Over the past decade, researchers have replicated and extended research on the preschool life skills (PLS) program developed by Hanley, Heal, Tiger, and Ingvarsson (2007). This review summarizes recent research with respect to maximizing skill acquisition, improving generality, evaluating feasibility and acceptability, and testing predictions of…

Closing the achievement gap in public education is a worthy goal that has been included as a top priority in the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (2002). This study analyzed the most salient predictors at the student and school levels to identify their long-term impact on mathematics achievement from the elementary grades to high school. The…

Middle school mathematics teacher quality is questionable because the number of certified mathematics teachers considered highly qualified is low (Birman et al., 2009). The author examined Grade 8 data from the 2005 National Association of Educational Progress mathematics assessment. The purposes of the study were to (a) determine the impact of…

The primary purpose of this study was to specify the variables that would play the greatest role in predicting success of North Carolina Central University (NCCU) nursing graduates in the National Certification Licensure Examination for Registered Nurses (NCLEX-RN). Participants for this study include a convenience sample of 39 students who…

This Briefing charts the progress of young people through university: (1) What difficulties do they encounter in the transition from school to university study?; (2) How many persist in their studies and graduate?; and (3) What are the benefits of university study? It also examines the issue of demand for university places: How many young people…

Seeks to appraise the present status of teacher expectation by posing the question, "Are we expecting too much of expectation?", and to locate the self-fulfilling prophecy--in all its variant forms--firmly within an interactionist framework. (Editor/RK)

A study was conducted to develop an instrument which would require a relatively short time to complete and would predict an adult's probable performance on a five-part General Educational Development (GED) test. It was believed that the cloze procedure (a measure of reading comprehension in which every fifth word is deleted from a reading passage…

An investigation of how well the predictor variables of credit hours, student credit hours, contact hours, student contact hours, level of instruction, and academic rank correlate with faculty self-report measures of time-use for each class taught showed that only contact hours were a reliable measure of faculty effort as measured in time for a…

Common factor scores were compared to unfactored data-level variables as predictors in terms of the correlation of a criterion with the predicted value in multiple regression equations applied to replication (cross-validation) samples. (Editor)

Argues that the complex human behavior studied by educational researchers is by its nature unpredictable if not indeterminate. Concludes that research should focus on descriptions and interpretations of educational phenomena and not on the prediction and control of educational outcomes. (FMW)

While Garrison and colleagues' (2000) Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework has generated substantial interest among online learning researchers, it has yet to be subjected to extensive quantitative verification or tested for external validity. Using a sample of students from 55 online MBA courses, the findings of this study suggest strong…

This study investigated the relation between the entering characteristics of the 1,210 students who entered the 7 residential teachers' colleges in Jamaica in September 1976 and their subsequent performance in college. There were 41 predictor variables (encompassing biographical data, previous education and work experience, and general and…

Results are described for the first two phases of a study to develop and evaluate models of student progress in a technical training course being offered in a computer managed instructional environment at Lowry Air Force Base, Colorado. Several categories of models were developed in Phase I and defined by model type and by the type of variables…

Using either an individuals' socioeconomic or ethnic status to predict his prospects for academic achievement or future employment is considered likely to be inaccurate and perhaps even immoral. The action implications of present socioeconomic and ethnic patterns of goal attainment are said to be in dispute. In order to contemplate the value of…