bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Catching up in Community Colleges: Academic Preparation and Transfer to Four-Year Institutions
Authors: Roksa Josipa , Calcagno Juan Carlos 
Published: November 2021

Background/Context Transfer from community colleges to four-year institutions remains a contentious issue in higher education, with proponents showing that students do indeed transfer to four-year institutions and opponents arguing that starting in community colleges hinders baccalaureate degree attainment. One particularly salient issue in this debate is academic preparation. Although virtually all studies of transfer control for academic preparation, there is a dearth of research focusing on whether and how academically unprepared students can catch up in higher education. Research Questions We address two research questions: To what extent do academically unprepared students transfer to four-year institutions? And, can successful completion of intermediate outcomes, such as passing college-level math and writing courses, meeting specific credit thresholds, and earning an associate's degree, diminish the role of initial preparation and increase the probability of transfer? Research Design Using event history techniques, we estimate the likelihood of transfer from community colleges to four-year institutions. Analyses include 20,900 first-time degree-seeking students who enrolled in Florida community colleges in the fall of 1998. Student enrollment is tracked through the summer of 2003. Results Community colleges can indeed serve as an alternative road of access to four-year institutions, even for academically unprepared students: Almost 20% of students in our sample who entered community colleges unprepared for college-level work made the transition to four-year institutions. Moreover, we found that successful completion of intermediate outcomes, such as passing college-level math and writing courses, meeting specific credit thresholds, and earning an associate's degree, enhances the probability of transfer. However, the ability of community colleges to mitigate the negative effects of inadequate academic preparation on transfer is limited; regardless of the intermediate outcome completed, academically unprepared students continued to lag substantially behind their more prepared counterparts. Conclusion Community colleges can serve as a democratizing force in higher education; however, their ability to overcome inadequate academic preparation with which some students enter higher education is limited. Improving academic preparation in K–12 is thus a crucial component of enhancing transfer.
Disrupting Injustice: Principals Narrate the Strategies They Use to Improve Their Schools and Advance Social Justice
Authors: Theoharis George 
Published: November 2021

Background/Context A group of educators have demonstrated success not only with White middle-class and affluent students but also with students from varied racial, socioeconomic, linguistic, ability, and cultural backgrounds. A reoccurring theme from these schools and from the literature on school change is that exemplary leadership helps create the necessity for change and helps make the realities of change happen. More specifically, leaders at these schools where students traditionally marginalized are thriving come to administration with a commitment, or larger “call,” to focus their leadership on issues of equity and justice. Purpose Scholars and administrators alike have called for “constructive models” of this kind of leadership. This article provides examples of these accomplishments in practice. It also provides insight into the realities of leading for social justice by revealing what principals sought to accomplish and how they approached that work. Participants This article focuses on 6 principals—2 elementary, 2 middle, and 2 high school—who (1) led a public school, (2) possessed a belief that promoting social justice is a driving force behind what brought them to their leadership position, (3) advocated, led, and kept at the center of their practice/vision issues of race, class, gender, disability, sexual orientation, and/or other historically marginalizing conditions, and (4) had evidence to show that their work has produced a more just school. Research Design The qualitative study in which these analyses are grounded used a positioned subject approach. The method of data collection took place over one school year and included in-depth interviews with the principals, a review of documents and materials, site visits, discussions/interviews with school staff, a detailed field log, and a group meeting of the principal participants. This article is a focused discussion of aspects of a larger study, using the principals’ voices to illustrate key themes. Findings These leaders narrate the strategies they used to disrupt four kinds of school injustice: (1) school structures that marginalize, segregate, and impede achievement, such as pullout programs; (2) a deprofessionalized teaching staff who could benefit from focused staff development; (3) a school climate that needed to be more welcoming to marginalized families and the community; and (4) disparate student achievement levels. Recommendations A series of lessons emerged from this research: that social justice in schools is more than rhetoric—indeed, it can be achieved; that inclusive schooling is a necessary and enriching component to enacting justice; that increasing staff capacity is essential to carry out a comprehensive agenda focused on equity; and that creating a climate that deeply values racial, cultural, and economic diversity is a key strategy to enacting justice.
Learning from Success as Leverage for a Professional Learning Community: Exploring an Alternative Perspective of School Improvement Process
Authors: Schechter Chen 
Published: November 2021

Background Although the professional learning community as a means of improving student achievement has received growing support from researchers and practitioners alike, professionals are still exploring ways to develop interaction networks regarding teaching and learning issues. Purpose This study explores the evolving stages of a collective learning-from-success process within the framework of a professional learning community. Research Design A qualitative case study of a comprehensive (middle and secondary) public school community was conducted to explore practitioners’ collective learning from successful practices. Data Collection and Analysis A total of 12 detailed session transcripts from the learning-from-success sessions (circle of learners), 42 evaluation forms (21 internal and 21 external evaluations), 6 observations of the development team's sessions, and pertinent documents were collected for analysis. The analysis process involved identifying patterns in the data-recurring ideas and perspectives that depicted the social world studied. Findings Data revealed that this collective process moved through three distinct, but closely interrelated, dynamic stages: invitation and framework building; collective inquiry into colleagues'professional successes; and experimentation and dissemination. Conclusion Whereas collective learning has been approached from a deficit-based orientation, this study reinterprets the professional learning community to include the collective learning-from-success process, thus providing a new outlook for linking concepts with practical capabilities in light of public school reality.
Schools as Architecture for Newcomers and Strangers: The Perfect School as Public School?
Authors: Masschelein Jan , Simons Maarten 
Published: November 2021

Background/Context The article reflects on the public role of education on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the publication of Hannah Arendt's essay, “The Crisis in Education” and in facing the current transformation of public policy into “new public management.” Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study Based on Arendt's essay, “The Crisis in Education,” the article explores that peculiar setting and architecture between family and world that is called school. The leading concern for this investigation is the school's public meaning. The point of departure is that today, the public role of education is an urgent concern, that is, the school's public role is questioned in view of the current processes of privatization, and what is critically described as the “capitalization of life.” In this contribution, based on a reading of Arendt's essay and relying on the analysis of a specific school design by the architect Wim Cuyvers, two different ways of thinking the public meaning of school education are explored. One way of thinking takes the school as an infrastructure of “intro-duction,” while the other way of thinking regards the school as an infrastructure of “e-duc(a)tion.” Research Design This article is an analytic essay. Conclusions/Recommendations The article shows that it is impossible to think “a new beginning in our world” without thinking the school as public space. Drawing on some thoughts of Agamben and the school architecture of Cuyvers, the article offers an outline for elaborating the Arendtian thinking of the “perfect school.” This school is conceived of as a space where people are exposed to things, and being exposed could be regarded as being drawn outside (or as e-ducation), that is, into public space. Public space is a “free space” or the space of “free time.” This free time is precisely the sense that the Greek “scholé” seemed to indicate—a space where (economic, social, cultural, political, private …) time is suspended and where people have time at their disposal for “a new beginning.” Whereas the museum is the setting that accumulates time, the school could be seen as the setting for suspending time. The school as “public architecture,” then, is not a space/time of “intro-duction” and “in-between,” but a space/time of “suspension” and “e-ducation.”
Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Early Education Interventions on Cognitive and Social Development
Authors: Camilli Gregory , Vargas Sadako , Ryan Sharon , Barnett W. Steven 
Published: November 2021

Background/Context There is much current interest in the impact of early childhood education programs on preschoolers and, in particular, on the magnitude of cognitive and affective gains. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study Because this new segment of public education may require substantial resources, accurate descriptions are required of the potential benefits and costs of implementing specific preschool programs. To address this issue comprehensively, a meta-analysis was conducted for the purpose of synthesizing the outcomes of comparative studies in this area. Population/Participants/Subjects A total of 123 comparative studies of early childhood interventions were analyzed. Each study provided a number of contrasts, where a contrast is defined as the comparison of an intervention group of children with an alternative intervention or no intervention group. Intervention/Program/Practice A prevalent pedagogical approach in these studies was direct instruction, but inquiry-based pedagogical approaches also occurred in some interventions. No assumption was made that nominally similar interventions were equivalent. Research Design The meta-analytic database included both quasi-experimental and randomized studies. A coding strategy was developed to record information for computing study effects, study design, sample characteristics, and program characteristics. Findings/Results Consistent with the accrued research base on the effects of preschool education, significant effects were found in this study for children who attend a preschool program prior to entering kindergarten. Although the largest effect sizes were observed for cognitive outcomes, a preschool education was also found to impact children's social skills and school progress. Specific aspects of the treatments that positively correlated with gains included teacher-directed instruction and small-group instruction, but provision of additional services tended to be associated with negative gains. Conclusions/Recommendations Given the current state of research on the efficacy of early childhood interventions, there is both good and bad news. The good news is that a host of original and synthetic studies have found positive effects for a range of outcomes, and this pattern is clearest for outcomes relating to cognitive development. Moreover, many promising variables for program design have been identified and linked to outcomes, though little more can be said of the link than that it is positive. The bad news is that there is much less empirical information in the studies examined available for designing interventions at multiple levels with multiple components.
Children of Immigrants and Educational Expectations: The Roles of School Composition
Authors: Wells Ryan 
Published: November 2021

Background/Context Many children of immigrants are not enrolled in high schools that sufficiently meet their needs, and subsequently, many are not making a successful transition to, and/or successfully completing, higher education. As immigration grows in the United States, educators and policy makers must understand how the educational processes for children of immigrants differ from nonimmigrants. Because expectations for higher education are a necessary, though insufficient, step toward college attendance and degree attainment, and because students have these attitudes influenced by the schools they attend, I examine high school composition for its effects on educational expectations and how compositional effects differ between children of immigrants and nonimmigrants. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study This study intends to be another step on the path toward understanding the educational processes of children of immigrants specifically, and of all students more broadly, as the immigrant population grows in U.S. schools. Toward those ends, this study is based on two overarching research questions: (1) How do the immigrant compositions of U.S. secondary schools affect the educational expectations of all students? (2) How do the compositions of U.S. secondary schools affect the educational expectations of children of immigrants differently than nonimmigrant students? Research Design The research questions are addressed via secondary data analysis using data from the Educational Longitudinal Study (ELS:2002/2004), which were collected by the National Center for Education Statistics. I explore school composition effects on a binary dependent variable indicating whether a 12th-grade student expects to complete a graduate or professional degree. This study emphasizes a critical-quantitative approach by demonstrating that common theories and assumptions about educational expectations may be inaccurate for children of immigrants in today's schools. Conclusions/Recommendations Results show that children of immigrants are affected differently by school composition than are nonimmigrants, and in ways that contradict commonly accepted theoretical views. Specifically, this analysis demonstrates that comparative and normative theories of school effects are not accurate for children of immigrants, at least not to the same degree as they are for nonimmigrants. This is a reminder to researchers and practitioners alike that subgroups of students, in this case the children of immigrants, may not be affected by schools in similar ways.
Race and Cultural Flexibility among Students in Different Multiracial Schools
Authors: Carter Prudence L. 
Published: November 2021

Background/Context One of the most critical functions of a well-integrated school is the development of “culturally flexible” students who, over the course of their social development, effectively navigate diverse social environs such as the workplace, communities, and neighborhoods. Most studies, albeit with some exceptions, have investigated the impact of desegregation on short- and long-term gains in achievement and attainment, as opposed to its impact on intergroup relations. Mixed-race schools are vital not only for bolstering achievement outcomes of previously disadvantaged students but also for promoting social cohesion in a diverse society. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study Specifically, this article examines the difference in cultural flexibility between black and white students enrolled in schools with different racial and ethnic compositions. Cultural flexibility is defined as the propensity to value and move across different cultural and social peer groups and environments. Furthermore, this article provides some insight into how students in different mixed-race and desegregated educational contexts experience their school's social organization and cultural environments, which influence their interactions and academic behaviors. Setting The study was conducted over a 6-month period in four high schools: a majority-minority school and a majority-white school located in a northeastern city, and a majority-minority school and a majority-white school located in a southern city. Research Design Survey data were gathered from a randomly stratified sample of 471 Black and White students attending. In addition, ethnographic notes from weeks of school observations and transcribed interview data from 57 group interviews conducted in the four schools with students in Grades 9–12 complemented the survey research. Data Collection and Analysis Findings reveal significant associations among self-esteem, academic and extracurricular placement, and cultural flexibility for black students. Also, black students in majority-minority schools scored significantly higher on the cultural flexibility scale than those in majority-white schools. Among white students, regional location and academic placement showed statistically significant associations with cultural flexibility. The ethnographic and interview data further explicate why these patterns occurred and illuminate how certain school contextual factors are likely linked to students’ cultural flexibility. Overall, this study's findings highlight some connections between student and school behaviors as they pertain to both students’ and educators’ willingness and ability to realize the visions of racial and ethnic integration wholly.
The Business of Education: Home Study at Columbia University and the University of Wisconsin in the 1920s and 1930s
Authors: Hampel Robert 
Published: November 2021

Background Correspondence schools abounded in early 20th-century America. Several hundred for-profit vendors drew the vast majority of the annual enrollments, which peaked at one half million in the mid-1920s. Dozens of well-known universities created home study departments to expand their “extension” work. The handful of good studies of the origins of distance education falls short of what we need to understand this popular alternative to traditional schooling. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study In 1930, Abraham Flexner ridiculed home study at Columbia, and, to a lesser extent, Wisconsin and Chicago. His denunciation of the mercenary spirit of home study reverberates in contemporary discussions of the entrepreneurial aspirations of American universities. This article places the business practices of home study at Columbia and Wisconsin alongside the work of proprietary schools to see if Flexner's criticisms were accurate. Research Design The article compares the advertising, sales, and collection practices of Columbia, Wisconsin, and the for-profit outfits in the 1920s and 1930s. The archival sources for Columbia and Wisconsin include annual reports, financial statements, letters to and from the directors of home study, and other documents. For the private schools, the verbatim transcripts of the annual meetings of their trade association are especially valuable. Conclusions Flexner's critique is misleading. Columbia avoided the excesses that swelled the income and marred the reputations of many for-profit schools. Wisconsin did even more to distance itself from the proprietary firms. The article ends with ruminations on the options available to universities when they undertake work in a field dominated by the private sector.
Understanding the Teacher Job Search Process: Espoused Preferences and Preferences in Use
Authors: Cannata Marisa 
Published: November 2021

Background/Context There is an extensive body of research on school and student characteristics associated with teacher career decisions that has contributed greatly to our knowledge of teacher preferences. Yet this research also has a number of limitations, including a lack of attention to the sociocultural influences on teacher careers and the processes teachers use to find a job. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study This article focused on the processes that teachers use to find a job and how they came to work in particular schools. In doing so, this article developed a new theoretical conception of teacher career decisions that incorporates Bourdieu's cultural reproduction theory and theories of action. Together, these frameworks highlight how teachers navigate through the hiring process using their practical understanding of how they could make the best match, rather than focusing on explicit preferences. Setting Teacher applicants were recruited from six colleges that provide teachers to one Midwestern metropolitan area. This area was experiencing an oversupply of teachers. Population/Participants/Subjects Participants included individuals currently completing teacher education programs and looking for their first teaching job. Research Design Data for this article came from a mixed-methods study of teacher applicants’ career decisions. The study design included a survey of 289 prospective elementary teachers and in-depth interviews with a subsample of 27 prospective elementary teachers at two points in the hiring season. Findings/Results Teacher applicants’ espoused preferences for schools were consistent with previous research, yet the data indicate that teacher applicants often contradicted these espoused preferences by the actual behavior on the job search. They did so by focusing on the district rather than the school when identifying open positions and focusing on feelings of comfort and familiarity when deciding where to apply. Further, teacher applicants had few sources of information about schools and districts, which forced them to make assumptions about schools and thus reinforced perceptions of familiarity, fit, and comfort. Conclusions/Recommendations Teacher applicants’ practical understanding of the job search was informed by their social and cultural background and emphasized characteristics such as familiarity when making career decisions. Policy makers who want to improve the quality of teaching should focus on developing teachers who want to teach in hard-to-staff schools and on providing teacher applicants with access to more information about schools. Teacher educators should also consider ways to increase teacher applicants’ familiarity and sense of comfort with schools serving high proportions of racial minority or low-income students.