Supplemental Instruction (SI) is a well-known academic support model to address retention and student performance in higher education. However, in studies reporting the effect of SI, the number of attendees at SI sessions are seldom mentioned or reflected upon. This study investigates whether there is a lower, optimal, and upper number of SI…

Graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) constitute a valuable and economical teaching force in many higher education undergraduate programmes. However, student satisfaction with their teaching has attracted little attention in the research literature. This study aimed at examining students' evaluation of teaching of GTAs in discussion groups, as well…

Education is recognized as a human right since the adoption of Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 besides health and shelter. Education for All Goals was established where more than 150 governments have adopted world declaration on Education for All policy to support the universal right for education. The ultimate goal of many countries…

Background/Context: Parents, policymakers, and researchers uphold that missing school has negative implications on schooling success, particularly for students in urban schools. However, it has thus far been an empirical challenge within educational research to estimate the true effect that absences have on achievement outcomes. This study…

This paper contributes empirically to the literature on peer effects in first-grade classrooms. The paper examines peer effects on academic achievement among first graders randomly assigned to their classrooms and to their teachers as part of Tennessee's Project STAR, America's largest ever education experiment. The analysis draws on previously…

Class size is one of the most researched and heavily debated topics in American public education. Currently, at least 25 states have initiated class size reduction (CSR) programs. In the past twenty years, several major studies have been conducted which indicate that smaller class sizes produce an increase in student achievement as well as greater…

More than eleven hundred university students were surveyed to determine attitudes toward learning and accountability. Apathy, absenteeism, and grade inflation emerged as contributing to the lack of student accountability. This article suggests institutional changes to reanimate college classrooms: explicit expectations; smaller, engaged classes;…

The literature on school absences has focused predominantly on the reasons for student truancy, or it has assessed only aggregate student absences in their effect on achievement. However, this study brings forth a new issue: the relationship between types of absences--excused versus unexcused--and school performance. With a quantitative model of…

Staff of the Tennessee State University Class Size Project investigated effects of a 1:15 teacher/pupil ratio on first grade students' reading and mathematics achievement, behavior, attendance, and self concept. Participants were first grade pupils attending metropolitan Nashville public schools, who were assigned to an experimental group of seven…

The object of this report is to review recent developments in compulsory schooling, to raise what appear to be the critical educational problems alreading facing, or beginning to emerge in, the countries of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and to suggest some of the considerations that might influence policy…

Since at least the 1980s, motivated, in part, by findings from international comparisons of students' mathematics achievement, some American (U.S.) educators and policy makers have initiated educational reform that focuses on improving teaching practices and curriculum designs by advocating for the adoption of Asian educational models. The…