This study follows two groups of students (67 in all) through the 3 years of their high school biology education and examines the development of their systems thinking--specifically their models of the human body as a system. Both groups were composed of biology majors, but the students in one group also participated in a PBLbased extension…

A 2010 paper published in "Higher Education" investigated the relationship between South African Grade 12 students' programme preferences in 2001 for study in higher education, student enrolment in higher education programmes in 2002, and student graduations in 2006, devising what the author dubbed a preference-enrolment-graduation (PEG)…

This study examined the science self-efficacy beliefs of students at the transition from elementary school (Grade 6) to middle school (Grade 7) and the transition from middle school (Grade 8) to high school (Grade 9). The purpose was to determine whether students' perceived competence is impacted at these important school transitions and if the…

The purpose of this study is to revisit the widely held assumption that the impact of socioeconomic background declines steadily across educational transitions, particularly at the postsecondary level. Sequential logit modeling, a staple methodological approach for estimating the relative impact of SES across educational stages, is applied to a…

In this article, we consider how the economic return to a college education varies across members of the U.S. population. Based on principles of comparative advantage, scholars commonly presume that positive selection is at work, that is, individuals who are most likely to select into college also benefit most from college. Net of observed…

The Algebra Project DR K-12, funded by the National Science Foundation as a Research and Development Project, addressed the challenge of offering significant STEM content for students to ensure public literacy and workforce readiness. The project's primary purpose was to test the feasibility and effectiveness of a model for establishing four-year…

Data from the "National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997" are used to examine the association between the CTE-to-academic-coursetaking ratio and the likelihood of dropping out. Descriptive statistics are presented for 1,628 individuals born in 1980. Transcript and survey data are then used in estimating nonproportional hazards models…