Graduation Rates and Accountability: Regressions Versus Production Frontiers

This paper suggests an alternative to the standard practice of measuring the graduation rate performance using regression analysis. The alternative is production frontier analysis. Production frontier analysis is appealing because it compares an institution’s graduation rate to the best performance instead of the average performance. The paper explains the differences between these two types of analysis and provides examples of their application using data for 187 national universities.

Strategic management accounting in universities: the Italian experience

This paper presents an investigation of management accounting in four major Italian universities, which have been struggling to build their strategy in a context of significant change. Following many OECD countries the Italian government has been changing its higher education system by giving more autonomy to universities. These changes pose a number of challenges for management and accounting systems in Italian Universities. Drawing on self-referential theory and its applications to accounting research the paper analyses the construction of Strategic Management Accounting (SMA) in four Italian universities, which are immersed in a similar context of change. The focus is specifically on two aspects of decisions: (1) resource allocation and (2) new academic programme.

Influencing the Probability for Graduation at Four-Year Institutions: A Multi-Model Analysis

The purpose of this study is to identify student and institutional characteristics that influence the probability for graduation. The study delves further into the probability for graduation by examining how far the student deviates from the institutional mean with respect to academics and affordability; this concept is referred to as the “match.” The validity of the matching model is tested using a multivariate analysis with select variables from the Beginning Postsecondary Study: 1996/2001 (BPS:96/01) and the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS). Traditional multivariate models examine the importance of both student and institutional characteristics but assume the two are independent of one another. This study is different in that it uses the matching model to examine the relationship between student and institutional characteristics. The results are compared to more frequently used models and show that the relationship between students and their institutions plays an important role in understanding the probability for graduation.

Clergy’s Views of the Relationship between Science and Religious Faith and the Implications for Science Education

Since many teachers and students recognize other kinds of knowledge (faith) based on other ways of knowing, consideration of these realities is appropriate for the science education community. Understanding the multitude of ways that clergy view relationships between science and faith (i.e. alternative ways of knowing) would assist in understanding various ways that people address complex issues arising from ideas about science and faith. We administered a questionnaire composed of multiple-choice and short answer items to 63 United Methodist ministers. Findings included (1) that formal, organized faith contexts (e.g. church services) serve as informal science education opportunities, (2) participants demonstrated considerable diversity regarding the types of relationships developed between science and faith, and (3) participants recognized a need exists for better understandings of science and its relationship to faith for them, their colleagues, and their congregations.

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Evaluation of a classroom based training to improve self-regulation in time management tasks during homework activities with fourth graders

A study on classroom based training of self-regulated learning was conducted with fourth grade pupils attending German public schools. The participating classes were assigned randomly to either a training group or a control group. The pupils in the training group received 5 weeks of training, as depicted by Zimmerman, Bonner, & Kovach (American Educational Research Journal 31:845-862 1996), during normal classroom instruction and homework activities. Training effects were confirmed for various skills associated with self-regulation, motivation and performance. By reviewing the solution rates to daily assignments with the help of hierarchical linear models, a linear growth in the solution rates over the course of the 5 weeks was proven, which weakened towards the end of the training. Significant differences in the growth rates among the students were also confirmed. Skills in time management, learning goal orientation and self-efficacy that were evidenced by the students prior to the training proved to be able to explain variances among the growth curves.

Impact of Increased Academic Intensity on Transfer Rates: An Application of Matching Estimators to Student-Unit Record Data

The impact of increased academic intensity on transfer rates from community colleges to 4-year institutions has been estimated only from observational data, with the possibility of selection bias. This study uses matching estimators to overcome possible selection bias and estimate the causal impact of increased academic intensity on transfer rates. Using student unit record data from Tennessee for the years 1995 through 2004, I find that taking 12 or more credit hours increases the probability of transfer from between 11% and 15%.

Enrollment,Persistence and Graduation of In-State Students at a Public Research University: Does High School Matter?

Educational research has shown that individual-level background characteristics, such as parental socio-economic status and academic ability, influence college going behavior. This study tests for the existence of aggregate-level high school effects on college enrollment, persistence and degree attainment. It links institutional data on students enrolling within a year after graduation from in-state high schools with state data on high schools’ performance and populations. Three high school aggregate-level factors were found to affect enrollment and persistence. Specifically, the high schools’ percent of SAT takers has a concave-shape effect on enrollment, retention and graduation. Additionally, students coming from schools with a higher percent of those receiving free lunch are less likely to persist, and students coming from schools located within a 60 mile radius are more likely to matriculate and to persist to the second year. These results suggest that aggregate-level high school characteristics should be accounted for in enrollment management.

A Role for Experiment in Using the Law of Inertia to Explain the Nature of Science: A Comment on Lopes Celho

The whole mode of Galileo’s discovery of the Law of Inertia is an excellent exemplar of the Nature of Science. The law can, moreover be shown to be a direct consequence of the hypothesis that space is homogeneous and isotropic and time is homogeneous

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Educational choice and persistence in male- and female-dominated fields

Even though female students now make up more than half of all higher education students in many countries, the distribution of women across fields of study is still very uneven. This study examines the gendered nature of recruitment and dropout in higher education. Our results show that students who made gender traditional choices more often had an early preference for the study programme they enrolled in. Moreover, female students reported more often than male students that they had been encouraged by their parents and friends. However, unlike what we expected, there are no differences between students in gender traditional and non-traditional programmes with regard to encouragement from parents and students’ confidence that they had made the right choice. While male students’ dropout is unrelated to the gender composition of educational programmes, women drop out of female-dominated programmes to a lesser extent.

Quality Matters: Assessing the Impact of Attending More Selective Institutions on College Completion Rates of Minorities

This paper examines the impact of attending different categories of selective institutions on students’ college completion. Specifically, it explores differences in the impact that selectivity of an institution has by race and ethnicity. The analysis accounts for the impact of individual and institutional characteristics and corrects for omitted variables with proxies for student motivation. The results suggest that students who attend the most selective institutions and highly selective institutions, as opposed to non-selective ones, are more likely to complete a bachelor’s degree. This result holds for African American and Hispanic students. After correcting for the problem of sorting of students into specific types of institutions, the results of the models suggest that the coefficient of selective institutions might have a small upward bias. The positive effect of selective institutions on attainment suggests that they have the potential to increase the graduation rates of minorities while narrowing the persistent college completion gap.

Moving towards multidimensional evaluation of teaching in higher education: A study across four faculties

The article investigates the issue of teaching evaluation in higher education, providing a picture of the phenomenon into the Italian specific context within a European dimension. Starting from the premise that in Italian universities, teaching evaluation is based on general indicators which reflect a simplification of a complex phenomenon, scientific research related to teaching evaluation in higher education is presented and discussed. In this perspective, it will be argued that nature of teaching evaluation is characterized by multidimensionality and complexity. Only in this way it can represent a useful instrument for the improvement of teaching process and for the comprehension of the importance of being effective teachers. Moreover, on the basis of a participative model, it seems important to involve teachers and students in the formulation of relevant questions related to teaching. The aim of the research is represented by highlighting the specific aspects of teaching process dependent from the context through a comparison among faculties. Seventy interviews have been carried out with teachers and students of the same four faculties (Humanities, Psychology, Educational Sciences, Mathematics and Natural Sciences). Qualitative analysis of the data collected are conducted using the scientific software Atlas.ti. The outcomes confirm our initial assumptions showing differences among the four faculties considering the multiple dimensions of the university teaching.

Exam Scams and Classroom Flimflams: Urban Legends as an Alternative Lens for Viewing the College Classroom Experience

Campus-based urban legends have the potential to convey and construct student culture in higher education. Basic qualitative and humanistic research methods were used to collect, analyze, and interpret legends related to the academic experience of collegiate life.

Listening and reflecting: an introduction to the special issue

The topic of listening has been broadly neglected in educational studies. This special issue presents studies on the connections between listening and reflecting in educational contexts.

Student and early career mobility patterns among highly educated people in Germany,Finland, Italy,and the United Kingdom

This article addresses the question of how great are higher education students’ incentives to change study programs or institutions to improve one’s personal employability in the course of the higher education-to-work transition process. The posed question is addressed at a system level. Students’ mobility between programs and institutions is referred to as ‘student mobility’ and graduates’ mobility between jobs is referred to as ‘early career mobility.’ The relationship between these two separate components of mobility is discussed in three different institutional frames: German/Finnish, Italian, and British. When depicting the relationship between the two components of mobility, the article also considers parallel phenomena such as prolongation of the degree-earning process and participation in work-life with student status. Indicator level analysis concerning graduates of the year 2000 reveals important differences between the three institutional frames: in Germany and Finland, there is a high level of student mobility at the basic degree level combined with a low level of career mobility after graduation; in the UK the opposite transition logic than that of Germany and Finland occurs, and in Italy students demonstrate prolonged transitions with little student mobility and early career mobility.

How Do Transfers Survive after “Transfer Shock”? A Longitudinal Study of Transfer Student Departure at a Four-Year Institution

Prompted by the notion of “Transfer Shock”, numerous studies examined academic performance of transfer students at senior institutions. However, few studies are found that examine how the varying nature of semester GPAs impact subsequent persistence behavior of transfer students after the initial drop in their college GPAs. Using an institutional data set, this study longitudinally investigated departure behavior of transfer students at a senior institution. Particular attention was given to how entry at different times and semester GPAs affected transfer student departure. Results indicate that during their first semester, sophomore and junior transfer students were 73% less likely to depart than freshman transfer students. After controlling for explanatory variables, higher semester GPAs were positively associated with higher persistence rates throughout the observation period.

Unraveling the Myths of Accountability: A Case Study of the California High School Exit Exam

Believing that accountability could be a vehicle for change, the California Department of Education (CDE) requires all high school students to pass the Calfornia High School Exit Exam (CAHSEE) in order to graduate. In doing so, California joins many others states in mandating a high school exit exam as a current or future requirement for graduation. In this essay, the authors will argue that this testing approach to school change is based on myths about the role of assessment, the information testing can provide and the impact high stakes testing has on urban schools. Although California is the focus of this analysis, these issues are salient across the county. Testing as a solution to poor student achievement is based on faulty assumptions. It is these assumptions this piece seeks to address.

Designing Assessments and Assessing Designs in Virtual Educational Environments

This study used innovative assessment practices to obtain and document broad learning outcomes for a 15-hour game-based curriculum in Quest Atlantis, a multi-user virtual environment that supports school-based participation in socio scientific inquiry in ecological sciences. Design-based methods were used to refine and align the enactment of virtual narrative and scientific investigations to a challenging problem solving assessment and indirectly to achievement test items that were independent of the curriculum. In study one, one-sixth grade teacher used the curriculum in two of his classes and obtained larger gains in understanding and achievement than his two other classes, which used an expository text to learn the same concepts and skills. Further treatment refinements were carried out, and two forms of virtual formative feedback were introduced. In study two, the same teacher used the curriculum in all four of his classes; the revised curriculum resulted in even larger gains in understanding and achievement. Gains averaged 1.1 SD and 0.4 SD, respectively, with greater gains shown for students who engaged more with formative feedback. Principles for assessing designs and designing assessments in virtual environments are presented.

Critical physics agency: further unraveling the intersections of subject matter knowledge, learning, and taking action

In this rejoinder to Bryan Brown and John Reveles, we highlight the facts that (a) sociocultural theories of learning do not go far enough because they fail to address a number of issues and (b) we require concepts such as power and positionality to understand science learning.

A research framework for creative and imitative reasoning

This conceptual research framework addresses the problem of rote learning by characterising key aspects of the dominating imitative reasoning and the lack of creative mathematical reasoning found in empirical data. By relating reasoning to thinking processes, student competencies, and the learning milieu it explains origins and consequences of different reasoning types.

The Consortium and the Commissioner: A Grass Roots Tale of Fighting High Stakes Graduation Testing in New York

The following paper provides a case study of the resistance of the New York Performance Standards Consortium to the state’s unitary high stakes testing policy from 1998 to 2006. After detailing the history of the grass roots actions undertaken by the group of alternative high schools called ‘The Consortium’, the analysis seeks to apply sociological and philosophical theory of, among others, John Rawls and Charles Willie to explain: (1) the success of the subdominant people of power in fighting the implementation of the battery of high stakes graduation tests; and (2) the failures of the dominant state authority to uniformly enforce its policy, with particular regard to the decisions of New York’s Commissioner of Education. Implications of the case are then discussed to place this little known educational struggle in a broader social, political and historical context.