A Missing Piece of the Departure Puzzle: Student–Institution Fit and Intent to Persist

According to prevailing theory and anecdotal evidence, the congruence between institutional attributes and students’ needs, interests, and preferences plays a key role in promoting college satisfaction and retention. However, this assertion has received little direct empirical attention, and the few available studies appear to have some key limitations. This study examined the factor structure and predictive validity of a newly developed student–institution fit instrument, which was designed to avoid the problems in previous research. Confirmatory factor analyses identified several interrelated dimensions of fit, and these dimensions can be combined into a single overall fit index. Moreover, a six-factor structure of student–institution fit is similar at two institutions that differ in terms of size, control, type, region, and religious affiliation. Structural equation modeling analyses show that student–institution fit is associated with greater college satisfaction and lower social isolation; fit also has a positive, indirect effect on intent to persist. Implications for practice and future research are discussed.     

Problematizing the Practicum to Integrate Practical Knowledge

This article examines the influence of a practicum teaching experience on two pre-service science teachers. The research is focused on examining a practicum in a secondary science department that actively promotes the teaching and learning of science as inquiry. We investigated the process through which the pre-service science teachers integrated their practical knowledge, and examined this in the context of the quantified reformed instruction they enacted. Using a mixed methods design, we have quantified these pre-service science teachers’ practice using the Reformed Teaching Observation Protocol (Piburn et al. 2000), in concert with a narrative methodology drawn from in-depth interviews. Our analysis of the data indicates two important conclusions. The first is the importance of a consistently reformed image of science education being presented and practiced by both science teacher educators and cooperating teachers. The second is the recognition that a consistently reformed image may not be sufficient, of itself, to challenge pre-service teachers’ views of science education. Pre-service teachers appear to be heavily influenced by their biographies and own science education. Consequently, it appears the extent to which a pre-service teacher identifies problems of teaching and learning, and then works toward possible resolution, influences their progress in shaping reformed views of science education.     

Patterns of student counselling in South African Universities

This study presents an overview of counselling and research practices at South African universities. Most of the universities have well-established counselling centres which students consult for a wide range of problems. Most of the counselling centres keep a record of their endeavours in annual reports but very little counselling research is published. The most important research topics for South African counsellors were identifying high-risk students, study techniques, developing vocational information and the academic success rate of students.     

The Impact of a Goal-Setting Intervention for Engineering Students on Academic Probation

Research in Higher Education - Many degree-seeking college students struggle academically and ultimately never graduate. Academic challenges and persistence within the major are especially salient...     

Nationalism and internationalism

International Review of Education -     

Early, late and non-participants in sexual intercourse: A profile of black South African first-year university students

This study investigated the differences among early-, late-and non-participants in sexual intercourse. 1817 first-year black South African university students completed a structured questionnaire, which tapped their knowledge, attitudes, beliefs and practices about sexuality. The results revealed significant differences among the three groups with regard to their sources of sexual knowledge, approval of pre-marital sex, first intercourse partner relationship, number of sexual partners, contraceptive use, satisfaction with first sexual intercourse and parental communication about contraception.     

Pavlovian conditioning in multiple contexts: Competition between contexts for comparator status

Water-deprived rats were used to investigate the effects of training a CS in more than one context on conditioned lick suppression. In each experiment, partial reinforcement of the CS was intermingled with unsignaled presentations of the US. In Experiment 1, subjects were either trained in one context alone, trained consecutively in two contexts (such that all training in one context occurred prior to any training in the second context), or trained alternately in two contexts. Following training, the first context, the second context, or neither context was extinguished. Testing of the CS occurred in a third (neutral) context. To the extent that either training context became established as a comparator stimulus for the CS, the comparator hypothesis (Miller & Matzel, 1988) predicts an increase in excitatory responding to the CS following extinction of that context. Subjects trained in a single context exhibited appreciable fear of the CS only when the CS’s training context had been extinguished. Additionally, subjects trained consecutively in the two contexts showed increased fear of the CS following extinction of the second, but not the first training context (i.e., a recency effect). Subjects trained alternately in the two contexts showed no increased fear of the CS as a result of either context alone being extinguished. In Experiment 2, subjects trained alternately in two contexts showed increased fear of the CS only when both training contexts were extinguished, suggesting that both training contexts had become comparator stimuli. These data indicate that multiple training contexts can either compete or act synergistic-ally in modulating responding to a Pavlovian trained CS as a function of the order of training in the different contexts.     

Education for Sustainability in the Parks: A Project Inspired by Chet Bowers

Since its inception, the education for sustainable development (ESD) movement in higher education has been doomed. Its standards of sustainability, bound to measures of development which suggest human flourishing is equated with the western ideals, is precisely the double-bind Chet Bowers so passionately stood against. His critical perspective on education itself and the ecopedagogy shared in Educating for Eco-Justice and Community (2001) as well as the critical analysis he demonstrates in How Language Limits our Understanding of Environmental Education (2001) are exactly what is needed to reorient a movement which in most cases is now focused on efficiency. I will share the story of my own discovery of Chet Bowers’ work and its subsequent manifestation in my work both within the greater community and within the context of higher education therein. With this as a backdrop, I critique the ESD movement as fundamentally flawed due to its double-binds and metaphorical missteps, and I reconceptualize sustainability as a guiding vision rather than a target. I call for a shift from ESD to Victor Nolet’s (2010) Education for Sustainability (EfS) and recontextualize the movement within the framework of community. Finally, I share a piloted normative approach founded on Bowers’ eco-justice principles.