COLLEGE ENROLLMENT TRENDS AMONG THE POPULATION THIRTY‐FIVE AND OLDER: 1972‐1982 AND PROJECTIONS TO 2000

This paper investigates college enrollment of the population 35 years of age and older from 1972 to 1982 using data collected in the Current Population Survey. Trends in enrollment and enrollment rates by sex are analyzed. It is clear that major increases in college enrollment have been taking place among the mature population. This is due to increased enrollment among females; males have experienced no trend in the likelihood of being enrolled in college after age 35. The characteristics of older college students, including attendance status, marital status, and labor force status are also investigated.

Female college enrollment rates are related to trends in GNP, labor force participation, divorce rates, age structure, and past educational attainment using regression analysis. The significant results are then applied to recent projections of the size of the older population in order to project the number of enrollees 35 years of age and over until the year 2000. Dramatic increases in enrollment among mature students can be expected in the last decade of this century.     

Interprofessional Dialogues Within a Senior Mentoring Program: Incorporating Gerontology Students as Facilitation Leaders

Effective health care with older adults requires that clinicians and practitioners are knowledgeable about aging issues and have the skills to work within an interdisciplinary team context. This article describes a Senior Mentoring Program that paired clinical students in medicine, nursing, and a physician assistant program with community-dwelling seniors for regular interactions. This interprofessional education experience included graduate gerontology students as discussion facilitators. Because including gerontology students as Interprofessional Dialogue Facilitators (IDFs) was an innovative aspect of the program, their participation within interdisciplinary groups was analyzed. IDFs monitored a secure internet site where clinical students discussed their experiences with their mentors. Discussion posts by the IDFs were clustered into three major types: amplifying statements that stimulated and furthered dialogue, augmenting posts that integrated specialized content on aging within the discussions, and analyzing comments that helped students reflect on experiences from different perspectives. The advantages of including aging content experts, such as gerontology students, within aging awareness activities like Seminar Mentoring programs are discussed.     

Student Response Technology: Empirically grounded or just a gimmick?

Student Response Technology (SRT) involves the use of hand‐held remotes by students during classroom lectures to electronically respond to questions. This study surveyed 350 students enrolled in one of 13 lower‐division university science classes taught by five different instructors who used SRT. The survey probed students’ perceptions of SRT in terms of enhancing student learning, and investigated which features of SRT students felt had the greatest/least impact on student learning. The majority of students reported that the SRT increased their content understanding, class participation, alertness, and interactions with fellow students, helped with examination preparation, provided important and immediate instructor feedback, and made class more enjoyable. Students in this study scored more positively than peer groups on survey questions related to student engagement in academic and intellectual experiences, suggesting that SRT helps to promote student engagement. Important instructor actions identified during this study that augment the enhancing effects of SRT on student learning, even in large lecture settings, include designing clear, substantive questions, reviewing correct and incorrect answers with students, and making pedagogical adjustments based on class responses.     

Building bridges: the use of reflective oral diaries as a qualitative research tool

The article is a reflection on the use of an oral diary as a qualitative research tool, the role that it played during fieldwork and the methodological issues that emerged. It draws on a small-scale empirical study into primary school teachers' use of group discussion, during which oral diaries were used to explore and document teacher reflective thinking across time. The paper considers the design of the oral diary tool in this context and how its use created both a window on the developing construction of teachers' ideas about their practice of using group discussion in science and also a space to explore emerging analytical themes. The way in which the regular routine of the oral diary entries helped to make connections between the researcher and the participant and nurture fieldwork relationships is discussed in addition to the limitations of this specific research tool.     

Assessing Scientific Practices Using Machine-Learning Methods: How Closely Do They Match Clinical Interview Performance?

The landscape of science education is being transformed by the new Framework for Science Education (National Research Council, A framework for K-12 science education: practices, crosscutting concepts, and core ideas. The National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 2012), which emphasizes the centrality of scientific practices—such as explanation, argumentation, and communication—in science teaching, learning, and assessment. A major challenge facing the field of science education is developing assessment tools that are capable of validly and efficiently evaluating these practices. Our study examined the efficacy of a free, open-source machine-learning tool for evaluating the quality of students’ written explanations of the causes of evolutionary change relative to three other approaches: (1) human-scored written explanations, (2) a multiple-choice test, and (3) clinical oral interviews. A large sample of undergraduates (n = 104) exposed to varying amounts of evolution content completed all three assessments: a clinical oral interview, a written open-response assessment, and a multiple-choice test. Rasch analysis was used to compute linear person measures and linear item measures on a single logit scale. We found that the multiple-choice test displayed poor person and item fit (mean square outfit >1.3), while both oral interview measures and computer-generated written response measures exhibited acceptable fit (average mean square outfit for interview: person 0.97, item 0.97; computer: person 1.03, item 1.06). Multiple-choice test measures were more weakly associated with interview measures (r = 0.35) than the computer-scored explanation measures (r = 0.63). Overall, Rasch analysis indicated that computer-scored written explanation measures (1) have the strongest correspondence to oral interview measures; (2) are capable of capturing students’ normative scientific and naive ideas as accurately as human-scored explanations, and (3) more validly detect understanding than the multiple-choice assessment. These findings demonstrate the great potential of machine-learning tools for assessing key scientific practices highlighted in the new Framework for Science Education.     

Relationships among stress,coping, and mental health in high‐achieving high school students

This study investigates the relationships among stress, coping, and mental health in 139 students participating in an International Baccalaureate (IB) high school diploma program. Mental health was assessed using both positive indicators (life satisfaction, academic achievement, academic self‐efficacy) and negative indicators (psychopathology) of adolescent social‐emotional and school functioning. Findings include that students in an IB program perceive significantly more stress than a sample of 168 of their general education peers, and that specific coping styles are differentially related to mental health outcomes in this subgroup of high‐achieving high school students. Furthermore, coping styles (specifically, anger and positive appraisal) moderate the influence of stress on global life satisfaction and internalizing symptoms of psychopathology. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Distress and Suicidality in Higher Education: Implications for Population-Oriented Prevention Paradigms

College students respond to stressful experiences along a continuum of distress and suicidality. This study investigated, from students’ perspectives, the contributors to stress, nature of stress, coping strategies used, and role of drugs and alcohol during stressful periods—all with particular relevance for suicidality. Undergraduate and graduate students were sampled on an online survey from 73 institutions, totaling 26,292 respondents. The pervasiveness of stressful experiences students endorse appears to be more than traditional clinical interventions can manage on their own. Recommendations are, therefore, made about how to utilize population-based prevention to reduce students’ distress and suicidality and improve their mental health.     

Autonomy and children's reactions to being controlled: evidence that both compliance and defiance may be positive markers in early development

This study examined reactions of 1-year-olds and young 2-year-olds to being controlled by mothers. Mothers' supportive behavior predicted children's willing compliance. However, contrary to research with older children, defiance was also associated with variables linked to maternal competence, specifically, mothers' supportive behavior, autonomy-granting controls, and low depressive symptoms. At this age high-defiant children initiated positive interaction with mothers more than did low-defiant children. With age, children displayed more willing compliance and more active resistance (defiance, low passivity). However, developmental increases in active resistance were absent when mothers were high in depressive symptoms. Findings are consistent with the proposal that in early development active resistance to parents often reflects children's motivation to control events, not poor parenting or strained parent-child relationships.