This article discusses our university's attempt to analyze whether our system of First Year Writing placement serves the needs of our diverse student body. The theory behind Directed Self Placement (DSP) is appealing, so our program adopted a modified version of it, and after several years, decided to evaluate it quantitatively. The authors, a…

For the past 10 years, government reports have documented an increase in college developmental reading courses. However, a community college in the southeastern United States has experienced a decline in enrollment and attendance in these courses since they began in 1999. The purpose of this study was to determine (a) the impact of taking a…

The Melbourne Declaration recognises the place of ICT in education by it being both a general capability (GC) and a learning area conceptually placed under the umbrella of Technologies. This dual recognition acknowledges the shift to a knowledge-based society and the need for all students to acquire and apply a depth and breadth of ICT knowledge,…

The present experimental study was undertaken with three objectives in view, (i) to identify students with language learning disabilities (ii) to develop CAI software to teach LD students through computer-assisted instruction and (iii) to measure the effectiveness of CAI with special reference to LD students. Two matched groups of LD students were…

Learning to systematically analyze the relationship between teaching and student learning is an important but difficult skill to engender in teachers. In this study, we examine how pre-service teachers who were introduced to a framework for analyzing teaching in a video-based teacher education course drew on this tool to analyze their own practice…

The ACT is a national college admissions examination developed and administered by ACT, Inc. AISD student participation has increased. This report summarizes the results for school year 2011-2012 compared with previous years.

A few weeks into the marking period, the author's eighth-grade students took an all-essay literature test. While grading the tests, she noticed that students made many grammatical errors. It seemed clear that a new approach to grammar instruction was necessary. Staring at this stack of essay tests draws the author in to the concept of…

This study extends and makes unique methodological contributions to research on the impact of learning communities (LCs) on community college students. Much of the previous research was short-term, lacked adequate comparison groups, and focused on four-year college students. This four-year study controlled for instructor-related variables by…

Students enter secondary classrooms armed with attributions for their own successes or failures, informed by experiences in and out of school, but it is unclear to what degree these attributions affect achievement. Additionally, while the influence teacher expectations can have on student achievement is well documented, students' perceptions of…

This study examined aspects of emerging adulthood that contribute to success in English developmental courses. The research approach included qualitative interviews with a collective case study of 12 emerging adults between the ages of 18-25 who successfully completed EN085 and EN085L at the University of Guam. The emerging adults shared…

This study investigated female high school students' (N = 293) patterns of help seeking in the domains of English and mathematics. Help seeking was operationalized using both self-report measures of need-contingent help seeking and help avoidance, as well as a behavioral measure of help seeking, namely the number of times students attended…

Recent efforts to improve developmental education have included references to learning communities as examples of effective practices in basic skills education. The study "Basic skills as a foundation for student success in California community colleges" (2007) cited research from Tinto that suggested that learning communities and…

This study examined the influence of campus-based and online-based community college developmental English courses on two student success factors: course persistence and course success. Retrospective data on all first year California community college students enrolled in developmental English courses between 2008 and 2011 were analyzed for…

This research aims at examining the Students' perceptions of the effectiveness of the English program implemented in the College of Technological Studies in Kuwait. A sample of 242 students was randomly selected from the population. The students were asked to respond to a 21-statement questionnaire designed to obtain information about how they…

The Changing Mindsets project sought to improve academic attainment by supporting pupils to develop a growth mindset: the belief that intelligence is not a fixed characteristic and can be increased through effort. Previous research (Good et al., 2003; Blackwell et al., 2007) has suggested that holding this belief enables pupils to work harder and…