Advocates of merit pay believe that teachers who prove themselves to be effective should be given opportunities to earn appropriate rewards while remaining in the field of education and in the classroom where they can directly impact student learning (Figlio & Kenny, 2006; Glewwe, Ilias, & Kremer, 2003; Ritter & Barnett, 2013).…

Background: Self-efficacy has been shown to be positively related to undergraduate engineering students' achievement. Designing self-efficacy measures to assess the multifaceted skills required of engineers could improve the predictive relationship between efficacy beliefs and performance. Purpose: This study evaluates the factor structure,…

Background: Community cultural wealth, or the types of cultural capital that students of color employ, has been used to understand the persistence of students of color in engineering. The assets-based theory of community cultural wealth helps identify the cultural resources that these students develop in their families and communities and bring to…

One of the major issues that concerns tertiary institutions around the world is the student retention rate. In general, higher rates of completion give more positive image about the academic, administrative and financial statues of these institutions. However, improving the student completion and retention rates can be a challenging task. One way…

Inertia created by the 15 years of teacher quality reform leading up to Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), coupled with a renewed focus on innovation and flexibility under ESSA, might provide a recipe for establishing new ways to recruit, develop, and retain teachers in rural schools. Many hope that the development of complex and tailored staffing…

We address the problem of selecting the best of a set of units based on a criterion variable, when its value is recorded for every unit subject to estimation, measurement, or another source of error. The solution is constructed in a decision-theoretical framework, incorporating the consequences (ramifications) of the various kinds of error that…

How do we confront entrenched educational practices in higher education that lead to student demotivation, poor retention, and low persistence? This article argues that project-based learning that situates student voice and capacity at the center of culturally-responsive curriculum has the potential to spark student passion for problem-solving…

This study examines the role of satisfaction on students' academic performance and investigates the relationship between satisfaction of students and academic performance and explores other factors that contribute academic performance. A correlation research was used. The study population was the third and the last year students of Benadir…

The teacher turnover issue impacts education on national, state, and local levels. On a national level, at the beginning of the 21st century 50% of teachers left the profession within the first five years, creating the need for districts to fill vacancies (Gonzalez, Brown, & Slate, 2008; Greiner & Smith, 2006; Heller, 2004; Ingersoll,…

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships between self beliefs, institutional characteristics, and college student persistence. More specifically, this study sought to understand whether self-efficacy beliefs, both academic self-efficacy and social self-efficacy, play a role in college persistence. Further, the possible moderating…

An increasing number of students are taking classes offered online through open-access platforms; however, the vast majority of students who start these classes do not finish. The incongruence of student intentions and subsequent engagement suggests that self-control is a major contributor to this stark lack of persistence. This study presents the…

We rely on natural experiments in North Carolina and Washington State, which previously extended time to tenure by one year, to estimate models that assess the relationship between the extended probationary period and absence and attrition outcomes for teachers affected by the new tenure laws. Across both states we find evidence of decreases in…

This study examines the effect of state need-based financial aid on crucial student outcome measures at 4-year institutions. In particular, I seek to analyze differential effects across income groups. To account for potential endogeneity bias and the nested data structure, this study employs a propensity score matching, multilevel modeling…

The purpose of this study was to identify factors that influenced African American doctoral students at HBCUs to persist toward degree completion. Despite the minimal gains experienced in the success of attracting minority students to graduate programs, problems graduating African American doctoral students still linger (Council of Graduate…

Overall the social capital of MOOCs is under-exploited. For most students in MOOCs, autonomous learning often means learning alone. Students interested in adding a social dimension to their learning can browse discussion threads, join social medias and may message other students but usually in a blind and somehow random way, only hoping to find…