Previously, we reported qualitative findings showing that students who experienced a problem- or enquiry-based course (EBL) in a first-year seminar program had greater confidence in their academic abilities, were more engaged, and were better prepared for upper-year courses. In the current paper, we provide quantitative data to substantiate the…

Given ongoing interest in increasing productivity and participation in the workforce, understanding when talent is lost is a useful exercise. The term "lost talent" describes the underutilisation or wastage of human potential. Focusing on young people, Sikora and Saha define lost talent as occurring when students in the top 50% of…

Advanced Placement (AP) and Dual Enrollment (DE) are two programs that allow high school students to earn college credits. The recent growth of these programs has been unprecedented. However, there is little evidence that compares how they fare in terms of improving college access and success. Using data from two cohorts of all high school…

This report describes self-reported attitudes and motivations of first-year college students nationally at the beginning of the undergraduate experience, based on a 100-item motivational assessment administered in the summer and fall of 2010. Highlighted this year are attitudes that may limit academic engagement, suggesting the need for…

Despite the major push for higher student outcomes in graduation, school achievement, and test scores, even when legislated (NCLB, 2001), too many students fail to persist in school, often choosing to drop out as their last resort (Bridgeland, DiIulio, & Morison, 2006). Specifically, one third of the nation's students drop out of school, even when…

The purpose of this paper is to report the findings of a research conducted to evaluate the effect of learning preconceptions, prior e-learning experience, ability and interest of students on their perceptions regarding the process of e-learning. We study the effectiveness of e-learning as it relates to the level of e-learning experience. The…

A handful of studies have found evidence of a gap in academic achievement between students of high- and low-socioeconomic status (SES) families. Furthermore, some scholars argue that the gap tends to widen as students get older. Evidence is, however, inconclusive and relies mostly on limited methodological designs. Drawing on the Hamburg School…

From individual longitudinal data for a full cohort of first-entering students who embarked on short programs in Spain and were observed over a 7-year period ending in 2003, we analyze the probability that an individual will drop out, transfer, or graduate from a university school program. The statistical analysis is carried out in a…

Efforts to identify factors associated with peer acceptance have historically focused on behavioral and social cognitive processes, whereas less empirical attention has focused on the impact of children's other personal attributes and competencies that are not inherently a component of social competence. The current study examined the association…

The purpose of this study was to assess the socialization skills, self-esteem, and academic readiness of African American males in a school environment. Discussions with students and the School Perceptions Questionnaire provided data for this investigation. The intended targets for this investigation were African American students; however, there…

Girls have been posting higher reading scores than boys for decades, but other trends suggest they may also have surpassed boys in overall academic performance. Girls have higher high school grade-point averages, are more widely represented as school valedictorians, and attend and graduate from college in greater numbers than boys. All this has…

The purpose of this review was threefold. First, the theorized sources of self-efficacy beliefs proposed by A. Bandura (1986) are described and explained, including how they are typically assessed and analyzed. Second, findings from investigations of these sources in academic contexts are reviewed and critiqued, and problems and oversights in…

Twenty-five years ago when Harry Judge published "American Graduate Schools of Education: a view from abroad", he referred to his subject as a "puzzle". These institutions were in the midst of a transition from a focus upon the education of academically talented children mostly from affluent backgrounds to the schooling of children of disparate…

We model how class size affects the grade higher education students earn and we test the model using an ordinal logit with and without fixed effects on over 760,000 undergraduate observations from a northeastern public university. We find that class size negatively affects grades for a variety of specifications and subsets of the data, as well as…

Increased diversity within student populations has led to concerns for meeting the needs of all learners. Traditionally, education has defined diversity in terms of students' ethnicity, language, and academic abilities. In today's environment, however, multicultural efforts fall short if they do not also include sexual orientation and family…