Gang-involved children dream of becoming respected members of society through professional careers, educational degrees or credentials, and socioeconomic mobility. This qualitative study used hoped-for selves as the theoretical grounding for exploring the career and college-going aspirations of 28 middle- and high-school gang-involved Latino boys…

The author, having drawn examples from her doctoral study, describes how a thematic analysis approach was employed to interpret raw data in her doctoral study which explored the impacts of a high-stakes test on students and parents in Nepal. As the main purpose of this paper is to provide some guidelines for English language teaching (ELT)…

This study was conducted in an effort to generate information toward fostering academic outcomes among African American adolescents. Gender differences in African American adolescents' personal, educational, and occupational expectations were examined in relation to perceptions of neighborhood quality. Participants included 352 African American…

Male and female Arab and Jewish private high school students in Israel were questioned on their attitudes toward women's roles. Finds that ambitious Arab females may experience less support from their male peers than may Jewish females. (DM)

Argues that high student aspirations are part of a positive school climate and an important component of school effectiveness strategies. Outlines research needed to clarify these relationships and to examine the impact of teacher and staff behavior on student aspirations. (SV)

The extent to which students' home characteristics, school factors, teaching and learning variables account for the variance of a measure of students' (n=2059) attitude toward science was investigated. The results indicate that most students come from homes that may not foster positive attitudes toward science and that variables that could lead to…

An analysis was conducted to compare two national surveys of American youth and to examine the life goals and occupational aspirations of college students in 1978 and of those in 1983. Two national data sets were used in the analysis. Both are based on traditional multistage probability design. The first was the 1978 National Public Affairs Study,…

This study investigated achievement attitudes of young, mathematically able adolescents in order to examine differences between boys and girls equated for ability, and to explore relationships between self-perceptions, aspirations, and extra-curricular activities related to mathematics, science, or computers. The research was guided by the…

Analyzed data from low-income students (480 males, 466 females) to explore differences between those who want to have children and those who don't. Found high school women who don't want children had higher occupational and educational aspirations. The reverse was true for males who didn't want children. (BH)

This paper presents the results of a survey titled "Postsecondary Plans of Nevada High School Seniors" that is administered biennially to provide educational planners with information about Nevada high school seniors' postsecondary plans. The survey consists of 43 questions and provides information in six areas: demographic…

This paper examines a broad set of beliefs about achievement and the relationship of those beliefs to performance and future plans in mathematics and English. The two main purposes of the analysis are (1) to assess gender and grade-level differences in children's achievement beliefs as they proceed through junior and senior high school, and (2) to…

This ethnographic study documents and interprets key school, work, and family life issues in the lives and experiences of a sampling of recent immigrants from the war-torn Central American nations; and suggests a psychocultural theory of achievement motivation. Information was gathered from observation in two urban high schools, interviews with 50…

This paper describes a model of the influence of personal and environmental factors on students' valuing of two deep-processing strategies for studying expository texts. In the model, task orientation (a form of intrinsic motivation in which learning and understanding are the major goals) interacts with perceptions of the teacher's goals to…

This paper explores the question of how and what a school can do to foster student discipline and effort. Personal experiences and observations are offered about the approaches and strategies used in schools and by parents in Taiwan, China to foster students' positive attitudes toward learning and school. This document focuses on the approaches…

This report contains a summary of findings from a study conducted in California and Nevada to investigate attitudes towards mathematics and extent of parental influence on three groups of high school students--high math-achieving males (N=59), high math-achieving feamles (N=44), and high verbal/low math females (N=27). Differences between Asian…