This paper explores the relationship between "process" quality characteristics in English pre-school centres and the developmental progress made by children between the ages of 3-5 years. A nationally representative sample of 141 English pre-schools participated in this study with longitudinal pre- and post-test measures taken from 2857…

Given the paucity of literature addressing the experiences of rural youth, this study investigated the ability of assessed levels of social support, perceived parental involvement, academic self-efficacy, and perceived educational barriers to predict school engagement and work role attitudes among rural high school students. The authors…

Improving leadership development opportunities among those likely to ascend to the principalship is a particularly effective policy response to reform advocates. But the school district level requires a deeper understanding of the individual personality preferences and leadership styles of those preparing to apply for the next round of…

This study, conducted through Arkansas State University and the University of Central Arkansas, examined parents' perceptions in the initial year of a three-year period (2004-2007) to determine whether public schools have made progress in their implementation of the parental involvement programs mandated by Arkansas Act 603 of 2003 (known as the…

The conceptualization and empirical assessment of service quality in juvenile justice remains limited. There are few reports on programmatic attempts to assess satisfaction in juvenile justice programs or attempts to include what constitutes quality of service from multiple customer perspectives. This article describes a potential model, the Gap…

This article describes the evolution of full service schools. Full service schools stress prevention, collaboration and systems change. Prevention is geared toward corrections, mental health and welfare, all topics of keen interest to people working in and studying criminal justice. By providing mental health services at the school for both…

Many organized out-of-school-time (OST) activities provide enriching opportunities for children to interact with peers, build cognitive skills, develop relationships with mentors, and explore a variety of talents and leisure pursuits. A growing set of findings suggests that youth participation in OST activities is associated with academic…

In recent years, a major shift in thinking has occurred among psychologists, educators, youth workers, and policymakers interested in adolescent development. The old focus on pathology, delinquency, and problem prevention has begun to be supplemented by a new interest in health, resilience, and opportunity development. In an extensive review of…

This paper reports a study of the reading and spelling skills of grades 1-3 Arabic-speaking children in Bahrain. Children were tested on their literacy skills (single word reading and spelling), their ability to decode letter strings (non-word reading) and measures of phonological awareness, short-term memory, speed of processing and non-verbal…

A student's behavioral performance within the classroom is influenced, in large part, by the interaction that student has with the learning environment and the people in that environment. Identifying antecedent variables that effect student performance enables practitioners to set the stage for prosocial behavior and academic learning. One…

This paper looks at several dimensions of the grade failure issue in Honduras using a unique data set compiled by the UMCE evaluation project in 1998 and 1999. The analytical framework incorporates econometric analysis of standardized tests and teacher pass/fail decisions for roughly 13,000 second and fourth grade students. The results show that…

Purpose: This paper aims to examine how influences at home and school interact to predict smoking among adolescents. Design/methodology/approach: Data were collected from 15-year-old pupils from Norway (n=1,404 in 73 Grade 10 school classes). Multilevel logistic regression analysis was used to determine how family and school influences interact to…

This paper is an "evaluation" study in the form of an extensive "case study" of one particular business school in Greece. Its alleged contribution focuses on the conclusions it hopes to draw in relation to the evaluation research methodology, based on the case evaluation research, experimenting with the use of students' ratings…

Currently, there has been substantial interest, in Australia and internationally, in policy activities related to outcomes-based educational performance indicators and their link with growing demands for accountability of teachers and schools. In order to achieve a fair comparison between schools, it is commonly agreed that a correction should be…

U.S. students now have four choices of schooling: public schooling, private-religious schooling, private-independent schooling, and home-schooling. Of these, home-schooling is the most novel: since legalization across the states in the last few decades, it has grown in importance and legitimacy as an alternative choice. Thus, it is now possible to…