Classroom boredom in the secondary mathematics classroom is a problem that can be addressed from knowledge of the intrinsic motivational variable of "interestingness." The lack of a theoretical model of interest is an obstacle in research that investigates this variable. This paper describes the three stages in the development of a model…

A review of the literature indicates that, in the 1990s, production workers will need significant amounts of human capital investments in terms of education, training, and retraining, to have the new and updated computer and technical skills required by American employers. The present empirical study determines and defines seven factors that are…

The development of the IDEA system, a survey concerning teacher effectiveness at Kansas State University (KSU) is described. The system originated at KSU during the 1968-69 academic year as a means for investigating the effectiveness of teaching and for improving instruction. A discussion concerning its purpose and rationale is included. The…

Reflective thinking is important to young adolescents as they develop their thinking skills. Various instructional methods have been recommended to support reflective thinking, yet the nature of the underlying factors in these methods is unclear. Exploratory factor analysis was used to determine the factors prompting reflective thinking. Results…

Methodology and findings are reported for a series of statistical analyses conducted to identify those factors that account for variations in instructional unit costs (IUC) among the Illinois community colleges. The first analysis described in the report correlates five measures of district wealth with total IUC (i.e., total instructional costs…

Background: Public schools in the United States are still segregated along cultural and racial lines 50 years after the 1954 Supreme Court's ruling. For example, Orfield and Lee, 2004; and Orfield, 2001) indicated that White student in the United States attended schools that were 80 percent White. Ethnic minority children (children of color),…

This study explored individual differences in educational disadvantage-- deficits in formal and informal education in the school, home, and elsewhere--in the SAT test-taking population. Factor analysis identified six educational disadvantage factors--four concerning the students' schools and two the students' nativity and parenting--and one family…

The purpose of this study was to develop and validate a new learning environments instrument designed to aid investigators and practitioners in measuring and researching the psychosocial learning environment in post-secondary distance education. Using a three-stage approach, the Distance Education Learning Environments Survey (DELES) was…

The failure to consider factors that make a key contribution to violence and its prevention may create serious problems of construct validity for school violence surveys. Further, few studies have assessed the relative importance of variables contributing to perceptions of safety by examining correlations between survey items and overall feelings…

Although scientific and technological developments are mathematics-based, many students continue to perform poorly in mathematics. This study investigated how students' mathematics self-concept (MSC) is related to their motivation to learn mathematics (SMOT) and gender differences in the two constructs. Out of 165,900 students in 256 secondary…

The report summarizes findings of a pilot study of 1985 graduates of bilingual high school programs at the University of Ottawa and Carleton, Queen's, and McGill Universities. Data on French language proficiency, attitudes toward the French language, and current patterns of French use at the universities are compared for early and late immersion…

A study examines the place of linguistics in undergraduate curricula in the United States and Canada, the nature and structure of the curriculum leading to a bachelor's degree in linguistics, and the population served by the curriculum. The final report consists of an overview of the study, including the forms used for the survey; a directory of…

THIS REPORT PRESENTS CORRELATIONAL AND REGRESSION ANALYSES OF VARIOUS COMBINATIONS OF SUBSETS OF NINTH-GRADE STUDENT BODY AND SCHOOL VARIABLES FROM THE EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITIES SURVEY (COLEMAN REPORT), IN AN ATTEMPT TO ISOLATE DIFFERENT SCHOOL INDEXES THAT CONTRIBUTE TO ACHIEVEMENT. IT IS HOPED THAT THE INDEXES OBTAINED FROM THE 400 ORIGINAL…

"Entering the Mainstream: The Quality and Extent of Online Education in the United States, 2003 and 2004" represents the second annual study of the state of online education in U.S. Higher Education. Supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, this year's study, like last year's, is aimed at answering some of the fundamental questions about the…

This report documents the design, development, and psychometric characteristics of the assessment instruments used in the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Class of 1998-99 (ECLS-K). The ECLS-K is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. The ECLS-K was designed to assess the…