A longitudinal study evaluated whether early remediation affected the persistence and/or performance of underprepared students at a midwestern, suburban community college. The study focused on the 3,282 students who completed the basic skills inventory in either Fall 1991 or Fall 1992. Students were classified as either prepared (N=2,028) or…

This report examines motivational variables and support structures that influenced the success of African American females who graduated with honors from a rural Georgia high school. Case studies focus on the nature of the honor graduates' friendships and the role that friendship may have played in motivating these students to become honor…

This study examined the extent to which an individual doctoral student's characteristics and involvement in the academic and social life of the department influences the student's perception of growth and development during graduate school, and thus the student's persistence in pursuing a graduate degree. The study surveyed doctoral students…

This paper explicates methods to motivate African American students to exhibit attitudes and behaviors that are conducive to high academic achievement. In particular, it argues that educational models must acknowledge and correct students' sense of academic futility. Academic futility measures student perceptions of the extent to which factors in…

The present study explored the perceptions of 664 Hispanic and non-minority high school students as regards barriers to entering health professions and the characteristics of health career jobs. Students were enrolled in a high school for the health professions or an enrichment add-on intervention, or were members of an honor society contrast…

Post-high school enrollment plans and specific choices of May 1980 Kentucky high school graduates were studied based on longitudinal data. The relationships between these choices and academic and personal background characteristics and future plans were analyzed. The analyses include both education-bound and noneducation-bound graduates, and…

A summary is presented of the literature on motivation relating to achievement in the classroom. Special attention is given to how values, ideology, and various cultural patterns may serve to enhance motivation to achieve in the classroom. In considering what determines motivation and personal investment in educational pursuits, the following…

Personal and academic background characteristics of 1980 Kentucky high school graduates and the influence of these factors on the graduates' educational plans in general, and the relationship between the students' college of choice and the actual institution in which they enrolled were studied. The analysis was based on data drawn from an initial…

Data from the National Longitudinal Study of High School Seniors (1972) were utilized to examine the effects of school personnel on educational and occupational decisions of farm-reared students. Information was gathered on 10 "significant others" grouped into 5 types: (1) ego--influence of self; (2) family--parents and relatives; (3)…

A total of 1,341 male and female students enrolled at a private women's college, a two-year comprehensive college of moderate size, an agricultural-technical college, and a small two-year comprehensive college were surveyed in Spring 1974 to determine demographic and descriptive data, career choices, plans for labor force participation, and…

The paper reported findings from a 2-year (1966-68) panel study of status projection development during late adolescence. The analysis, which focused on black and white girls from rural East Texas, is sequential to previous studies (RC 007 777 and RC 007 842). The paper specifically examined the integration of girls' occupational and educational…

Longitudinal data in St. Paul (Minnesota) for 1,001 ninth graders and 962 of them as tenth graders show that part-time work experience and mastery orientation are reciprocally related for adolescents. Youth more internally oriented in grade 9 had less stressful jobs in grade 10. Extrinsic work conditions are sources of control orientation. (SLD)

How low-income Brazilian students explain their school performance and the predominant achievement causes were studied. The relationship between achievement attribution and school achievement and students' conceptions of choice, career, agency, and relationship with achievement were also studied, using the causal attribution theory of B. Weiner.…

This study used the Tinto Model to examine characteristics of community college students without initial plans to graduate, but who did eventually receive an Associate's degree from the institution. In 1991, a large midwestern community college began asking enrollees whether they planned to graduate. By 1994, sizable numbers of graduates had…

Chicano student achievement remains low at virtually all stages of the educational pipeline but the low rates of postsecondary matriculation and persistence are especially alarming. Tinto (1993) has described student persistence in higher education as a longitudinal process of interaction between an individual student and his/her institutional…