This is a phenomenological study of ten graduate international students at Chardin University (pseudonym). Through 30 in-depth interviews, multiple social contacts, and group and member checking sessions, stories emerged that highlight the social experiences of these graduate international students through their transient lives. For the purposes…

Song learning, maintenance and production require coordinated activity across multiple auditory, sensory-motor, and neuromuscular structures. Telencephalic components of the sensory-motor circuitry are unique to avian species that engage in song learning. The song system shows protracted development that begins prior to hatching but continues well…

Many societies and cultures have become increasingly diverse and heterogeneous over the past decade. This diversity has a direct bearing on social justice in children's and adolescents' social development. Increased diversity can have positive consequences, such as the possibility for increased empathy, tolerance, perspective taking, and the…

This study explores the changes in Taiwanese university students' English-learning motivation and the causes of these changes. The emphasis herein is on a comparison and contrast of both English major and non-major students in three different universities in Taiwan. In the study, a qualitative approach (20 semi-structured interviews) was used. The…

The experiences of gifted students at the postsecondary level have not been studied widely. The goal of the present study was to explore and describe gifted students' perceptions of their first year after high school regarding experiences of success and failure. Two focus groups were conducted with 12 students (8 males, 4 females) from different…

Parental involvement in schools is regarded as critical to student success in Australia, Canada, and the USA, the world's top refugee resettlement countries. Refugees can be disadvantaged when they are unfamiliar with the practices and when their own cultural beliefs conflict with expectations in their new communities, or when they are consumed by…

The purpose of this study is to examine the social and self-perceptions of twice-exceptional "students", those students who meet criteria for being identified as both gifted and learning disabled. In particular, we focus on how twice-exceptional students are similar to, or different from, students with only a learning disability or who…

This descriptive study using survey design sought to establish the efficacy of the Community of Inquiry instrument utilized in a study published by Shea and Bidjerano in 2009 exploring an online community of business students in a multi-institutional study. The current study sought to validate the instrument with a population of students in three…

Cramer's (1999) model of self-concealment and willingness to seek counseling was extended to examine the role of positive and negative social experiences in a sample of 235 college students reporting a psychological, academic, or career issue. Structural equation modeling indicated that self-concealment predicted willingness through the mediators…

In this personal essay, Aurora Chang describes her experience of "hyperdocumentation"--the effort to accrue awards, accolades, and eventually academic degrees to compensate for her undocumented status. In spite of her visible successes and naturalization, Chang still confronts the rage and intolerance of American "commonsense" beliefs about…

This article presents the findings of an action research project conducted with a group of pre-service teachers of a program in modern languages at a Colombian university. The study intended to go beyond an emphasis on linguistic and textual features in English as a foreign language argumentative essays by using a set of genre-based activities and…

The concept of liminality describes the experiences of individuals who live "between and betwixt" as a result of their indeterminate status in society. This concept seems appropriate to describe the experiences of people who live with vision loss, because we simultaneously belong to two social or cultural groups. On the one hand we must…

This exploratory study investigated the long-term learning resulting from participation in a LeaderShape program. The research examined LeaderShape graduates' current practices and definitions of leadership to see if they remain consistent with the program's learning goals. Graduates with five or more years since attendance were studied to provide…

In a previous article for the "Engagement on Campus" column in the "Journal of College and Character", the authors described the weaker sense of community experienced by students of color and students from low-socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds in a university-based community service learning program, as well as how students from these…

Six years ago, a small group of liberal arts colleges in New England (Bates, Bowdoin, Colby, Middlebury, Smith, Trinity and Wellesley) and their regional accreditor (the New England Association of Schools and Colleges) formed the New England Consortium on Assessment and Student Learning (NECASL). The general goals of this collaboration were to…