This article reports the use of a Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) technique as a means of exploring our understanding of the leadership of Heads of Subject Departments within School Based Management (SBM) secondary schools in Hong Kong. Arguments made by Gronn (1999, 2000), Spillane et al. (2001) suggest that studies of leadership need to…

This 17-year longitudinal study tested whether low peer-perceived acceptance and association with aggressive-disruptive friends during preadolescence predicted students' failure to graduate from secondary school. Participants were 997 Caucasian, French-speaking boys from low-socioeconomic status, urban neighborhoods. The boys were recruited in…

An expanding body of research suggests an important role for parent or family competency training in children's social-emotional learning and related school success. This article summarizes a test of a longitudinal model examining partnership-based family competency training effects on academic success in a general population. Specifically, it…

The aim of the present study was to better understand the combined and unique effects of teacher-student and parent-child relationships in students' achievement motivation and self-esteem. Participants were 3450 high school students administered items assessing their interpersonal relationships, academic motivation and engagement, academic…

Young children's learning--and how their learning is distributed by social background--may be influenced by the structural and organizational properties of their school. This study focuses on one important structural dimension of these educational contexts: "size." This study differs from extant studies linking size to student outcomes in four…

The present study was conducted to determine the effects of students' perception of both teacher support and students' reaction to questioning on the instrumental help-seeking strategy used by students. The researchers also examined the relationships between these three variables and the motivational components of achievement goal theory. A…

This study examines program elements related to reductions in drug use and crime among Drug Treatment Courts (DTC) participants as well as theoretical mechanisms--increased social controls and improved perceptions of procedural justice--expected to mediate the effects of DTC on these outcomes. Data are from 157 research participants interviewed…

The NEAIR 2010 Conference Proceedings is a compilation of papers presented at the Saratoga Springs, New York conference. Papers in this document include: (1) Collaboration Between Student Affairs and Institutional Research: A Model for the Successful Assessment of Students' College Experience (Michael N. Christakis and Joel D. Bloom); (2) Direct…

The trend of "self financing" (Un-aided) institutions has implemented for the last twenty two years in Maharashtra state and other parts of India. The Government does not financially support these institutions. The "job satisfaction" of teachers working in such institutions is always questionable, particularly in those…

The trend of "self financing" (Un-aided) institutions has implemented for the last twenty two years in Maharashtra state and other parts of India. The Government does not financially support these institutions. The "job satisfaction" of teachers working in such institutions is always questionable, particularly in those…

The positive association between volunteering and health has been widely interpreted as evidence of the salutary effect of volunteering during adulthood. Using three waves of data from a national survey, this study uses structural equation models to examine the relationships among volunteering, functional limitations, and depressive symptoms…

This paper discusses two methodological issues regarding the analysis of longitudinal data using structural equation modeling that emerged during the reconsideration of the analysis of a recent study on the relationship between academic motivation and language achievement in elementary education [Stoel R.D., Peetsma, T.T.D. and Roeleveld, J.…

R is free, open-source, cooperatively developed software that implements the S statistical programming language and computing environment. The current capabilities of R are extensive, and it is in wide use, especially among statisticians. The sem package provides basic structural equation modeling facilities in R, including the ability to fit…

This study is the second in a series of investigations attempting to clarify relationships between variables that impact on a young musician's ability to perform music (as assessed on a graded music examination). Consistent with studies on school academic subjects, our previous investigation demonstrated the importance of self-efficacy in…

Finite mixture models are well known to have poorly behaved likelihood functions featuring singularities and multiple optima. Growth mixture models may suffer from fewer of these problems, potentially benefiting from the structure imposed on the estimated class means and covariances by the specified growth model. As demonstrated here, however,…