Students' post-school options are limited if they have not completed mathematics subjects involving the study of calculus. This paper employs a sociocultural approach to identify institutional practices that might promote sustained engagement with these subjects among students from disadvantaged backgrounds. Drawing on interviews with mathematics…

The study aims to understand psychological processes relevant to learning argumentative writing in high school. Multi-group path analysis was used to explore whether self-efficacy mediates the relationship between writing anxiety and use of self-regulation across students with different goal orientation profiles. A cluster analysis identified…

The Internal/External (I/E) Frame of Reference Model and the structure of students' self-concept in various academic subjects were examined using 195 Grade 10 Chinese students in Hong Kong. Results of structural equation analyses supported the following: (1) the distinction between Chinese and English as two independent academic subjects (rather…

A study examined learning strategies used by secondary school students in Singapore who were streamed into special, express, or normal high school curriculum courses according to their ability. The sample was drawn from nine schools, three schools for each stream. Participants were 1,165 eighth and tenth graders. Measures included Biggs' Learning…

The last two decades have seen an increase in the demand for information about school effectiveness. For this paper, school effectiveness is defined as the value-added effectiveness. Value-added indices measure achievement over and above what would have been expected from attendance at a comparable school. They assess school effectiveness after…

This study investigated whether alcohol use by public school students differs in its relationship to other variables when analyzed on the individual level versus the aggregated group level. The study presents a model and a set of analytic techniques for studying the ways that school and individual variables relate to adolescent alcohol abuse.…

The learning of decision-making (DM) skills and appropriate attitudes is an important objective of career education. This study provides an empirical test of theoretical links between aspects of DM styles and vocational maturity (VM) in adolescence. Approximately 260 Australian students in grades ten and twelve answered questionnaires measuring…

This study used high school data from Phi Delta Kappa's 1988-1989 nationwide "Study of Students at Risk" to examine and compare administrator, teacher, and student attitudes, characteristics, and perceptions in 77 high schools sorted according to high and low holding power statistics (HPS). Data from 7,100 10th graders, principals, and…

The longitudinal analysis population of the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS:88) is used to produce descriptive findings about the transition to high school of eighth grade students. An overview summarizes some of the policy issues of the study and sketches the research design and samples. First, longitudinal data are used to…