This study examines preschoolers' beliefs concerning their transfer into primary education. Data from 1386 Finnish preschoolers were obtained using interviews with parents at the end of the children's preschool year. The qualitative content analysis revealed categories, which encompassed peer relationships, relationship with teacher, learning,…

Do you find it challenging to have discussions with instructors about designing online courses and best practices in teaching? This article will highlight key components to conducting effective Learning Design meetings. It outlines techniques used by this institution that inspires faculty to design coherent courses that lead to meaningful learning…

Secondary agricultural education has consistently faced a shortage of teachers for the past several decades. Because there are not enough newly qualified teachers certified annually to fill all the vacancies, attrition must be addressed. The purpose of this research was to develop and pilot test an attrition risk assessment instrument. Items were…

Universities in Hong Kong implemented a new 4-year undergraduate curriculum in 2012, and many initiated academic advising programs to help students from different academic backgrounds and with various levels of preparedness to review their options and manage challenges in college. For this study, we administered a questionnaire survey to discover…

A crisis of student funding has led to most South African universities being closed for weeks, after protests in 2015 and again in 2016. A policy response to these events requires insight into relationships between higher education, society, and the economy. This paper interrogates the assumptions which underpin current approaches to measuring…

In the present study, the assumption was tested that expectancy-incongruent feedback in conjunction with explicit self-affirmation directs attention away from the task and to the self. As a result, performance should decrease in resource-sensitive text/picture comprehension tasks as compared to resource-insensitive tasks. Three hundred and…

This study investigated patterns of college attendance using data from a nationwide and contemporary sample of 2112 rural youth. We found that more than half of rural youth attended two-year institutions at some point during their college career and about a fourth initially enrolled in a two-year college before enrolling in a four-year college.…

Expectancy violations theory, a communicative framework, is applied in this study to understand how recent college graduates form, evaluate, and respond to violated job-searching expectations. In-depth interviews of college seniors (N = 20) who were currently job searching helped answer the three research questions posed. Using a thematic…

Teachers in rural, black schools understood their communities and their students and provided lessons that are still relevant today. The three main lessons are to learn and use culturally appropriate teaching, initiate and maintain mutually respectful community connections, and expect great things from every student.

Despite increasing utilization of chromosomal microarray analysis (CMA) for autism spectrum disorders (ASD), limited information exists about how results influence parents' beliefs about etiology and prognosis. We conducted in-depth interviews and surveys with 57 parents of children with ASD who received CMA results categorized as pathogenic,…

The purpose of this research was to identify conflicts in the rights and responsibility of Grade 9 test takers when some parts of a large-scale test are marked by teachers and used in the calculation of students' class marks. Data from teachers' questionnaires and students' questionnaires from a 2009-10 administration of a large-scale test of…

This qualitative study explores undergraduate critical-thinking development from the perspective of students, faculty, and academic affairs administrators. We interviewed three different student cohorts at the end of both the first and second semesters of their first year at a selective liberal arts university in south/central Texas. We also…

In this paper, we identify reasons for the high school achievement of some migrant children, in spite of the language barriers faced by themselves and their parents. We explore the literature to determine the factors used to overcome such barriers, particularly those beyond social economic status (SES) and other largely inherited factors that…

In 2011 the U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights released additional guidance to colleges and universities on how they should handle campus sexual harassment and assault. Since that time institutions of higher education have been under significant pressure to improve their processes. This qualitative study adds to this…

As a result of decreasing state and federal aid to colleges and universities, higher education administrators are seeking alternative revenue streams to help support operational expenses. Though commercial influences are not new to the higher education sector, their size and scope within traditional liberal arts and private non-profit universities…