After the 2008 Olympics is concluded and commentators and journalists internationally begin the process of evaluating Beijing's performance as the host city, one of the primary elements to be analyzed will be the quality of visitor service provided by more than 70,000 volunteers. Given the large number of Chinese students who have chosen a Western…

School counselors were surveyed regarding their choice to join or not join their professional organization. Members and nonmembers differed on the following: whether participants' graduate program emphasized professional membership, membership status of colleagues, the belief that professional organizations advance the field, and the belief that…

A critical conceptual analysis of the South African Higher Education context reflects the lack of a structural and functional framework for the conceptualisation of community engagement (CE) in higher education. The purpose of this article is to explore a framework and model for the conceptualisation of CE for a better understanding of community…

Deficit views of Mexican parents are pervasive and hinder both parents and school staff from effectively supporting student achievement. Analysis of the qualitative results from a larger study of school-based adult ESL classes yielded findings about the motivations and capacities of Mexican mothers that critique these deficit views and illuminate…

Strengthening the transition from school to work is a major educational reform issue on the Chinese Mainland. Starting in 1985, the government began developing a massive secondary vocational education system, which sought to have 50% of all secondary senior level students enrolled in a vocational education programme. In this study, qualitative…

This response to Slavin's article (2008) explores the issues of transparency, representation, and warranting of claims in Slavin's descriptions of the work of others and his suggestions for program evaluation syntheses. Through contrastive analyses between Slavin's representations of the program evaluation synthesis efforts of five organizations…

With the invention of World Wide Web in 1992, delivery of distance education via internet and emergency of web-based classrooms have rapidly gained acceptance as an alternative and supplement to traditional face to face classroom instruction (Alavi, Yoo & Vogel, 1997; Rahm & Reed, 1997), which represents a paradigm shift challenging all…

This qualitative study explored how informal community networks (i.e., faith based organizations, community cultural centers and service agencies) provided information to culturally and linguistically diverse families. The goals of this study were, first, to gain a better understanding of the methods the informal community networks used to…

There is limited literature connecting the field of school counseling and pre-service counseling education programs to the individual student planning process with English learners in high school. This study employed multiple case studies to explore the issues that arise during school counselors' planning sessions with recently arrived English…

While approximately 62% of high school graduates enroll in college, almost half of these students do not return for their second year in school. This demonstratable gap in college interest and reaching actual goals speaks to a need for information on how to facilitate the precollege guidance process to achieve more successful high school graduate…

Since the early 1980s, policy makers and educational leaders have pinned high hopes on mentoring as a vehicle for reforming teaching and teacher education (Feiman-Nemser, 1996). A review of literature written throughout the evolution of mentoring illustrated that researchers focused most of their attention on a relatively narrow aspect of…

This study examines the reflections of preservice teachers in relation to their experiential knowledge gained through active learning of African American culture and their perceptions and beliefs concerning the home life of these students and their lives in the community. This action research study presents the results of a qualitative analysis of…

This research study explored and analyzed the perception and attitudes of first year White special education teachers' experiences as they successfully matriculated through an alternative teacher certification program with a concentration in Special Education. The certifying entity for this teacher preparation program was a historically Black…

The language shortcuts used in text messages are becoming evident in students' academic writing assignments. This qualitative study sought to determine if the use of the shortcuts has an adverse impact on developmental students' spelling and grammar skills. This research was based on the constructivist theory, which rationalizes that students use…

Since the lifting of martial law in 1987, the rapid liberalization and democratization of Taiwan has led to the transformation of its political structure from a single-party system to a full-fledged two-party system. Along with this political opposition are the two contrastive concepts, the North and the South. Located in this background, this…