Multilevel analysis of student pathways to higher education

This study examined the relationship between academic preparation and post-secondary educational outcomes. To uncover the factors that influence secondary-level school course-taking patterns and outcomes, multi-level modelling was conducted using data from a nationally representative sample of US secondary-level school students from the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002. Results indicated (1) significant effects from student, family and school predictors on course-taking patterns and (2) significant effects from course-taking patterns on enrollment in post-secondary institution types with math course-taking pattern having the largest impact. Implications for educators and administrators are discussed.     

Preliminary study on the role of alternative educational pathways in promoting the use of problem-focused coping strategies

Coping styles are generally considered to be environmentally driven. Up to now, research has mainly focused on family influences. However, some studies underline the effect of educational settings on the development of problem-focused coping strategies. Consistently with previous reports on the enhancement of autonomy and problem-solving in alternative schools, and the relationship established by self-determination theory between autonomy-supportive climates and positive coping, we hypothesized that alternative school students develop more problem-focused coping styles. This hypothesis was tested on 80 traditional school students and 50 alternative school students (Steiner, Montessori and New schools), during their last secondary school year, using the Coping Inventory for Stressful Situations (Endler & Parker, 1990a). We also assessed psychological factors which can influence coping styles measures (anxiety and depression), using the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (Spielberger, 1983), and the Beck Depression Inventory (Beck, Ward, Mendelson, Mock, & Erbaugh, 1961). The proportion of problem-focused coping strategies was compared in traditional and alternative settings, adjusting for potential confounding factors, using logistic regression. Results show that the proportion of students using predominantly problem-focused coping strategies is higher in the population of alternative schools. Directions for further research on alternative schools are highlighted concerning coping as well as autonomy-supportive class climates.     

African American student sociocultural adjustment to Thai international higher education

ABSTRACT

This article aims to detail an exploratory study involving African American student experiences in a Thai international programme. This study employed a qualitative case study to explore the adjustment process of African American international students in Thailand. The participants included 15 African American students who were selected through a snowball sampling technique in 2014–2016. The data were collected through semi-structured one on one interviews and analysed through content analysis. The participants reported adjustment difficulties related to their sense of isolation in Thailand, the excessive attention received from their hosts, the appropriate response to said attention, Thai culture and adjustment to academic differences. An analysis of the source of stress, anxiety and conflict among the participants is intended to provide insight into international recruitment practices and facilitating more progressive pre-departure orientation sessions among impending international students.     

The problem of student attrition in higher education: An alternative perspective

Student attrition continues to be a significant and costly challenge for higher education institutions across the globe. In Australia, universities cite the importance of addressing student attrition through strategic statements and policy documents, and expend time and resources on the problem. Despite vast expenditures, they have made little impact on student attrition, which continues to negatively impact reputation and revenue. Using a regional Australian university as a case study, this paper analyses a student exit survey to identify the complex and inter-related array of factors that contribute to student attrition. It was found that attrition would be better conceptualised as a wicked problem, which is one that cannot be strategically addressed using traditional approaches to problem-solving. The practical implications of these findings reinforce that current approaches to attrition are likely to fail. Therefore, the wicked nature of the attrition problem needs to be taken into account when developing strategies or policies within higher education.     

The role of the student in the higher education production function

Increasing concern with productivity and efficiency in service industries such as higher education has created interest in cost analysis techniques, implicit in which must be some notion of the production function, that is, the technology by which inputs are combined to produce outputs. In order to clarify the existing confusion in higher education between inputs and outputs, and to offer aid in understanding the complex issues of productivity and efficiency, this paper offers a paradigm of the student as an economic entity analogous to the profit-maximizing firm in microeconomic theory. The paper concludes by suggesting an extension of the model to include the faculty member as an individual economic agent.     

从教育服务承诺看高等教育的政策调整

我国加入WTO签定的教育服务承诺具有鲜明的政策性意义。履行这一承诺要求对现行的教育政策尤其是高等教育政策作出一些必要的调整。高等教育政策调整主要包括宏观管理政策、招生政策、财政政策和高校教学政策等方面。调整教育政策又特别需要加强政策研究。     

Student voice in higher education: Opening the loop

UK national policy and the practices of university course boards tend to reduce understandings of ‘student voice’ to a feedback loop. In this loop, students express feedback, the university takes this on board, then they tell the students how they have responded to their feedback. The feedback loop is a significant element of the neoliberal imaginary of higher education globally. This qualitative research study drew on interviews with course representatives in three universities in England, and on policy analysis, to explore the discursive construction and enactment of student voice. It uses the feedback loop as an analytical frame. Drawing on Foucault’s later work, the article aims to open up the feedback loop by exploring its manifestation in the mundane everyday practices of universities. In opening the loop, we identify the following effects of the student voice policy ensemble: students have to construct feedback as it is not just waiting to be gathered; it promotes a dividing practice, where reps are positioned differently to other students; there is a focus on problems; an ‘us and them’ is reinforced between staff and students; the loop closes down discussion; and a managerial logic obscures political processes. The article articulates its opening of the loop as a way of unmasking the modes of power which work through discourses of ‘student voice’, and hence seeks to create possibilities for resistance to being governed this way.     

Student engagement in the educational interface: understanding the mechanisms of student success

Student success and retention continue to be of concern for higher education institutions. Wider participation, combined with lower completion rates for non-traditional students, highlights the need for new ways of understanding the student experience to ground policy and practice. This article provides this insight by drawing together a number of key constructs to refine a recent framework of student engagement. We argue that the transition metaphor, focusing on the first year, is limited because it depicts differences between students and institutions as both transient and temporal. Instead, we use a cultural lens to introduce the educational interface as a metaphor for the individual psychosocial space within which institutional and student factors combine and student engagement in learning occurs. Incorporating the interface into the existing framework of student engagement makes three contributions to our understanding of the student experience. First, the educational interface is a tangible way of representing the complex interactions between students and institutions, and how those interactions influence engagement. Second, the refined framework highlights four specific psychosocial constructs: self-efficacy, emotions, belonging and well-being, which, we contend, are critical mechanisms for mediating the interactions between student and institutional characteristics and student engagement and success. Finally, the refined framework helps to explain why some students with demographic characteristics associated with lower completion rates are retained and do go on to successfully complete their studies, while similar others do not. These three contributions, the interface, the key constructs within it being mediating mechanisms and their explanatory utility, provide focus for the design and implementation of curricula and co-curricular initiatives aimed at enhancing student success and retention, and importantly to evaluate the impact of these interventions.     

关于学生组织在学生公寓中发挥作用的思考

学生公寓是学生在校期间学习生活的重要场所,是进行思想政治教育和行为培养教育的重要阵地。随着时代发展,学生公寓基本情况随之变化,本文将对学生组织和公寓管理服务之间的联系进行探究。     

Committed to learn: student engagement and care in higher education

Efforts to evaluate and improve student engagement have been pervasive in higher education over recent years. Critics argue, however, that troubling affinities are evident between student engagement efforts and a neoliberal agenda which emphasises accountability through performativity. Neoliberalism manifests in policies that focus on the economic benefit to individuals of higher education, rather than the broader social or intrinsic benefits. In this conceptual article, we draw on the work of Martin Heidegger and Nel Noddings in arguing that efforts aimed at promoting engagement and commitment to learn by students should include developing a capacity to care about others and things. Through the lens of care, our aim is to extend current notions of what engagement of students in their learning might look like. Challenging and supporting students entail encouraging them to take a stand on what they are learning and who they are becoming. This enriched conceptualisation has the potential to re-orient student engagement away from a narrow neoliberal agenda, while enabling students to realise the full benefits a higher education can provide.     

军地高教结合:优化国民高教资源配置新举措

本文通过探讨军事高等教育和普通高等教育体系充分结合的必要性和可能性，提出了实现两者充分结合的基本构想，优化国民高等教育资源配置，共同培养21世纪合格人才。     

The development of the special educational needs coordinator role in a higher education setting

UK higher education appears to have generally been slow to adopt an organised means of provision for special educational needs for its students. This may be due to the fact that, historically, relatively few disabled students entered UK higher education. However, there is a growing number of disabled students entering UK higher education institutions, and the figure is likely to increase. It is therefore important and, under the UK Special Educational Needs and Disability Act (2001), legally binding, that UK higher education institutions make appropriate adjustments to their activities so as not to disadvantage or discriminate against disabled students. In this article Mark Taylor examines the development of the special educational needs coordinator role in a higher education setting based upon a two‐year case study in a UK university.