This study assessed the needs of urban school leaders for special education preparation in a large public school district in the USA in order to assist the school administrators with improving their knowledge and skills for providing appropriate services to students with disabilities and their families to support inclusive education. The needs…

Undergraduate student attrition is a major concern in higher education. It is usually explained by the impact of student attributes; however, recent developments in student success literature point to the need of exploring institutional practices that may impact a student's decision to abandon their studies. The current weight of academic quality…

Background: Some adolescents are victims of negative appearance-related feedback, and this may have lasting adverse effects on their self-evaluation. The aim of this study was to examine the frequency and impact of appearance teasing across sex and weight status. Methods: The participants were 570 Czech adolescents (47.9% girls) evaluated at age…

Background: There has been relatively little analysis of school context including a large number of elements from the broader social, political and economic influences. However, primary schools in Flanders (Belgium) are supposed to consider their school context when implementing the Flemish policy on equal opportunities in education. Purpose: In…

The 1990 Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) reauthorization introduced transition mandates that included a "student involvement in transition planning" requirement, creating an emphasis on promoting such involvement so as to enhance the self-determination of students with disabilities and positive transition-related…

In large-scale educational surveys, a latent regression model is used to compensate for the shortage of cognitive information. Conventionally, the covariates in the latent regression model are principal components extracted from background data. This operational method has several important disadvantages, such as the handling of missing data and…

This study is an attempt to classify raters according to their weighting patterns and explore systematic differences between rater types in the rating process. In the context of an EFL speaking test, 126 raters were classified into three types--form-oriented, balanced, and content-oriented--through cluster analyses of their weighting patterns…

This paper examines people's attitudes toward public spending on education in Japan. It is well known that Japan has the smallest public education expenditure relative to GDP among the OECD countries, and this may yield unequal opportunities in education. The tax burden in Japan is small compared to those in OECD countries, and there may be no…

This study examines the impact of positive and negative affects and personality traits on meaning in life in an adult population. The sample consisted of 335 subjects: 190 females and 145 males, and a Meaning in Life Questionnaire (MLQ), positive and negative schedule (PANAS), and adjective-based personality scale (ABPT) were used in the research.…

The authors outline the application of latent class analysis (LCA) to classroom observational instruments. LCA offers diagnostic information about teachers' instructional strengths and weaknesses, along with estimates of measurement error for individual teachers, while remaining relatively straightforward to implement and interpret. It is…

This article examines the redesign of an undergraduate course in Business & Society using a threshold concept approach. Business & Society courses may be troublesome for students because they depart from the premise that business is limited to creating value for shareholders. We argue that Business & Society courses contain a web of…

The current study uses social judgment theory to inform the design of processes to be used in selecting teachers for training programs. Developing a comprehensive selection process to identify individuals who are likely to succeed as teachers is a mechanism for improving teacher quality and raising the profile of the profession. The design of such…

Background: This study examined the extent to which social cognitive theory is involved in dietary behavior changes among a sample of African Americans in Georgia. Purpose: We examined whether outcome expectations, barriers, and self-efficacy mediate changes in fruit and vegetable intake behavior. Methods: To accomplish this, we used change scores…

State support in higher education (HE) is often justified on the grounds that HE is important for the development of the country. However, little analysis is normally done in order to assess the impact of education quality initiatives. The Mexican government has been engaging in a policy of HE quality improvement that can be traced to 1989. In…

The prevalence, severity and symptom profiles for major depressive disorder (MDD) were compared in samples of boys and adolescents with and without an autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Self-reports were obtained on the Depression subscale of the Child and Adolescent Symptoms Inventory (CASI-D) with 70 ASD and 50 non-ASD male participants between the…