The primary aim of this study, funded by the Department for Education and Skills, was to identify the nature and influence of school-based factors in the choices of young people about their post-16 education, training and career pathways. The study also contributes to the wider understanding of "choice", and identifies implications for…

Community colleges across the country have created innovative, data-informed programs that are models for educating underprepared students, engaging traditionally underserved students, and helping students from all backgrounds succeed. However, because most of these programs have limited scope, the field now has pockets of success rather than…

Although the transition from elementary school to middle school can be an exciting time for students, it can also be vexing and traumatic. Often, when parents drop off their children at middle school on the first day of school, the scene is reminiscent of the first day of school for kindergarteners and their parents. At Albert Leonard Middle…

One purpose of professional conference attendance is to enhance social support. Intentionally fostering this support is an important political aim that should be developed. Although many multifactor definitions of social support exist (Cobb, 1979; Cohen & Syme, 1985; Kahn, 1979; Shaefer et al., 1981; Weiss, 1974), all distinguish between an…

Students with differing profiles of epistemological beliefs--their beliefs about personal epistemology, intelligence, and learning--vary in thinking, reasoning, motivation, and use of strategies while working on academic tasks, each of which affect learning. This study examined students' epistemological beliefs according to gender, school…

There is increased attention on the first year experience at universities generally as a result of the Australian federal government's focus on increased accountability for universities and widening participation in further education (DEST, 2003; Jardine & Krause, 2005; Kift, 2005; Krause, Hartley, James & McInnes, 2005). However, these…

The focus of this qualitative study is on U.S. third culture kids (TCKs), youth who have grown up abroad because of their parent's work, and their college choice experiences and reentry expectations. Through a background questionnaire and personal interviews with eleven students transitioning from two international secondary schools in a…

The purpose of this study was to determine the retention rate of students who had received academic scholarships versus students who had not received academic scholarships but met the qualifications to receive the scholarships and the effects of emotional intelligence on these students. The data collection mechanisms for this study included the…

This best practices piece is based on key research into high school transition strategies. It draws on two studies of high school reform models conducted by MDRC, a nonpartisan, nonprofit research organization, which shed light on promising strategies to support ninth-grade students. Increasing the capacity of high schools to provide extra help…

In this paper, a framework for developing first-year students' learning is proposed. Its aim is to increase university managers' and teachers' awareness of two issues: (1) that the currently predominant "skills" approaches to the enhancement of student learning are based on a deficiency model and achieve little more than remedying the overt…

In developing a Library Orientation Tour, it is important to be perceptive about the needs of a college population. At Queensborough Community College the student population is a mix of traditional and non-traditional students from diversified backgrounds. The initial contact with the Library, and its resources, may be overwhelming for students…

Bitter experience has shown Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, that if students are going to leave school, they are most likely to do it between the 8th and 9th grades. To combat that problem, the school district has launched a full-on campaign to get its rising freshmen into high school and keep them there. Two weeks before school opened, the district…

Minnesota's Intervention for College Attendance Program (ICAP) is a program of competitive grants awarded to postsecondary institutions, professional organizations and community-based organizations. Funded programs focus on increasing the access and success of groups traditionally underrepresented in higher education by strengthening their…

A quasi-experiment using quantitative methods was conducted to examine the effects on academic student outcomes when a cohort of employed low-SES community college commuter students (the treatment group, N=198) participated in a comprehensive support and access intervention program, compared with similar students (the matched comparison group,…