Preparation for meaningful work and life: urban high school youth's reflections on work-based learning 1 year post-graduation

The challenges confronted by low-income high school students throughout school and across the transition to higher education and employment are well-documented in the US and many other nations. Adopting a positive youth development perspective (Lerner et al., 2005), this study reports findings from interviews with 18 low-income, racially and ethnically diverse graduates of an urban Catholic high school in the US. The interviews were designed to shed light on the post-high school experiences of urban high school graduates and to understand how students construct meaning about the value of school and work-based learning (WBL) in their preparation for meaningful work and life. The interviews highlight the perceived value of the academic and non-cognitive preparation students experienced through high school and WBL in relation to the challenges they encountered along the pathway to post-high school success and decent work. Overall, the findings suggest the potential of WBL for low-income youth in facilitating access to resources that build academic and psychological/non-cognitive assets, while also illustrating the role of structural and contextual factors in shaping post-high school transitions and access to meaningful work and life opportunities.Published versio

Attributions for Success and Failure in Mathematics: A Comparative Study of Catholic and Public School Students

The documented higher performance of minority students in Catholic versus public schools raises questions about motivational factors that may underlie the impact of parochial education. This study examines attributions for success and failure and their relationship to mathematics achievement in a sample of African American, Latino, and Caucasian fifth- and sixth-grade public and Catholic school students. Results showed that relative to their public school peers minority students in Catholic schools endorsed attributions that were more adaptive for learning. Specifically: 1) Latino and African American Catholic school students were less likely to attribute success in mathematics to external factors, 2) Latino Catholic school students were more likely to attribute success to ability, and 3) African American Catholic school students were less likely to attribute failure to external factors. Further, for Latino students, Catholic but not public school membership was positively associated with mathematics achievement. Results are discussed in the context of school culture

How do student prior achievement and homework behaviors relate to perceived parental involvement in homework?

This study investigated how students' prior achievement is related to their homework behaviors (i.e., time spent on homework, homework time management, and amount of homework), and to their perceptions of parental involvement in homework (i.e., parental control and parental support). A total of 1250 secondary students from 7 to 10th grade participated in the study. Structural equation models were fitted to the data, compared, and a partial mediation model was chosen. The results indicated that students' prior academic performance was significantly associated with both of the students' homework variables, with direct and indirect results linking achievement and homework behaviors with perceived parental control and support behaviors about homework. Lowachieving students, in particular, perceived more parental control of homework in the secondary grades. These results, together with those of previous research, suggest a recursive relationship between secondary school students' achievement and their perceptions of parental involvement in homework, which represents the process of student learning and family engagement over time. Study limitations and educational implications are discussed.This work has been funded by the Department of Science and Innovation (Spain) under the National Program for Research, Development and Innovation: project EDU2014-57571-P, and from the European Union, through the European Regional Development Funds and the Principality of Asturias, through its Science, Technology and Innovation Plan (grant GRUPIN14-100 and GRUPIN14-053).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Dissolving the digital divide : Creating coherence in young people's social ecologies of learning and identity building

This chapter discusses current research on educational efforts to connect school learning with young people’s digital practices in- and out-of-school. Instead of focusing on divides between in-school and out-of-school learning or between the “digital generation” and other age groups, in this chapter we discuss what recent research says about the ways in which school can become a space in which young people’s digital practices can transformatively converge with schooling, and how this convergence is related to their learning and identity building. We begin our narrative reflection of current research by focusing on the myth of digital natives. Next, we will conceptualize recent efforts to researching and understanding young people’s engagement, learning and identity building across sites and contexts. We will then turn to illuminating some key rationales of current educational research on creating convergence in young people’s social ecologies via the use of digital technologies and media. We conclude our reflections by pointing out that although there are some promising findings on how digital technologies and media can create convergence in young people’s engagement and learning across sites and contexts, less research attention is given to young people’s personal sense-making and self-making mediated by their digital practices, and how formal education could build on those practices for academic, vocational and/or civic ends.Peer reviewe

Perceptions and Practices of Stimulating Children’s Cognitive Development Among Moroccan Immigrant Mothers

We explored the perceptions of children’s cognitive development among Moroccan Arabic and Berber immigrant mothers who cannot read, who are less educated, middle educated or highly educated in the Netherlands. A series of in-depth interviews was conducted with 22 mothers with young children (mean age = 5 years and 6 months). Qualitative data analyses revealed five major themes that are of significant importance to these mothers: moral attitudes, social values and religiousness; conversation, reading and playing as stimulating activities; importance attached to education; parental expectations; attributions of school success. The parental perceptions about the cognitive development of young children differed according to their own educational level. Mothers who cannot read and mothers with less education emphasized the development of moral, social and religious values for strengthening the cultural identity of their children. This sense of identity would enable them to function within their own cultural group and help them to perform well at school. School success was attributed in large part to a combination of the efforts of the child and the school. Middle and highly educated mothers, on the other hand, valued scholastic development and attributed school success to their own efforts and to the kind of support the child received. The ethnic background of the parents, whether Arabic or Berber, did not make a difference in the perceptions

In-lecture learning motivation predicts students’ motivation, intention, and behaviour for after-lecture learning: Examining the trans-contextual model across universities from UK, China, and Pakistan

This paper presents a cross-cultural examination of the trans-contextual model in University education setting. The purpose of the study was to test the effect of students’ perceived autonomy support and in-lecture learning motivation on motivation, intention, and behaviour with respect to after-lecture learning via the mediation of the social cognitive variables: attitude, subjective norm, and perceived behavioural control. University students from UK, China, and Pakistan completed the questionnaires of the study variables. Results revealed that in-lecture perceived autonomy support and autonomous motivation were positively associated with autonomous motivation and intention to engage in after-lecture learning activities via the mediation of the social cognitive variables in all samples. After controlling for the effect of past behaviour, relations between intention and behaviour were only observed in the Chinese sample. In conclusion, the trans-contextual model can be applied to University education, but cultural differences appear to moderate the predictive power of the model, particularly for the intention-behaviour relationship

Attributions for Success and Failure in Mathematics: A Comparative Study of Catholic and Public School Students

The documented higher performance of minority students in Catholic versus public schools raises questions about motivational factors that may underlie the impact of parochial education. This study examines attributions for success and failure and their relationship to mathematics achievement in a sample of African American, Latino, and Caucasian fifth- and sixth-grade public and Catholic school students. Results showed that relative to their public school peers minority students in Catholic schools endorsed attributions that were more adaptive for learning. Specifically: 1) Latino and African American Catholic school students were less likely to attribute success in mathematics to external factors, 2) Latino Catholic school students were more likely to attribute success to ability, and 3) African American Catholic school students were less likely to attribute failure to external factors. Further, for Latino students, Catholic but not public school membership was positively associated with mathematics achievement. Results are discussed in the context of school culture