There has been growing recognition of the importance of trust in efforts to reform schools, improve learning, and positively impact student achievement. Previous research has focused on trust between adult actors--teachers, parents and principals--typically in elementary school settings. This dissertation shifts the focus to student trust, asking whether and how student trust in high schools matters.

Trust is conceptualized as a multi-faceted construct involving the discernment of benevolence, competence and integrity in school organizations and staff. Structural Equation Modeling is used to measure student trust as a second order factor with benevolence, competence and integrity as first order factors; and to determine the effect of trust on high school outcomes such as graduation and post-secondary plans, controlling for prior achievement and student background.

Data for this study is drawn from the Educational Longitudinal Study of 2002 (ELS). ELS provides a nationally representative sample of over 14,000 students attending more than 750 public, private and Catholic schools, representing 3.2 million students in the U.S. who were high school sophomores in 2002, with follow-up studies in 2004 and 2006.

Results show that student trust has a significant measureable effect on high school outcomes. Students with high levels of trust have more positive high school outcomes than students low in trust. Trusting students are more likely to graduate, have more ambitious postsecondary plans and higher grade point averages. Additionally, this research demonstrates that while all three facets of trust are important, student estimation of benevolence is the most important, followed by equal amounts of competence and integrity.

The goal of this study is to identify those factors contributing to special education teacher (SET) turnover that can be directly amendable to intervention by the improved policy and practice at school sites. This study examines the turnover behavior of SETs by including variables clustered as teacher demographics, employment factors, and teacher perceptions of organizational conditions. The responses of SET stayers (teachers who remain on their school from the base year to year two of the survey), movers (teachers who moved from one school to another), and leavers (teachers who left the teaching profession) were compared to general education teachers (GET) in the same groups to identify variables that separated the subgroups.

The data for this research are the teacher reports contained in the Teacher Follow-up Survey (TFS) 2000-2001. This survey is the complement to the Public and Private School Teacher Questionnaire of the School and Staffing Survey (SASS, 1999-2000). These surveys are sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education and were conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau. They were analyzed by the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES). The teacher samples are weighted to produce national estimates. The sample of this study is 4,048 SETs and GETs (N = 4,080 weighted).

This study is unique to others whose focus is SET turnover in that it examines the distinct roles of elementary and secondary SETs. The school levels differ in school organization, academic rigor, and special education law. This study found that these differences appear to have an impact on retention behavior.

The purpose of this work was to understand the concept of trust, its meaning, antecedents, and outcomes as they applied to teacher trust in principals. Since there are very few in-depth studies specifically on trust in a school principal, research on trust from an organizational perspective was consulted. This body of research has numerous and valuable studies on trust in organizations that assisted in helping to understand how trust develops and flourishes within an organization's structure in general and how it applies to a school as a specific type of organization.

Data for this study were collected using a modification of a survey instrument from Mayer and Davis (1999) and McAllister (1995). Data from the four-part self-administered survey were used to build a structural equation model (SEM) that studied the relationships between teacher trust in the principal to the following: principal trustworthiness; teachers' propensity to trust; principal teacher interaction patterns; background similarity between the teacher and the principal; student demographics; and overall school achievement. The data for this study were included responses from 377 teachers in 13 elementary schools in one Southern California school district.

The trust model developed in this study confirmed the existence of a second-order factor for trustworthiness which integrated the first-order factors for ability, benevolence, and integrity. This second-order factor was a strong predictor of teacher trust for their principals. As a result, a teacher's perceived trustworthiness of a principal can be viewed as being comprised of three distinct factors (ability, benevolence, and integrity).

Teacher propensity to trust other adults had its strongest influence on the actual level of trust teachers have for their principals. The propensity factor also influenced the extent to which teachers find their principals to be of trustworthy character. The propensity factor also had a negative relationship with the perception of principal benevolence--independent of the overall level of trustworthiness measured by the second-order factor. The specific frequency of interaction factor did not have an independent affect on the factor that measured a teacher's actual trust in his/her principal. A strong relationship between teachers viewing their principals as trustworthy and the frequency of principal/teacher interactions also was found--with trustworthiness as being dependent on frequency of interaction.

It was also demonstrated that the factor structures accounting for teacher trust of their principals are independent of the specific school context or the particular principal being evaluated. The factors of propensity and specific frequency of interaction also relied on common measurement items. Finally, a significant relationship between principal and teacher trust and background similarity between teachers and principals as Zucker (1986) proposed was not found to exist. Student demographics and overall student achievement (though limited to one item) also did not have a significant relationship with teacher trust in the principal. Some discussion was also provided on the strength of the proposed model's fit and how it could possibly be improved.

Based on a qualitative methodological approach, this study focuses on the understanding of a phenomenon called globalization in a research university computer science department. The study looks into the participants' perspectives about the department, its dynamics, culture and academic environment as related to globalization. The economic, political, academic and social/cultural aspects of the department are taken into consideration in investigating the influences of globalization.

Three questions guide this inquiry: 1) How is the notion of globalization interpreted in this department? 2) How does the perception of globalization influence the department in terms of finances, academics, policies and social life And 3) How are these perceptions influence the selection of students? Globalization and neo-institutional view of legitimacy is used as theoretical lenses to conceptualize responses to these questions.

The data include interviews, field notes, official and non-official documents. Interpretations of these data are compared to findings from prior research on the impact of globalization in order to clarify and validate findings.

Findings show that there is disagreement in how the notion of globalization is interpreted between the doctoral students and the faculty in the department. This disagreement revealed the attitudes and interpretations of globalization in the light of the policies and procedures related to the department. How the faculty experience globalization is not consistent with the literature in this project. The literature states that globalization is a big part of higher education and it is a phenomenon that causes the changes in the goals and missions of higher education institutions (Knight, 2003, De Witt, 2005). The data revealed that globalization is not the cause for change but more of a consequence of actions that take place in achieving the goals and missions of the department.

A review of literature suggests women superintendents face several disadvantages gaining access to positions as public school district superintendents. This study focused on 1) which characteristics applied to the prediction of women superintendents in California public K-12 system; 2) if the predecessor's sex predicted for the successor's sex; 3) whether the percentages of women districts office staff changed because of districts' hiring of women superintendents. The data include districts that appointed new superintendents between 2000 and 2008, N=1690. Logistic regression was used and found doctoral degree, years of educational service, years in the district, large suburbs and large cities, API, and student enrollment total were the seven predictors show significance for women superintendents. Cross-tabulation was then applied to test whether the predecessor's sex influences the successor's sex, ÷² (1) = 1120 .361, p = .000 < .05, revealing that the association between superintendent's sex before turnover was significant. That is, if districts had women superintendents before, it is easier for women successors to enter these districts again. One repeated, one within ANOVA was used to test whether superintendent's sex influence the percentage of female district staff. The results found it was not significant to determine the rate of increase based on superintendent's sex. Women superintendents did not increased the percentages of female district office staff; rather, women were more likely to enter districts with larger female principal percentages than men. The percentages of female principals and student services staff increased overtime for both women and men superintendents, but the rate of increase was not significant.

This study concludes with only examining the percentages of new hired women superintendents, there were 27.3%. However, if we used historical record of women superintendents, the percentages increased from 8.25% in 1985 to 31.7% in 2008. Women superintendents won a small numbers of districts that used to be men. If we examined by the high status districts, women superintendents were more likely to be in large suburbs and large cities with higher API scores than men superintendents.

Research in education involving sex segregation is dominated by a historic paradigm of conflict and sexual politics theory, even when these paradigms may now be inconsistent with the findings of the latest research. Utilizing the California Department of Education's Professional Assignment Information Form (PAIF) in conjunction with the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) data from 2001-02 to 2008-09 school years this study employs rational choice theory to explain the increases females now enjoy in obtaining the principal position throughout the broad range of schools in California. While previous work contends that women are only gaining access to the principal position in areas that would be seen as "unfavorable" to men, this study finds that women are being made principals systematically in all areas and across nearly all variables. Women are gaining in total proportion of principalships in the more desirable schools in eight of the ten variables studied. Specifically, the hiring of women into principalship positions is increasing in all categories of schools. These include high schools, rich schools, high achieving schools, schools with low pupil-teacher ratios, schools in suburbs and in small towns and in most small schools, regardless of their locations and other factors. Remarkably, these gains are being achieved by women, all while having equal or less education on average than men. However, two variables, "years in the district" and "years teaching", show that women have more years than men in holding the position of principal. The significance of the findings of this study is outlined, as well as suggestions for possible future research.