Mississippi State University is participating in a pilot test of the Beginning College Student Survey (BCSS), the newest addition to the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE). The BCSS is designed to provide information about students' experiences in high school and expectations for college and parallels NSSE's premier survey of college…

This study is conducted with self-developed questionnaire on 910 middle school students, aimed at describing middle school students' academic subjective well-being and exploring its influential factors. Results show that (1) Academic subjective well-being of middle school students is generally low and there exist differences in different schools…

The ways in which seven private sector dance professionals in the United States perceive the impact of sexuality in contemporary culture and the choices that they make for their own schools of dance because of these perceptions are explored. This study was conducted through in-depth interviews and a survey instrument. The participants' narratives…

Research courses are associated with performance anxiety and educational insecurity for many social work students. This paper makes the case that student anxiety associated with research courses is rooted in the history of the social work profession, and this history sheds light on the present day climate of research in social work education. The…

DeVault shares strategies, enlivened with examples and anecdotes, for dealing with pressures for academic kindergarten. For example, teachers can embrace the positive elements in new methodologies; document children's meaningful activities and progress using photographs, videos, and slide shows to share with parents and administrators; share…

With the enactment of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 and the reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act 2004, our nation has an explicit mandate to put reading first. Recognizing the fundamental connection between language and literacy, teachers and speech-language pathologists have become more…

The study reported in this paper examined student messages, gathered through post-exit interviews, to compare how they talk about membership in the organizational culture of Southern Nazarene University (SNU) with the institution's espoused values and underlying assumptions as presented in official institutional documents. This analysis considers…

Higher education programs across the nation have recognized that transformation in pedagogical norms is critical. Often, decreased funding for education is cited as a primary driver for the need to transform the way higher education does its business. This article describes a series of factors that confirm that the decrease in funding is only one…

While children usually look forward to being reunited with their parents following incarceration, reunification signals yet another stage in a long adjustment process. This article explores the impact of parental incarceration as it relates to future reunification, examines pre- and post-release factors which affect successful reunification, and…

Because it focuses on the interactions between students and their environments, Holland's theory of vocational choice provides a powerful framework for studying college experiences. The present study assessed the relative merits of psychological and sociological interpretations of Holland's theory by examining the relationships among students' …

In this article (the edited keynote address to the NAEYC 15th National Institute for Early Childhood Professional Development in June) Bowman defines the four different kinds of standards-for programs, content, learning or performance, and professional development-and explains her beliefs about them. Regarding content and learning standards,…

This article is an open letter to English teachers by the author, a second-year graduate student in English education doing substitute teaching. She argues that as a substitute teacher, expectations of her teaching abilities and those of most substitute teachers are incredibly low, and that low expectations often result in low performance. Here,…

This study examines the interplay of institutional environments and organizational contexts in shaping the responses of four professional schools (public health, business, social work, and engineering) to diversity-related pressures, expectations, requirements, and incentives. The role of market demand in structuring postsecondary approaches to…

Findings from the current study show that new teacher expectations for involvement in school decision-making are not being actualized. Based on feedback from elementary and secondary teachers (n=504) in 87 schools, the results show significant differences between actual and preferred levels of participation in 16 areas of school decision-making.…

The "Fiscal Year 2008 Illinois Community College System's Performance Report" contains summary information about state and common institutional outcome indicators. External comparative benchmarks are cited whenever possible using the latest available data--national reporting typically trails what is available at the state level.…