The aim of this study is to investigate the epistemological beliefs of university students according to their genders, classes, fields of Study, academic success and learning styles. This study was carried out with 246 females and 242 males, in total 488 university students. The data was collected through Epistemological Beliefs Questionnaire…

Every five years, universities in the UK submit themselves to an exercise that produces league tables to determine the levels of funding support provided for research infrastructure by government, based on the previous five years of research activity. In 2013, the next exercise, called the Research Exercise Framework, will see in each university,…

This paper presents findings from a study addressing final year pre-service teachers' perceptions of their confidence and competence in managing student behaviour. Data were collected by means of a written survey administered shortly after the end of their last professional experience. Themes derived from analysing survey responses are examined in…

The relationships between disciplines and the institutions within which they are situated is a fertile area for researching the shaping of sociological knowledge. Applying theoretical insights from the sociology of knowledge, this article draws on an empirical study of research publications in the sociology of health and medicine to show which…

The current study, a preliminary examination of whether music teachers are more susceptible to vocal problems than teachers of other subjects, asked for expert evaluation of audio recordings from licensed speech-language pathologists. Participants (N = 41) taught music (n = 23) or another subject (n = 18) in either elementary (n = 21), middle (n =…

Using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort (ECLS-K)--a large, nationally representative sample of US elementary school students, we employed multilevel analysis to answer the following research questions: (a) Does students' mathematics achievement growth in grades K-3 vary among schools? (b) To what extent does…

At three different institutions, public and private, in varying roles, I have found the very particular problem of how to inform micro-level classroom practices with macro-level disciplinary knowledge to be centrally important to our field's development and our students' learning--and singularly difficult to overcome. In this program profile, I…

In recent years the field of literacy education and research has seen an increased attention to disciplinary literacy instruction--the teaching of discipline-specific and valued ways of reading, writing, knowing, and communicating knowledge. This article is about disciplinary literacy, specifically disciplinary reading as it is understood by…

In this descriptive study, we examined self-reported concerns of 159 music student teachers pre- and post-student teaching, over a period of 5 years. Resulting comments ("N" = 867) were analyzed on the basis of (a) stages of teacher concern (focus on self, subject matter [music and teaching], and students) modeled after Fuller and Bown…

The following paper proposes a discipline-affirming response to the challenge facing higher education in the context of the knowledge economy. It resists the drive to reduce the value of a humanities based education to the mere production of skills and instead affirms the substantial body of knowledge of specific disciplines. It uses as its model…

The purpose of this case study was to examine the School-Wide Positive Behavior Support (SWPBS) impact on five selected student performance factors. A literature review revealed there have been many SWPBS research studies regarding traditional public schools. However, there have not been any published empirical SWPBS studies involving K-12…

The aim of this study is to examine whether the expansion of higher education across countries is associated with the growth of shadow education as a function of families' efforts to ensure attainment of educational opportunities. To address this research objective, this study samples approximately 163,000 students, nested in 21 Organization for…

"Adolescent Literacy in the Era of the Common Core" provides school leaders, teachers, and others with strategies and best practices for advancing adolescent literacy in the classroom. Exceptionally clear and accessible, the book addresses a full range of topics in this vitally important field, including disciplinary literacy; vocabulary…

The Iowa Department of Education collects information on joint enrollment in Iowa's 15 community colleges. Jointly enrolled students are high school students enrolled in community college credit coursework. Most jointly enrolled students enroll through Senior Year Plus (SYP) programs such as Postsecondary Enrollment Options (PSEO) and concurrent…

Many factors--individual, departmental and institutional--have been associated with longer time to degree and progress toward degree completion. Lengthy time to degree affects the availability of resources, advising, persistence, and degree completion. This research identified institutional characteristics that impacted extended time to degree,…