With degree in hand, and ink nearly dry on their first contract, new teachers enter the educational field ready to change students' lives. Filled with hopes, ideas, and excitement, they file into classrooms and begin classroom preparations for their first year. More often than not, novice educators appear to be easily and quickly overwhelmed by…

Over the past decade the educational environment has not only become more competitive but also more commercialised. These trends have contributed to the introduction of service quality measurement at higher education institutions. Traditionally institutions assume that students have relatively homogeneous needs and expectations and the result is…

This study investigated undergraduate student experiences during an online class. The purpose of the study was to gain an understanding of (a) how student context influences students' experiences, how students adapted to the classes, how students' mindsets changed, and how students expressed buy-in or lack of buy-in. The data revealed that…

A total of 75 individuals participated in 1 of either 5 parent or 4 early intervention therapist focus groups. Groups were held regionally in a large mid-Atlantic state to explore the ways in which each group interpreted the concept of natural environments and to identify any differences in perspectives among parents and therapists. Transcribed…

In their longitudinal study, Kosnik, Beck, Cleovoulou and Fletcher accompanied a group of 22 beginning teachers along the critical period of their first three years in the profession. While the overall tone of this inside-the-classroom-door-study is positive and even optimistic, the findings point to seven key areas where the authors concluded…

Lower secondary school teachers from six different schools in one Norwegian municipality reported on the prevalence of problems among pupils entering lower secondary school and types of problems among pupils in Grades 8-10. Teachers report that the transition from Elementary to Lower secondary school is problematic for approximately 30% of the…

Transitioning from high-school to university can be difficult, and many university teachers feel students are often ill-prepared for the change. To investigate this 233 Humanities and Science students at the University of Adelaide were surveyed 6 months into their first year regarding experiences of teaching and learning at university. 189…

This qualitative study investigates how parents of adolescents with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) manage courtesy stigma in their lives. Focus groups are conducted with mothers and fathers of adolescents with ADHD who are part of a cohort study on ADHD detection and service use. Using grounded theory analysis, researchers find…

This article is based on the sociological analysis of the experiences and perspectives of five young men making the transition out of one state's end-of-the-line maximum security juvenile correctional facility and attempting to reenter the community as emerging adults. As part of a larger ethnographic study of violent offenders in a cottage, these…

This study examined maternal beliefs about the functions of memory sharing and the relations between these beliefs and mother-child reminiscing behaviors in a cross-cultural context. Sixty-three European American and 47 Chinese mothers completed an open-ended questionnaire concerning their beliefs about the functions of parent-child memory…

This study investigated the relationships and mean-level changes of middle school students' motivation (expectancy-related beliefs, task values, self-efficacy, and outcome expectancy) toward physical education over time, and how gender affected students' motivation. Participants (N = 206) completed questionnaires over a 1-year period: once in the…

This study examined the dispositions, experiences, and expectations of international students in a developing country to understand the increasing phenomenon of reverse student flows and the role of the political economy in international student mobility. Students' dispositions, experiences and expectations--referred here collectively as…

This study examines the peer relations and emotion practices of adolescent boys in light of their expectations and assumptions about masculinity. We carried out semistructured interviews with middle-class and upper-middle-class boys from an independent high school. The boys reported that they assiduously avoided displays of emotional or physical…

This study investigated students' motives for participating in a short-term study abroad program in Germany, their expectations about learning progress at the beginning of the program, and their perceived progress in various language skills at the end of the program. Findings indicated that students' expectations were higher than their perceived…

As educators increasingly focus on increasing the level of rigor in their schools, it is important to first agree on what rigor is. Rigor is more than just the content of the lesson or even what teachers expect students to do. Too often, teachers simply raise expectations without providing appropriate support for students to succeed. True rigor…