What exactly is perfect? Students describe perfection as a combination of characteristics valued by their peer culture: intelligence, thin and fit physical appearance, social poise. As students chug through their daily lives--morning classes, organization meetings, club sports practice or the gym, dinner, another class, more meetings, library,…

Introduction: The aim of this research is to analyse the thinking of teachers-in-training for compulsory secondary education, in order to facilitate the work of education and guidance at secondary schools. Method: The participants were 265 students in the "CAP" program (course for the Pedagogical Aptitude Certificate). The instrument…

Scott and Meyer (1991) suggest that individual organizations must conform to elaborate rules and institutional scripts to achieve legitimacy. In the case of the College of Business at Potential University (pseudonym), legitimacy was accreditation from the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB). This case study used Benson's…

In this article, the author looks to the past for trends in hardware, software, networking, and education and attempt to extrapolate where they are going and what their broad implications might be. However, there are many different ways that trends can be interpreted, and it is easy to pick trends that support one's thesis and ignore ones that…

The high school completion rate for the U.S. has increased only slightly over the last quarter of a century. A promising area of focus for dropout prevention efforts may be found in research that assesses how messages about educational attainment may affect school completion rates. The supportive communication framework is used to address how…

This preliminary study examined the effect of a caring-based versus a traditionally-focused physical activity intervention on underserved adolescents' perceptions of the caring climate, the motivational climate, empathetic concern, enjoyment, and future anticipated participation. Multiethnic youth (N = 353) aged 9 to 17 involved in two National…

The activities and self-direction allowed after school provide children in different countries with distinct developmental opportunities that promote culturally valued orientations and outcomes. Fourth-grade children in Bulgaria, Taiwan, and the United States (countries with contrasting social values and expectations) reported their usual…

This chapter presents an autoethnography of a Chinese American woman's twenty-five years of experience in higher education at universities in Southern California and the Pacific Northwest. Her career is discussed in four stages: master's teaching assistant and student, part-time instructor, doctoral teaching assistant and student, and professor.

What teaching strategies must teachers of reading be able to perform and how are these strategies applied effectively in teaching children to read? This article attempts to answer these two important questions. One key element of a successful reading program focuses on the teacher. A brief review of the teacher effectiveness literature, including…

This discussion of the potential roles of learners and instructors as they affect the learning environment argues that the roles of teachers and learners are the key issues rather than learning styles. It begins by discussing the roles of learners as receivers, detectives (problem solvers), generators (developers of new ideas), and facilitators…

Expectation theory, developed during the 1930s and 1940s, explains human behavior in terms of interaction between person and situation characteristics, as they are perceived by the individual. This study is centered on the expectations of Belgian and Brazilian undergraduates about their first professional job. Recent research about work…

A study explored academic writing from the students' side of the desk, examining how different tasks and writing situations influenced students' approaches. The study used interviews and process logs to examine how 13 college freshmen interpreted writing assignments in a variety of courses (sociology, engineering, and literature) and how these…

Typically, attributions of attitude are assessed after one instance of an actor's behavior. To determine what types of attributions observers make after the presentation of a sequence of behaviors, 135 college students were asked to make attributions about an actor's behavior after having been provided with category-based (group membership) and…

Expectations about jobs held by 77 undergraduates in the Leisure Services and Studies Department at Florida State University were studied. A basis for the study was the finding that 10-60 percent of leisure services practitioners leave the field within 2 years of graduation. It was hypothesized that the students' expectations about job…

The purpose of this study was to compare the effects of two contextual influences (performance-contingent rewards and proximal goals) on children's task motivation, self-efficacy, and skillful performance after division skill-development training. The sample included 44 children, ranging in age from approximately 9 to 11 years, who were identified…