Identifying Factors that Influence the Successful Transition of Criminal Justice Transfer Students

Higher educational institutions place a priority on the retention and timely graduation of students. Previous literature has identified transfer students to have unique concerns and that these concerns vary by major. While previous retention research has reported factors that influence students’ decision to remain in college, many of these studies treated transfer status as a homogenous group. The university in this study enrolls a high percentage of transfer students, and a large percentage of these transfers students enroll in Criminal Justice classes and become Criminal Justice majors. To determine if there are unique risk factors among Criminal Justice transfer students, this study uses multiple measures of transfer status to identify factors that might impact a students’ (1) university involvement, (2) GPA, (3) satisfaction with and sense of belonging to their university and (4) thereby influence their decision to remain in school. The proposition that transfer students as compared to native (nontransfer) students differ on how they face university challenges was also examined. While several variables were found to be important to students’ adjustment to the University, transfer status does not appear to be significant risk factor. Implications of the results are discussed.     

Evaluating the Graduation Gap: Interventions Designed to Enhance Upper-level Student Success and Commitment

Over the past several decades, there has been a wealth of research identifying factors and conditions of persistence toward graduation for first-year students and more recently transfer students. While previous research recognizes these critical periods, some recent literature suggests that students may face a similar transitional period later in their academic careers as they advance into their major areas of study. To date, there has been a dearth of information exploring upper-level students' success and commitment to graduation. Exploring this later transition might provide a critical link to understanding the graduation gap between those students who persist to graduation and those who drop out. The purpose of this research was to review the intervention programs proscribed by the literature, design an intervention program, and examine the impact of the program on criminal justice students during this advanced transitional phase of their college careers. It examined the direct and indirect effects of the intervention program on both retention and the antecedents of successful retention while controlling for other relevant influences identified in the literature. The results indicated that the intervention had small, but significant positive direct and indirect effects on academic integration, commitment to the university, and graduating in a timely fashion. Policy implications are discussed.     

WOMEN PRESIDENTS DEFINE THE COLLEGE CULTURE THROUGH STORY

The concept of the leader's need to leave a record so that others know that she was present at a community college at a given point in time, working on behalf of the communities she served, is the theme of this article, which consists of stories from the lives of seven current and former community college chief executive officers, Vivian B. Blevins, Pamila Fisher, Sylvia Ramos, Carol Tatsey-Murray, Jerry Sue Thornton, Carolyn G. Williams, and Parker Williams give accounts of how they came to their positions as chief executive officers, the challenges and joys of that work, and the legacies they hope to leave. Their accounts as academic laborers are important tools for exploring the meaning of their roles and the roles of those they serve, for educating the uninitiated in the mission of the community college, and for reinforcing the value of that mission to the lives of community college students past, present, and future.     

Empirical Performance of Covariates in Education Observational Studies

This article summarizes results from 12 empirical evaluations of observational methods in education contexts. We look at the performance of three common covariate-types in observational studies where the outcome is a standardized reading or math test. They are: pretest measures, local geographic matching, and rich covariate sets with a strong theory of treatment selection. Overall, the review demonstrates that although the pretest often reduces bias in observational studies, it does not always eliminate it. Its performance depends on the pretest's correlation with treatment selection and the outcome, and whether preintervention trends are present. We also find that although local comparisons are prioritized for matching, its performance depends on whether comparable no-treatment cases are available. Otherwise, local comparisons may produce badly biased results. In cases where researchers have a strong theory of selection and rich covariate sets, observational methods perform well, but additional replication studies are needed. Finally, observational methods that rely on demographic covariates without a theory of selection rarely produce unbiased treatment effects. The article concludes by offering education researchers empirically based guidance on covariate selection in observational studies.     

Changing thoughts,changing practice: examining the delivery of a group CBT-based intervention in a school setting

Promoting mental health and well-being for children and young people in the UK has attracted increasing prominence in recent years and has been a focus for government strategy within health and education. Training and practice in educational psychology has increasingly focused on developing skills and expertise to provide therapeutic support within school contexts, at an early stage of need. One approach, Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT), has been heralded as an effective, evidence-based intervention for anxiety. This research examines the factors influencing the outcomes of a group CBT-based intervention, run by an Educational Psychologist (EP), in a school setting. The findings suggest that influential variables included pupil identification, measures of change applied and the role of school staff. It is concluded that EPs can play a key role in increasing access to psychological therapies, alongside considering due caution in relation to the application of traditional clinical approaches in school contexts.     

Oxidative injury and antioxidant vitamins E and C in Schizophrenia

Susceptibility of Schizophrenic patients to lipid peroxidation relative to healthy control subjects was investigated by measuring the malondialdehyde (MDA) levels in plasma. The main finding was that Schizophrenic patients were more susceptible than control subjects to oxidative damage as evident from increased MDA levels in plasma. Antioxidant levels are also depleted in Schizophrenic patients when compared to normal subjects as evident from decreased levels of vitamins E and C in the plasma. Impaired antioxidant defense and increased lipid peroxidation suggests that treatment with antioxidants (Vitamin E, Vitamin C, beta carotene) at the initial stages of illness may prevent further oxidative injury and deterioration of associated neurological deficits in Schizophrenia.     

Exploring cultural differences in critical thinking: Is it about my thinking style or the language I speak?

Critical thinking is deemed as an ideal in academic settings, but cultural differences in critical thinking performance between Asian and Western students have been reported in the international education literature. We examined explanations for the observed differences in critical thinking between Asian and New Zealand (NZ) European students, and tested hypotheses derived from research in international education and cultural psychology. The results showed that NZ European students performed better on two objective measures of critical thinking skills than Asian students. English proficiency, but not dialectical thinking style, could at least partially if not fully explain these differences. This finding holds with both self-report (Study 1) and objectively measured (Study 2a) English proficiency. The results also indicated that Asian students tended to rely more on dialectical thinking to solve critical thinking problems than their Western counterparts. In a follow-up data analysis, students' critical thinking was found to predict their academic performance after controlling for the effects of English proficiency and general intellectual ability, but the relationship does not vary as a function of students' cultural backgrounds or cultural adoption (Study 2b). Altogether, these findings contribute to our understanding of the influence of culture on critical thinking in international education.