Effectiveness of the Student Success Course on Persistence,Retention, Academic Achievement,and Student Engagement

ABSTRACT

Despite a great increase in the numbers of students enrolling in higher education, specifically at community colleges, the successful completion rates for these students has remained static since the 1970s. When reviewing strategies to increase student retention and successful completion, the Student Success Course (SSC) has emerged as a promising and prominent strategy for community colleges. Given that, the purpose of this sequential mixed methods study was to determine if participation in a SSC influences persistence, retention, academic achievement, and student engagement on a community college campus. Data were collected from a purposeful sample of 197 SSC participants at a middle sized community college in southeast Texas and compared to a matched sample of 235 non-SSC participants. Twelve former SSC participants were also interviewed in an attempt to build a more empirical understanding of the impact of the SSC on student engagement and, thus, the students’ decisions to remain in college. Results of this study indicate that a relationship exists between participation in the SSC and persistence, retention, academic achievement in English and mathematics, and student engagement. Additionally, participants claim that taking the SSC not only altered their perceptions of the importance of the course, but their social and study skills as well.     

Profiling teachers’ sense of professional identity

This study shows that professional identity should not be viewed as a composed variable with a uniform structure. Based on the literature and previous research, we view teachers’ job satisfaction, self‐efficacy, occupational commitment and change in the level of motivation as indicators of teachers’ professional identity. Using two‐step cluster analysis, three distinct professional identity profiles have empirically been identified, based on data of 1214 teachers working in secondary education in the Netherlands. These profiles differed significantly regarding the indicators of teachers’ professional identity. Teachers belonging to the found profiles did not significantly differ in their amount of experience.     

“Why Give Up Something That Works So Well?”: Retirement Expectations Among Academic Physicians

For individuals with strong work identities, the decision to retire can be particularly challenging. For academic physicians, retirement is an important personal decision that also has far-reaching implications for the healthcare system. This is because academic physicians are responsible for producing the research from which key medical decisions are made, for training future healthcare providers, and for providing specialized care for patients. For this study, we conducted focus groups with academic physicians from a large research university in Canada and then performed inductive thematic analyses to examine perceptions and concerns about later life career transitions. This study highlights tensions between professional experiences for the next generation of physicians and individual struggles with personal identity. Findings suggest improvements to institutional programs that support flexible, agentive, and respectful retirement transitions will not only be beneficial but necessary as medical and university systems continue to grapple with issues of balanced recruitment and succession.     

The Case for Comprehensive Counseling Centers at Community Colleges

This article addresses the need for a comprehensive counseling center to be housed on each campus of community colleges. Counseling helps to improve student academic success and retention, transfer, and graduation rates. Current research also illustrates an increase in psychological and emotional disturbances among college students across the nation, which, at times, results in acts of campus violence such as those that have occurred at Virginia Tech, Northern Illinois University, Henry Ford Community College, and the University of Alabama at Huntsville. This paper discusses the needs of the 21st century student body that result in the case for comprehensive college counseling centers. Recent legislation related to counseling at institutions of higher education is examined, recommendations are given, and components of a comprehensive counseling center are described.     

Longitudinal effects of induction on teaching skills and attrition rates of beginning teachers

The teaching profession faces a shortage as well as a decline of teaching skills. A possible way to mitigate this is to implement evidence-based induction arrangements. Seventy-one schools with 338 beginning secondary education teachers were randomly allocated to an experimental or a control group. The experimental schools used induction arrangements; the authors measured the effects of these arrangements by using repeated lesson observations and by comparing the rates at which beginners in the control and experimental groups left the teaching profession. Three years later, 14% of the control group and 12% of the experimental group had left. Leaving the profession could be explained by a lack of certification and low initial teaching skill levels. The experimental group exhibited greater improvement in teaching skills compared to the control group. Workload reduction influenced the skill level negatively, and coaching and observing had a strong positive influence on the skill level in Year 3.     

Ironies and Limitations of Educational Leadership for Social Justice: A Call to Social Justice Educators

In this article that reviews this special issue, we identify 5 ironies and limitations of educational leadership for social justice: (a) the meaning of inclusive practice, (b) the intersection of identity and difference, (c) the emphasis given to student achievement, (d) the lack of policy and practice coherence, and (e) the separation of superheroes from critical collaborative leadership. Although we discuss each issue separately, these conceptions are interrelated and intersecting. We conclude with a call to educators for social justice to change their work in several fundamental ways.     

More than meets the eye: patterns and shifts in middle school mathematics teachers’ descriptions of models

Modeling is a major topic of interest in mathematics education. However, the field’s definition of models is diverse. Less is known about what teachers identify as mathematical models, even though it is teachers who ultimately enact modeling activities in the classroom. In this study, we asked nine middle school teachers with a variety of academic backgrounds and teaching experience to collect data related to one familiar physical phenomenon, cooling liquid. We then asked each participant to construct a model of that phenomenon, describe why it was a model, and identify whether a variety of artifacts representing the phenomenon also counted as models during a semi-structured interview. We sought to identify: what do mathematics teachers attend to when describing what constitutes a model? And, how do their attentions shift as they engage in different activities related to models? Using content analysis, we documented what features and purposes teachers attended to when describing a mathematical model. When constructing their own model, they focused on the visual form of the model and what quantitative information it should include. When deciding whether particular representational artifacts constituted models, they focused on how the representations reflected the system under study, and what purposes those representations could serve in further understanding that system. These findings suggest teachers may have multiple understandings of models, which are active at different times and reflect different perspectives. This has implications for research, teacher education, and professional development.     

Infants parse dynamic action

As observers of human behavior, infants are faced with a complex flow of motion in which pauses are rare and only occasionally coincide with boundaries between intentional actions. Two studies investigated whether, despite such complexity, 10- to 11-month-old infants (N = 16 for each study) possess skills for parsing ongoing behavior along boundaries correlated with the initiation and completion of intentions. After being familiarized with digitized sequences of continuous everyday action, infants showed renewed interest in test versions in which motion paused in the midst of an actor's pursuit of intentions (interrupting test videos). In contrast, pauses that suspended motion at intention boundary points (completing test videos) sparked no such renewed interest on infants' part. Moreover, basic salience differences between the two types of test videos were not the source of infants' increased interest when intentions were interrupted (Study 2). These findings demonstrate that infants readily detect disruptions of the structure inherent in intentional action, and hence parse ongoing behavior with respect to such structure. Such parsing skill is likely a prerequisite to the development of genuine intentional understanding.     

寻找快乐

Once upon a time, there was a little girl; once upon a time, she was polishing her nail in her yard with her friend like a young woman; once upon a time, this world is such a beautifill and perfect place for her; once upon a time, she was me.Once upon a time, she sang loud and clear with her little voice as if she had been the greatest singer in the world without shyness; once upon a time, she has so many dreams to be fulfilled; once upon a time, she has a heart as pure as an mborn baby.