Urban Students’ Perceptions of Teachers: Views of Students in General, Special, and Honors Education

Students’ satisfaction with school experiences has been linked to their sense of belongingness, connection to school, and achievement. Though the extant research addresses students’ perceptions of school climate and sense of belonging, there is a paucity of research about students’ views of teacher–student interactions. Five hundred and seventy-seven students from one ethnically and academically diverse urban high school were surveyed and interviewed about the nature of teacher talk with students. Findings from this mixed-methods investigation indicate students from general, special, and honors programs experience a wide range of interactions based on academic services received, gender, and ethnicity. More frequent perceived punitive feedback was reported by all students in special education as well as males in general and honors education programs, while Hispanic students indicated a greater frequency of perceived supportive feedback. Findings also reflect a wide range of attitudes and feelings about teachers, the educational system, and learning.     

The Effects of Special Curricular Study of Mexican Culture on Anglo and Mexican-American Students’ Perceptions of Mexican-Americans

Anglo and Mexican-American students in six sixth-grade classrooms were randomly assigned to control or experimental conditions (four weeks of special curricular study of Mexican culture). The effect of the treatment on perceptions of MexicanAmericans was studied by having students respond anonymously to an attitude inventory. The posttest means were significantly lower than the pretest means for all groups, apparently as a consequence of greater honesty in responding. There were significant differences in the ethnic group means, but no sex difference. The length and intensity of the treatment were not sufficient to cause changes in the ethnic attitudes and stereotypes.     

Deconstructing Doctoral Students’ Socialization from an Institutional Logics Perspective: A Qualitative Study of the Socialization of Chinese Doctoral Students in Finland

While socialization has become a major lens of research in doctoral education, this paper advances the theoretical foundation of the socialization process in doctoral education by using the institutional logics theory. Specifically, it proposes an analytical framework for understanding the socialization of doctoral students, where it is seen as a process of reconciling different or even competing institutional logics that drive students’ development in doctoral education. The framework has been applied in an empirical study of ten doctoral students in Finland who were funded by the China Scholarship Council (CSC). While proving the usefulness of the analytical framework, the study shows that CSC doctoral students mainly face the competing logics of profession and corporation during socialization. Influenced by a strong profession logic, the Chinese students have transformed themselves into novice professionals and knowledge producers. Corporation logic competed with profession logic in the management of doctoral students and has resulted in a lack of teaching experiences in doctoral training and a weak recognition of professional identity in the students’ host universities. The influence of family logic, inherited from CSC doctoral students’ cultural backgrounds, has been decoupled in the socialization process and has led to a strong sense of loss in handling the supervisory relationship between supervisors and students. Based on the findings of this study, the author provides several recommendations for host universities, supervisors, doctoral students, the CSC, and the Chinese Embassy in Finland to enable them to work together and help CSC doctoral students tackle the aforementioned challenges.     

Mentoring Undergraduate Researchers: An Exploratory Study of Students’ and Professors’ Perceptions

Mentoring is believed to be one of the most influential factors in US efforts to encourage college‐aged students to seek careers in science, yet the role that mentoring plays in this process has not been elucidated. The researchers were interested in understanding whether the long‐held beliefs about the importance of mentoring would be revealed as what actually occurs in an undergraduate research program. They describe students’ perceptions of the mentoring process and students’ beliefs about how it impacted their experiences as undergraduate researchers and their development as scientists. Also described are professors’ perceptions of their roles and effectiveness as mentors in students’ development as scientists. A multi‐case narrative analysis was conducted of two groups, undergraduate science scholars (n=5) and mentoring professors (n=5), who were each interviewed on two occasions at the beginning and end of the first year of a funded research program. As this grounded research study shows, students and professors described student gains as increased technical expertise and communication skills. Professors suggested that they were available to students on a regular and frequent basis. However, students’ experiences suggested a contradiction. They were often mentored by postgraduates, technical assistants, and other students; their meetings with mentoring professors were infrequent and at times distant. With respect to mentoring, this finding highlights the differences between beliefs and the reality of what was delivered. Professors discussed the challenges associated with mentoring including the recruitment of and difficulty of working with students whose first language was not English and concerns about the quality of instruction from graduate students.     

MSW Students’ Perceptions of Relevance and Application of Statistics: Implications for Field Education

Many social work students feel anxious when taking a statistics course. Their attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors after learning statistics are less known. However, such information could help instructors support students’ ongoing development of statistical knowledge. With a sample of MSW students (N = 101) in one program, this study examined students’ feelings of anxiety and confidence, beliefs about the relevance of statistics to their education and practice, and the relationship of these attitudes and beliefs to their actual statistical competence. The findings indicate that repeated exposure to statistics supports the development of statistical competence, particularly in relevant applied contexts like field education.     

Conceptualizing and Contextualizing the Concept of Refugee in Education: A Phenomenological Study of Teachers’ and Students’ Perceptions in a Conflict-Affected Society

The aim of this study was to investigate Greek-Cypriot primary school teachers’ and students’ perceptions of the concept of refugee using a phenomenological-interpretive framework. The value of a phenomenological study was to gain a deeper understanding of the roots of participants’ perceptions of refugeehood as well as how those perceptions were connected to participants’ feelings about refugees. Data collection involved a total of 40 interviews—20 interviews with teachers and 20 interviews with students. Against legal definitions of refugee and internally displaced people, it is shown that participants’ understandings were rooted in their lived experiences of uprootedness, of loss of home, and of lack of belonging. The study makes a contribution in understanding the complexities and tensions between legal definitions and the situatedness of the concept of refugee in lived experiences. Contextualizing the concept of refugee can create pedagogical spaces for the affective dimension in teacher professional development, which is critical to understanding the lived experience of refugees in more complex and nuanced ways, especially within conflict-affected settings.     

Employers’ Perceptions of Online Accounting Education

The main focus of this research is on perceptions of accounting employers of those individuals obtaining their accounting education online. An online survey of accounting professionals was conducted, and the findings suggest that a candidate with a traditional education is more suitable for employment than a candidate with an online education. Also, the reputation of the candidate’s institution, as well as the candidate’s grade point average and work experience, all have an impact on an employer’s hiring decision. However, the perception of respondents is that online education is becoming more acceptable. Further, the online education experience of recruiters does not impact their hiring decisions.     

Justice in the Higher Education Classroom: Students’ Perceptions of Unfairness and Responses to Instructors

We investigated college students’ perceptions of instructor unfairness and their emotional and behavioral reactions to perceived injustice. Results obtained from 397 undergraduates from three universities in the United States indicate that anger and dissent were the strongest emotional and behavioral responses to injustice. Furthermore, disgust mediated the influence of injustice on student behaviors most damaging to professors—taking action, expressing verbal aggression, and dissenting to authority. Stress mediated the effect of injustice on the most constructive student behaviors—changing their approach and engaging in the class. We discuss the implications of the results of our study for the student-instructor relationship and learning in the contemporary higher education environment.     

An Exploratory Study of Minority Students’ Technology Usage and Perceptions of Technology: Nontraditional Adult Students in Technology-Based Environments

Abstract

The study examines nontraditional, African-American adult students’ use of technologies and their perceptions toward this in technology-based environments. Technology perceptions included computer self-efficacy, Internet self-efficacy, user attitude, and computer anxiety. The effects of student characteristics on these factors and the relationships between these factors were examined throughout this study. Participants included minority students who participated in face-to-face or online undergraduate courses offered in continuing education. A quantitative approach was undertaken to analyze the collected data. Results indicated that nontraditional minority students utilized basic software tools more frequently than the advanced ones, suggesting that many of them may lack the knowledge or skills for advanced technologies. Age, hours spent online, and previous online course experiences influenced students’ technology perceptions. Gender did not have an impact on technology perceptions. Internet self-efficacy was affected by most of the student characteristics variables. Computer self-efficacy was found to be a good predictor for both user attitude and computer anxiety. (Keywords: technology usage, technology perceptions, student characteristics, computer and Internet self-efficacy, minority students)     

The Implementation of School Inclusion Practices for Students with Special Needs in Israel: Teachers’ Perceptions

The research examined how school inclusion practices for students with special needs in Israel are perceived by teachers. Participating in the study were 121 elementary and secondary teachers in 10 schools around the country. The instrument was the 50-item ‘Implementation of inclusion practices in schools for students with special needs’ questionnaire, developed by the author together with seminar students. The findings indicate that inclusion practice as a whole was perceived to be implemented in the schools to a moderate degree. When testing the five components of inclusion separately, moral obligation was perceived to be implemented to a significantly greater degree and the knowledge component to a significantly lesser degree than the others. Inclusion practice was found to be implemented more in schools with medium-high socio-economic-level students than in those with low socio-economic-level students, and to a greater degree in the Jewish sector than in the Arab.     

Relationships Among Teachers’ Positive Discipline,Students’ Well-being and Teachers’ Effective Teaching: A Study of Special Education Teachers and Adolescent Students With Learning Disabilities in Taiwan

The authors proposed a positive discipline, well-being and teaching effectiveness model that suggested that teachers’ positive discipline would facilitate students’ well-being and effective teaching, and students’ well-being would play a mediating role in the association between positive discipline and teaching effectiveness. The model was tested by including 255 resource room teachers (mean age = 32.71 years, SD = 7.09) and 255 matched adolescent students with learning disabilities (mean age = 14.06 years, SD = .74). Teachers responded to a scale for rating positive discipline strategies, and adolescents completed a students’ well-being questionnaire and a students’ awareness of teachers’ teaching effectiveness questionnaire. To evaluate the fit between the collected data and the proposed model, structural equation modelling was used to analyse the data. The results supported the proposed model and revealed that the link between teachers’ repertoire of positive discipline strategies and their students’ perception of teaching effectiveness was partially mediated by students’ well-being. Thus, the authors suggest that instead of eliminating individual student misbehaviours, teachers should focus more on positive classroom management, which is linked to improved outcomes for students and teachers.     

Perspectives from Both Sides of the Parent–Professional Partnership: A Preliminary Study on Taiwan’s Early Childhood Special Education Services

The purpose of this qualitative study was to get an understanding of perspectives on effective parent–professional partnership for young children with special needs in Taiwan. Through purposive sampling, a total of nine parent–professional pairs were recruited. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to obtain perspectives from both sides of the partnerships about building effective partnerships. Data analyses were based on six domains (communication, commitment, equality, skills, trust and respect), and the results showed that (1) positive partnerships were found between partners; (2) participants agreed that their partners fulfilled their roles and met the children’s needs; (3) effective two-way communication was the key for building successful partnerships; and (4) other essential domains of competence (e.g. skills) needed to be further considered as well. Most importantly, the study further emphasised that positive partnerships should be built through effort from both sides.     

The Relation of Teachers’ Emotional Intelligence and Students’ Social Skills to Students’ Emotional and Behavioral Difficulties: A Study of Preschool Teachers’ Perceptions

The present study used hierarchical linear modeling to examine predictors of students’ emotional and behavioral difficulties in preschool classrooms. Specifically, the study examined (a) the link between teachers’ perceptions of their own emotional intelligence and students’ emotional and behavioral difficulties, (b) the link between teachers’ perceptions of students’ social skills and emotional and behavioral difficulties, and (c) how teachers’ perceptions of their own emotional intelligence were related differentially to their perceptions of students’ emotional and behavioral difficulties based on students’ social skills. Participants were 92 preschool teachers and 238 students from 52 state schools in central Greece. Research Findings: Results indicated that higher scores for teachers’ perceptions of emotional intelligence and students’ social skills were related to lower scores for teachers’ perceptions of students’ emotional and behavioral difficulties. Teachers’ perceptions of emotional intelligence were important in predicting students’ emotional and behavioral difficulties, especially in the case of students’ lack of social skills. Practice or Policy: This study provides empirical support for the predictors of students’ emotional and behavioral difficulties by taking into consideration both teachers’ perceptions of emotional intelligence and students’ social skills, thus suggesting new insights into the interpretation of emotional and behavioral difficulties in preschool.     

Students’ Perceptions of a Problem-Based Learning Environment

During the last decades, traditional learning environments have been criticised for not developing the prerequisites for professional expertise (H. Mandl, H. Gruber &; A. Renkl, Interactive minds: Life-span perspectives on the social foundation of cognition, pp. 394–412, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996; P. Tynjälä, International Journal of Educational Research, 31, 357–442, 1999). To meet this criticism, educational approaches such as problem-based learning, project-based learning and case-based learning are being implemented to an increasing extent. Research also concentrates on the efficiency of these approaches in terms of students’ learning outcomes. At the same time, classroom-based theories of learning (J. B. Biggs, British Journal of Educational Psychology, 63, 3–19, 1993; M. Prosser &; K. Trigwell, Understanding learning and teaching. Buckingham, UK: SRHE and Open University Press, 1999) stress the importance of the investigation of subjective learning environments in order to understand the nature of these students’ learning outcomes, for learning results are not a mere function of the learning setting because each student operates as a filter for the possible influence of the environment. However, most research on students’ perception of the learning environment is conducted in predominantly traditional learning environments.The goal of our research was to investigate students’ perceptions of the key design variables of a problem-based learning environment and if students perceive that they enhance learning. There are four research questions. First, to what extent do students’ perceptions of a PBL environment match the theoretical assumptions of PBL? Second, do their perceptions differ as a function of the institutional context? Third, is there a difference in the perceptions of students between groups of first year and experienced students and between disciplines? Fourth, are there interaction effects between study phase and discipline?The results show that, in general, students value the key variables of the learning environment as powerful (i.e. enhancing learning). Also, the results indicate that students’ perceptions of the learning environment in various institutional contexts differ significantly. In general, no distinctions were found related to students in different study phases. However, in terms of specific design variables, students studying in diverse disciplines showed significantly divergent perceptions. Finally, significant interaction effects were found between study phase and discipline.     

Students’ Preconceptions and Perceptions of Science-Oriented Studies

Do non-science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) students’ views about STEM studies correspond with how STEM students actually perceive these studies? This paper deals with this issue by comparing higher education students’ attitudes towards STEM studies between those who actually did a STEM study and those who did not. The attitudes of the first category of students have been referred to as perceptions and the attitudes of the second category as preconceptions. The study included 1,935 students in higher education. The results confirm both small and large differences between the preconceptions and perceptions, and show significant differences between suitably qualified students (i.e. eligible for STEM studies) and other students. At the end of this paper, we will discuss the implications of this study for future research and offer some suggestions for practice.