Study of the factors influencing sex differences in the career motivation of Iranian high school students

The purpose of the study was to investigate some factors thought to influence sex differences in the Career Motivation of Iranian high school students. Subjects (n = 206) were balanced on sex, ages 17–18 and attending schools in Tehran, Iran. Measures included the criterion career motivation and six predictors: Sex, Social Class, Early Family Socialization, Religious Orientation, Community Resources and Community Discrimination against women 's careers.Multivariate regression analyses with partial correlations were used to test hypotheses. Hypotheses were that males would score higher than females on career motivation; upper middle class students would score higher than lower middle class students on career motivation; Scores on Early Family Socialization, Community Resources and Religious Orientation would be positively correlated with Career Motivation; and Community Discrimination would be negatively correlated with Career Motivation. Interactions were expected for Sex, Religious Orientation and Social Class. Main effects found in the regression analyses supported hypotheses related to Sex, Social Class, Community Discrimination and Early Family Socialization. It remained for the interpretation of three significant interaction effects to shed light on the contribution of Religious Orientation to Career Motivation. The three significant interactions found were Sex × Social Class; Sex × Religious Orientation; and Religious Orientation × Community Discrimination. It appeared that the religion measure was confounded by the new movement within Islam led by the Mojahedin Khalgh group that is supportive of women 's careers, in contrast to the dominant Shia Islam group. The Community Resources measure was significantly (p<.05) and positively related to career motivation but it did not contribute importantly to the prediction equation. The equation derived including interaction terms accounted for 41% of the variance. It was concluded that the analysis used provided an important addition to understanding complex phenomena such as career motivation in a changing social context.     

Informing Institutional Management: institutional strategies and student retention

European universities are facing demands for better student retention, especially in countries where state funding is no longer based on the number of students, but on the number of graduates. An extensive literature on retention focuses on the characteristics of students who leave higher education without a degree. Much less is known about the measures taken by higher education institutions to encourage study progress. This article examines whether retention strategies are incorporated into the institutions’ overall strategies and the policies and activities developed by universities to foster study progress and enhance retention rates. The results suggest that the universities’ overall strategies and retention activities are loosely coupled and that the universities tend to use blanket measures addressing retention, regardless of why students are leaving.     

Lifelong learning – lifelong returns? A new theoretical framework for the analysis of civic returns on adult learning

Education is associated with a wide range of positive outcomes such as higher wages and employability, but also with increased well-being or volunteering. While previous research focused mainly on returns on formal education in schools or universities, there has been a notable shift in recent years towards the analysis of returns on adult learning. While research has established theory-driven empirical evidence concerning labour market-related outcomes, it fails to identify and coherently explain non-monetary outcomes. The authors of this article review 13 empirical studies on different forms of civic participation as a return on engagement in adult learning. Individuals’ civic participation is one precondition to social cohesion and functioning citizenship at a societal level and thus a factor of high political and societal relevance. All the studies reviewed in this article suggest a positive association between adult learning and civic engagement. To what extent this association is causal, however, remains an open question. The authors argue that any efforts to identify such causality must begin with a number of theoretical assumptions about the mechanisms through which learning may influence civic participation. By linking the theoretical ideas of the studies reviewed with the literature on volunteering, the authors suggest a new theoretical framework, which may guide further research.     

Desirable places: spatial representations and educational strategies in the inner city

This article examines how the outcome of neoliberal educational reforms has affected urban schooling in the inner city of Stockholm – making it into a centralized nexus or a ‘hot-spot’ for students and schools. The aim is to analyse how geographical place and space have become major distinctive criteria in inner-city students’ educational strategies, as well as a comparative advantage for upper-secondary schools in the fierce in-between school competition. The data consist of interviews with close to 120 participants, official statistics and marketing from 55 inner-city upper-secondary schools. Our findings suggest that the growing commodification and upward socio-spatial homogenization of the inner city both affect the way schools use spatial representations in their marketing and also the strategies deployed by students in their school choice.     

The pursuit of belonging in inclusive education – insider perspectives on the meshwork of participation

According to the United Nations Convention for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities [UN 2006. Accessed May 7, 2016. https://www.un.org/development/desa/disabilities/convention-on-the-rights-of-persons-with-disabilities.html], full participation should be premised for everyone with a disability. However, the concept of ‘full participation’ is not clear. In this article, it is argued that the conceptualisation of participation is essential to create a welcoming context for all children in education. In a context characterised by a multiplicity of connections, children with special educational needs participate but at the same time also experience discrimination and exclusion. The aim of this study is to unravel the meaning of full participation, not as a state of being but as a process of becoming. In focus group dialogues, it is demonstrated how full participation is relationally formed inside and between the many connections that pupils seek in order to belong. It is thus a multi-layered concept, closely connected to accessibility and, due to its emergent and entangled nature, also very elusive. It revolves around a sense of belonging, with an important focus on interconnectivity, diminished conditionality and imagination.     

From swiping to casual sex and/or committed relationships: Exploring the experiences of Tinder users

To better understand if and how the mechanics of the process Tinder imposes on its users (i.e., swiping, matching, and starting conversations) influences the resulting sexual or romantic interactions, we collected data from 1038 Belgian Tinder users. Our findings show that a user's swiping quantity does not guarantee a higher number of Tinder matches, women have generally more matches than men and men usually have to start a conversation on Tinder. Moreover, while conversations were positively associated with reported offline Tinder encounters, less than half of our sample reported having had an offline meeting with another Tinder user. Whereas more than one third of these offline encounters led to casual sex, more than a quarter resulted in the formation of a committed relationship. Such findings indicate that Tinder is not “just a hookup app”, as often assumed in public discourse. We argue it is plausible that sexual encounters will eventually lead to committed relationships in a society where initiation of relationship formation with dating has been replaced by hooking up.