Financial aid and student persistence in online education in the United States

Distance education has historically had lower completion rates. Several models of persistence, for on-campus students, indicate that students’ financial status affects their decision to persist. This study involved providing distance education students’ financial aid in the form of institutional scholarships (N = 545) at Penn State University in the United States. The recipients were students who were not overachievers and not at-risk of failing, but somewhere in the middle. The purpose of the study was to test if receiving financial aid was related to students’ persistence. Using logistic regression and Chi-square analysis, this study found that scholarship-receiving students with higher financial need were two times more likely to persist in their studies than those with lower financial need. Results suggest that there is a positive relationship between providing even small financial aid to students with high-financial need and their persistence in their studies.     

Impact of School-Based Interventions for Building School Belonging in Adolescence: a Systematic Review

Educational Psychology Review - A student’s sense of school belonging is critical to school success, yet internationally, a large proportion of secondary students do not feel that they belong...     

#1: labor begins on its own

In this position paper-one of six care practice papers published by Lamaze International and reprinted here with permission-the benefit of allowing labor to begin on its own is discussed and presented as an evidence-based practice that helps promote, protect, and support normal birth. The paper is written for childbearing women and their families. The accompanying commentary-written by a leading home-birth midwife and prominent national and international speaker on maternity care-describes further evidence of the disadvantages of inducing labor. The indications for and risks of induction are also explored. Lamaze International recommends that, unless there is a medical indication for induction, labor should be allowed to begin on its own.     

Information and Reliability for Percentile Ranks and Other Monotonic Transformations of the Number-Correct Score: Reply to De Gruijter

De Gruijter (1997) has claimed that May and Nicewander (1994) erred on two points that indicated that both reliability and information in the number-correct score could be reduced considerably by converting to percentile ranks. The points raised by De Gruijter are very well taken, and we are pleased to have an opportunity to respond.     

Strategic Assistance in Toddler Disputes: II. Sequences and Patterns of Teachers' Message Strategies

Adopting the view that peer conflict is a zone of proximal development in which adults may provide strategic assistance in negotiating interactional opposition, this study analyzed message strategies used by 13 teachers in the course of intervening in 135 toddler disputes. Spontaneous oppositional episodes precipitating teacher intervention were transcribed and analyzed with lag sequential techniques. The teachers used one of three message strategies to begin processing the toddlers' disputes: (a) summon disputants' attention (CALL); (b) physical restraint or removal of objects (STOP); or (c) ask the disputing toddlers to identify the problem (ASK). Each strategy was associated with certain act-to-act sequences suggesting unique patterns for terminating peer opposition. The predominant pattern began with STOP, in which teachers exercised high control over the intervention and adjudicated its outcome. Dispute negotiation failed to develop, however, from the CALL entry strategy. The process of negotiating peer opposition was more information-based and child-involving when teachers intervened with an ASK strategy, but this strategy was used in only 10.4% of the episodes. Findings are considered relative to evaluating day-to- day teacher practices and refining curriculum models for dealing with toddler disputes in the classroom.     

语音系统困难儿童的评估和治疗:个案研究

本研究采用语音加工分析方法 ,探讨了一名说广东话有语音障碍的儿童的语音系统 ,并对其语音系统进行了评估和分析 ,本文亦藉此个案对语音系统困难提出一系列的治疗建议。     

Children missing from school systems: exploring divergent patterns of disengagement in the narrative accounts of parents,carers, children and young people

The aim of this study was to identify and re‐present the experiences and views of a sample of children who have been ‘missing’ from education, and those of their parents/carers. Access to this hard to reach population has been possible as a result of an innovative interventionist tracking system, responding to pupil mobility, developed by the Education Authority in the fieldwork area. Semistructured interviews were conducted with parents/carers, children and young people with the aim of obtaining a demographic profile of families and eliciting a chronology of factors that participants saw as contributing to a child going missing from school systems. Three distinct life‐course groups emerged from participants' accounts illustrating different degrees of disengagement from external systems. The authors conclude with a discussion of the different challenges each life‐course group presents, for education policy and practice.     

What Journals are the Most Cited Journals in Criminology and Criminal Justice’s “Big Three” Journals?

Recently, scholars have sought to learn more about scholarly activity within the fields of criminology and criminal justice (CCJ). Research in this area has examined which departments have the most productive faculty, which scholars are the most productive, and which journals are the most prestigious. However, no study of which we are aware has determined what journals criminologists are most likely to cite in their scholarly research. In this study, we rank the most influential journals by the number of times those journals were cited between 2009 and 2013 in Criminology, the Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, and Justice Quarterly. Our analyses suggest that Criminology is clearly the most influential CCJ journal in terms of citations, while the American Sociological Review, the Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, and the American Journal of Sociology remain influential in CCJ as well.