This study examined faculty experience with student academic unpreparedness at two open-admission universities in the southern United States. Fourteen faculty from core subject areas, such as English, history, and mathematics, completed open-ended interviews on the effects of student unpreparedness. Faculty discussed the basic problems and…

A total of 343 first-year, African-American students at the University of Maryland College Park completed a questionnaire on a variety of topics including career and advising issues to determine the career needs and interests of these students. The reasons African-American students most often reported for going to college were to get a better job…

A survey administered to 53 African American freshmen at Hampton University (Virginia), a private historically black institution, gathered information on attitudes toward the learning of foreign languages in general and toward German second language learning specifically. Only two respondents had studied two or more years of German in high school,…

The topic of repeated judgments of interest in vocational education was examined in a study in which 10 female full-time technical and further education (TAFE) students (aged 15-60 years) were handed 120 randomly selected real profiles of TAFE students who had completed subject interest surveys in a previous study. The 10 TAFE students judged how…

This report examines the effectiveness of elementary school-based family literacy programs and describes the first year evaluation of a middle-school-based family literacy program in Baltimore, Maryland. In section one it reviews the literature on adult education and early childhood intervention and proposes a hypothesis of the broad pathways by…

This paper examines whether Hispanic Americans are more likely than Anglo Americans to view college education as a major component in job attainment. The study reviewed data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and surveyed 86 undergraduate students at Texas A&M University. The college sample was fairly representative of the student…

The possibility of promoting community development as well-being through a community learning ethos was examined to determine whether learning can be used to develop a framework for conceptualizing community well-being in order to contribute to Australia's regional sustainability. The examination focused on the following: the relationship between…

The major purpose of this study was to determine if the influences of educational productivity factors on achievement and attitudes are the same for African Americans and other ethnic groups. Using Walberg's Educational Productivity Model as a framework, this study estimated the influence of home environment, quality and quantity of instruction,…

This book traces the evolution of job training as an educational ideal, beginning with the drive to install manual training in American schools and proceeding to vocational education and to vocationalization, which includes vocational education but also incorporates the idea that the curriculum as a whole, not just a part of it, exists for the…

This report provides statistical data on enrollment patterns of first-time beginning postsecondary students for academic years 1989-1990 and 1995-1996. It notes that in 1995-1996, about 40 percent of all first-time beginning postsecondary students enrolled in four-year institutions (25 percent at public institutions and 15 percent at private…

This study sought to develop a valid and reliable instrument to measure student perceptions of good college teaching from a cross-cultural perspective. A total of 63 graduate and undergraduate students from various ethnic and racial groups (Caucasian, African American, Hispanic American, and Asian American) completed a set of open-ended questions…

A history of the influences and pressures shaping the evolution of bilingual education legislation in Texas (1965-73) illustrates how different and opposed political factions and philosophical views have shaped programs to teach language minority children such as Mexican Americans. (MH)

In order to understand the factors which influence success or failure for adult students, a group of shop stewards attending a union training program were studied. The chief determinant of individual success was the attitude of the convenor, a higher level union official, who shaped behavior and attitudes toward learning. (IS)

Secondary language teachers' and administrators' perceptions of the contribution of foreign languages to curriculum objectives compared to those of math, science, and social studies were assessed. Although administrators viewed languages' overall contribution as small, the contribution to certain individual goals was found greater. (MSE)

Presents Mina Shaughnessy's thoughts on why English professors dislike the teaching of writing, what is needed in writing research, the disadvantages of being a writing teacher at an open admissions school, what open admissions policies have revealed about education in general and basic writing instruction in particular, and writing evaluation…