This article presents preliminary data correlating students' scores on measures of speaking, listening, and reading with their grades in Spanish courses. As might be expected, students with higher grades generally scored higher on performance assessments than did classmates with lower course grades. However, large score ranges resulted within a…

Schools across the United States are facing budgetary pressures on a scale not seen in generations. Times of fiscal exigency force policymakers and education practitioners to pay more attention to the return on various categories of public investment in education. The sizes of the classes in which students are educated are often a focus of these…

This collection of nuanced, insightful papers is a welcome contribution to research and policy dialogue around international youth development. At the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the lead government agency for foreign assistance, a growing understanding of the profound links between the well-being of youth and…

In the midst of disciplinary and public debates about education at open-access institutions, it's more important than ever that institutions set a clear path for inquiry and scholarship that will meet the needs of the professional community. This essay provides an assessment of the research achievements in two-year college English, particularly…

This issue of "Issues in Prevention" focuses on the impact of the availability of drinks in licensed establishments, such as bars and taverns on student drinking. This issue contains the following articles: (1) Cheap Drinks at College Bars Can Escalate Student Drinking (John D. Clapp); (2) High Alcohol Outlet Density: A Problem for Campuses and…

Within academia there is an elaborate and extensive system of awards for both students and faculty (Frey, 2006). Although the majority of student-based awards are for outstanding leadership and related accomplishments, there has been virtually no research on the impact of receiving such a leadership award (Frey, 2006). Due to the conspicuous…

Recognizable symptoms and features of borderline personality disorder (BPD) appear during adolescence. However, there has been resistance to diagnose or research this disorder prior to adulthood because of clinical lore that BPD is a long-standing illness and that personality traits are not stable until adulthood. This has resulted in little…

This commentary addresses Subotnik et al.'s target article from the perspective of researchers active in the field of giftedness. First, we self-critically examine the current standing of giftedness research within the scientific community. Second, the authors' critique of gifted education is sharpened in three respects: (a) gifted identification,…

Career programming is a useful framework for thinking about how to support youth development across schools and multiple out-of-school-time contexts. The articles in this issue of "New Directions for Youth Development" highlight the broad research base relevant to career programming from which policy and practice can draw. This concluding article…

Despite previous and successful attempts to outline general criteria for rigor, researchers in special education have debated the application of rigor criteria, the significance or importance of small n research, the purpose of interpretivist approaches, and the generalizability of qualitative empirical results. Adding to these complications, the…

This special issue of "portal: Libraries and the Academy" grew out of a discussion about the need for speculative, creative space within the library and information science (LIS) literature.1 While venues for exposing important research and illuminating case studies are plentiful, the LIS literature lacks an obvious platform on which to…

Background: During the last 30 years, several theories of motivation have generated insights into the motives underlying learners' behavior in physical education. Self-determination theory (SDT), a general theory on social development and motivation, has enjoyed increasing popularity in physical education research during the past decade. SDT…

Background/Context: Principles of evidential reasoning have often been discussed in the context of educational and psychological measurement with respect to construct validity and validity arguments. More recently, Mislevy proposed the metaphor of assessment as an evidentiary argument about students' learning and abilities given their…

Research on the inclusion of women in textbooks found severe inequalities in the way women were included in text and illustration. The use of carefully and purposefully selected images in the classroom can address both the lack of images of women in textbooks as well as the stereotypical portrayal of woman in textbook images.

Although "the compilation of lists of best practices accelerated", significant resources have been allocated, and federal mandates requiring transition special education services for students with disabilities have been in place now for over three decades, post school outcomes for students with disabilities have still not improved…