Success or Failure in a Core University Unit: What makes the difference?

Factors which have been identified as contributing to student academic success at the degree and program level in tertiary study include mode of study, student age, previous tertiary qualifications and past academic performance. Limited published Australian research is available, however, on student academic success in individual subjects. This study investigated identifiable patterns related to the academic success of three separate cohorts of students in an Early Childhood second-year Language, Literature and Literacy unit (N = 601). The data support previous research findings with regard to the effect of mode of study, previous university qualifications and past academic performance on academic success in this subject. In contrast with most previous studies, this study found a significant relationship between previous study at TAFE (college study at a Technical and Further Education institute) and failure in an academic unit, perhaps due to the timing of this unit in the students' overall program. Further implications for Early Childhood teacher education are discussed.     

Price-induced substitution of faculty in academe: Does mission make a difference?

In an earlier paper Tuckman and Chang demonstrated that college faculty were substitutable and that differences in faculty salaries influenced the distribution of faculty by rank and sex. This paper uses a similar methodology to explore the question of whether institutions of high education with different missions have different substitution patterns and price elasticities. Our main conclusion is that price-related substitution does exist at each of the four types of colleges in our sample. However, the observed price effects are small and there is little evidence that any one college type is consistently more price responsive than any other.     

Socio‐emotional adjustment in elementary school boys and girls: Does giftedness make a difference?

Fifty 10‐year‐old gifted children were matched with 50 pupils of average intelligence on the variables ‘gender’ and ‘socio‐economic status’. Three data sources (children, parents, and teachers) on the children's personality and socio‐emotional behavior were used.     

Medicine as a calling among male and female medical students in Israel: Does it make a difference?

This study focused on the perception of medicine as a calling and its associations with medical training satisfaction, career certainty, career satisfaction, career commitment, and well-being among 176 Israeli medical students. Participants replied to an online questionnaire including the Brief Calling Scale (Duffy and Sedlacek in Career Dev Q 59:27–41, 2010) and measures related to medical training, a medical career, and well-being. Calling was positively associated with all outcome measures, and gender moderated these associations, which were stronger for female medical students in comparison with male medical students. The importance of taking these gender differences regarding calling under consideration for career counseling is discussed.     

Full-day kindergarten and student literacy growth: Does a lengthened school day make a difference?

In the context of a quasi-experimental research design, literacy data obtained on students were examined to assess relationships between kindergarten program model (full- vs. half-day) and student literacy outcomes. Application of multilevel modeling techniques to the time series data collected from kindergarteners in economically disadvantaged school contexts in a large southwestern school district revealed that students exposed to a full day of instruction had greater literacy growth than their peers in half-day classrooms. Further examination of the program model results revealed that the relative efficacy of full-day kindergarten tended to be greater in smaller class size environments. These results, if replicated, suggest that full-day kindergarten initiatives targeted toward students from disadvantaged backgrounds may be more successful when implemented in classrooms with relatively small student enrollments. Implications for instructional policy and practice are discussed.     

School-to-work transitions in the OECD: do education systems make a difference?

High unemployment among the young is a concern in many OECD countries. A key issue for policy makers is whether the education system has a role to play in assisting the transition from education to work or whether economic issues dominate. This paper uses OECD country-level data to see whether the structure of countries’ education systems, characterised by the level of participation by age at the various ISCED education levels, affects systematically the level of unemployment for the cohorts aged 20–24 and 25–29 years who should have largely completed their transition to work. Various confounding factors, including overall labour market conditions and demographic structures, are accounted for. We find that the structure of education systems does make a difference, although the general state of the labour market is critical.     

Stigmatic beliefs toward a person with Alzheimer’s disease among high-school students: Does majority–minority status make a difference?

Research in the area of public stigma and Alzheimer disease (AD) is attracting increased attention in the last years. However, studies are limited to assessing the topic among adult persons. The aims of this study were to assess stigmatic beliefs toward a person with AD in high-school students and to examine whether majority–minority status is associated with stigmatic beliefs beyond other correlates of stigma.

A total of 460 high-school students aged 14–15 participated in the study. Approximately half (55.1%) were female and the rest male. The majority of participants were Jewish (64.6%) and the rest were Israeli Arabs. Students completed a self-administered structured questionnaire assessing public stigma, ageism, knowledge about AD, and familiarity with AD.

Results showed that high-school students reported relatively low levels of stigmatic beliefs toward a person with AD. Additionally, the majority–minority status had a unique contribution to the explanation of stigma, with Arab high-school students reporting higher levels of stigma toward a person with AD in comparison to Jewish students.

Our results stress the importance of developing intervention programs to reduce stigma toward persons with AD at an early age. These programs should be tailored to the cultural values and needs of specific groups.     

Do age and gender make a difference in the relationship between intellectual styles and abilities?

This article reports two studies that aim at further distinguishing intellectual styles from abilities by taking into account the confounding effects of age and gender on the relationship between these two constructs. Two independent groups of secondary school students responded to the Thinking Styles Inventory-Revised and took the Sternberg Triarchic Abilities Test (Level H). Both sets of results suggested that although statistically significant relationships could be identified between thinking styles and abilities, when age and gender were put under control, styles and abilities became fundamentally independent. Implications of this finding for students and teachers are discussed.     

Na?ve Students’ Conceptual Development and Beliefs: The Need for Multiple Analyses to Determine what Contributes to Student Success in a University Introductory Physics Course

This research involved na?ve physics learners who were interested in majoring in science or engineering. In a semester-long quasi-experimental study, open-ended pretests and weekly interviews were used to analyse the progressive development of students’ conceptions relating to sound and wave motion. Semi-structured interviews were also conducted to elucidate: (1) how their conceptions developed from everyday conceptions to unclear scientific conceptions to scientific conceptions, and (2) their beliefs of physics knowledge. Despite efforts to enable these students to learn physics, the findings showed that only two out of ten students developed acceptable physics conceptions during the course that would enable them to pursue the subject to a higher level. Also, students’ conceptual development was found to be related to their cognitive understanding and to epistemological beliefs of physics. Therefore, to facilitate na?ve physics learners’ success in a general physics course, in addition to the acquisition of content knowledge, explicit emphasis needs to be placed on the nature of physics knowledge.     

Emotional experiences during test taking: Does cognitive ability make a difference?

This study examined test-related experiences of enjoyment, anger, anxiety, and boredom in a sample of 2059 German school students (50% female) from grade 6, and how they relate to students' abstract reasoning ability (ARA). Emotions were assessed immediately before, during, and after a mathematics achievement test. Analysis of variance showed that emotions experienced during the test situation differed based on students' ARA level, with correspondence analysis revealing substantial differences between the emotional profiles of different ability groups. Enjoyment proved to be most prominent in students with high ARA, whereas anger and anxiety were predominant for students with low ARA. Boredom was found to be highest among students in the intermediate ARA group. Implications for research and practice are discussed.     

Education and psychological distress in adolescence and mid-life: Do private schools make a difference?

This article extends the evidence base on childhood circumstances, education and psychological distress. We examine the link between childhood advantage and disadvantage, the type of school attended during adolescence and psychological distress at ages 16 and 42. The analysis uses a large, population-based birth cohort study, the 1970 British Cohort Study (BCS70) (n = 17,198) using a structural equation modelling (SEM) approach. More advantaged young people were more likely to attend private schools, but we find no evidence for an effect of private schooling on psychological distress for men, and for women there was an association between private schooling and raised psychological distress at age 16. Having a university degree was associated with a modest reduction in psychological distress in mid-life. We establish that maternal psychological distress at age 10 was a risk factor for the offspring’s psychological distress both in adolescence and in mid-life, and adolescent psychological distress predicts psychological distress in mid-life. We conclude that schools which are academically successful do not necessarily provide wider benefits in terms of mental health.     

Representational and decorative pictures in science and mathematics tests: Do they make a difference?

Multimedia effects in learning receive much attention in research. In contrast, effects of different picture types in testing materials are hardly studied. The present computer-based experiment with n = 404 students investigates the effects of adding a representational picture (RP) or a decorative picture (DP) to text-based educational test items on students' performance, metacognition, test-taking motivation and item processing in the domains of science and mathematics. The data show that RPs enhanced students' performance, perception of ease and test-taking pleasure in both scientific and mathematics items. Furthermore, RPs increased time on task (TOT) in mathematics, but not in scientific items. DPs had no significant effect on students’ performance, test-taking pleasure or perceived ease, while DPs reduced TOT in mathematics items. Explanations for the process-related differences are discussed. The pattern of results indicates that the multimedia principle and the coherence principle from instructional psychology can be transferred to educational testing material.     

Does principal leadership make a difference in teacher professional learning? A comparative study China and Thailand

This research explored the relationship of principal leadership and teacher professional learning in China and Thailand. The authors tested a conceptual model in which teacher trust and agency were proposed as mediators of the effects of the principal’s learning-centered leadership on teacher professional learning. Common survey measures had been used to collect data from 1259 teachers in 38 schools in mainland China and 1071 teachers in 60 schools in Thailand. Multi-group confirmatory factor analysis, multi-group structural equation modelling, and bootstrapping were employed to compare the proposed leadership and teacher learning processes in Chinese and Thai schools. The results confirmed a similar model of strong, statistically significant, ‘mediated effects’ of principal leadership on the professional learning of teachers in the two societies. These findings contribute to our understanding of leadership effects across societies and offer insight into how policymakers and practitioners can support school leadership, teacher development, and educational change.     

Student Graduation in Spain: To What Extent Does University Expenditure Matter?

Graduation rates (GRs) remain one of the most frequently applied measures of institutional performance. This paper analyzes the relationship between university characteristics and GRs in Spain, using a dataset for the entire public university system over the period 1998–2008. Since we observe the same university over several years, we address the problem of institutional unobserved heterogeneity for the first time. The main findings that can be drawn from our results are that university features, such as expenditure, student–teacher ratio and financial-aid to students are important in accounting for GRs. Surprisingly, student ability has no significant impact explaining graduation, a result that can be justified given the features of the Spanish university system.     

Does high-quality professional development make a difference? Evidence from TIMSS

Abstract

While professional development has been emphasised in many countries, few comparative studies have examined the degree of teachers’ participation in professional development and its effect on teachers. Using the TIMSS 2007 data, this study analyses to what extent teachers participated in professional development in 50 TIMSS countries and examines the relationship among high-quality teachers’ professional development, teachers’ beliefs, attitudes and job satisfaction. The study found that the extent to which teachers have participated in professional developmental activities was surprisingly low. In particular, teachers in 47 countries have rarely participated in active learning. The study also found that high-quality teacher professional development was significantly associated with greater job satisfaction, higher expectations for student performance and more positive attitudes in teachers concerning their implementing the school’s curriculum. Policy implications for professional development are discussed.     

Is What Glitters Really Gold? A Quasi-Experimental Study of First-Year Seminars and College Student Success

First-year seminars are frequently designed to help students adjust to and succeed in college. Although considerable literature has explored this topic, many previous studies may have notable problems with self-selection, since students who choose to participate are likely more motivated academically than those who do not. Therefore, this study used quasi-experimental analyses within a large, longitudinal, multi-institutional dataset to explore the link between seminar participation and several student success outcomes. Overall, the use of propensity score analyses substantially alters the results, such that first-year seminars are positively associated with first-year college satisfaction, but they have no effect on fourth-year satisfaction, college grades, retention, or four-year graduation within the full sample. This lack of impact is largely consistent regardless of whether the seminar is designed to engage students in academic inquiry or to promote orientation and academic success. Additional analyses observed some differential effects of first-year seminars by race/ethnicity, ACT score, and sex; the most consistent finding is that first-year seminars appear to promote the college grades and college satisfaction of Black students. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.

     

Intensifying instruction: Does additional instructional time make a difference for the most at-risk first graders?

Research is clear on the benefit of early intervention efforts and the importance of intensive instructional supports; however, understanding which features to intensify is less clear. General intervention features of group size, instructional delivery, and time are areas schools can consider manipulating to intensify instruction. Also, each of these features can vary along a continuum making them easier or more challenging for schools to implement. What is unclear is if implementing very intensive interventions early in school (first grade), which require significantly more school resources, provides accordingly accelerated student learning. This article investigates the role of intensifying instructional time for the most at-risk first graders in schools implementing research-based instructional and assessment practices within multitiered instructional support systems. Results indicate that students receiving more intensive intervention made significantly more progress across a range of early reading measures. Intervention features, limitations, recommendations for practice, and implications for treatment resisters are discussed.     

Child maltreatment among boy and girl probationers: Does type of maltreatment make a difference in offending behavior and psychosocial problems?

This study examined differences in offending behavior and psychosocial problems between juvenile offenders who have been sexually abused (n = 231), physically abused (n = 1,568), neglected (n = 1,555), exposed to multiple forms of maltreatment (n = 1,767), and non-victims (n = 8,492). In addition, the moderating effect of gender in the association between type of maltreatment and offending behavior/psychosocial problems was examined. Results showed that violent offenses were more common in victims of physical abuse and victims of multiple forms of abuse than in non-victims, both in boys and girls. In boys, sexual offenses were far more common in victims of sexual abuse than in victims of other or multiple forms of maltreatment or in non-victims. In girls, no group differences were found in sexual offending behavior. For both boys and girls, externalizing problems were relatively common in victims of physical abuse and neglect whereas internalizing problems were relatively common in victims of sexual abuse. In victims of multiple forms of maltreatment, both internalizing and externalizing problems were relatively common. Implications for clinical practice are discussed.     

The Relationship Between Attendance in Student‐centred Physics Tutorials and Performance in University Examinations

The School of Physics at the University of Sydney has introduced voluntary workshop tutorials in large first‐year courses. The tutorials are based on informal cooperative groupings with structured worksheets and short hands‐on activities. In this study we explore the relationship between attendance at the workshop tutorials and student performance in examinations. We show that about 80% of the students attend more than two‐thirds of the voluntary tutorials. Discounting the students who attend very few tutorials, on average, examination marks improve significantly with increased tutorial attendance. In particular, on average, students with poor senior high school scores have significantly better examination marks if they work in the same group for eight or more tutorials than those who do not work in the same groups. There is evidence that the improvement in examination performance is more pronounced in qualitative concept questions, most dramatically again for students who did poorly in senior high school.     

Time Constraints in the School Environment: What Does a Sleepy Student Tell Us?

ABSTRACT— In this article, we discuss school schedules and their implications in the context of chronobiological contemporary knowledge, arguing for the need to reconsider time planning in the school setting. We present anecdotal observations regarding chronobiological challenges imposed by the school system throughout different ages and discuss the effects of these schedules in terms of sleepiness and its deleterious consequences on learning, memory, and attention. Different settings (including urban vs. rural habitats) influence timing, which also depends on self-selected sleep schedules. Finally, we criticize the traditional view of a necessary strict stability of sleep–wake habits.