The primary objective of the present study was to investigate the relationship between language proficiency and socio-cultural factors among the Iranian MA students registered and entered at Shiraz University in 2008. The second objective was to explore whether or not one or a combination of socio-cultural factors are predictors of language…

Although the onset of illicit substance use during adolescence can hit parents abruptly like a raging flood, its origins likely start as a trickle in early childhood. Understanding antecedent factors and how they grow into a stream that leads to adolescent drug use is important for theories of social development as well as policy formulations to…

Non-completion of senior secondary schooling continues to be a matter of concern for policy makers and practitioners in Australia today. Despite the efforts of governments to improve participation and retention rates, 30% of students drop out of school before completing Year 12. Further, some students remain at school, just biding their time until…

The purpose of this article is to provide an overview of the analysis of the Early Childhood Education (ECE) curriculum in six countries involved in the UPDATE-project, and on that basis, propose a conceptual foundation for technology education in ECE that aims to enhance gender sensitive technology education in the continuum from early years to…

The issue of where to teach children with special educational needs (SEN) and disabilities has been a great concern as countries respond to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Salamanca Statement on inclusion of 1994. In this study, the responses of 500 trained and untrained mainstream primary school…

The No Child Left Behind Act requires state boards of education to identify schools that are unsafe. Schools that are identified by measures such as suspension and expulsion rates are subsequently labeled "persistently dangerous." To our knowledge there is no published research that attempts to characterize fighting behavior among youths…

Stress and burnout have emerged as a serious concern for today's higher education instructors. As the growth in distance education continues, the demands on online academics will increase, potentially leading to the burnout. This study examined the correlation between years of online work experience, gender, educational level, academic training,…

One of the greatest differences in resources across schools in California comes from an inequitable distribution of teachers. This study identifies reasons for this sorting of teachers by surveying 531 teachers in a California elementary school district. The surveys ask the teachers to make choices between various workplace characteristics. With…

This article examines the widespread resistance to condom use in sub-Saharan Africa by describing the major semiotic axes that organize how people talk about condoms and condom use. These axes include the "sweetness" of sex, trust and love between sexual partners, and assessments of risk and danger. Using data from rural Malawi, we show…

This study investigated the links between racial discrimination and school engagement and the roles of racial socialization and ethnic identity as protective factors in those linkages in a sample of 148, sixth through twelfth grade African American adolescents from working and middle-class two-parent families. In home interviews, youth described…

Based on earlier studies using the 1999 and 2004 National Study of Postsecondary Faculty (NSOPF) data [1, 2], a causal model explaining faculty technology use was constructed. Path analysis was used to test the causal effects of age, gender, highest degree, discipline (health science or not), recent research productivity, and teaching load on…

Objective: The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between children's experiences of three different types of violence and academic achievement among primary school children in Kingston, Jamaica. Methods: A cross-sectional study of 1300 children in grade 5 [mean (S.D.) age: 11 (0.5) years] from 29 government primary schools in urban…

This study examines the degree to which support from parents and teachers buffers the level of depression for four groups of children involved in bullying (victim, bully, bully-victims, or not involved children). Nine hundred and seventy-seven 5th-, 9th-, and 11th-grade students in the rural South completed questionnaires on bullying, social…

Attitudes about inclusion are extremely complex and vary from teacher to teacher and school to school. This article explores the attitudes of teachers about inclusion of children with special needs in their secondary schools in general education. This study adopted a descriptive survey research design, with 60 teachers as participants from…

The objective of this study was to evaluate the influence of family, psychosocial, health, demographic, and behavioral characteristics on regular drug use. All the students of 17 randomly stratified public secondary schools in Nairobi were required to complete self-administered sociodemographic and the Drug Use Screening Inventory-Revised (DUSI-R)…