Many articles and reports have reviewed, researched, and commented on international assessments from the perspective of exploring what is relevant for the United States' education systems. Researchers make claims about whether the top-performing systems have transferable practices or policies that could be applied to the United States. However,…

This annual snapshot of child well-being is intended to inform policymakers and the public of the progress of and challenges to ensuring the health, welfare, and safety of all children. Following a special section on the racial disparities that exist among New Jersey children based on the Annie E. Casey Foundation's "Race for Results"…

The "International Society for the Social Studies (ISSS) Annual Conference Proceedings" is a peer-reviewed professional publication published once a year following the annual conference. The following papers are included in the 2015 proceedings: (1) Local History and Local Culture at the Core of Elementary Social Studies Curriculum (C.…

This article introduces a special issue on the meaning of children in violent, uncertain times. It is framed in terms of the political-economy aspects of adoption, focusing on the local occurrences that make international adoption possible, from legal determinations of abandonment to wartime and postwar parenting. The article argues that…

This study sought to understand how the Army Family Team Building program influences self-reliance and self-sufficiency in Army spouses as they integrate into the Army community. The purpose of the Army Family Team Building program is to empower Army spouses with knowledge and skills, which foster well-being and improve quality of life. The…

This study examined the importance of faculty's commitment to pedagogical quality (CPQ) in predicting instructional technology adoption. A customized electronic survey of 27 questions was developed and implemented to four higher educational institutions and yielded 104 usable surveys. Data were analyzed with SPSS using correlation and backward…

Objective: Little is known about how parenting might offset genetic risk to prevent the onset of child problems during toddlerhood. We used a prospective adoption design to separate genetic and environmental influences and test whether associations between structured parenting and toddler behavior problems were conditioned by genetic risk for…

As the number of international adoptions has increased over the past 2 decades, so has awareness and understanding of the risks associated with the conditions to which these children have been exposed. Prenatal alcohol and/or drug exposure, infectious diseases, malnutrition, and psychosocial deprivation all contribute to the profound growth and…

This study examined the severity of externalizing symptomology among adopted boys with preadoptive histories of child sexual abuse, physical abuse, neglect/abandonment, or no abuse. The study was based on data collected across a three-year period from parents who adopted children from Florida's child welfare system. The sample consisted of 1,136…

Institutions of higher education have increasing turned to web portals as a way to connect with students. These portals are designed to provide students a centralized point of access to information and services. In spite of the efforts put into developing and maintaining these portals, their use by students can be disappointing. The study…

This article proposes a conceptual framework to explain the adoption and diffusion of a national human resource development (NHRD) standard. NHRD standards are used by governments to promote training and development in organizations and increase the professionalization of practices used by organizations. Institutional theory suggests that adoption…

One of the most significant changes in the field of education in this information age is the paradigm shift from teacher-centered to learner-centered education. Along with this paradigm shift, understanding of students' e-learning adoption behavior among various countries is urgently needed. South Korea's dense student population and high…

There are hopes that new learning technologies will help to transform university learning and teaching into a more engaging experience for twenty-first-century students. But since 2000 the changes in campus university teaching have been more limited than expected. I have drawn on ideas from organisational change management research to investigate…

Despite implementation of electronic medical record (EMR) systems in the United States and other countries, there is no organizational development model that addresses medical professionals' attitudes toward technology adoption in a learning organization. The purpose of this study was to assess whether a model would change those attitudes toward…

Adopting a new technology is an important decision for many academic institutions. Colleges have had to upgrade technology or face diminishing enrollment as students choose to attend other, more responsive institutions. New and imaginative approaches to technology have been developed and implemented by faculty, support staff, and students to…