In most countries, wearing uniform in the university level is a rare practice. Interestingly, Thailand is one of a very few countries requiring the undergraduate students to wear the student uniform to attend class on daily basis. The university uniform has been seen to represent the ideas of politeness, honor, unity, and uniqueness of Thai…

Despite China's recent remarkable performance in high-quality research, the number of students going abroad to pursue doctoral degrees in STEM fields has been rising rapidly. This study investigates the motivations of Chinese international doctoral students (CIDS) in STEM fields for undertaking a PhD abroad, and the external factors influencing…

Institutions of higher education place a high priority on retaining students. With orientation programming, tutoring, learning communities, peer mentoring, and other efforts, institutions dedicate the resources necessary to increase the academic success of their students because academic success has a positive relationship with retention. Through…

This study examines how graduates of a specific educational institution ("The Boarding School for the Gifted Disadvantaged" in Israel) integrate their school experiences into their life story. The in-depth interviews with the boarding school graduates demonstrate special use of the gift metaphor to describe their selfhood and their…

The study looked back on the one-year experience of the first group of peer mentors of a university at northern Taiwan. Twelve peer mentors (six males and six females; with an average age of 21.45) took part in the study. A qualitative phenomenological approach and in-depth interviews were adopted. The results showed that participants deemed the…

The present study aimed to describe and explore the influence of social support on the school engagement of young survivors of pediatric leukemia. Fifty-three young Quebecers, previously diagnosed and treated for leukemia, completed a questionnaire measuring their school engagement and participated in an interview focusing on the support offered…

The purpose of this qualitative case study was two-fold: to investigate the dialog about psychosocial aspects of health care in problem based learning (PBL) groups in a single medical school; and to describe the factors that learners and PBL facilitators identify as influencing dialog about these issues in PBL groups. Medical education is a…

This study investigates how doctoral students perceive research work in the context of their own PhD projects. Thirty-two students from a Finnish university were interviewed, representing three disciplines: medicine, natural sciences and behavioural sciences. Their conceptions of research varied in terms of describing research as "a job to…

This research examines academic experiences of African American males (ages 18-25) who attended urban schools in southern California. The participants were incarcerated for at least one year prior to being housed in a pre-release program where they reflected on their academic experiences and perceptions of the school environment. The participants'…

Recently the adoption of mindfulness or contemplative based approaches has escalated across many sectors, including in education. Proponents argue that mindfulness based teaching programs improve students' life skills, provide emotional balance, reduce stress and enhance classroom climate. To date though there is little evaluation or knowledge of…

For the last ten years, language learning motivation research has focussed on how learners see knowledge of a language as part of their identity. This article presents the findings of a qualitative interview study that investigated whether personal growth is also a strong element in the motivation of Australian university students to learn German.…

Despite the fact that approximately half of high school physics students are female, only 21% of physics bachelor's degrees are awarded to women. In a previous study, drawn from a national survey of college students in introductory English courses, five factors commonly proposed to positively impact female students' choice of a physical science…

In this article we examine how students' accounts of the discipline of sociology change over the course of their undergraduate degrees. Based on a phenomenographic analysis of 86 interviews with 32 sociology and criminology students over the course of their undergraduate degrees, we constituted five different ways of accounting for sociology.…

The present study evaluated the latest English Language Teacher Training Programme in Turkey from the viewpoint of students who were enrolled on the programme for a period of four years. Participants were 90 last year students who were enrolled in the English Language Teaching department at Uludag University, Turkey. Data were collected by means…

The present study evaluated the latest English Language Teacher Training Programme in Turkey from the viewpoint of students who were enrolled on the programme for a period of four years. Participants were 90 last year students who were enrolled in the English Language Teaching department at Uludag University, Turkey. Data were collected by means…