This article reports on an initiative to explore the potential of using supplementary audio podcast material to reduce the anxiety caused by isolation and to promote a sense of inclusivity amongst both undergraduate and postgraduate students studying an information technology subject in external mode with Australia's largest provider of distance…

This article provides a brief historical context and analysis of current middle school reform efforts to promote student engagement by facilitating social relationships. International comparisons of perceived social climate are presented to assess whether sense of belonging and support are lacking in American schools. Research documenting…

Background: Early school leaving and dropout are widely recognized as problems, leading to further marginalization and exclusion of young people from society at large. The Finnish government has set a target that, by the year 2008, 96% of those who complete compulsory education will continue without interruption in secondary education or in the…

Once as familiar in the back-to-school ritual as falling leaves, teacher strikes seem headed for a winter freeze. According to the nation's largest teacher's union, about 15 of the National Education Association's (NEA) 14,000 local affiliates have gone on strike since the start of this school year. In Pennsylvania--a traditional union…

This paper recounts the author's removal as an Indian child to a non-Indian foster home and consequent alienation and identity crisis, and presents survey results from Indian adults with similar childhood experiences. The problems in this particular case began when, at age 5, the author moved with her family from the reservation to an urban…

Much has been learned during the past 2 decades about school learning environments; researchers have developed a variety of measures of perceptions of learning environment characteristics. However, most of the studies on this subject have used the whole school as the unit for the research. This study examined the relationships among school-level…

Ever since the publish-or-perish era began sometime ago, academics in the humanities have experienced a widening gap between their two primary obligations, teaching and research. Bad enough for tenure-track junior faculty, the tension between the demands of writing, delivering, and publishing papers is even worse for graduate students because of…

In order to investigate the relationship among student orientation--social or conceptual--perception of educational process and context, satisfaction, data from a ten per cent random sample (final "n" was 626) drawn from ninth through twelfth grade students from four public schools was analyzed. Self-administered questionnaires were…

An attempt to explain radical student activism as a distinct function of potential downward mobility in the lives of student activists, who, coming largely from higher status backgrounds, face and fear the possibility of "skidding", thus culminating in a revolt of the priviledged against the system. (EH)

The dogma that art is beyond politics has cut off literary criticism from the full activities of our culture. (JH)

Differences in black student and white student perceptions of university climate were examined at an integrated university. The results indicate blacks perceived the climate more negatively. (Author/DE)

Student difficulties adjusting to college may lead to individual dysfunction. The enhancement of a sense of community could have a positive effect on student morale and may help to prevent dysfunction. This study examined the effects of a group counseling program on college students' sense of community. College students (N=90), mostly freshmen,…

Although most segments of the American workforce now recognize that computers can reduce the drudgery of repetitive tasks and lighten the burden of information exchange, storage, and retrieval, some people, especially many humanists, social scientists, and other non-technically oriented professionals, remain hesitant to step into the computer age.…

A conceptual model of sudden organizational change, the Significant Change Model, is described and graphically displayed. The model includes the organizational member's perception of the degree, magnitude, or abruptness of an institutional change in relation to the individual's imputed value of the perceived change. Both of these factors are…

Literature is basically a private, silent enterprise--which is not served by the social, talky processes of the classroom. (JH)