When students begin their education at community colleges, they may face more obstacles to obtaining their college education than students starting in four-year institutions. Research has shown the importance of academic and student services in the support of student athletes, that community college student athletes are often at academic risk, and…

What are the common types of social goals endorsed by early adolescents and how are they related to their school adjustment? This article discusses the importance of assessing students' social goals during the early adolescent developmental period when peers become increasingly important and youth experience tremendous changes to the school…

Motivational theories suggest various motivational best practices; however, the empirical research literature largely lacks the perspective of teachers, who facilitate motivation day in and out with students, about how they apply these motivational practices in their classrooms. The purpose of this study was to better understand what teachers do…

At-promise students enter colleges and universities with various challenges including being academically underprepared and lacking those essential critical thinking skills to be successful. However, providing support mechanisms within a nurturing environment can help these students overcome academic obstacles as well as personal challenges in…

As William Newell observed, in order to obtain an excellent undergraduate education, it is necessary for students to move between disciplinary and interdisciplinary educational experiences; additionally, he claims it is essential that "students also…shuttle back and forth between the classroom and the outside world" (Newell, 2010, p.…

This study reports on how an urban teacher relied on herself and harnessed performance-based pedagogy in developing her students' moral awareness over one academic year. Drawing on qualitative analyses of the teacher and students' reflections, interviews, as well as students' performance, the study shows that the teacher's reliance on her own…

Institutions of higher education must include policy-informing research into their long-term retention planning to improve institutional practices regarding student support and persistence (Bean, 2001; Kuh, 2006; Brown, 2015). This information is needed to make institutions of higher education aware of how student characteristics interact with the…

This paper examines the perception undergraduate students have, regarding the attributes they have developed in terms of transferable and communicative skills. The goal was to shed light on how undergraduate students, in the context of this research, perceive their graduate profile. This study was carried out at a university school of foreign…

Although three articles in this special issue address three very different social groupings--gender, ethnicity, and academic needs--they all highlight why inclusion is important for students' healthy development. The authors make specific suggestions for how schools might promote a more inclusive and welcoming climate for their students.…

Purpose is conceptualized as an intention to make meaning for self and to contribute to a greater world. Purpose in youth is critical to well-being, especially in the areas of good health and overall life satisfaction. An intentional set of strategies can be employed by educators to infuse and integrate purpose into youth development,…

This qualitative case study explores how former Supplemental Instruction (SI) leaders experienced perspective transformation as a result of serving in a peer leadership role at a 4-year, private university through a blended theoretical framework based on the principles set forth by Mezirow and Nohl. Through their participation in interviews and…

Changes in their brains, combined with a greater awareness of peers and events around them, make adolescence a key time for students to figure out who they are, what they aspire to be, and what they want to do in the world. This Alliance for Excellent Education report explores how human identity and self-regulation develop during adolescence and…

The authors contend that many undergraduate students lack the ability to deftly articulate the value of their college degree, including the competencies they acquire through classroom learning and extracurricular activities. Despite the positive impact of experiential education opportunities such as service learning and internships, there is a…

This is a theoretical paper that addresses the challenge of educational access to the Humanities and Social Sciences. It plots a theoretical quest to develop an explicit pedagogy to give "disadvantaged" students in the Humanities ways of working successfully with texts. In doing so it draws on Bernstein, Moore and Maton's work to…

We developed and implemented a series of workshops and seminars in an undergraduate journal club targeted at improving student development in applying the scientific process. Students were surveyed before and after participating in the club about their confidence in accessing, analyzing, and reporting scientific research. Post-club, the students…