Catholic schools in Scotland have been fully state-funded since the 1918 Education (Scotland) Act. Under this Act, 369 contemporary Catholic schools are able to retain their distinctive identity and religious education and the teachers have to be approved by the Catholic hierarchy. Similar to the position of other forms of state-funded and…

In this article, John Macalister draws attention to the fact that the term "extensive reading" can have multiple meanings. It has been used to include breadth of reading and time spent reading, as well as both amount of new reading and amount of text read. It is, therefore, perhaps unsurprising that teachers can hold differing views as…

In this paper, we analyze how students select particular sections of required undergraduate courses at a regional public university in Texas. Specifically, we study how perceived instructor quality and other course section attributes, such as meeting time, impact enrollment. We find strong evidence that publicly available information about…

Textbooks have a great importance in instructing and sharing experiences by the use of theoretical information. This study aims to present views of instructors regarding the selection and use of textbooks in Turkish education departments. For that purpose, the participants in this survey were composed of 15 instructors officiating in the Turkish…

This paper analyses the process of production and regulation of school textbooks in Poland under communist rule. The stages of textbook approval were as follows: selection of authors; editorial work at the publishing house; discussions in the commissions of the Ministry of Education; decisions of the censorship office. It is argued that the Polish…

Elective language courses, particularly those starting from the beginner level, constitute their own special group within the communication and language course offerings of universities. The elementary courses of less commonly taught languages (LCTL), such as Japanese, provide students with the opportunity to acquire, among other benefits, a…

Israel is a multi-cultural society with a Jewish majority and a large Arab minority. This study aims to examine whether Israeli Arab and Jewish students have different motivations and consider different factors when choosing a college for postgraduate studies. A case study, during the academic year 2010-11 administered questionnaires to 290 Jewish…

Sustainability issues have led to increased demands for a STEM-literate society and workforce. Potential contributors need to be competent, have an understanding of earth and physical sciences, and be willing to pursue such fields. High school girls, however, remain underrepresented in physical science course enrollments (College Board, 2014).…

The purpose of this paper is to identify and explain the best practice of using "big data" reports to help distance learning administrators better understand their own programs and represent them to stakeholders. The authors examine five reports: (1) the number and percentage of graduates from the main campus who also take classes at the…

Genius Hour is a time built into the school day or week to enable students to actively create their learning rather than passively consume it. During the time set aside for Genius Hour, students choose what they will learn about, the strategies they will use to learn it, the pace of their work, the materials and resources they will use, and the…

Although about 77% of ACT-tested high school graduates express an intention of earning a bachelor's degree or higher (ACT, 2016a), the percentage of students who achieve academic success in their first-year courses, persist in college, and ultimately earn a bachelor's degree within six years is substantially lower. Approximately 60% of students…

Students who take advanced courses in high school are more likely to enroll and persist in college. This report describes patterns in advanced coursetaking among three groups of students in Washington state: Spanish-speaking students, other language minority students whose primary or home language is not Spanish, and English-only speakers. This…

This dissertation format includes three articles that each address a unique aspect of the current barriers to access that individuals with disabilities with intersectional identities experience in their academic and career paths to attainment of a doctoral degree. The first article contains an analysis of data drawn from the High School…

"How do personal beliefs, organizational structures, and decision-making processes influence principal practice in leading for equity?" Over the course of one academic school year, we conducted semi-structured interviews, participant shadowing, and collected artifacts from three elementary school principals with demonstrated success in…

Despite the widespread adoption of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), no business model has emerged to make them sustainable from an institution standpoint. Using MOOCs as a marketing platform shows promise; but for this to succeed, it is necessary to understand the motivations of those who undertake them and to demonstrate how these same…