Career development influences of international students who pursue permanent immigration to Canada

This research focused on the career decision and planning needs of a unique group of migrants: international students who are completing their studies as temporary immigrants and who are embarking on the career journey of employment and permanent immigration. A semi-structured interview employing a Critical Incident Technique was used to assess the career influences of 19 undergraduate and graduate international students at a Canadian university. Data were analyzed using a constant comparison method and critical incident protocol. Students were motivated to remain in Canada due to enhanced job opportunities and high standard of living. Barriers to migration included the fear of not securing employment and cultural and linguistic barriers. International students would like to see campus and career services specified to the needs of international and graduate students to help them realize their goal of pursuing employment as the key to permanent immigration.     

Sunshine Dialogue II

Abstract

The ideal of bildung as a goal for higher education and research (HER) in European Union member states is losing ground to more pragmatic goals such as innovation and growth. This shift in the policy perspective about the role of science in society has given rise to a system of multi layered governance which in turn is progressively giving rise to the emergence of a new normative regime for the HER sector. This normative regime involves the blurring of boundaries between the public and the private and the introduction of social accountability as a criterion for evaluating scientific knowledge. The paper concludes that the elision of the boundary between private and public disguises real problems about defining who owns what particularly in the light of the increasing commercialisation of public funded science. Further, the limitation of social accountability to select groups of actors who can afford to pay for influencing research raises questions about the ability of the new governance regime for HER to achieve the democratic aims that it purports to pursue.     

Diversity research literature in school psychology: 1990–1999

This study is an extension of an initial study conducted by Wiese Rogers in 1992 that examined the diversity literature in school psychology journals. The purpose of this study was to review all research published in four major school psychology journals during the decade of the 90s for diversity content to determine if there had been an increase. Results indicated that 10.6% of the articles have diversity as a focus, a slight increase over Wiese Rogers's findings. Assessment continues to be the area that has the greatest number of diversity articles. Six reasons are proposed for the continued gap in the literature base. Implications for the field of school psychology and suggestions for increasing diversity articles are provided. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Studying children’s social learning experimentally “in the wild”

Diffusion studies are taking us a step closer to understanding social learning and cultural transmission in young children. The first half of this article presents a review that focuses on four main cultural issues addressed by diffusion studies: (1) horizontal transmission, including child-to-child learning; (2) learning in children’s everyday environments (“in the wild”); (3) the experience of multiple demonstrations and attempts at mastering new tasks; and (4) the iterative process of learning across multiple cultural “generations.” The second half of the article introduces an open-diffusion experiment. After an initial asocial-learning phase in which children had the chance to discover two possible solutions to a puzzle box, the box was brought into the children’s playgroup, thus allowing observational learning. Although variation of method use occurred in the asocial-learning phase, by the end of the second day of the open diffusion, the group had converged on a single method. The open-diffusion approach allowed the documentation of social interactions not seen in the dyadic studies typical of the field, including both coaction and scrounging, the significance of which for cultural transmission is discussed.     

The primary school’s invasion of the privacy of the child: unmasking the potential of some current practices

Privacy has been defined as “the protective buffer within which people can avoid another party’s taking something from them, keeping watch over them, or entering into their lives in a way that is both unwelcome and undesirable”. It is a premise of this paper that such a position needs to be taken very seriously in contemporary society, and particularly in the case of schools, as school personnel have the capacity to engage in practices which show great disregard for individual and family privacy. This is illustrated in the case of primary school education in the Republic of Ireland. Particular attention is paid to assessment, pedagogical and curricular practices that derive from patterns of systematic and mandatory disclosure that are confessional, performative and public.     

Baccalaureate Attainment of College Students at 4-Year Institutions as a Function of Student Engagement Behaviors: Social and Academic Student Engagement Behaviors Matter

Vincent Tinto originally asserted, “… it is the individual’s integration into the academic and social systems of the college that most directly related to his continuance in that college” (Tinto, Review of Educational Research 45(10): 89–125, 1975), yet the rates of college degree attainment are still stagnant. Institution-level research on student engagement indicates that both types of engagement contribute to increased student persistence and degree attainment. Research has prompted going beyond institutional-level data and calls for using of nationally representative, longitudinal data to addressing engagement. Using the 2004/09 Beginning Postsecondary Students Longitudinal Study (BPS:04/09) and logistic regression, this study finds that both academic and social student engagement behaviors significantly impact degree attainment in postsecondary education net of individual and institutional factors. Interaction analysis of the two different types of engagement finds that the impact is not additive but instead is differential and dependent upon the student’s engagement typology as proposed by Coates (Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education 32(2): 121–141, 2007).     

Multilevel correlates of behavioral resilience among children in child welfare

Resilience, defined as positive adaptation and functioning following exposure to significant adversity, is an important topic of investigation in child welfare. The current study used data from the Ontario Looking After Children (OnLAC) project to estimate the prevalence of behavioral resilience (i.e., lower frequency of conduct and emotional problems, higher frequency of prosocial behavior) in 531 5–9 year olds living in out-of-home care, and to determine how behaviorally-resilient children are functioning in other domains (i.e., peer relationships and academic performance). Furthermore, hierarchical linear modeling was used to examine the contribution of four levels of analysis (i.e., child, family, child welfare worker, and child welfare agency) on behaviors and to identify the contribution of predictor variables within each of these levels. Findings indicated that 50–70% of children exhibited resilience on one behavioral outcome while approximately 30% showed resilience on at least two of the outcomes. Also, 8.4–9.6% exhibited resilience on one of the behavioral outcomes in addition to peer relationships and academic performance. The child level accounted for the highest proportion of total explained variance in behavioral outcomes, followed by the family-, child welfare worker-, and child welfare agency-levels. A number of child and foster family variables predicted behavioral functioning. Findings indicate that it is important to inquire about children's functioning across multiple domains to obtain a comprehensive developmental assessment. Also, child and foster family characteristics appear to play considerable roles in the promotion of behavioral resilience.