In an effort to expand research on effective and ineffective schools into the area of student attitudes, this study examined the cognitive, as well as the noncognitive scores for two groups of Pennsylvania schools that had been identified as effective or ineffective. Cognitive and noncognitive data were available for all 500 school districts for…

Anxiety has been shown to have detrimental effects on students in the classroom. This study examined the relations between motivational variables and anxiety. In particular, this study utilized goal orientation theory to examine whether the personal goals a student adopts and the goal structures a student perceives in the classroom are predictors…

A study was conducted to examine the influence of administrative actions on levels of faculty commitment to administratively defined priorities. Previous research conducted in a large, urban, multi-campus community college district revealed four district goals: serving new clientele, strengthening developmental education, retaining students, and…

This paper assesses the effectiveness of readability indices, standard cloze procedure, and the matching cloze procedure as determinants of the readability of supplementary English materials for elementary ESL students in a Pacific Island context. A review of readability indices and the standard cloze procedure indicated that neither procedure is…

Recent research on the effects of women's studies courses has indicated that there are two general approaches to teaching: a concern for competence or mastery and a concern for personal change and advocacy. It was hypothesized that students taking a psychology of women course would become more androgynous and masculine in sex-role concept, more…

Community colleges must often analyze and report rates for outcomes, such as transfer to four-year colleges. A single, summary rate may be an invalid measure of its achievement in the transfer goal if the summary rate ignores the real difference in enrollment composition at different institutions. California's community colleges embody a very…

This report explores the status of the teaching of psychology as a separate course on the pre-college level and examines the nature of the differences between urban-suburban and rural teachers, their courses, and their classes. One hundred sixty-two urban-suburban and 166 rural school teachers in Illinois were surveyed via questionnaires. Students…

Despite increasing graduation requirements and the limited vocational offerings in rural schools, many rural high school students still enroll in vocational education courses. This study examined factors influencing the decisions of rural Ohio high school students to select vocational education courses. In spring 1988, an interview and…

Data are presented on the characteristics of community college transfer students who earned baccalaureate degrees in Maryland between 1981 and 1987. Tables and graphs cover the transfer status (i.e., native, community college transfer, four-year college transfer, or out-of-state transfer) of baccalaureate recipients, of graduates who were Maryland…

This study attempted to: (1) identify differences, among full-time academic faculty in eight disciplines and five major institutional types, regarding their goals for classroom instruction, their assumptions about undergraduate students and the conditions under which students learn best, and their teaching practices; and (2) determine which of the…

An Institutional Goals Inventory (IGI) is used to assess a health science subsystem within a Western statewide higher educational system. Institutional goals are defined as ideal conditions the institution can continuously seek to maximize or perfect. Data were collected from each college and campus responsible for health science education and for…

Two major evaluations of bilingual education differed significantly in evaluation design and results. The American Institute for Research (AIR) conducted the national impact study for bilingual education and gathered data from many programs. AIR based its study on comparisons of mathematics and language arts achievement of students in bilingual…

Because public relations (PR) writing is different from the writing required in journalism, broadcasting, and advertising, PR practitioners require a background in editing, graphics, planning, campaigning, special events, public opinion, and evaluation beyond that required of a newswriter. Responses to a survey of 38 PR educators across the nation…

Administrators from 32 public two-year community colleges were surveyed to reveal the extent to which Management by Objectives (MBO) programs affected organizational conditions; 200 questionnaires (71%) were returned. Approximately 65% of the administrators indicated that the MBO system did not change the amount of formal contact between superior…

An overview is provided of Hispanic enrollment and staffing patterns in U.S. community colleges. After an initial discussion of changes taking place in postsecondary education, information on the low participation rates of Hispanics in higher education is presented; e.g., in 1978 Hispanics made up 6% of the population of the mainland United…