Economic aspects of post-secondary schooling decisions

This study analyzes post-secondary schooling decisions of high-school graduates using a human-capital framework. Unlike most studies, which consider only college or no school, the current analysis considers the alternative of post-secondary occupational schools as well as four-year and two-year colleges. The model is tested using a multinomial logistic approach on state aggregated data for 1976. Cross-price elasticities reveal that post-secondary occupational schooling is a relevant substitute investment for college. Own-price elasticities have the expected negative sign and income is not found to be a significant determinant of post-secondary-school attendance.     

What to do next: an exploratory study of the post-secondary decisions of American students

Research on college choices is the new tool used by Higher Educational Institutions to help them identify the influences and factors affecting potential student populations. To measure the growing rate of working students in higher education, we propose to examine the decisions made after graduating from high school to current demographic changes. In this study, we use data from the Educational Longitudinal Study of 2002 (ELS: 2002) to estimate the influence of individual variables on post graduating high school choices using multinomial logistic regression analysis. Untangling the individual choices allows us to examine, four possible after high school life choices—students who decide to pursue post-secondary education (student); those who decide to work while attending a post-secondary institution (working student); those who decide to enter the workforce (worker) or high school graduates who neither work nor enroll in postsecondary education (unemployed). Results suggest that aside from socioeconomic status and achievement, interesting patterns for gender, ethnicity and family composition and its effect on the likelihood of a high school graduate’s life choices emerged. As an example, Asian students are more likely to enter their next phase in life as a student than a working student in comparison to white ones. That result is a clear example that not all high school students are alike in their life choices; therefore, for a better understanding in the needs and decision making ways of high school graduates, this paper addresses different factors that lead to a post-secondary decision in order to accommodate their transition to HEI.     

The academic impact on children of maternal post-secondary enrollment

Numerous empirical studies have found that maternal educational attainment is correlated positively with desirable outcomes for children, including academic achievement. At the same time, little is known about the effect of the timing of mothers’ schooling on the same set of child outcomes. Using the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study - Kindergarten Cohort (ECLS-K), I find a positive effect of full-time maternal post-secondary enrollment on the reading scores of kindergarten students after controlling for child-specific, time-persistent unobserved heterogeneity. This effect is especially strong when the sample is narrowed to children with married mothers or in households where a father is present. No similar effect is found for kindergarten math scores.     

From order to chaos: The impact of educational telecommunications on post-secondary education

The convergence of digital communications technologies is changing the nature of the relationships between post-secondary institutions, their students, and the private sector. The current predictable and ordered world of inter-institutional relationships is breaking down, to be replaced by one of perpetual change. Contemporary relationships can be modeled using Christaller's central place theory. On the other hand, we must turn to chaos theory for clues as to how institutions will be operating in an environment characterised by complexity and constant flux.     

The 1986 Act: Opportunities Missed

The arrangements for assessing school leavers under Sections 5 and 6 of the Disabled Persons Act are 'imperfectly applied' or unknown in many areas. Phil Madden argues for the setting up of advisory groups which would improve the way the Act works. The author is director of social work for the Home Farm Trust, a national charity for adults with learning difficulties.     

The limited facilitative effect of typographical signals

Two experiments investigated the limited facilitative effect of typographical signals. Subjects were presented with a text that had parts of the microstructure (i.e., details within the text) underlined or not underlined. In addition, subjects were informed about a subsequent task that was designed to set up a specific expectation (i.e., receiving questions about the microstructure of the text, or being asked questions about the macrostructure or general nature of the text). After reading, all subjects were asked questions about the text's microstructure. In both experiments, it was found that the mere presence of signals did not lead to better performance on the questions. Instead, there was a facilitative effect only for those subjects who received signals and who received questions about the microstructure. Additionally, Experiment 2 found that in the same text the signaled information was recalled better than the nonsignaled information. These results argue against a general facilitative effect of typographical signals, and indicate that the use of these signals can vary as a function of strategic processing.     

The Internet's effect on women's coauthoring rates and academic job market decisions: The case of political science

The late 1990s saw the introduction and spread of the Internet and email. For social scientists, these technologies lowered communication costs and made inter-department collaboration much easier. Using women in political science as a case study, we show that this change has disproportionately affected women in two ways. First, women have increased the rate at which they co-author journal articles faster than their male counterparts. Second, the lowered communication costs have made women more willing to take jobs at smaller departments because it is now easier to work with colleagues at other universities.     

Instructional improvement and student engagement in post-secondary engineering courses: the complexity underlying small effect sizes

The current study leveraged a professional development programme for engineering faculty at a large research university to examine the impact of instructional improvement on student engagement. Professors who participated in the professional development were observed three times and rated using an existing observation protocol. Students in courses with instructors who participated and did not participate in the professional development were surveyed about their classroom engagement. The responses were used to conduct quasi-experimental comparisons. Results indicated that students in courses with professors who participated in the professional development self-reported 3% more behavioural and 2% more cognitive engagement than students with professors who did not participate. Within professional development group, follow-up comparisons showed that students in courses with the highest rated instructors self-reported 7% more cognitive engagement than students with lower ranked professors. Thematic coding of the qualitative data suggests that the highest rated instructors may have achieved these gains through the use of three domain general instructional strategies: activating prior knowledge, facilitating classroom interaction and promoting reflection. Findings are contextualised within extant literature reporting similar effect sizes, and implications for future engagement research from a classroom systems perspective are discussed.     

美国中学后私营教育组织的集团化特性分析

本文认为相对于传统的单体学校组织,教育集团是一种复合体组织。本文以美国中学后私营教育领域的几个大型教育集团为案例,分析了美国教育组织的集团化特性及其对我国教育集团理论和实践探索的几点启示。     

Attitudes toward computers: A study of post-secondary students in Singapore

Research has found that computer attitudes not only play an influential role in determining the extent to which students accept the computer as a learning tool but also future behaviours towards the computer such as using it for further study and vocational purposes. A sample of 183 post-secondary students was assessed for their computer attitudes using a Likert-type questionnaire with three subscales, Computer Importance, Computer Enjoyment, and Computer Anxiety. Additionally, the effects of gender and computer ownership at home were also examined. One-way MANOVA revealed no significant differences in computer attitudes by gender although male students reported more positive attitudes towards the computer than female students. Significant differences in computer attitudes were found between students who own computers at home and those who do not. Students who own a computer at home also reported a lower level of computer anxiety compared to those who do not.     

Staying on track: behavioral engagement of at-risk and non-at-risk students in post-secondary vocational education

Behavioral disengagement from school is a proximal predictor of dropout. Therefore, the enhancement of behavioral engagement is a useful point of entry for dropout prevention. In this study, we examine the behavioral engagement of at-risk and non-at-risk students in Dutch senior vocational education (SVE), a sector confronted with high dropout rates. Using multilevel regression analyses, we assess the role of students’ background characteristics and perceived fit with the school environment in their behavioral engagement. Findings indicate that students in highly urbanized areas are significantly less engaged in school. The perceived proportion of autonomous work is most prominently correlated to students’ behavioral engagement. Whereas in general SVE students are more engaged if their program requires little autonomous work from students, engineering students appear to favor autonomous work forms.     

Assessing the importance of cultural capital on post-secondary education attendance in Canada

This paper extends the current literature on access to post-secondary education by investigating the role played by various family background characteristics related to the home environment and family habits and behaviours. Exploiting the extraordinary richness of the Youth in Transition Survey in this regard, we include whether the family ate dinner together, whether they discussed current affairs, and how often their children went to concerts – and if so, what kind of concerts. Many of these factors are found to have a significant relationship with attending post-secondary education, university in particular. Furthermore, these factors are in addition to – and at least to some degree independent of – more conventional influences such as parental education and family income. With appeal to the paradigm of ‘cultural capital’ – which refers to the knowledge, experiences, and connections which help individuals succeed in life – these results indicate how advantages in accessing higher levels of education accrue to those from families that are rich in this kind of asset, while others are left behind.     

The educational environment of the American Farm School: secondary,post-secondary and adult education curricula running parallel

Abstract

This article describes the educational environment of the oldest agricultural educational institution in Greece. At the American Farm School of Thessaloniki (hereafter AFS), a secondary school program is running together with a post-secondary program and a variety of continuing training activities.

Throughout the paper a comparison between the AFS educational practice and some well-known models of curriculum is made. The comparison leads to a better understanding of the framework under which the AFS offers education. This is important since no other similar institution in Greece serves three educational levels simultaneously.     

Some lessons to be learned from a decade of general education outcomes assessment with the ACT COMP measures

In the last decade, the ACT COMP Composite Exam and Objective Test have been the most frequently used standardized measures of cognitive general education outcomes. This article reviews the literature addressing uses of the COMP measures in order to evaluate valid and reliable uses of the COMP measures. It concludes that worthwhile evaluations of uses of the COMP measures can only take place in wellcrafted general education program evaluations, and that many reported general education program evaluations incorporate both untenable assumptions and flawed practices. The article concludes with suggestions for improving general education program evaluations.Donald B. Yarbrough received his B.A. in English literature from Hendrix College, his M.A. in Germanic languages and literature from the University of Kentucky, and his Ph.D. in educational psychology from the University of Georgia. He is currently an assistant professor of educational psychology at the University of Iowa, where he teaches and conducts research in two specialty areas, program evaluation and the cognitive psychology of school learning. This article grew out of an on-going investigation of how best to define and measure the cognitive outcomes of post-secondary general education programs.A portion of this research was presented at the Annual Forum of the Association for Institutional Research, San Francisco, CA, May, 1991.     

老年糖尿病漏诊分析

目的:探讨老年糖尿病特点及其诊断方法,提出临床医生在诊治中应提高警惕性,减少漏诊和误诊。方法:自2005年1月~2006年4月共收集17例老年糖尿病并发症入院资料。结果:3例病人分别因心肌梗塞、肾功衰及高渗性昏迷死亡,其余患者经积极治疗,并发症及血糖控制好,出院。结论:老年2型糖尿病患者合并症多,容易漏诊和误诊。医生应提高警惕性,重视对OGTT及餐后血糖的监测。     

Teachers’ academic appraisals and referral decisions: The effect of sharing health information when diabetes is present

Two prior studies showed that giving teachers more information about a student's illness led them to make better attributions about that student's classroom problems and better classroom accommodations. In this study, 235 teachers appraised academic competence and judged whether to seek help or make a referral for a hypothetical student with type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM). Teachers received one of five levels comprising increasing disease disclosure and classroom‐relevant information about T1DM. Contrary to prior studies, teachers in this study who were given a student's T1DM diagnosis and details about T1DM's classroom risks failed to make better judgments about the student's academic skill levels or to award more accurate grades. Instead, teachers seemed swayed by this student's apparently careless and inconsistent schoolwork, which was presumably disease related. Likewise, better‐informed teachers were no better at selecting accommodations. However, once it was disclosed that the hypothetical student had T1DM, most teachers seemed knowledgeable about the most appropriate potential Individuals With Disabilities Education Improvement Act category for service delivery. Regarding practice issues, school psychologists were rarely selected as a first choice for consultation, and the more information teachers were provided with about T1DM and the student's disease status, the less likely they were to select a school psychologist as a consultant.     

The impact of conflicting goals on mathematical teaching decisions

This paper describes part of an international project considering graphical construction of antiderivative functions in the secondary mathematics classroom. We use Schoenfeld’s resources, orientations, and goals (ROGs) framework to analyse the decisions made by a teacher, Adam, during a lesson on graphical antiderivatives. We present details of Adam’s ROG and see how this is related to resolution of the conflict between his competing goals and the decisions he makes. The results suggest that a beneficial professional development strategy might be to assist teachers to become more aware of their ROG and its influence on in-the-moment classroom decisions.