CIRCLE Working Paper #72 addresses whether efforts to systematically incorporate media into school curricula increases several elements of civic engagement, including students' media use, political knowledge or their sense of being able to understand and influence politics (internal political efficacy). In "The Classroom-Kitchen Table…

In vocational education, a challenging issue is to help apprentices build integrated knowledge from workplace training and school teaching. The present research proposes a learning design in which apprentices are required to write with a reciprocal peer-tutoring approach about situations they encountered in the workplace in order to help in…

The topic for this article is parents' participation and willingness to participate in formalized home-school cooperation. The analyses are based on a nationwide survey among parents in lower secondary schools in Norway. A main finding is that parental involvement practices differ according to parents' level of education in the sense that parents…

Many studies have examined the reasons for students' satisfaction or dissatisfaction with their higher educational experience. However, no single paper reviews the major attributes of an educational program that are most commonly found to be significant predictors of student satisfaction. This paper reviews the major attributes that most influence…

U.S. Department of Education studies reveal that, by various measures, almost 75 percent of college students today are "non-traditional." While the "non-traditional" label used to refer mostly to students beyond the 18-to-22 age range (about 40 percent of college students are older than 22), the phrase now connotes students of all ages who are…

Objective: Identify college freshmen perceptions of the effectiveness of a nutrition module taught by graduate nutrition students. Participants: Thirty-four college freshmen, 18 and older. Methods: Three graduate nutrition students conducted 5 focus groups during spring semester, 2004. Audio recordings were transcribed and data analysis was based…

Recent research has challenged traditional assumptions that scientific practice and knowledge are essentially individual accomplishments, highlighting instead the social nature of scientific practices, and the co-construction of scientific knowledge. Similarly, new research paradigms for studying learning go beyond focusing on what is "in the…

This study used action research methodology to explore factors that influenced student athletes to major in family and consumer sciences (FCS). Three survey groups included current student athletes (n = 23), alumni athletes (n = 14), and FCS faculty (n = 5). Current student athletes and FCS faculty participated in separate focus groups. The…

The rationale for taking bold action on the nation's persistently failing schools can be summed up in one dramatic and disturbing statistic: half of the young Americans who drop out of high school attend just 12 percent of the nation's schools. Ending the cycle of failure at schools is a daunting challenge and a surprisingly controversial one.…

Continuing professional development for teaching is important for institutional renewal, teacher development and student learning improvement. However, our longitudinal research into provision of continuing professional development has shown that the majority of educators who attend professional development workshops do not put what they have…

This research study examines the factors involved in the child care choices of low-income working families in two urban communities. Applying qualitative research methods, this study explores how low-income parents' decisions are shaped, facilitated, or constrained by "family characteristics" as well as "contextual community…

In this empirical study, teacher reported knowledge, use, preparation, and importance of higher-level thinking summative assessment questions were analyzed. This study was conducted using a survey distributed to seven Minnesota high schools that represented urban, suburban, and rural settings. Survey responses were cross tabulated with demographic…

We have investigated the grasp of some of the basic concepts of motion by students taking the introductory physics course in Mechanics at United Arab Emirates University (UAEU). We have developed a short research-based multiple-choice test where we were able to extract some information about the state of knowledge of the students. In general, the…

This volume begins with an essay by Noelle McAfee, a contributor who is familiar to readers of Higher Education Exchange (HEX). She reiterates Kettering's president David Mathews' argument regarding the disconnect between higher education's sense of engagement and the public's sense of engagement, and suggests a way around the epistemological…

The World Wide Web has come a long way in a very short time. A little more than a decade ago, with the invention of Mosaic, the first browser to display images inline with text instead of displaying images in a separate window, and Netscape, the first graphical user interface (browser), people began to experience a rapid expansion of information.…