There is a little information about whether and if so how student aspirations for college change over time. We introduce a conceptual model to explain how student aspirations may change over time, utilize panel methods to examine the extent to which this happens during high school, and investigate which factors are associated with such changes. We…

Limited research exists on rural student academic aspirations from a counseling perspective. Much of the existing research focuses on the high school years and their implications for college. This study explores the relationship between place attachment, academic self-efficacy, and academic aspirations in rural elementary students. The sample…

Animal-assisted interventions intentionally incorporate the power of the human-animal bond into the therapeutic process. Research findings indicate that therapy dog programs can reduce student stress and build connections within the school, strengthening student response to school-based interventions and providing a foundation to achieve a diverse…

This study examined a psychosocial mechanism of how general self-efficacy interacts with other key factors and influences degree aspiration for students enrolled in an urban diverse community college. Using general self-efficacy scales, the authors hypothesized the General Self-efficacy model for Community College students (the GSE-CC model). A…

According to sociological rational choice theory, students' class-specific educational decisions at key transition points significantly contribute to educational and social inequalities. Yet, while theory missed to clearly accentuate all relevant actors' influences on students' decisions, research generally failed to adequately empirically account…

Background: Most community college students from low-income families have ambitious educational degree goals, but only a small fraction attains them. For many decades, sociologists have primarily attributed this problem to a cooling out process in which college practitioners diminish students' educational ambitions using academic reorientation…

A much larger proportion of English 14-year-olds expect to apply to university than ultimately make an application by age 21, but the proportion expecting to apply falls from age 14 onwards. In order to assess the role of socioeconomic status in explaining changes in expectations, this paper applies duration modelling techniques to the…

The newly arrived Roma Slovak community in a large urban city in the north of England has been widely perceived as having a myriad of social problems and there is a conflict with the wider community. This paper presents the results of a project to explore barriers and possibilities for the social and educational integration of newly arrived Roma…

This paper uses the cultural preparedness approach to analyse the interface between the aspirations of immigrants and their engagement with systems of the host country. It draws upon interviews with 84 immigrants from 35 developing countries living in 9 high-income countries. Based upon Edmund Husserl's hermeneutical phenomenology, two studies are…

In this article we wish to clarify not only if, but also how--through which institutional settings--higher education (HE) is accessed by students from vulnerable immigrant groups in France, Switzerland and Canada. We are interested in the possible educational mobility that immigrant youths can experience arising from country-specific educational…

Given the lack of research on measurement models used to operationalize parental involvement with secondary students, the goal of this research is to examine the measurement properties of the three-domain conceptualization of parental involvement including school-based involvement, home-based involvement, and academic socialization, compared to a…

Against a United Kingdom policy background of attempts to widen higher education participation in a socially inclusive direction, this article analyses theory, policy and practice to understand why past efforts have had limited success and to propose an alternative: an "anchor institution" model. A university and a private training…

Survival analysis is an advanced statistical method to investigate the occurrence and the timing of an important event such as school access, dropout, and graduation in a longitudinal framework. The aim of our study is to provide practical guidelines for empirical researchers in choosing an appropriate survival analysis model. For this goal, this…

There is a growing recognition that parents play an important role in the academic achievement of their children. This role includes both the interactions they have with their children and the management of resources that can contribute to their children's achievement. To better understand parents' roles, it is important to understand their…

This article summarizes assessment of cognitive skills through collaborative tasks, using field test results from the Assessment and Teaching of 21st Century Skills (ATC21S) project. This project, sponsored by Cisco, Intel, and Microsoft, aims to help educators around the world enable students with the skills to succeed in future career and…