From sixth form to university: motivation and transition among high achieving state‐school language students

This paper reports on a research project involving a sample of 19 state‐educated students in their first year of a German course at Oxford University. The project is one of a number of research studies into widening participation issues funded by the Higher Education Funding Council of England (HEFCE) and the Sutton trust. The paper describes the students' motivation for applying to study German at Oxford and their experiences of the transition from school to university. This is part of a larger scale study looking at access and transition data. The findings, based on data from semi‐structured interviews, suggest that the students had instrumentally oriented motivation for wanting to do a language course which was qualitatively different from the one experienced at A level. Although several factors might have alienated the students, most managed to adapt to the academic requirements at Oxford. It is argued that the students' ability to adapt and succeed is due to a high level of preparedness and to a flexibility of motivational orientation. The study contributes to the widening participation debate in general by commenting on issues of transition in terms of how well matched certain prestige university courses are to the aspirations of the applicants.     

Quality of alternatives,institutional preference,and institutional commitment among first‐year college students

We tested the hypotheses derived from investment theory that quality of alternatives and institutional preference exert additive and interactive effects on institutional commitment in a sample of 1166 first‐year college students at a large state university, who were surveyed within two weeks of the start of their first semester. As predicted, a hierarchical regression analysis revealed: as quality of alternatives increased, institutional commitment decreased; as preference for the university increased, institutional commitment increased; and as institutional preference decreased, the inverse relation between quality of alternatives and institutional commitment increased. The findings of the present study suggest that first‐year college students who do not rank their university as one of their top three choices and who rate the quality of alternatives as high should be classified as at risk of dropping out and targeted for proactive advising.     

Discrimination of the language behavior of college‐and middle‐aged encoders

Language samples of college and middle‐aged respondents were syntactically analyzed in order to determine if the use of college students is appropriate for generalizations to other elements of the population. Multiple Discriminant Analysis was employed to determine correct classification of written language samples based on syntactic categories. Twenty‐two college‐aged subjects and 22 middle‐aged subjects responded to a TAT‐type photograph. The correct classification of college and middle‐aged subjects was 93.18%. A second MDA calculated on a three‐way distinction (college/nursing home employees/educators) yielded 90.91% discriminability. Utilizing a four‐way distinction (freshmen/sophomores/nursing home employees/ educators], the correct classification was 81.82%. Finally, an MDA calculated for male/female resulted in 68.18% discriminability. These results cast doubt on the validity of a “science of sophomores.”     

Date of birth and achievement in GCSE and GCE A‐level

General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) examinations are taken by almost all pupils in England, Wales and Northern Ireland at age 16 years. General Certificate of Education Advanced level (GCE A‐level) examinations are normally taken by relatively able students at age 18. The effect of month of birth on attainment in these public examinations is investigated through a database which brings together the 1991 GCSE results and the 1993 GCE A‐level results of all candidates born between September 1974 and August 1975. Older pupils perform best at GCSE but not at GCE A‐level. Selection effects on entry to A‐level courses appear to explain why this is the case.     

A Study in Self‐assessment: tutor and students’ perceptions of performance criteria

This paper reports a study which implemented and evaluated a method of student self‐assessment. The theme of the importance of marking criteria (Orsmond et al., 1996) is developed. Pairs of first‐year undergraduate biology students were asked to complete a poster assignment on a specific aspect of nerve physiology. The study was designed to allow the evaluation of (1) student self and tutor marking for individual marking criteria; and (2) student vs student marking of their poster work for individual marking criteria. A comparison between the tutor and the student self‐assessed mark reveals how important it is to consider the individual marking criteria rather than the overall mark. These results support our findings on peer assessment reported earlier (Orsmond et al., 1996). The results also illustrate the potential pitfalls that exist when making assumptions about the degree of student/student interaction and students’ marking ability. This study supports previous work which showed that self‐assessment is extremely useful in helping students reach their learning goals, i.e. it is a strong formative educational tool and can be used in order to bring about behavioural changes in students with regard to their own learning processes.     

Promoting positive attitudes towards science and religion among sixth‐form pupils: dealing with scientism and creationism

A sample of 187 female students, attending a sixth‐form study day on religious studies, completed a questionnaire containing four scales concerned with assessing: attitude towards theistic religion, attitude towards science, scientism and creationism. The data demonstrated a negative correlation between attitude towards religion and attitude towards science. However, this negative correlation was transformed into a positive correlation after taking into account individual differences in the students’ views about scientism and creationism. The implications of this finding are discussed in the context of the increasing support within society for the teaching of alternatives to evolution within the science curriculum. The authors argue both that it is important to challenge scientism by developing a better understanding of the role and limits of scientific methods, and that religious belief about creation should be recognised as essentially a claim about the ontological dependence of nature rather than about the details of its origins and development.     

Israeli college students’ perceptions of internationalisation

In the last two decades, higher education institutions have invested significant resources to internationalise, due to economic, political, academic and cultural pressures. Students play a dual role in this process: as customers, selecting institutions based on respective reputations (including the international dimension) and as outputs of institutional internationalisation processes aiming to produce internationally oriented graduates. Universities aspire towards integration of international, global and intercultural dimensions as main aims of higher education, reflecting the upsurging prominence of cosmopolitan capital among their future graduates. Indeed, cosmopolitanism is increasingly considered desirable on individual and institutional levels. Using data from a student survey (n = 1650) gathered at seven geographically and otherwise diverse colleges in Israel, this paper investigates Israeli college students’ perceptions of internationalisation and estimation of their institutions’ internationalisation activities. Parents’ education, previous experiences abroad, proficiency in English and institutional efforts to internationalise were found to positively impact students’ perceptions of on-campus internationalisation initiatives and characteristics. Such differences were also found to relate to the university’s general status and context. This paper presents the findings of the survey and discusses possible implications for policy and practice at institutional and national levels.     

Classifications of college students’ protean and boundaryless orientation to work

Increasingly, individuals navigate their own careers in self-directed (protean) and boundaryless contexts. These concepts have been applied to adult employees but have seen limited application with young adults. Therefore, 205 college students were assessed on the Protean and Boundaryless Career Attitudes scales (Briscoe, Hall, and DeMuth, 2006); i.e., self-directed career management, values-driven, boundaryless mindset, and organizational mobility preferences. Scale items were reworded to focus on college experience. Cluster analysis organized respondents into five distinct protean-boundaryless career types. Three types were similar to those hypothesized for adults, while two types were unique to our sample.     

Personality characteristics differentiating and predicting the achievement of televised‐course students and traditional‐course students 1

Abstract

A large‐scale field study was conducted to 1) determine if the personality traits of students enrolled in televised college‐level courses differ from the personality traits of students enrolled in traditional college‐level courses and 2) identify the specific personality traits predictive of successful performance in televised classes. Results showed that students enrolled in telecourses do have a unique personality profile and that certain traits predicted success for these students. Implications of these results are discussed.     

Research review of college students＇ psychological quality

Quality education forms an important content of tertiary education reform and is at the same time a basic requirement for talent cultivation in the future society. Psychological education, one constituent of the said quality education, is of great significance for the overall development of college students. In recent years, some psychologists have carried out many valuable discussions on college students＇ psychological quality. This paper is thus composed as a review of researches done in the past decade on the current situation of college students＇ psychological quality and the factors that influence it.     

Faith conquers all? Demographic and psychological resources and their associations with academic performance among religious college students

ABSTRACT

Evidence on the association of religiosity and academic attainment is consistent, thus suggesting additional factors intervene in this relationship. We proposed and tested a model with two concepts from the field of positive psychology: psychological capital and psychological resilience. We hypothesised that these mediate the association between religiosity, demographic variables and academic achievement. We tested the model in a sample of 119 senior students in a Catholic university in Poland. The results partially supported the model; both psychological capital and psychological resilience mediated the association between religiosity and academic attainment but in different directions. Among the demographic variables, only age associated directly with achievement. The results are discussed in light of the existing evidence and positive psychology theory.     

Comparison of learning and study strategies of traditional and open‐learning‐system students in Turkey

This study compares the learning and study strategies of the students of the Faculty of Administrative Sciences of Cukurova University taking traditional on‐campus courses and those at the Open Learning Faculty of Anadolu University following an open learning programme. The evaluation was based on the Learning and Study Strategies Inventory (LASSI), developed by Claire E. Weinstein (1987), together with a separate questionnaire to elaborate the findings.

Findings reveal that students of both groups have considerably lower scores, especially in the affective domain, in relation to the other college students answering the same items in previous evaluations. However no important difference has been found between the groups belonging to the traditional and open learning systems evaluated in this study.     

The effect of language on the performance of second‐language students in science examinations

It has been established by previous researchers that changes in the wording of multiple‐choice examination questions can significantly affect pupil performance. In this study recent ‘home’ General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) and ‘overseas’ General Certificate of Education (GCE) papers were examined for questions in which the language could be simplified, and modified questions were prepared. When performance on the original and modified forms of the questions was compared for a sample of British school pupils, no statistically significant difference emerged. When performance on the same questions was examined for a sample of pupils for whom English was the second (or third) language, there were significant differences in their performance on modified and unmodified versions of the questions.     

Integrated,marginal, and resilient: race,class, and the diverse experiences of white first‐generation college students

While first‐generation college students are ‘at risk’, the majority do persist. Using in‐depth interviews with 28 white college students I ask: How do white, first‐generation, working‐class students understand their college experiences, especially in terms of their academic, social, and cultural adjustment? Moreover, what kinds of factors seem to help or hinder their adjustment to college life? I discovered three patterns of adjustment among these students: (1) about half expressed few feelings of marginality and appeared well integrated into campus life; (2) one quarter experienced persistent and debilitating marginality; and (3) another quarter overcame their feelings of marginality en route to becoming socially and academically engaged on campus, with some transforming their feelings of marginality into motivation for social change. I argue that these variations can be understood by looking at how working‐class students’ economic resources may function as an asset, while their whiteness may function alternately as an asset and a liability.     

Private transfers and college students’ decision to work

We estimate the impact of external financial support on the labor supply of students during their tertiary education. Using a dynamic labor supply model and accounting for the endogeneity of income from private transfers, we find a significantly lower likelihood of being employed for transfer recipients. Our results suggest that private transfers lead to a shift in students’ time allocation, lowering their hours devoted to working and increasing their time devoted to studying. We find evidence for a psychological component of receiving transfers through an increase in the perceived risk of failure in academic studies.     

Relationships among properties of college students’ self-set academic goals and academic achievement

The major purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships among properties of college students’ self-set academic goals and academic achievement, using multiple theoretical perspectives. Using a personal goal-based research methodology, college students enrolled in a learning-to-learn course (N?=?130) were asked to list 20 of their goals (academic and/or non-academic). For each of their goals, goal specificity, value, expectation of success and autonomous and controlled motivation were measured and then ratings on each goal property were averaged across students’ academic goals (24.75% of all goals) to predict students’ grade point average (GPA) for the semester. Regression results suggested a positive affect on students’ semester GPA for goal specificity and a negative effect for controlled motivation; the model explained 19% of the variation in GPA. This research may help to inform motivation researchers and educational practitioners who assist college students with goal setting.     

Teacher‐college students’ opinions in Israel and on the West Bank of ‘what science‐education is supposed to be’

A three‐way comparison of teacher‐college entrants’ and graduating students’ views in Israel (both Jews and Arabs) and their counterparts on the West Bank was undertaken in order to diagnose subjects’ image of science and of science teaching. The questionnaire used permitted the gathering of subjects’ normative views as well as the application of these views in actual classroom science‐lesson planning. It was found that college entrants’ views of the Jewish subjects differed sharply from those of both Arab samples in all areas tested. While there was no difference between Israeli Arabs and their counterparts on the West Bank on matters concerning in‐school and in‐classroom affairs, the Israeli Arab subjects’ views about science and science‐teaching were midway between those of the Jewish subjects and the West Bank subjects. As to the graduating subjects’ normative opinions, no significant difference was found between Jewish and Arab Israeli subjects, with both these samples differing significantly from their West Bank counterparts. An identical situation for both the entrants and the graduating students pertained to actual lesson‐planning. The findings were interpreted to mean that:

• Arab science education in Israeli schools is at present in a transition period, tending to move away from traditional and towards ‘Western’ approaches.

• Three years of college education had been instrumental in eliminating the previously existing discrepancies between prospective science teachers in the Jewish and Arab sectors of Israel, and to widen the gulf between Israeli Arabs’ and West Bankers’ normative stances as to ‘what science teaching is supposed to be’.

     

Italian students’ performance and regional decomposition

Educational Research for Policy and Practice - We relate students’ math scores in the OECD-PISA test to school characteristics. The average math score for Italian students has been increasing...     

Acculturation and teacher ratings of hispanic and Anglo‐American students∗

Robert Albert examined key conceptual shifts in the pertinent professional literature language over the first part of the 20th century in his 1969 American Psychologist article, “Genius: Present‐Day Status of the Concept and Its Implications for the Study of Creativity and Giftedness. “ His findings indicated profound changes in pertinent terminology in the professional knowledge base after 1945 from an emphasis on concepts such as genius, eminence, fame, and distinction to giftedness, talent, and creativity.

The goal of the current project was to investigate empirically changes in conceptions of exceptional ability and performance, as reflected in the professional literature published since 1969. Over 28,000 articles were culled from three data bases: Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC), PsycINFO and Exceptional Children Educational Resources (ECER). Conceptual themes and types of research were analyzed for a sample of the articles, drawn from the midpoint year of each decade.

Significant results include: an increase in the number of articles relating to creativity; a rise in the number of practice‐oriented articles; and a small but steady increase in the number of articles employing qualitative research methods. Articles were also analyzed for evidence of a “paradigm shift” also discussed in the literature; however, the paradigm shift was not significantly reflected in practice. Implications are addressed relative to the conceptual trends in the literature and qualities of the knowledge base.