation of various effects given the limitations of the quasi-experimental nature of the cohorts, the non-equivalent groups and the self-selected subjects. Comparison and treatment effects were measured using the Revised Self-Leadership Questionnaire (RSLQ) as developed by Houghton and Neck (2002). Results were analyzed through descriptive statistics, ANCOVA, ANOVA, and Student's t-test. A total of 134 subjects were compared using paired sample and group means to test the impact of the training on six hypotheses relating to overall self-leadership skills and the five practices of the model. The results indicate that the subjects participating in the training based on the prescriptive model did not significantly demonstrate improved RSLQ scores for any of the hypotheses tested.

Experiences in natural environments are perceived as a human necessity. Additionally, prior studies show that nature access has emotional, cognitive, and psychological benefits for children. Nature is defined as a space comprised mostly of vegetation that allows an individual to escape common surroundings. Access is defined as the ability to interact with high-quality nature by walking or biking in close proximity to one's place of residence. This geospatial analysis employs Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology and site analysis to assess whether or not socioeconomic factors, and their relationship to housing choice, affect a child's access to nature. The study includes measures of socioeconomic status and how these factors influence a child's access to nature within parks and school facilities. The results show that including qualitative factors enhances the traditional model of measuring "distance as access." There was no inequality in access found in the study area when qualitative factors are included. The project implication is that communities can focus public resources and planning efforts in areas lacking access to nature for children. This leads to geographically less segregated neighborhoods and improved equity in nature access across a community.

A study to explore the base-drag reduction with passive control means, to determine the effects of boundary-layer displacement thickness and shape factor at the trailing edge, and to understand vortex dynamics and its suction effects using the phase-averaged pressure.

Electronic portfolios represent an assessment measure with strong potential for providing feedback about student performance to improve curricula and pedagogy, determining individual students' mastery of learning and providing feedback for improvement, and actively involving students in the assessment process. This study examined the relationship between e-portfolio participation and student success. Despite some limitations, the current study has demonstrated that, after background factors are controlled for, undergraduate students with e-portfolio artifacts had significantly grade point averages, credit hours earned, and retention rates than a matched set of students without e-portfolio artifacts. Also, there were significant positive relationships between various measures of e-portfolio utilization and grade point average and credit hours earned among undergraduates, although these results were mixed for graduate students.There were no statistically significant group differences in any of the National Survey of Student Engagement or New Student Transition Questionnaire scales, which serve as measures of student academic engagement.

Every person has a unique perspective through which the concept of music education is filtered, and for good reason: music classrooms and programs across the United States are very different. Programs are dissimilar in everything from tangible items, such as facilities and available teaching materials, to foundational frameworks, including curriculum and program philosophy. Local geographical and cultural contexts contribute to the dissimilarity of music programs across the United States, and even those within the same region or state. The purpose of this study was to examine the commonalities and differences in school climate and access to resources among urban, rural, and reservation Nebraska public school districts to determine their readiness to achieve Nebraska State Music Standards. All students deserve a quality, standards-based music education. The research questions focused on teachers' perceptions of school climate; advantages or disadvantages of staffing and scheduling; and availability of equipment, materials, and curricular resources. The survey tool was developed and updated from the "Survey of Nebraska School Music Programs" (Nierman, 1998). Survey data gathered from a random stratified sample of music educators in Nebraska Class C and D rural schools, socioeconomically diverse urban schools, and reservation settings were analyzed using descriptive research tools, ANOVA tests, and chi-square analysis. Among the findings were indications that urban music educators had the most access to teacher development resources; rural music educators gave a significantly higher appraisal of school climate than reservation music educators; and rural music educators had significantly higher student-to-teacher ratios than urban music educators. This study illuminates some of the challenges and rewards of teaching in underserved districts in Nebraska, which could positively impact the musical growth of Nebraska students, as well as broaden the philosophical perspective of music educators in the state. Finally, this study acknowledges Native American reservation music programs, which have been largely overlooked in educational research.