Community colleges have long taken pride in their ability to adjust to changing workforce needs. They adjust when local plumbers union requires a new certification. They also adjust when a biotechnology manufacturer seeks workers to staff its state-of-the-art research facility. But what happens when a new industry materializes almost overnight?…

The roles of previous psychological service use and social network variables in beliefs about psychological services were examined with 184 college students. Having friends and family members who used psychological services, being female, and having used psychological services positively related with beliefs about psychological services.…

In the author's small school district of about 1,450 students and over 150 staff members, she is considered a local expert on all things social media. She has a minor presence on many of the social-media platforms including Twitter, Blogger, Pinterest, and Edmodo, and more accounts that she can remember. Interacting daily with her personal…

Homeless youth lack the traditional support networks of their housed peers, which increases their risk for poor health outcomes. Using a multilevel dyadic analytic approach, this study identified characteristics of social contacts, relationships, and social networks associated with the provision of tangible and emotional support to homeless youth…

This chapter takes into account and discusses innovative learning in the 21st digital and communicative century based on life-world-phenomenology and Hannah Arendt's view of democracy. From this point of view, the authors address and discuss how democratic practices can offer innovative musical learning in relation to what is taking place in…

Using a network analytic framework, this study introduces a new method to measure peer influence based on adolescents' affiliations or 2-mode social network data. Exposure based on affiliations is referred to as the "affiliation exposure model." This study demonstrates the methodology using data on young adolescent smoking being influenced by…

Most discussions about keeping kids safe online center around two issues: (1) With the rapid development and dissemination of digital technology, how can we stay ahead of what our students are doing?; and (2) What controls are available to prevent students from visiting inappropriate sites? These are reasonable questions, but they ignore two…

This study investigated differences in university students' academic entitlement (AE) by demographic group (sex, college class, college generational status) as well as AE's relationship with self-efficacy for college coursework and social networking. It also investigated predictors of AE in first-generation (FG) students and continuing-generation…

In recent years, historical events, issues, and characters have been portrayed in an increasing number of non-fiction graphic texts. Similar to comics and graphic novels, graphic texts are defined as fully developed, non-fiction narratives told through panels of sequential art. Such non-fiction graphic texts are being used to teach history in…

Driven by existing socialization theories, this study describes specific friendship contexts in which peer influence of alcohol misuse and depressive symptoms occurs. In the fall and spring of the school year, surveys were administered to 704 Italian adolescents (53% male, M[subscript age] = 15.53) enrolled in Grades 9, 10 and 11. Different…

Matt Ivester became notorious on campuses across the country in 2007 for publishing gossip--not about celebrities but about students--on Juicy-Campus, the Web site he created. The site was blocked by some colleges, banned by several student governments, and threatened with legal action by several students who claimed that defaming comments on the…

While a growing number of longitudinal studies contribute to our knowledge on the relationship between delinquent peers and one's own delinquent behavior, researchers have generally approached the issue in a restricted way: failing to identify mediating processes or to distinguish between what peers approve of and what they do. Moreover, most…

Evidence shows that engaged students perform better academically than disinterested students. Measurement of engagement with education is difficult and imprecise, especially in large student cohorts. Traditional measurements such as summary statistics derived from assessment are crude secondary measures of engagement at best and do not provide…

This article examines how Norwegian children with physical disabilities experience friendship during the transition between primary and secondary school. The research was based on 38 life mode interviews with 15 children. Two themes were explored: (1) different kinds of friends: friends with disabilities, friends without disabilities and…

Based on a 3-year qualitative research study that took place in a new immigrant-receiving community in North Carolina, the manuscript examines the implications of transnational cultural and sociolinguistic patterns of multilingual indigenous Latino immigrants (ILIs), and its effects on their survival in the US. Utilizing narrative analysis, it…