2+2 Statewide Articulation Policy,Student Persistence,and Success in Florida Universities

The reported study in this paper examined the continuing viability of Florida's 2+2 articulation agreement by comparing academic success and persistence among Florida public community college graduates (n = 1,738) and native (n = 874) juniors at three universities. Discriminant analysis yielded statistically significant differences. Transfer students graduated with fewer lower level courses in upper division and fewer cumulative credit hours than native students. Discriminant analysis did not yield appreciable differences in the final grade point averages of student graduates, indicating that community college transfer students performed just as well academically as native students. Chi-square tests of independence indicated that a greater percentage of transfers dropped out prior to graduation. These findings support the conclusion that community college transfers are academically competitive, but they may benefit from retention services and programs that engender student engagement.     

Grade stability in a criterion‐referenced grading system: the Swedish example

This study investigates empirically the mechanisms behind the increasing grade point averages in Swedish upper secondary schools. Four hypotheses are presented as plausible explanations; improved student achievements, student selection effects, strategic behaviour in course choices, and lowering of grading standards. The analysis is based on extensive data, and focuses on grades and test scores from upper secondary school graduates over a 6‐year period. The result shows that the increase in grade point averages cannot be explained by better achievements, selection effects or course choices, which means that standards have been lowered, which is interpreted here as grade inflation. The grade inflation is most likely an effect of the leniency in the grading system in combination with pressure for high grading, related to the upper secondary school grades’ function as an instrument for selection to higher education.     

Revising a College 101 Course for Sustained Impact: Early Outcomes

ABSTRACT

In response to strikingly low completion rates in public 2-year colleges, including for students who are well-prepared academically, most community colleges across the country offer student success courses as one approach to improving outcomes for students. Some colleges have begun to revise these courses in response to research indicating that their impact fades over time. This article examines Bronx Community College’s efforts to restructure their student success course into a First Year Seminar (FYS) that integrates college orientation activities, disciplinary content, and academic success skills. The course emphasizes student-centered pedagogies in order to encourage learning that persists beyond the semester of participation. We use mixed methods to assess the early outcomes of students in FYS courses and understand whether and why the course’s impact has the potential to be sustained. Using propensity score matching to compare 1,138 FYS participants to 1,138 similar nonparticipants, we find early evidence that the FYS approach leads to positive outcomes, including higher grade point averages (GPA) and earning more credits. Using classroom observations (N = 40), instructor interviews (N = 10), and interviews with participants (N = 27), we find that FYS appears to facilitate student-centered, contextualized, and applied learning, thereby helping students apply their FYS-related skills in future courses. This study has implications for reforming student success courses in a way that achieves long-term positive student outcomes.     

Middle-class parents’ educational work in an academically selective public high school

This article reports the findings of a study on the nature of parent–school engagement at an academically selective public high school in New South Wales, Australia. Such research is pertinent given recent policies of ‘choice’ and decentralization, making a study of local stakeholders timely. The research comprised a set of interviews with parents and teachers (n = 15), through which parents – all members of the school’s Parents’ and Citizens’ group – theorized and explained their involvement with the school, and teachers spoke about their views on this involvement. Results are organized around three themes: ‘how parents worked to nurture their children’s schooling’, ‘reasons behind parents’ involvement with the school’, and ‘communication and use of parental resources by the school’. Overall it was found that while parents were making significant efforts to involve themselves in the education of their children and with the school more broadly, the reasons for their involvement were not always consistent, but instead revealed a range of motivations for and conceptions of parents’ roles within schools, which at times were at odds with the teachers’. Through this, the study contributes to our understanding of middle-class parent engagement at an unusual and particular type of school.     

Prospective primary teachers’ perceptions about the use of mathematics homework

The benefit of homework (HW) has been the subject of ongoing debate among various stakeholders. Within this debate, and in relation to teacher development, prospective teachers’ views of HW have received limited attention. In this study, we survey primary pre-service teachers’ (‘PSTs’) views of HW use (n = 45 teaching grades 2–5; n = 39 teaching grades 6 and 7) in a single discipline (mathematics) at one large Australian university.

The literature suggests students in upper primary and secondary grades will benefit from the use of mathematics HW. Results of the study, in contrast, suggest our PSTs teaching early primary grades planned to give proportionally (but not significantly) more mathematics HW than those teaching later grades. Reasons for this disparity are discussed. We argue there is a need in teacher development to equip PSTs with a better understanding of how classroom and home-based learning work together in the development of mathematical understanding.     

Alternative class ranks using z-scores

Grades at US colleges and universities have increased precipitously over the last 50 years, suggesting that their signalling power has become attenuated. Moreover, average grades have risen disproportionately in some departments, implying that weak students in departments with high grades may obtain better class ranks than strong students in departments with low grades. Using a unique data set, we show that Colby College has experienced both trends and that variation in student ability does not fully explain variation in grades awarded in different departments. We then propose a simple alternative measure of calculating class ranks based on z-scores, and demonstrate that this relative measure of rank mitigates the bonus (penalty) associated with taking courses in departments with high (low) grading distributions.     

Academic achievement standards and quality assurance

Quality assurance processes have been applied to many aspects of higher education, including teaching, learning and assessment. At least in the latter domain, quality assurance needs its fundamental tenets critically scrutinised. A common but inadequate approach has been to identify and promote learning environment changes ‘likely to improve’ learning outcomes. They are simply labelled ‘quality assurance’ without establishing their effectiveness. Part of the problem is that the case for quality assurance has been largely taken as self-evident. Originally, quality assurance principles were developed in domains outside higher education. In those, auditable product, service and other standards play a central role. Although external processes do not directly transfer to higher education, their underlying principles offer perspectives and pointers for reconceptualising quality assurance and improving assessment and grading. Quality assurance should be grounded in authoritative and properly formulated academic achievement standards applied to actual student works, performances and course grades.     

A tale of two narratives: student voice—what lies before us?

As the last century closed, and a bright new millennium dawned, the concept of ‘student voice’ within education emerged as something to be ‘identified’ and ‘captured’. In effect, it became reified and driven by a raft of government and institutional policies and strategic initiatives; initially within the compulsory sector, but soon followed by the post-compulsory sector as the 2000s moved on. In an increasingly quasi-consumerist environment, a mechanism had emerged with potential to ‘measure’ student satisfaction. Institutions quickly took up the ‘call to arms’, assigning responsibilities to ensure there was evidence of ‘student voice’ engagement; but there was no conversation with the ‘students’ about how this was experienced by them. This concept had become a ‘portmanteau’ term; a ‘catch all’ competing between two narratives—student voice as democratic and transformational; and student voice as ‘policy’ and strategic initiative. Formal research that could contribute to this discussion has been sparse and this paper takes a critical stance to the literature and policy, exploring the current status of student voice and proposing a research focus that has the potential to involve students in a discussion about how their voice is heard, and for what purpose.     

Lower income students and the ‘double deficit’ of part-time work: undergraduate experiences of finance,studying and employability

This paper explores how the various pressures of finance, employability and part-time work are experienced by undergraduates studying in an English Red Brick University. Drawing on the results of a 3-year qualitative study that followed 40 students throughout their 3 years of studies (n? = 40, n? = 40, n? = 38, n_total = 118), the paper details three dimensions by which students understood their part-time employment experiences: the characteristics of employment types; motivations for employment and the challenges of shaping their employment experiences around their studies. It is argued that the current shortfalls in the student budget and the pressures of the employability agenda may actually serve to further disadvantage the lower income groups in the form of a ‘double deficit’. Not only are discrepancies between income and expenditure likely to mean that additional monies are necessary to study for a degree, the resulting need for part-time employment is also likely to constrain both degree outcome and capacity to enhance skills necessary for ‘employability’.     

Analysis of engineering discipline grade trends

Among the academic community, there is a perception that there is an upward shift in grade point average over an extended period of time without a corresponding increase in achievement. This trend has become an alarming topic among educators, industry and the general public. Some attribute increases in GPA to improvements in student quality while others point to the emergence of a consumer‐based perception of education that unjustly awards high grades. The objective of this paper is to review various opinions regarding grade inflation, investigate whether grade inflation exists in engineering curricula, and analyze the related factors. Using eight years of detailed course data from a college of engineering, we seek insight into recent grading practices within each engineering discipline. The results indicate an upward trend in grade point average and an increasing prevalence of ‘A’ grades. However, both trends match increases in student achievement potential as measured by ACT composite score. The results also show different grade outcomes among the engineering departments and the importance of class size as a predictor of grades.     

PROGRAMS OF STUDY AS A BASIS FOR SELECTION, PLACEMENT AND GUIDANCE OF COLLEGE STUDENTS

Studies of collegiate success and attrition are generally conducted at the all-college level. The definition of academic programs that are homogeneous in the abilities and interests of their students and the grading standards of their faculties may lead to more accurate prediction of success and more effective control of attrition.
Homogeneous curricular groups were defined via Ward's hierarchical grouping analysis applied to curricular means on high school percentile rank, four ACT subscores, first semester GPA, and 16 Kuder scores. Programs so defined differed on scientific-verbal and competitive level dimensions. Prediction of grades was more accurate within programs than colleges. Drop and transfer rates were correlated with discriminant scores.
The programs are discussed as promising units within which differential selection and placement strategies might reduce attrition.     

Are there differences in ethnic majority and minority adolescents’ friendships preferences and social influence with regard to their academic achievement?

Research has established that adolescents both befriend peers based on their academic achievement and adjust their own achievement to that of their friends’ over time. However, these processes may be different for ethnic minority students, because some of them may adhere to an oppositional culture that rejects striving for academic success. We examine respective differences between self-identified ethnic minority and majority students using longitudinal social network analysis (stochastic actor-oriented models) in a sample of 1175 students (aged 13) from 12 grade-level networks in Germany secondary schools. Among the students, we find that academically successful students in particular prefer friends with high grades, but that students with poor grades exert more social influence on their friends to adjust their performance. Moreover, while minority students are indeed less inclined to select friends with higher grades, both ethnic majority and minority youth prefer friends with similar academic achievement and are similarly influenced by their friends’ achievement. However, social influence is stronger from same-ethnic than from inter-ethnic friends. In sum, there is mixed evidence for an oppositional culture among ethnic minority students in our sample.     

Implications of Overlapping Difficulties in Mathematics and Reading on Self-Concept and Academic Achievement

In this study, the relationship between adolescents’ difficulty in mathematics and reading and the influence on academic self-concept and school grades was examined. The participants (N = 585; 299 girls, 286 boys) were one age group of ninth-graders whose mathematics and reading skills were assessed at the end of comprehensive school at age 16 years. Five student profile groups were found using cluster analysis: best achievers, normal achievers (NA), the reading difficulty (RD) group, the mathematical difficulty (MD) group, and the learning difficulty (LD) group. Post-hoc tests revealed that the RD group and the LD group had a higher academic self-concept than the MD group. In school grades history, surprisingly, the NA group and the RD group performed equally well across all school grades. Students in the MD group performed as poorly as the LD group. The results emphasise the prolonged and generalised effects of especially MD on students’ academic careers.     

Learning molecular behaviour may improve student explanatory models of the greenhouse effect

We assessed undergraduates’ representations of the greenhouse effect, based on student-generated concept sketches, before and after a 30-min constructivist lesson. Principal component analysis of features in student sketches revealed seven distinct and coherent explanatory models including a new Molecular Details model. After the lesson, which described the invisible molecular behaviour of gases, this group (n = 164) produced significantly more expert-like representations of the greenhouse effect, and included fewer novice ideas. The key behaviour that greenhouse gases emit radiation in random directions is new to most students and directly counters common explanations involving reflection and ‘trapping’ of radiation in the atmosphere. Thus, learning molecular behaviour of greenhouse gases may help students replace non-expert explanatory models. This Molecular Details model has not been previously identified, and is unlikely to have emerged from human evaluation of student sketches alone. When teaching the greenhouse effect, we propose that interventions explicitly incorporate greenhouse gas behaviour.     

Longitudinal associations of student–teacher relationships and behavioural and emotional strengths on academic achievement

Positive student–teacher relationships are related to students’ academic achievement and behavioural and emotional adjustment. How a student’s behavioural and emotional strengths are associated with these relationships and how the relationships influence students’ academic performance remains unknown. We examined this framework using a cross-lagged panel model with a group of Finnish students and their parents from Grade 5 to Grade 7. The results revealed that the parents rated behavioural and emotional strengths are stable over a 1-year (r = .78) and 2-year (r = .71) period and that students’ perceptions of student–teacher relationships demonstrated greater change over time (r’s = .54, .35). Behavioural and emotional strengths demonstrated a positive relationship with student–teacher relationships as well as academic achievement (β = .39, p < .01). Strengths were also indirectly associated with academic achievement via student–teacher relationships. Study limitations, implications and future research are discussed.     

Learning with and from: positioning school students as advisors in pre-service teacher education

This article reports on an innovative pedagogical approach within the Learning Partnerships program in which school students help to ‘teach the teachers’ within pre-service teacher education. Classes of school students join with classes of pre-service teachers to provide input on how teachers can enhance school students’ engagement and wellbeing. The article draws on data collected from 125 students (aged 13–16) and 120 pre-service teachers in these workshops. Findings generated from a mixed methods study combining pre-workshop focus groups (n = Students: 38, Teachers: 33) and post-workshop focus groups (n = Students: 69, Teachers: 15) and post-workshop surveys (n = Students: 96; Teachers: 101) demonstrated that the workshops were mutually beneficial for both students and pre-service teachers. Participants found that workshopping together enhanced their belief in the possibility of positive student–teacher relationships. The pre-service teachers reported greater confidence in communicating with young people about the issues that affect student engagement and wellbeing. The school students reported that they were more willing to use teachers as a source of help. Implications include the need for increased attention to a ‘third space’ for learning in teacher development which provides opportunity for learning with and from young people about how to foster their engagement and wellbeing.     

BOOK REVIEW

This investigation addressed the effects of teaching styles, student cognitive styles, matched and mismatched conditions, student age, and student gender in relation to course grades in community college education. The Gregorc Style Delineator was used to determine the dominant cognitive styles of 16 teachers and 207 students on two campuses of a comprehensive community college. Data were analyzed according to two analysis of variance models. The findings indicated that concrete sequential teachers assigned significantly lower grades to students than did teachers dominant in any other style and that students 25 years of age and older received significantly higher grades than younger students, except when matched with concrete random teachers. Although many authors have suggested that students whose cognitive styles match those of their teachers tend to attain higher grades, findings in this study contradicted the literature and indicated that mismatched students performed better academically.     

‘Non-traditional’ and ‘traditional’ students at a regional Finnish University: demanding customers and school pupils in need of support

ABSTRACT

This article explores university students’ constructions of the ideal student at present-day university, that emphasises student-as-consumer culture and employability rather than education as a virtue in itself. The research is based on thematic narrative accounts (n = 67) generated in a generalist field in one regional Finnish university. We apply a narrative-discursive approach to analyse how ‘traditional’ young students (n = 34) and ‘non-traditional’ mature students (n = 33) position themselves in relation to the ideal good student in a present-day university and in relation to their university studies. Moreover, we examine some of the consequences of such positionings for the students themselves. Our analysis indicates that the present-day university student is constructed in line with the ideal student of the neoliberal order and student-as-consumer culture. However, whereas mature students positioned themselves as customers and were comfortable with the demands of today’s university for self-directedness and self-responsibility, younger students positioned themselves as ‘school pupils’ and were critical about being left on their own without adequate support. The study suggests that the terms ‘traditional’ and ‘non-traditional’ make differences related to age and different kinds of student positionings visible and, thus, also possible to reconstruct the ideals and normalities of the present-day neoliberal university.     

Counterfactual mutation of critical classroom incidents: implications for reflective practice in initial teacher education

This study explores reflective practice through the lens of counterfactual thinking and examines its role in encouraging student teachers to reflect on negative ‘critical incidents’. The study posits that reflections on critical incidents are often not ‘critical’ in nature. They more frequently result in counterfactual thinking processes which leads to a counterfactually mutated outcome congruent with one’s initial beliefs. To explore this issue, the study examined a collection of school placement reflections (n = 180) from a cohort of initial teacher education students on a 4-year B.Ed programme in the Republic of Ireland. The data revealed that, where present in the student teachers’ reflections, critical incidents of a negative nature did invoke counterfactual thinking. These counterfactually mutated scenarios and actions tended to draw on quite traditional views of teaching and tended to reinforce the idea that teachers should be authority figures. The study discusses some of the factors, specific to teacher education, that increase the likelihood that counterfactually thinking is invoked and raises questions about current practice in teacher education that contribute to this.     

Parental Involvement as a Protective Factor During the Transition to High School

ABSTRACT

The authors investigated whether student-perceived parental involvement predicts improvement in academic, behavioral, and relational outcomes for low-achieving adolescents. With a sample of 59 racially diverse 9th-grade students, the authors measured 3 dimensions of parental involvement: direct participation, academic encouragement, and expectations for grades and attainment. Analyses revealed associations between 2 types of parental involvement and outcomes, which held after considering student gender and race. Students whose parents had higher expectations about grades and attainment had higher grade point averages and were rated as more academically engaged by their teachers. Students who reported that their parents were more academically encouraging experienced more care from their teachers. Results suggest certain types of parental involvement may be more effective than others in supporting low-achieving adolescents’ school performance.