Young people’s views on choice and fairness through their experiences of curriculum as examination specifications at GCSE

Abstract

This paper presents data that consider ways in which young people experience the curriculum through the lens of subject examination syllabuses (for GCSEs), their associated assessment techniques and structures, and educational policies at national and school level concerning subject choice. Drawing upon an original qualitative dataset from a mixed-methods study of students’ views and experiences of GCSE from Northern Ireland (NI) and Wales, the paper explores students’ perceptions of choice and fairness in relation to studying various subjects at GCSE. Factors of importance are the subjects available to them through subject option selections at the school level and the ways in which GCSE courses are then administered. In relation to notions of choice and fairness, the paper considers how students see access to the curriculum moderated by national- and school-level decisions regarding the assessment of GCSEs; the extent to which assessment techniques such as tiering, controlled assessment, and modularity, as well as school-level policy decisions about timing of entry to GCSEs (known as early entry) all combine to restrict students’ access to the full range of subjects and influence the ways in which they experience these subjects as curricula within their particular school settings.     

Impact of Universities' Promotional Materials on College Choice

ABSTRACT

A major promotional tactic for higher education marketers is the use of printed promotional materials to recruit freshmen students. These promotional materials range from full color glossy brochures to simple letters on university letterhead. They are sent to students during their junior and senior years in high school.

The research reported in this article attempted to provide in-depth information on the impact of these promotional materials through the use of student focus groups. Students from a large, southern metropolitan university were asked about the impact of these promotional materials on their college choice decision. The students provided detailed suggestions on the ways to improve the method of distribution, graphic design, and content of the materials.     

The Impact of Human Capital and Selected Job Rewards on Community College Faculty Job Satisfaction

Community colleges accommodate nearly half of all United States college students. Increased reliance upon community colleges is driven by the current economic downturn, rising costs of higher education, and changing expectations for today's workforce requiring advanced skill sets. Community colleges offer more affordable options for broader spectrums of students including traditional and nontraditional college students and dual-enrolled high school students.

Community college faculty facilitate student learning and program completion. A shortage of community college faculty will likely emerge as numerous faculty retire. Community college administrators need strategies for retaining and recruiting faculty amid increasing retirements. One effective strategy is to offer a work environment that cultivates positive work-related attitudes (e.g., job satisfaction). This study examines the ability of select human capital investments, intrinsic rewards, extrinsic rewards, and sociodemographics to predict overall job satisfaction for full-time community college faculty. A cross-sectional predictive design was used with secondary analysis of the 2004 National Study of Postsecondary Faculty (NSOPF:04) dataset.

Logistic Regression was utilized to determine predictive ability of the independent variables on overall job satisfaction. Results indicated that faculty were more likely to be satisfied with their work if they were satisfied with their salary, benefits and workload; were satisfied with the teaching support they received from their institutions; and if they perceived that females and minorities were treated fairly by the organization. Conversely, minority faculty were less likely to be satisfied, as were faculty who indicated they would again choose a career in academe if given the choice.     

High school students’ implicit theories of what facilitates science learning

Background: Research has primarily concentrated on adults’ implicit theories about high quality science education for all students. Little work has considered the students’ perspective. This study investigated high school students’ implicit theories about what helped them learn science.

Purpose: This study addressed (1) What characterizes high school students’ implicit theories of what facilitates their learning of science?; (2) With respect to students’ self-classifications as African American or European American and female or male, do differences exist in the students’ implicit theories?

Sample, design and methods: Students in an urban high school located in south-eastern United States were surveyed in 2006 about their thoughts on what helps them learn science. To confirm or disconfirm any differences, data from two different samples were analyzed. Responses of 112 African American and 118 European American students and responses from 297 European American students comprised the data for sample one and two, respectively.

Results: Seven categories emerged from the deductive and inductive analyses of data: personal responsibility, learning arrangements, interest and knowledge, communication, student mastery, environmental responsiveness, and instructional strategies. Instructional strategies captured 82% and 80% of the data from sample one and two, respectively; consequently, this category was further subjected to Mann-Whitney statistical analysis at p < .05 to ascertain ethnic differences. Significant differences did not exist for ethnicity but differences between females and males in sample one and sample two emerged.

Conclusions: African American and European American students’ implicit theories about instructional strategies that facilitated their science learning did not significantly differ but female and male students’ implicit theories about instructional strategies that helped them learn science significantly differed. Because students attend and respond to what they think and perceive to be important, addressing students’ implicit theories may be one way to enhance science education reform.     

Choice Modeling New Zealand High School Seniors' Preferences for University Education

ABSTRACT

Preferences for college education among year 12 and 13 high school seniors from throughout New Zealand were surveyed. Initial focus group researched students in the process of deciding on college education and/or on a particular college or university institution in their choice process. Quantitative research developed from the focus group responses and based on a stated preferences (choice) survey of school students (n = 526) followed. Students' preferences regarding university choice were predominantly influenced by the quality and flexibility of the degree and/or course options, likelihood that employers will recruit from the university, the extent that university accommodation is subsidized and the overall cost of attending the university positioned in comparison to other universities. Secondary students would prefer not to attend a university with access restricted to an “A” bursary examination mark (bursary is a New Zealand pre-college examination to gain fee subsidy), that has limited first year accommodation, or which offers sports scholarships. New Zealand secondary school students are relatively price insensitive, with the cost of attending university not perceived as a deterrent. Moreover, the research findings show a positive cost-value relationship exists in students' choice preferences. Students would prefer to attend a university where the cost was equal to or higher than other options.     

All against all competition: the incorporation of the International Baccalaureate in public high schools in Canada

ABSTRACT

Since the 1980s, education in Canada has been through a process that led to school choice, targeting the improvement of students’ performance through school competition. These policies fostering an education quasi-market became an ideal framework for the expansion of IB schools. Since the Diploma Programme of the International Baccalaureate (IBDP) offers a differentiated international curriculum and is perceived as a program that contributes to students’ achievements, it has been increasingly adopted in school districts and schools. This paper explores the marketing strategies developed in schools and districts in response to school competition by tracing the incorporation of the IBDP in high schools in different districts in British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec. Based on interviews with school staff, district officials and IB local association representatives, this study analyzes schools’ marketing decisions from a consumer and producer orientation taking into account the macro environment (federal government) and micro-environment (provincial government and districts). Rather than fostering efficiency and improving students’ achievement as intended, marketization policies resulted in an increased focus on the recruitment of high achieving students, which led to a competition between schools, between districts and between other programs in the districts or in other words –an ‘all against all’ competition.     

Reading literacy in Compulsory Secondary Education: an exploration of the difficulties in the use of information to answer questions / La competencia lectora en la Educación Secundaria Obligatoria: descripción y dificultades del uso de información para responder preguntas

Abstract

This paper is a review of studies about processes and secondary school students’ difficulties with these processes when they use information to answer questions. The PISA program uses this kind of task-oriented reading situation to evaluate reading literacy, which is also a common reading situation in educational settings. Four key strategies are identified to successfully perform this kind of task: decide how to read the information, comprehend the task, decide when to search for information in order to solve the task, and self-regulate that search process. Moreover, this paper provides accurate information about the students’ difficulties in becoming skilled readers when they use information to answer questions. This information might help teachers and educational counselors in the design of interventions to improve reading literacy in schools.     

Understanding College-Student Roles: Perspectives of Participants in a High School/Community College Dual-Enrollment Program

Dual-enrollment programs have been proposed as a useful way to ease students’ transition from high school to community college. Several studies have shown that dual enrollment produces positive effects for students, but less is known about the mechanisms these programs use to support student success. Symbolic interactionism suggests that clarity of the role of a college student may help students transition into this role with more ease. With new legislation allowing students to use Pell Grants to attend dual-enrollment programs, and other proposed policies to increase attendance at community college, research on the mechanisms that make dual enrollment successful is well-timed. This study takes a mixed method approach with an online survey (N = 101) and a series of focus groups (N = 15) to explore the experiences of dual-enrollment students from several high schools and one community college. Findings suggest that dual enrollment helped to enhance participants’ clarity of the college-student role, including who attends college, what skills are required, what college can lead to, and their own self-identification as college students. Sources of role expectations for these students included self-reflection and peer, family, teacher, and structural expectations. Students highlighted strengths and weaknesses of the dual-enrollment program in which they were enrolled. These findings have implications for practice, including the potential for dual enrollment to support low-income and first-generation college students in their transition to higher education.     

Getting from Here to There: The Role of Geography in Community College Students’ Transfer Decisions

Community colleges have received renewed attention from policymakers seeking to increase college attendance and completion rates because they provide open access to postsecondary education for historically marginalized students. Yet, transfer rates from community colleges to 4-year institutions are low. Inequities in opportunity that are shaped by geography and compounded throughout childhood may restrict higher education opportunities for low-income, first-generation college students. Most studies examining how geography constrains college choice focus on high school students’ initial decisions about higher education, not community college students. We analyze the spatial distribution of community college students’ “choice sets,” the 4-year institutions that they are considering transferring to. Using qualitative interviews and geospatial analysis, we examine how these spatial patterns compare between two community-college systems in Central Texas. We find that students’ choice sets are geographically constrained, but that for many students, these zones are geographically large, suggesting that interventions and targeted outreach from universities could help students identify and select from greater range of options. Our findings have important implications for college access and completion among first-generation college students, and for policies that seek to interrupt patterns of inequity tied to location.     

Impacts of perceived country image,institution image and self-image on students’ intention to study abroad: a study in Hanoi,Vietnam

ABSTRACT

This study examined high school students’ evaluations of a country image, institution image and self-image with regards to their intention to attend a foreign university. Using data gathered from students in Hanoi (n?=?403), this study found that the students have more positive perceptions of the host country, the host institution and their desired self-image if they choose to study abroad as compared to those of their home country (Vietnam). In addition, the perceived image of the host country and host institution can generate a significant impact on the formation of the students’ desired self-image. However, the most important antecedent of the students’ intention is the discrepancy between the perceived image of the host country and the perceived image of the home country. Based on these findings, implications for foreign institutions and home institutions in recruiting and retaining students are discussed.     

The Home Schooling “Market”: Results and Implications of Current Research

ABSTRACT

One of the biggest forces in primary and secondary education today is the home schooling movement–parents opting to forego sending their children to public or private schools in order to teach them themselves in their own home. As this movement grows, more and more students entering higher education will have been home schooled. This is becoming a market segment that many colleges and universities cannot afford to ignore. The current paper reviews the research which has been conducted on home schooling to answer four questions of importance to college or university officials as they contemplate targeting this group: (1) why do parents home school? (2) what are the characteristics of home schoolers? (3) would home schoolers make good college students? and (4) how could a college or university effectively reach out to home schoolers? By answering these four questions, college and university officials can better decide whether or not they should target home schooled students and, if they do, how to best reach these students.     

Parents’ Individualist and Collectivist Strategies at the City Technology College,Kingshurst

ABSTRACT

This paper discusses the attitudes to school choice and to City Technology Colleges of a sample of parents of children at the first CTC at Kingshurst, Solihull. In examining the views of these parents, wider questions about individualist and collectivist strategies towards education are raised.     

Articulation,transfer, and student choice in a binary post-secondary system

This paper investigates the intersection of system articulation, transfer, and the choices that secondary school students make when they apply to college and university. The investigation is based on the results of a study that was undertaken to determine factors that influence choices that secondary school students make between enrolling in community college or university, and in particular whether or not those choices are affected by the degree of “articulation” within a public system of post-secondary education. There are several studies that have emerged recently in the United States and Canada that examine factors that influence the choice of university and 4-year college. There are a few studies that examine the choice of community and 2-year college. None, however, either in Canada or in the United States, has sought to examine “college choice” comparatively among students who apply to baccalaureate (4-year colleges and universities) and sub-baccalaureate (community colleges) programs. This study examines college choice on the basis of two series of longitudinal surveys conducted in the province of Ontario since the late 1980s, and on a series of surveys and interviews of students, parents and guidance counselors in six secondary schools, each with a different student population, since 2004. The third study—called the “college choice” project—tracked secondary school students as they made decisions about attending college or university, and as they finally selected the institutions that they would attend. The study concludes that greater conventional articulation will not significantly affect rates of transfer, that for most students plans to transfer develop after they enter college and are not a major factor in their initial “choice,” that the rate of transfer is highly dependent on the corresponding arrays of programs at colleges and universities, and that articulation might better be thought of as a subset of other basic forms of inter-institutional cooperation. An earlier version of this paper was presented to the ASHE Annual Conference, Louisville, Kentucky, November, 2007.     

Expanding the Start of the College Pipeline: Ninth-Grade Findings From an Experimental Study of the Impact of the Early College High School Model

Abstract

Early college high schools are a new and rapidly spreading model that merges the high school and college experiences and that is designed to increase the number of students who graduate from high school and enroll and succeed in postsecondary education. This article presents results from a federally funded experimental study of the impact of the early college model on Grade 9 outcomes. Results show that, as compared to control group students, a statistically significant and substantively higher proportion of treatment group students are taking core college preparatory courses and succeeding in them. Students in the treatment group also have statistically significantly higher attendance and lower suspension rates than students in the control group.     

Family and School Influences on the Vocational Choices of Students in a Rural Western Australian Community

ABSTRACT

Little is known about the influence of isolation on the vocational choice processes of rural students except that such people often make very traditional career decisions. In remote areas of Australia vocational choice has to be considered at a comparatively early stage of a student's education because of the lack of full, locally available secondary education facilities. Students, in some cases accompanied by their families, migrate to urban centres to complete years 11 and 12 in order to matriculate. In the Western Australian community in which this study was located, the influence of family and school on the vocational decisions of 24 rural students was investigated. Family influence was found to be much stronger than that of the school, a matter that has implications for schools that are remote from vocational opportunities.     

Using Student Diaries to Develop an Evaluative Instrument for Teacher Education Programs

Abstract

This study compared the attitudes of high school juniors toward three types of institutions: 4-year colleges, 2-year colleges, and the “ideal college.” Students rated each institution on forty attitude dimensions. Attitudes toward 4-year colleges were more favorable than attitudes toward 2-year colleges on twenty-seven of the forty dimensions; fifteen of these differences were statistically significant. In contrast, 2-year colleges received more favorable ratings on twelve dimensions, with only five of the differences being significant. The correlation between ratings of the 4-year college and the ideal college was + .601, which was significantly higher than the correlation of + .437 between ratings of the 2-year college and the ideal college. When student attitudes were factor analyzed, three dimensions were identified: Social Activities, Supportive Interpersonal Environment, and Intellectual Climate. The data indicate that high school students have more favorable attitudes toward 4-year than 2-year colleges, and that they do not share the perceptions of community college proponents concerning certain advantages of attendance at 2-year colleges. These findings may have implications for college attendance plans made by students, and for their performance in college.     

Allowing Idiosyncratic Learners to Thrive

Abstract

School-within-a-school programs are an alternative school choice that can provide differentiated learning opportunities for academically gifted students, but they are often politically contentious. In a recent study, we interviewed 530 students and teachers in gifted and regular streams in three publicly funded secondary schools with different approaches to high-ability school-within-a-school programs: gifted, International Baccalaureate, and science-focused. Although teachers and students across conditions expressed strong satisfaction with the academic challenges provided by the special programs, they also expressed serious concerns about the relationship between these programs and the larger schools within which they are housed. Taking into consideration concerns about gifted education usurping resources from more urgent educational and societal goals, we discuss policy implications of our findings, considering ways to “allow idiosyncratic learners to thrive” (in the words of a teacher interviewed in this study), while minimizing misconceptions, prejudices, and perceptions of elitism.     

An integrative review of in-class activities that enable active learning in college science classroom settings

ABSTRACT

Engaging students in active learning is linked to positive learning outcomes. This study aims to synthesise the peer-reviewed literature about ‘active learning’ in college science classroom settings. Using the methodology of an integrative literature review, 337 articles archived in the Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) are examined. Four categories of in-class activities emerge: (i) individual non-polling activities, (ii) in-class polling activities, (iii) whole-class discussion or activities, and (iv) in-class group activities. Examining the collection of identified in-class activities through the lens of a theoretical framework informed by constructivism and social interdependence theory, we synthesise the reviewed literature to propose the active learning strategies (ALSs) model and the instructional decisions to enable active learning (IDEAL) theory. The ALS model characterises in-class activities in terms of the degrees to which they are designed to promote (i) peer interaction and (ii) social interdependence. The IDEAL theory includes the ALS model and provides a framework for conceptualising different levels of the general concept ‘active learning’ and how these levels connect to instructional decision-making about using in-class activities. The proposed ALS model and IDEAL theory can be utilised to inform instructional decision-making and future research about active learning in college science courses.     

Patterns of Italian high school and university students’ attitudes towards physics: an analysis based on semiotic-cultural perspective

The purpose of this study was to analyse Italian high school and university students’ attitudes towards physics using the Semiotic Cultural Psychological Theory (SCPT). In the SCPT framework, attitudes represent how individuals interpret their experience through the mediation of generalized meaning with which they are identified. A view-of-physics questionnaire was used as an instrument to collect data with 1603 high school and university students. Data were analysed through multiple correspondence analysis and cluster analysis. We identified four generalized meanings of physics: (a) interesting and important for society; (b) a quite interesting, but badly taught subject at school and not completely useful for society; (c) difficult to study and irrelevant for society; and (d) a fascinating and protective niche from society. The identified generalized meanings are significantly correlated to the choice to study physics at undergraduate level and to the choice of attending physics-related activities in high school. Implications for research are discussed.