Initiation rituals in university as lever for group cohesion

The ‘initiation rituals’ of new students in Portuguese Higher Education are viewed as a lever for group cohesion. Using the group dynamics perspective as a theoretical view, this paper reflects on hazing as an initiation ritual that supports and maintains groups by encouraging cognitive, behavioural and emotional processes of social dependency. For the empirical data analysis, a qualitative methodology was chosen, using the students’ spontaneous discourses about their academic integration. The results point to the diversity of freshmen perspectives on and experiences of hazing: either rejecting or subscribing, no student seems indifferent to it. Hazing can work as a positive catalyst to the construction of statutory identity. Furthermore, the relationship of submission which underlies these transition rituals is experienced by freshmen as a ‘price to pay’ for their entrance in the university world.     

Social Work Students' Attitudes About Working With Involuntary Clients

Social workers employed in areas such as public child welfare, substance abuse, and corrections often provide services to involuntary clients. These individuals do not seek social work services on their own volition and may be actively opposed to the services they are receiving. This study explores social work students' attitudes about working with involuntary clients. The article is based on a cross-sectional survey of social work students (N = 107) at a large Southeastern university. Participants answered questions regarding their experience, knowledge, and attitudes about involuntary clients. Findings and implications for social work education and practice are discussed.     

高校开展弱势群体思想政治教育工作的对策

高校弱势群体是社会弱势群体的一部分,是高等教育发展过程中必须面对的一个重要问题。关注高校弱势群体大学生的健康成长,是高校思想政治教育工作的重中之重。高校思想政治教育工作对弱势群体的教育和疏导应重点做好以下工作:一是改革现行教育制度,注重对学生人文素质的培养;二是关注弱势群体,给予其更多的情感关怀;三是开展心理咨询,对弱势群体进行适当的心理疏导;四是要鼓励弱势群体大学生进行自我教育;五是社会、家庭和学校要全方位配合,形成合力。     

特殊群体：高校人才培养必须关注的话题

高校扩招后,日益庞大的大学生群体逐步分化,学生群体呈现多样性、复杂性的特点,文章根据不同学生群体的特点和形成的主客观原因,有针对性地提出培养建议,以促进学生特殊群体的健康成长。     

高校特殊群体学生精细化辅导体系的构建

高校特殊群体学生在思想、行为、就业等方面存在困难或有特殊需求,具有复杂性和个性化的特点。高校教育管理应针对不同类型特殊群体学生的特点,以＂做精、做细、做实＂为工作原则,形成以＂摸排分类、规范建档、精细辅导、共促成长＂为主要思路的精细化辅导体系,促进不同群体学生的健康成长。     

网上青年自组织的形成基础探析

随着网络和信息技术的发展,网上青年自组织发展呈现蓬勃之势,对社会的影响也越来越大。网上青年自组织的兴起和发展,从形成背景上分析,是经济社会发展和文明进步的成果,也是青年文化多元化发展的必然要求;其形成基础则可以从社会学、经济学、传播学、组织学和心理学、行为学六个视角予以观照。探讨网上青年自组织的形成基础并利用这些理论来制定相关的政策和措施,可以减少网上青年自组织对大学生的负面影响。     

The retention and success of under-represented groups in a Bachelor of Education program in New Zealand

For several decades researchers have raised questions regarding factors that enable undergraduate students, particularly those from ethnic minority groups living in low socio-economic areas, to persist with their studies to degree completion. Seeking answers to these questions becomes more urgent as universities around the world enrol increasingly diverse cohorts of students. This article reviews the patterns of participation and success for students enrolled in a Bachelor of Education program at one university, distributed across three different locations and attracting different cohorts of students. This provided the university with a unique opportunity to learn about the retention and success of diverse cohorts, particularly those traditionally under-represented at undergraduate-level study. At least 75% of students in the under-represented groups passed their courses. Surprisingly the pass rates of students at the three campuses were similar, despite dissimilarities in ethnicity, socio-economic status and previous academic success.     

Diversity in collaborative research communities: a multicultural,multidisciplinary thesis writing group in public health

Writing groups for doctoral students are generally agreed to provide valuable learning spaces for Ph.D. candidates. Here an academic developer and the eight members of a writing group formed in a Discipline of Public Health provide an account of their experiences of collaborating in a multicultural, multidisciplinary thesis writing group. We consider the benefits of belonging to such a group for Ph.D. students who are operating in a research climate in which disciplinary boundaries are blurring and where an increasing number of doctoral projects are interdisciplinary in nature; in which both academic staff and students come from enormously diverse cultural and language backgrounds; and in which teamwork, networking and collaboration are prized but not always proactively facilitated. We argue that doctoral writing groups comprising students from diverse cultural and disciplinary backgrounds can be of significant value for postgraduates who wish to collaborate on their own academic development to improve their research writing and communication skills; at the same time, such collaborative work effectively builds an inclusive, dynamic research community.     

Testing for invariance in a structural model of academic achievement across underachieving and non-underachieving students

This work aimed to test the invariance of a causal structural model of the determinants of academic achievement in underachieving and non-underachieving students. A theoretical model of the relationships between personal, social, and familial variables and academic performance was derived empirically using data from a large sample obtained in a previous study, prior to testing for invariance across the two student groups. Underachieving students were identified using the Rasch model procedure. The sample comprised 259 underachieving and 258 non-underachieving students. The latter were selected randomly from a large non-underachieving sample of Spanish secondary education students. For model comparisons between groups, multiple-group causal structural analyses were performed, following a sequence of nested models with increasing constraints. The results showed a good fit of the model in both groups, although about half of the parameters were not invariant across groups. Underachieving students were characterized by their lack of learning strategies, an academic self-concept that exerted less influence on achievement, and a positive effect of the parent-school relationship on academic performance/achievement. Non-underachieving students were characterized by their use of metacognitive strategies, which led to higher academic achievement, a greater effect of self-concept on their achievement, the perception of parental support leading to higher performance, and the positive effects of peer acceptance on academic achievement.     

Promoting student collaboration in a detracked, heterogeneous secondary mathematics classroom

Detracking and heterogeneous groupwork are two educational practices that have been shown to have promise for affording all students needed learning opportunities to develop mathematical proficiency. However, teachers face significant pedagogical challenges in organizing productive groupwork in these settings. This study offers an analysis of one teacher’s role in creating a classroom system that supported student collaboration within groups in a detracked, heterogeneous geometry classroom. The analysis focuses on four categories of the teacher’s work that created a set of affordances to support within group collaborative practices and links the teacher’s work with principles of complex systems. An earlier version of this article was presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Chicago, 2007 as part of the Tracking and Detracking SIG session Teaching, Learning, and Other Outcomes in Tracked and Detracked Environments.     

高校特殊学生教育管理和服务有效性的研究

高等学校特殊学生群体的教育和管理,是高等教育事业面临的困难和挑战,也是学生工作的重要内容之一。为了更加完善高校学生管理工作,本文通过问卷（调查）和结合工作经验,针对不同类型特殊学生群体提出相应的教育管理对策和有效性服务等问题。     

School-Community-Based Organization Partnerships for Language Minority Students' School Success

Because language minority students, including immigrants and the U.S.-born children of immigrants, may have to contend with a mismatch between the language and culture of their schools and those of their communities, as well as the schools' difficulty in addressing their academic needs appropriately, some schools have been partnering with community-based organizations (CBOs) to broaden the base of support for these students. This article outlines findings from a study of school-CBO partnerships that promote the academic achievement of language minority students. It describes the types of CBOs that partner with schools, the ways partners work together, and the work that they do. Crucial elements in program success are discussed, as well as challenges that partnerships may face.     

构建和谐校园必须注重大学生中的弱势群体

高等院校大学生近年出现的弱势群体，其负面作用已增加了创建和谐校园的难度。高校应该采取有效措施帮扶弱势群体，使处于弱势群体的大学生和所有大学生都能在同一个平台健康成材。     

‘Becoming and being writers’: the experiences of doctoral students in writing groups

The use of writing groups to support students undertaking post-graduate research within universities has begun to receive attention from academic supervisors and doctoral researchers. Very little has been written by doctoral students themselves on the benefits of working within such writing groups. In this article, the experiences of working within a doctoral writing group at an Australian University are presented, primarily from the perspective of students. The authors identify two main benefits they have experienced through participating in a writing group using a ‘multi-voiced’ approach. First, they discuss the kind of learning that they achieved through working in a writing group. They do this with reference to key principles of peer learning and of peer review. Second, they focus on the ways the group worked as a community of discursive social practice. An overarching message for them in participating in the group and now writing this article is the shift in their thinking and experience of writing from seeing writing as an essentially private and implicit process to writing becoming a matter of public and shared work. These two notions are bound by the concept of identity building, drawing from the literature on communities of practice.     

A Dynamic Model for Education of Doctoral Students and Guidance of Supervisors in Research Groups

In the department of mathematics of the Luleå University of Technology in Sweden, a dynamic model for the education of doctoral students and guidance of supervisors in research groups has been developed and applied for several years now. Presently groups in mathematics as well as a group in mathematics education are working according to this model and treated in the same way. Moreover, both the students and the supervisors get some education and experience also in elements, which usually are not included in more traditional models for supervision in the mathematical sciences in Sweden. In this paper, we describe our model as well as some experiences of it. Moreover, the results of a questionnaire addressed to and answered by all doctoral students (both finished and still in the program) are presented, evaluated and compared with some related investigations in Sweden. We claim that the students in general are very satisfied to be supervised and guided in this way. In principle, there have been no cases of dropping out of the Ph.D. programs, students obtained their degrees within the stipulated time and the careers after the studies have been successful. We hope that this positive experience will stimulate other universities to test and evaluate our model (or relevant parts of it) under different conditions.     

Similar goals,different results: differences in group learning goals and their impact on academic achievements

Research has indicated significant disparities in the academic achievement of minority and majority groups in most Western countries. In light of the role of academic achievement as the main component of social mobility, it is important to understand the source of these differences between the majority and minority groups. The present research focused on learning goals as a possible basis for the disparity in academic achievement. It examined the learning goals of matched groups of students of Jewish and Arab Israelis who were enrolled in the same academic institution, and followed their academic achievement for two years. The findings indicate a gap between the groups in terms of achievement in favour of the students from the Jewish majority group. No difference was found between the groups in learning goals, but the level of intrinsic goal orientation was associated with achievement differently in the two groups. Possible explanations and implications of the findings are discussed.     

Career Development Among Ethnic and Age Groups of Community College Students

The purpose of this study was to examine differences in career development among four ethnic groups and two age groups of community college students in regard to their career goals, career preparation actions, and the number of job seeking strategies utilized. Data were obtained from the Beginning Postsecondary Students Longitudinal Study (BPS: 90/94) of the National Center for Educational Statistics (NOES), U.S. Department of Education. Results suggest that there are statistically significant differences among the ethnic groups in six of the seven career goals; however, there are no significant differences between the traditional and non-traditional age groups in career goals. For career preparation action there are significant differences between the two age groups and also between Black/African American and White/European American students. There is no significant difference among the age or ethnic groups in the number of job seeking strategies utilized. These findings imply that student services providers, such as counselors, should be sensitive to community college students' backgrounds and experiences related to ethnicity and age. Individualized career-related workshops tailored to the career needs of specific student populations should be offered. The function of community colleges as providers of employment preparation can be enhanced by familiarizing students with accurate career information, considering students' ethnic backgrounds and their age.     

Cooperative learning on an international masters

Postgraduate taught provision in Anglophone higher education contexts is becoming increasingly populated by cohorts of students from a wide range of linguistic, cultural and educational backgrounds. However, the voices of these students on their learning experiences remain largely unheard. Little previous research exists on the experiences of higher degree students as they participate in group work in multi-cultural settings. This study investigates the perspectives of students from a variety of educational backgrounds on their experiences of cooperative learning in multi-national groups on a Masters programme at a UK university. Seven focus groups were conducted with students from a range of countries including Confucian Heritage Cultures (CHC) and non-CHC backgrounds. Students perceived group work as often lacking adequate structure, leading to feelings of confusion and insecurity. While it was apparent that a complex interplay of cultural, cognitive, and linguistic factors impacted on the functioning of collaborative learning, the data highlighted the need to provide students with more structure and guidance for cooperative learning environments and the importance of creating intercultural learning opportunities for students to better understand the impact of cultural backgrounds on approaches to cooperative learning in multi-national situations.     

Using Multicultural Resources for Teachers to Combat Racial Prejudice in the Classroom

As the American population continues to become more diverse there is a need to provide children in early education with factual information about all ethnic groups to decrease prejudice. First, teachers must examine their own beliefs prior to implementing a multicultural approach into the curriculum. Three questions are presented that will assist teachers in evaluating their views and behaviors toward ethnic groups. Informative resources are provided for teachers to educate themselves, parents, and students. Through children's literature, instructional materials, and Internet sources, teachers can promote more positive attitudes among students and educate children to be respectful and accept the individuality of others.     

Multicultural contacts in education: a case study of an exchange project between different ethnic groups

One important aim of citizenship education is learning to deal with cultural diversity. To this end, schools organise exchange projects to bring students into contact with different social and cultural groups. The aim of this study is to investigate the effects of intergroup contact in educational settings and to understand what the most favourable conditions are. The paper discusses a case study on an exchange between 10th‐grade students of Surinamese and Dutch‐Antillean backgrounds from an Amsterdam suburb with native Dutch students from rural Netherlands. The study included interviews with teachers and students and pre‐ and post‐tests of intergroup attitudes. The results indicate that students become more aware of their own preconceived ideas. The results show that interaction on the individual level is important. Getting students to work together on common goals is an effective way of stimulating interaction.