Career maturity of Lebanese students in higher education

The purpose of this study was to investigate the extent to which Lebanese Baccalaureate II students' (Freshmen in american colleges) perceptions of their academic abilities match their actual achievements in both school and government examinations. A population sample of 2999 students were selected from a representative school sample (n = 122) throughout Lebanon. Students' demographic data, occupational choices and perceptions of their achievement were collected by a three-part questionnaire. Their cumulative grade averages in school and in government examinations were standardized and used to assess their career maturity. Findings indicated that most students wanted to become engineers or physicians while their actual achievement scores in school was average and in the government examination below average. Most correlational values between perceptions and actual achievement scores were either negative or insignificant. Students were found to make immature career decisions mainly because of the lack of any formal guidance programs in schools.     

PPBS in higher education planning and management: Part I,an overview

Higher education in the United States and elsewhere is beset by crises: crises of public confidence, questions of continuing relevance, doubts about continuing the emphasis on doctoral instruction, and a very real financial crisis. In response, governing boards and governmental agencies are devoting increasing attention to the management of higher education. Part of this response has been a heightened interest in formal planning-programming-budgeting-systems (PPBS); in fact, several states have legislated the adoption of PPBS for higher educational planning and decision making. Similar interest has been evidenced in other countries. Therefore, it is an appropriate time to reconsider the nature and role of PPBS and its potential impact on higher education. This paper describes the salient characteristics of PPBS and traces the development of PPBS and related analytical techniques in governmental agencies and institutions of higher education. A second paper will illustrate both the concepts and the implementation of PPBS by a detailed exposition of the University of California's experience with PPBS. Finally, in a third paper we suggest an alternative view of policy analysis for educational planning which is a departure from traditional PPBS. We conclude with general observations and specific recommendations to educational managers seeking to improve their resource allocation procedures.     

A Feedback Procedure for Teacher Trainees Working with Parent Tutors of Reading

Abstract In this pilot study, four third‐year teacher trainees were trained to give feedback to parents who were tutoring their own children in reading using the Pause Prompt and Praise procedures. The trainees learnt to teach the procedures to the parents and then to give feedback by prompting parents to remember and explain their own tutoring behaviours. Baseline measures showed that when trainees were asked to help parents in any way they could to implement the procedures, they used very intrusive forms of prompts. Following training trainees used much less intrusive forms of prompts, giving parents more opportunity to remember and explain their own tutoring behaviours. It was argued that less intrusive forms of prompting when giving feedback may have been of more assistance to parents in learning the procedures than more intrusive forms of prompting, since parents may have learned to become more independent of trainee support. This, in turn, may have contributed to the substantial gains in children's reading levels which occurred.     

The Consistency and Concomitants of Inhibition: Some of the Children, All of the Time

Toddlers displaying extremely inhibited behavior may be at risk for becoming socially withdrawn. However, behavioral inhibition may be a multifaceted characteristic, and its concurrent relation to toddler wariness with peers has not been examined. In this study, 108 toddlers (54 females) and their mothers were observed in novel situations involving unfamiliar settings, adults, and peers. Vagal tone, temperament, separation-reunion behavior, and maternal oversolicitousness also were assessed. There was little consistency of inhibited behavior across the 3 situations. Consistently inhibited toddlers had fearful temperaments, showed distress following maternal separation, and had mothers who were warm and controlling but unresponsive to children's cues during interaction. Toddlers with highly fearful temperaments and highly oversolicitous mothers were the most inhibited across contexts.     

Why states should enact an Adult Recurrent Education Entitlement Voucher program

This paper addresses the problems of financing adult continuing and recurrent postsecondary education in America. An analysis of the public investment and policy needs and recommendations for a specific state policy and program for meeting these needs are presented. It is adapted from the state-based Adult Recurrent Education Entitlement Voucher (AREEV) plan pending as legislation in Massachusetts. The AREEV design and the data on which it was originally based in Massachusetts are generalizable to other states. The rationale is not peculiar to Massachusetts.The AREEV proposal provides public investment in recurrent education in a manner that will enable existing educational resources to be utilized most efficiently by adults currently not being adequately served. The general context and rationale for public policy and investment is presented, and a specific, implementable design for legislation to create a state-based Adult Recurrent Education Entitlement Voucher program is recommended.This proposal is designed to aid selectively the working middle class, the disadvantaged, and the socially dependent to pursue part-time recurrent education to improve their career and social condition. The program places a priority first on subsidizing those adults who have the greatest need and then on subsidizing those activities that will yield the highest social rate of return, particularly in relation to problems of unemployment, social dependency, and the national skills base.Dr. Nolfi, an independent public policy analyst, is President of University Consultants, Inc., 45 Hancock Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139. This paper is a chapter in the forthcoming bookRecurrent Education and Open Learning: Policy Analysis and Program Design at the State and National Level. The substance of the paper is drawn from several documents, and extended references for those sources are available from the author.     

UNIVERSITY‐BASED INITIATIVES IN FAVOUR OF ECOSYSTEM REHABILITATION FOR THE NORTH AMERICAN GREAT LAKES

On‐going attempts by governments to implement measures intended to eliminate environmental degradation in the nearshore waters of the Great Lakes have revealed a critical need for integrative understanding that transcends disciplinary and professional specialisms. Academics from universities in the United States and Canada began, ten years ago, to meet with government officials and with people from nongovernmental organizations to find solutions to the problems in question. Groups of academics followed up these meetings with policy oriented studies using systems and transdisciplinary perspectives. Results have been readily disseminated into a wider constituency of interests because of the participation of nonacademics in the guiding of the studies. Similar collaborative approaches have been used to design role playing exercises for students in environmental studies courses at universities, using various Great Lakes situations as examples. An action learning/research mode lies at the core of environmental education at university level which also has considerable potential for addressing other global issues at universities.     

Does prior mathematics knowledge really lead to variation in elementary statistics performance? Evidence from a developing country

A model incorporating prerequisite mathematics performance and other variables deemed to be associated with learning elementary statistics (ES) is developed. The relationship between ES performance and the explanatory variables is well represented by the logistics form. Aptitude, effort and motivation are the only significant explanatory variables of ES performance. Since prerequisite mathematics is not significant, statistical thinking at the tertiary level may be mostly intuitive and non-mathematical. Students with low aptitude experience increasing returns to effort over the first half of the feasible effort interval, while high-aptitude students experience diminishing returns at all levels of effort. The levels of effort required to achieve a minimum pass are interpreted.     

Toward Developing a Behavioral Counselor Education Model

Counselor education currently does not have a training model that is systematically employed and contains provisions for individual differences or promotes the development of programs for facilitating transfer of training. In the proposed model, counselor educators must decide which of the counseling student's thinking, feeling, and acting behaviors will become the focus of training efforts. The staff creatively implements its conceptualized behavioral curriculum goals through the application of learning principles to specified counseling student behaviors that are assessed to determine if whether or not the desired behavior changes are occurring.     

Determining the level of inquiry in teachers' questions

The purpose of this investigation was to determine if an instrument, originally designed to classify levels of teachers' questions on the basis of logical operations, could be utilized to measure the level of inquiry present in a classroom discussion and to determine if the inquiry questioning behavior of the teacher influenced student achievement. The results of the study show that the modified classification scheme could accurately and reliably measure the inquiry level of teachers' classroom questions. The data also indicated that teachers who ask a greater proportion of high inquiry questions cause a greater change in students as measured by an achievement examination.     

Validity of self-reported reading disability by parents of reading-disabled and control children

Composite reading scores obtained from parents of 125 reading-disabled children and 125 matched control children who participated in the Colorado Family Reading Study were used to test the validity of self-reported reading problems. Parents who reported that they encountered serious difficulty learning to read had significantly lower reading scores than did those who reported no positive history of reading problems. Moreover, this difference was larger for parents of reading-disabled children than for those of controls. Thus, parental self-reports provide a valid index of reading problems.