Urban high-school students' low average level of academic achievement is a national problem. A lack of academic progress is a factor that contributes to students failing to graduate. In response to these urban high school student problems, a growing number of urban charter high schools have opened as an alternative to the traditional public high…

Increasing pressures on colleges and universities to ensure degree completion and job placement as measures of success make it imperative that the path to graduation is clear and that seniors receive the support needed to earn a degree and make a successful transition to life beyond college. This new edited collection describes today's college…

Schools are beginning to offer an increasing number of courses in social and emotional intelligence, teaching students how to better understand their own emotions and the emotions of others. It sounds warm and fuzzy, but it's a trend backed up by hard data. This article discusses what new studies reveal--that teaching kids to be emotionally and…

How can higher education faculty, staff, and administrators create campus environments that guide students in their development within chosen disciplines and careers as well as in ways that contribute to a common good? How can they help students find a sense of calling in life? What does it mean to cultivate a sense of purpose in students? Are…

The "enhancement agenda" in educational policy is based on the idea that "something affective", which supports and improves learning, can be a) measured and b) enhanced. This idea is explored, and it is argued that the identity of the "something" that the enhancement agenda seeks to enhance is fatally obscure, as is the idea of measurable…

Service-learning, by its very nature, fosters young people's spiritual development, especially in experiencing a sense of interconnectedness with others and the rest of the world; opening one's heart; and expanding self-inquiry and self-knowledge. (Contains 7 notes.)

This article explores a graduate student's process of embracing emergent identity as a researcher in the field of counselling, and how this is facilitated through mentoring relationships. I apply concepts from Winnicott's object relations theory (1958, 1965, 1971) and Lave and Wenger's (1991) sociocultural model of "situated learning" to…

Systems thinking is an essential cognitive skill that enables individuals to develop an integrative understanding of a given subject at the conceptual and systemic level. Yet, systems thinking is not usually an innate skill. Helping students develop systems-thinking skills warrants attention from educators. This paper describes a study examining…

This article is about student learning, specifically the problem of what a university can do to develop its students' powers of learning. The broad approach is to discover what we can learn from the university's long experience with developing students' critical faculties and then apply the lessons to developing students' powers of learning. The…

This article provides a multi-level conceptual framework for service-learning that can serve as a decision-making guide for service-learning initiatives in Canadian post-secondary education. Service-learning approach options along a non-hierarchical continuum (philanthropic, social justice, and social transformation) are examined; the theoretical…

This author's interest in philosophy derived from a passion for mathematics that developed in middle high school, which he attended in Sydney. In this article, he provides a self-portrait of his intellectual life and his involvement with the Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia (PESA). He states that despite the research demands of his…

The aim of this article is to serve as a framework for lessons and experiences in grateful living. The objectives in teaching gratitude are to give children opportunities: (1) to create experiences that cultivate an awareness of abundance; (2) to experience and appreciate simple pleasures; (3) to understand how others contribute to a sense of…

The encouragement of the development of a set of graduate attributes to enhance employability in universities is not new. Mostly, however, it takes place within the formal curriculum. This article presents a case study of the outcomes of an institutional award for student development through extra-curricular activity. There are three categories of…

First-generation college students face a number of barriers to academic success and completion of their degrees. Using Bronfenbrenner's (1989) ecological theory as a framework, qualitative research was used to examine the experiences of 10 first-generation Appalachian Kentucky university students (mean age = 21 years) and factors they attributed…

Achieving a doctorate presents candidates with certain challenges--undertaking the research, writing the thesis and defending both at their viva. Throughout that doctoral journey, candidates are expected to display doctorateness in their thesis via the characteristics of high-quality scholarly research. The blockages that occur and prevent…