Purpose: This article aims to set the scene for this Special Issue on beginning principals and to inform one's understanding of how new principals manage their work lives to make a difference in their schools. Design/methodology/approach: Based on recent literature on beginning principals, the paper draws together and analyses issues encompassing…

Recent work with human infants and toddlers suggests a dissociation between performance on looking and reaching tasks. Specifically, infants appear to generate accurate representations of occluded objects and their actions when tested in expectancy violation looking tasks but often fail to use this information when reaching for occluded objects.…

Prior research has shown that students consistently overestimate their performance on academic exams, with the error being inversely related to their grades. The effect has been explained as a matter of competency. If true, then students who do not know what they do not know are put in a double bind. They do not have the cognitive ability to…

The Future Events Scale (FES; S. M. Andersen, 1990) is an expectancy-based measure of optimism and pessimism, grounded in cognitive theories of depression, with implications for clinical practice. Although ample research has documented the utility of the FES in predicting important cognitive and behavioral outcomes, psychometric data on the scale…

This article deals with a study that helped reveal the influence of the religious factor on the consciousness, intentions, expectations, and social behavior of young Russians. In this article, the author discusses the rising popularity of religion and its increasingly stronger role and influence, and the increasing secularization, worldview…

Previous research from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) presents student reports of time spent on homework and teacher reports of amount of homework assigned. However, no research using recent, nationally representative data has investigated the amount of homework expected of and completed by a cohort of students as they…

This report presents data on parents' and families' involvement in their children's education in the United States according to parents' reports for the 2006-07 school year. It also incorporates basic demographic information about children, parent/guardian characteristics, and household characteristics. The data come from the Parent and Family…

This review of the literature investigates the various factors identified by researchers to explain women's underrepresentation in the engineering field. Because a great deal of research has been published through the years, a compilation summary of existing research was necessary. This literature review utilized searches from thousands of…

This manuscript briefly examines minority participation within the school population that is eligible for special education services--namely, African Americans in the United States and the Roma population in Romania. A large percentage of students from both minorities come to school unprepared to learn and they remain behind because of the…

The purpose of this study was to determine the factors that influence African American parents' involvement in their children's middle school experiences. Two focus group interviews were conducted with African American parents. While the participants viewed parent involvement as important, they reported that family structure and socioeconomic…

To introduce this special section marking the 25th anniversary of the publication of "A Nation at Risk," the author contemplates the document's lasting impact and refreshes readers' memories about the problems it defined and the recommendations it offered. In April of 1983, "A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform" was unveiled.…

Educational statistics and worldwide media have reported a gender gap in academic achievement, with boys falling behind girls with regard to grades, high school graduation, and college enrollment and retention. This mixed methods study involved interviews with educators and the examination of quantitative data to investigate this issue in a school…

This survey study explored gender differences in transition imperatives and opportunities for youth with disabilities (N = 521). Results indicated that males and females differ in terms of the adult outcomes they hope to achieve, transition training opportunities they have received, and their access to teachers and other nonfamilial adults to…

A path model based in a theory of social capital was tested with Latino middle school (n = 195, 58% female, average 13.8 years of age) and high school students (n = 129, 64% female, average 16.8 years of age). Most participants (77%) were immigrants (predominantly from Mexico). Questionnaires assessed student perceptions of parent involvement,…

This article reviews recent literature highlighting the challenges associated with the college-to-work transition and proposes a model for understanding the experience of workplace entry for new graduates. This model outlines three stages of development in the transition process, namely (a) anticipation, (b) adjustment, and (c) achievement, and…