Balancing Open Access with Academic Standards: Implications for Community College Faculty

Community colleges act as the gateway for students to higher education. Many of these colleges realize this mission through open-door policies where students lacking in basic reading, writing, and mathematics skills can enroll. But, this open-access policy often creates challenges when meeting academic standards. Based on data collected from selected community colleges in the United States, this article examines the balancing of open access with academic standards. The article reviews open-door admission policies, describes methods used to maintain academic standards, and it balances this with open admission and implications for community college faculty.     

Positive and Negative Facets of Formal Group Mentoring: Preservice Teacher Perspectives

The use of mentoring within teacher education has become more common in recent years, however, there still seems to be a lack of research about formal group mentorship models as a pedagogical process. In my study, I presented knowledge about how a formal group mentorship model used during a teacher education program at a Swedish university has affected the student teachers’ professional development. The findings suggest that nearly all the student teachers describe the mentoring group conversations as beneficial as they have contributed to a strengthened socialization, identity and/or teacher role, a possibility to share experiences, hear others perspectives, and get support in the process of linking theoretical educational content and teaching activities. A few students expressed that the mentoring program has not contributed at all to their professional development.     

Bi-directional dynamics underlie the complexity of talk in teacher–child play-based conversations in classrooms serving at-risk pupils

This study examined the transactional, utterance-by-utterance dependencies in the syntactic complexity of teachers’ and children's talk during small-group conversations in preschool classrooms. The sample included 39 teachers and select children in their classroom, which targeted enrollment to children experiencing documentable risk factors. Patterns of sequential dependencies demonstrated a bi-directional interdependence in teachers’ and children's complex syntactic use, whereby both teachers and children appeared sensitive to each other's use of complex syntactic forms. Teachers’ use of complex syntax increased the likelihood that children's adjacent utterance would contain complex syntax; similarly, children's use of complex or simple syntax increased the likelihood that teachers’ adjacent utterance would mirror their syntactic level. Associations were small to moderately large in strength, but varied across individual classrooms. The findings point to complex, bi-directional relationships underlying the complexity of talk within the classroom language environment.     

Catholic and Protestant Schools,a Better Choice in the Netherlands?

Abstract

This paper focuses on the influence of the sector of education (Catholic, Protestant and public) on the success of their pupils in tertiary education and on the labour market in the Netherlands. In the United States Coleman and Hoffer (1987) could hardly find any differences between the job prospects of pupils of private and public schools, but they did find effects of Catholic secondary education on success in tertiary education. In this study, which is based on longitudinal data of a nationally representative cohort of Dutch primary school leavers in 1965, an analogous comparison is made between the success in tertiary education and the job careers of the pupils who attended Dutch Catholic, Protestant or public secondary education. Differences are found between success in tertiary education and on the labour market of those who attended Catholic, Protestant or public Dutch schools. Pupils of public schools enter the university more often than pupils of private schools and pupils of Catholic schools enter the lower valued tertiary vocational education more often than pupils of Protestant or public schools. Significant effects of school sector were only found for those job characteristics which indicate the kind of job (sector of the job, nature of the job) but not for job characteristics which indicate the level of job. Especially pupils of Protestant schools less often have jobs in the administrative‐financial sector and the medical‐social sector than pupils of non‐Protestant schools. They also less often have jobs which have an exact or social nature. These differences in success in tertiary education and on the labour market are not systematically in favour of the private Catholic and Protestant schools.     

Promoting Research Writing in an Undergraduate Measurement Course

The purpose of this article is to introduce a 12-step approach for an abbreviated research project to promote research writing in an undergraduate measurement course. This 12-step approach assumes a 14-week semester schedule that is common among many colleges and universities. The steps for the proposed research project include selecting a topic, identifying and reading published research, writing the Introduction section, designing the methods, developing the Methods section, applying for Institutional Review Board approval, scheduling appointments with participants, collecting data, analyzing the data, writing the Results section, writing the Discussion section, and presenting the final product. Content of this article includes both details of the 12-step approach to research writing and a discussion of possible concerns that measurement instructors may have when considering adoption of the proposed research project.     

Reliability of a Protocol for Testing Endurance Performance in Runners and Cyclists

This study examined stability and reliability of free-living physical activity assessed by pedometer in 69 young female college students (M age = 18.7 years, SD = 1.2, range: 18-25 years; body mass index = 23.2 kg/m², SD = 0.6) for two complete weeks (Week 1 and Week 2) separated by 12 weeks. During Week 1, participants took an average of 8,880 steps/day, SD = 3,219, range: 1,858-19,480; during Week 2 9,088 steps/day, SD = 3,299, range 1,736-16,837; t (68) = -.568, p = .572. In both weeks, only Sunday differed significantly (repeated measures analysis of variance; Week 1: p < .0001; Week 2: p < .01) from all other days of the week. The computed intraclass correlation between weeks was moderate (.72). Group mean pedometer-determined physical activity was stable across 2 weeks separated by 12 weeks in this young, healthy sample of women. Individuals within these groups held their rank order to a moderate extent over time. These findings provide important evidence of the reliability of pedometer-determined physical activity data and are of practical importance to study design.     

Traditional occupations in a modern world: implications for career guidance and livelihood planning

This article is an attempt to examine the place and significance of traditional occupations as careers in today’s world. The areas of tension and compatibility between ideas and values that signify modernity and the practice of traditional occupations are reviewed. The meaning of “traditional occupations” is unravelled, the potential that traditional occupations in agriculture and crafts offer for building inclusive and sustainable societies is explored, and attention is drawn to the implications of such potential for career guidance practice.     

Education,health and care plans: What do we know so far?

The Children and Families Act, 2014 and the new Special Educational Needs and Disability SEND Code of Practice (DfE and DoH, 2014) has led to reforms in how children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities are supported in England. Now, five years on, research has begun to emerge exploring the implementation of the new statutory assessment process, the Education, Health and Care (EHC) plans and the outcomes of the process in England. This article seeks to review current research about the introduction of EHC needs assessment process and plans. It highlights three key themes: experiences of the process, reflections on the EHC plans and the outcomes of the process. Whilst parental involvement has improved, and there is some evidence of multiagency work, the views of children and young people continue to be marginalised, and EHC Plans are highly variable in quality, indicating that person-centred approaches are not yet fully implemented. This indicates a need for further research on how to effectively involve CYP with SEND in statutory processes and support.