This chapter explores the marginality of university-based degree-granting adult education programs and considers how both hopes and fears add to the discourse about the field's vitality.

Two studies were conducted to examine perceptions about achievement and achieving peers in 190 U.S. and Chinese kindergartners. Children provided free-narrative responses to story beginnings about an achieving protagonist in school settings. We found marked cultural differences. For achievement, U.S. children perceived more intellectual…

This paper examines whether the relationship between parental work and adolescents' well-being would be mediated through parenting behaviour. The primary focus was on the experiences of adolescents. Questionnaire-based data from families (both parents and one children, n=77) and adolescents (n=126) were collected in Finland in 2000 and 2001,…

We aimed to further investigate the "hairlessness" norm that is the common practice of body hair removal among women. A sample of 198 undergraduate students (91 men, 107 women) completed questionnaires asking about attitudes toward women's body hair and the reasons women remove this hair, as well as a measure of disgust sensitivity. It was found…

When older students fail to gain rapid and accurate decoding skills by the third or fourth grade, they not only struggle with reading comprehension, but they also fall behind their average reading peers in academic performance and achievement--and they rarely catch up. When presented with academic tasks that require reading, these students often…

What lies beneath the formal or overt curriculum may impair students' professional growth and development, including their ability to foster genuine relationships with patients and others, and may contribute to the inadvertent, often negative attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors expressed by medical students and witnessed by educators within and…

Poor performance in mathematics among students, at a variety of grade levels, has been attributed, in part, to mathematics anxiety (Bulmahn & Young, 1982; Kelly & Tomhave, 1985; Hadfield & McNeil, 1994). Some investigators have related this phenomenon to gender effects (Cooper & Robinson, 1989) mathematics self-concept and test anxiety (Bandalos…

This paper examines the images middle school students have of science and technology, the workplaces, and the relevant professions. It also describes the effect on these images caused by an instructional initiative, "Investigation into Science and Technology" (IST), designed to introduce students to science and technology in the "real life."…

Since the global item of subjective health has emerged as a strong predictor of important health outcomes such as mortality, there have been many attempts to uncover its correlates. In this study, we tested whether personality as assessed via the five-factor model of personality predicted subjective health when physician-rated health and…

In this article, the story of 11 male psychotherapeutic patients with low self-esteem is told within the context of the research process. The literature suggests that the concept of "self-esteem" has a significant influence on the way an individual experiences his/her world. Therefore, the meaning that the psychotherapeutic patients…

To understand whether difficulties in emotional functioning distinguish between body dissatisfaction and disordered eating, a set of emotion regulation (i.e., negative emotion, emotional awareness, coping), demographic (i.e., age), and physical (i.e., BMI (Body Mass Index)) factors were assessed in 234 early adolescent girls, grades six to eight.…

This issue of "Focus On" examines where boys are underachieving and some possible reasons for their under-achievement, including biological and environmental factors. It also offers strategies that teachers can employ in their classrooms in order to address the educational needs of boys. Books in Brief; Web Resources; and Related ERS Resources are…

This study examines high school students' attitudes toward mathematics and analyzes whether there were differences in attitude and its source that could be attributed to gender, class level, type of school, mathematics success, whether the students received preschool education, families' income level, and high school student's place of living.…

Objective: This study investigates how the academic skills of children diagnosed with ADHD are perceived by teachers, parents, and the children themselves. Method: The authors analyze data collected for third graders in spring 2002 in the nationally representative Early Childhood Longitudinal Survey. They use linear regressions to estimate…

The aim of this study was to assess test takers' attitudes and beliefs about an admissions test used extensively in graduate schools of business in the United States, the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT), and the relationships of these attitudes and beliefs to test performance. A set of attitude and belief items was administered by…