Community colleges serve an access mission built on affordable tuition and an open-door admissions policy and deliver support to students and communities by providing post-secondary education, credentials, and workforce training. Several student groups, including first-generation and low-income students, find community colleges as a viable, and…

Syllabus-boundness constitutes an important attribute of a so-called surface approach to learning, whereby students are seen as highly assessment-oriented, doing what is minimally required from them, and wanting well-organized courses and clear instructions. When this concept emerged in the late 1960ies, it was linked to a discussion on issues of…

Data from international large-scale assessments (ILSAs) of schooled populations indicate that boys have considerably poorer literacy skills than girls. New evidence from a household-based ILSA--Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC)--indicates that the gender gap in literacy is negligible, even though…

Social relationships in the school context -- particularly teacher-student relationships and peer relationships -- are related to students' positive attitudes toward school, and consequently are of great importance regarding various aspects of learning and instruction. This can be concluded from studies that examine the influence of social…

Research has shown that more efforts are needed to increase high school completion and postsecondary enrollment among Latino youths. However, little is known regarding efforts that engage both Latino youths and their parents. To address this gap, we surveyed Juntos Oregon participants to examine the school and community context Latino youths and…

The goal was to assess the role of children's social cognitions about peers in attitudes toward school. Because of gender segregation, we differentiated children's cognitions about same-gender and other-gender peers. We examined the influence of gender-based relationship efficacy for both own-gender and other-gender peers (GBRE-Own and GBRE-Other)…

The goals of this study were (1) to identify groups of bullies and victims, (2) to investigate level differences in depression, peer relationships, and academic variables, and (3) to examine how peer relationships and academic variables were associated with depression in these groups. The sample comprised 1,451 students (48.6% girls) aged 10-15…

The aim of this study was to examine the direct and indirect relationship between student school absenteeism, personal factors (academic self- perception, attitudes towards teacher and school, goal valuation and motivation/ self-regulation), family factors (parents' educational level and income), and academic achievement in structural equation…

This case study reports on a doctoral research project conducted in a school using critical discourse analysis to examine the discourse of youth 'disaffection'. The study aimed to identify how some students acquired the label 'disaffected' and considered the extent to which the quality of relationships between teachers and students contributed to…

This article reports on the first phase of a research project in which we looked for the voices of young children, aged 5 to 6, in school. What do children experience in school? What do they see as the meaning of school? What is their motivation? Children have the right to be listened to. The question is which settings, under which circumstances,…

School motivation and attachment typically decline after the transition to middle school. According to the stage-environment fit approach, extracurricular activities are supposed to promote motivation. However, research has shown that the effects depend on the quality of the activities, which usually is measured by assessing students' individual…

This article reports on the findings of an Australian Research Council (ARC) funded research project, "Building the future for Indigenous students", an investigation of the hopes and dreams for the future of over 1,000 secondary students, 733 of whom were Indigenous, living in very remote, remote, and urban locations in the Northern…

This study investigated high school students' and teachers' perceptions of academic self perception, environmental perceptions, goal valuation, and motivation/self-regulation as factors affecting students' academic achievement. A two-way MANOVA was conducted to determine if high school students' gender and academic programs,…

Background: Gifted children learn differently compared to their peers in several ways. However, their educational needs are often not met in regular schools, which may result in underachievement and social-emotional and behavioral problems. A pullout program, the "Day a Week School" (DWS), was offered to gifted children in 25 elementary…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore teenagers' and young adults' use of social networking sites (SNS), in light of certain personal, social and educational outcomes and attitudes. Design/methodology/approach: Data were gathered on the basis of surveys, and were analyzed through a series of multivariate models. Findings: It was found…