Given the frequent critiques of elite universities for admitting low numbers of state school graduates and, more recently, British Afro-Caribbean students, how do students attending those universities make meaning of the admissions process? Through an analysis of 46 one-on-one in-depth interviews with undergraduates attending Oxford University, we…

This study explores the perspectives of three girls, identified through progressive sampling, from an original study of over 100 children's behaviour in, and feelings towards, literacy and, in the latter stages, all subjects, across one academic year. Through observational and semi-structured interview data, the girls' dissatisfaction,…

Using an experimental design, native majority group children (8-13 years, N = 842) evaluated acculturation strategies (assimilation, integration, and separation) adopted by immigrant and emigrant peers. There were medium to large effects of the perceived acculturation strategies on children's peer evaluations. Overall, assimilation was valued…

Much of current studies focus on the investigation of the thinking styles of students and teachers. However, exploring school administrators' and inpectors' thinking styles is also critical for increasing students' achievement at school. For that purpose, this study was performed to determine the thinking styles of teachers, principals, and…

This study examines relationships between identity status and process measure scores that advance our understanding of methodological characteristics in the context of gender and age. A sample of 391 adolescents and adults (215 males, 176 females) completed the Identity Style Inventory (ISI; Berzonsky, 1992) and Ego Identity Process Questionnaire…

Sociologists have focused almost exclusively on academic aspects of status in higher education, despite the prominence of nonacademic activities, specifically athletics, in U.S. colleges and universities. We use the case of football to investigate whether intercollegiate sports influence the distribution of status in U.S. higher education.…

Substantial federal resources are allocated each year to National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) program, but the effectiveness of the program is unknown and resources devoted to the program may be unjustified. The purpose of the nonexperimental quantitative study was to examine the impact of NBPTS certification on student…

California community colleges are under pressure to increase core student attainment outcomes such as graduation rates, transfer rates, and certificate completion rates. This study examined whether, or how, the allocation of institutional expenditures for instructional, student support, administrative, and total educational and general activities…

The impact that removal of students from the educational setting has on student reading achievement (and later life outcomes) was the impetus for this study which sought to identify whether a relationship existed between an increasingly greater frequency of out of school suspension (OSS days) and reading achievement for middle school students.…

There is concern internationally that socio-economic class and ethnicity remain the most significant predictors of outcomes in mathematics; performance is often largely dependent on family income and level of parental education. Consequently the influence of pupils' socio-economic backgrounds remains a major challenge to those of us in the field…

The primary purpose of this study is to determine the influence of selected demographic and academic factors on the science achievement among middle school students in Louisiana. The dependent variable for this study was Science achievement as measured by the Eighth Grade LEAP Test. The independent variables consisted of selected demographic…

This article discusses the provision of education in Zimbabwe between 2000 and 2008 which occurred in the midst of a crisis. It is based on the case study of Harare and data collected from primary and secondary sources. It argues that the government's capacity to ensure the provision of education was crippled by the economic meltdown generated by…

We examined 482,418 students who took the ACT in the seventh grade and again in high school, taking an exploratory analytic approach to examine academic growth trends from 1996 to 2017. Predictors included sociodemographics, interests, high school (HS) characteristics, HS coursework and GPA, and extracurriculars, which explained 25% of the…

Socio-emotional development is increasingly recognised as playing a central role in children's academic achievement. However, little is known about the socio-emotional development of language-minority children on entry to school and how these children fare in comparison to their language-majority peers. To address this gap, longitudinal data on…

Earning a higher education credential is increasingly necessary for achieving family economic security. For single mothers, who are more likely to live in poverty than other women, earning postsecondary credentials can bring substantial benefits, from increased lifetime earnings and employment rates to better health outcomes and chances of success…