Over the last several decades we have seen a fundamental transformation of higher education. Fifty years ago, 75% of faculty were in highly paid and secure tenure-track jobs, but today 75% are in non-tenure-track, or contingent positions. University administrators argue that this shift, and the low wages that accompany these positions, are…

We examined the functions of mothers' speech to infants during two tasks--book-sharing and bead-stringing--in low-income, ethnically diverse families. Mexican, Dominican, and African American mothers and their infants were video-recorded sharing wordless books and toy beads in the home when infants were 1:2 and 2:0. Mothers' utterances were…

We examined the functions of mothers' speech to infants during two tasks -- book-sharing and bead-stringing -- in low-income, ethnically diverse families. Mexican, Dominican, and African American mothers and their infants were video-recorded sharing wordless books and toy beads in the home when infants were aged 1;2 and 2;0. Mothers' utterances…

Objective: Racial discrimination experiences are common among youth with an ethnic minority background, and such experiences affect health. Stress-sensitive systems like the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis have been proposed as one mechanism. HPA-axis activity, measured through daily patterns of salivary cortisol, is altered among…

Previous research has largely documented that socioeconomic status (SES) is a strong and consistent predictor of pupils' school performance in several countries. In this research, we argue that children internalize the SES achievement gap in the form of a lower/higher sense of school self-efficacy. In two studies, teenaged students' (Study 1) and…

Where are you going for spring break? How many colleges did you apply to? Why are you not going on the international service-learning trip? These are the sort of questions students and colleagues ask each other in advisories, classrooms, and hallways. No doubt they are born out of intentions to connect. They are not meant to embarrass or be…

This qualitative study examines the role of college in how undocumented students make meaning of their identity through the concept of status ownership. Using a sociological framework that drew upon Kaufman and Feldman's (2004) work, this study calls attention to the social context in the college experience and offers insight into this student…

Academic achievement disparities based on parental education are robust during the middle school years. The current study examined whether cross-class friendship (i.e., reciprocal relationships between peers with different levels of parental education) decrease class-based achievement differences during a developmental phase when friends are…

The Stanford Educational Data Archive (SEDA) is the first data set to allow comparisons of district academic achievement and growth from Grades 3 to 8 across the United States, shining a light on the distribution of educational opportunities. This study describes a convergent validity analysis of the SEDA growth estimates in mathematics and…

In hypothetical playmate preference tasks, obese figures are rarely picked up as friends. This study aims to observe what happens in real life and examine the relationship between body-size and social status in children. Four-hundred and fourteen children aged 5, 7 and 9 years were given a sociometric test. The Body Mass Index (BMI) of each child…

Challenges to ensuring teaching quality in higher education give ongoing impetus to invest in teaching quality improvement. While a significant body of literature has recognised challenges faced by academics seeking to improve teaching practices, processes for developing constructive responses to identified barriers have attracted less attention.…

This study examined the moderating effects of gender and life cycle characteristics in the relationship between desired self-image and sport participation behavior. Multigroup comparisons revealed that the moderating effects of gender and life cycle were most salient in groups with the interaction effect. Specifically, the group difference between…

This study investigated whether a country's policy context for immigrant integration was related to native adolescents' attitudes towards ethnic minorities in European countries, using data from the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study. We found that students in a country with more inclusive and multiculturalist policies for…

At a time when most students aspire for college but not all necessarily attain it, do educational expectations still matter? High self-expectations are said to influence future educational success, but studies have often focussed on expectations at a single point in time. Thus, this research asks how stable, unstable, and later expectations…

In Australia's highly multicultural and multilingual society the number of students studying languages in secondary schools has declined markedly in recent decades, but not for all students. For students from high socio-economic status (SES) families who attend elite private schools and academically selective high schools, studying traditional…