From the workplace to the classroom:examining the impact of self-leadership learning strategies on higher educational attainment and success

Self-leadership is a concept from the organisational and management literature broadly combining processes of self-goal setting, self-regulation and self-motivation. Research has typically focused on the impact of self-leadership on work performance outcomes, with little attention to potential benefits for learning and development. In this paper, we employ a longitudinal design to examine the association of a number of processes of self-leadership with higher educational attainment in a sample of business students (N = 150). Self-reported use of strategies related to behavioural, cognitive and motivational aspects of self-leadership were measured in the first semester of the academic year, and correlated with end-of year grade point average. We found that in particular, self-goal setting, pro-active goal-related behaviour, behaviour regulation and direction, motivational awareness, and optimism were all significant predictors of educational attainment. We discuss implications for educational research and for teachers and tutors in practice.

The Effects of Social Class and Ethnicity on Gender Differences in GCSE Attainment: A Secondary Analysis of the Youth Cohort Study of England and Wales 1997-2001

This article is based upon a secondary analysis of the Youth Cohort Study of England and Wales 1998 and examines the effects of social class and ethnicity on gender differences in GCSE attainment for those who left school in 1997 (n = 14,662). The article shows that both social class and ethnicity exert a far greater influence on the GCSE performance of boys and girls than gender. Moreover, the article also shows that an interaction effect is present between social class and gender and also between ethnicity and gender in relation to their impact upon GCSE attainment. More specifically, the findings suggest that a strong correlation exists such that the lower the overall levels of educational attainment for any group (whether that group is defined in terms of social class or ethnicity), the higher the gender differences that exist between those within that group.

Summary statistics, educational achievement gaps and the ecological fallacy

Summary statistics continue to play an important role in identifying and monitoring patterns and trends in educational inequalities between differing groups of pupils over time. However, this article argues that their uncritical use can also encourage the labelling of whole groups of pupils as ‘underachievers’ or ‘overachievers’ as the findings of group-level data are simply applied to individual group members, a practice commonly termed the ‘ecological fallacy’. Some of the adverse consequences of this will be outlined in relation to current debates concerning gender and ethnic differences in educational attainment. It will be argued that one way of countering this uncritical use of summary statistics and the ecological fallacy that it tends to encourage, is to make much more use of the principles and methods of what has been termed ‘exploratory data analysis’. Such an approach is illustrated through a secondary analysis of data from the Youth Cohort Study of England and Wales, focusing on gender and ethnic differences in educational attainment. It will be shown that, by placing an emphasis on the graphical display of data and on encouraging researchers to describe those data more qualitatively, such an approach represents an essential addition to the use of simple summary statistics and helps to avoid the limitations associated with them.

Leisure goods, education attainment and fertility choice

This paper proposes a novel mechanism for the fertility decline that occurred across the world since the late nineteenth century. It suggests that the rise in the cost of children relative to leisure goods in the process of development contributed to the decline in fertility. The paper develops a unified growth model in which children are substitutes for leisure goods in the parental utility function. The theory suggests that the rise in income, the decline in the relative price of leisure goods and the increase in educational attainment in the process of development speed up the demographic transition from high to low fertility and contributed to the transition from stagnation to growth.

Modelling trajectories through the educational system in North West England

The main aim of this paper is to identify those school-level and locality-level factors that significantly affect each of the three stages in a young adult's educational trajectory in North West England: GCSE results, track taken at age 16 and 'A'-level scores. By applying three-level models to data collected as part of the EFFNATIS project, we find no evidence of any locality-level effects. Overall, none of the explanatory variables conventionally considered to affect educational attainment had a consistent effect across all three stages. Rather, each explanatory variable had a contingent effect at specific points within the overall trajectory of educational outcomes.

Adolescents' educational outcomes in a social ecology of parenting, family, and community risks in Northern Ireland

This study examines the influence of social ecological risks within the domains of parenting, family environment, and community in the prediction of educational outcomes for 770 adolescents (49% boys, 51% girls, M = 13.6 years, SD = 2.0) living in a setting of protracted political conflict, specifically working class areas of Belfast, Northern Ireland. Controlling for religious community, age, and gender, youths' lower academic achievement was associated with family environments characterized by high conflict and low cohesion. School behaviour problems were related to greater exposure to community violence, or sectarian and nonsectarian antisocial behaviour. Youths' expectations about educational attainment were undermined by conflict in the family environment and antisocial behaviour in the community, as well as parenting low in warmth and behavioural control. Findings underscore the importance of considering family and community contributions to youths' educational outcomes. Suggestions regarding targeted interventions toward promoting resilience are discussed, such as assessing both child and family functioning, developing multidimensional interventions for parents, and building community partnerships, among others.

School's out forever: Postsecondary educational trajectories of students with autism

Objective:Postsecondary educational attainment is the key for successful transition to adulthood, economic self-sufficiency, and good mental and physical health.Method:Secondary analyses of school leavers’ data were carried out to establish postsecondary educational trajectories of students on the autism spectrum in the United Kingdom.Results:Findings show that students with autism who had attended mainstream secondary schools enter Further Education (post-16 vocational training) and Higher Education (University) institutions at a similar rate to other students to study the full range ofsubjects on offer. However, they are more likely to be younger, study at a lower academic level, and remain living at home.Conclusion:While course completion data were not yet available, attainment data showed that prospects were improving, although more needs to be done to enable these young adults to a achieving their post secondary educational potential.

Increasing inter-generational social mobility: is educational expansion the answer?

Reforms which increase the stock of education in a society have long been held by policy-makers as key to improving rates of intergenerational social mobility. Yet, despite the intuitive plausibility of this idea, the empirical evidence in support of an effect of educational expansion on social fluidity is both indirect and weak. In this paper we use the raising of the minimum school leaving age from 15 to 16 years in England and Wales in 1972 to estimate the effect of educational participation and qualification attainment on rates of intergenerational social class mobility. Because, in expectation, children born immediately before and after the policy was implemented are statistically exchangeable, the difference in the amount of education they received may be treated as exogenously determined. The exogenous nature of the additional education gain means that differences in rates of social mobility between cohorts affected by the reform can be treated as having been caused by the additional education. The data for the analysis come from the ONS Longitudinal Study, which links individual records from successive decennial censuses between 1971 and 2001. Our findings show that, although the reform resulted in an increase in educational attainment in the population as a whole and a weakening of the association between attainment and class origin, there was no reliably discernible increase in the rate of intergenerational social mobility.

Educational characteristics of adult students in portuguese technological schools

Despite a massive expansion of education in Portugal, since the 1970’s, educational attainment of the adult population in the country remains low. The numbers of working-age people in some form of continuing education are among the lowest, according to the OECD and EU-27 statistics. Technological Schools(TS), initially created in the 1990’s, under the umbrella of the Ministry of Economy in partnership with industry and industrial associations, aimed to prepare qualified staff for industries and services in the country, particularly in the engineering sector, through the provision of post secondary non-university programmes of studies, the CET (Technological Specialization Courses). Successful CET students are awarded a DET(Diploma of Technological Specialization), which corresponds to Vocational Qualification level IV of the EU, according to the latest alteration (2005) of the Education Systems Act (introduced in 1986). In this, CET’s are also clearly defined as one of the routes for access to Higher Education (HE), in Portugal. The PRILHE (Promoting Reflective and Independent Learning in Higher Education) multinational project, funded by the European Socrates Grundtvig Programme, aimed to identify the learning processes which enable adult students in higher education to become autonomous reflective learners and search best practices to support these learning processes. During this research, both quantitative and qualitative methods were used to determine how students organise their studies and develop their learning skills. The Portuguese partner in the project’ consortium used a two case studies approach, one with students of Higher Education Institutions and other with students of TS. This paper only applies to students of TS, as these have a predominant bias towards engineering. Results show that student motivation and professional teaching support contribute equally to the development of an autonomous and reflective approach to learning in adult students; this is essential for success in a knowledge economy, where lifelong learning is the key to continuous employment.

Educational Qualification Without Suitable Employment: Exploring Immigrant Engineers' Personal Narratives

This qualitative study investigated the experiences of immigrant professional engineers in Canada, 81% of whom are unable to secure employment in their field despite arriving under the auspices of the Canadian government’s skilled workers program. The study sought to identify factors that impede such qualified engineers’ opportunities within the Canadian job market. Because global economic competition demands that qualified professionals contribute to technological innovation, Canada must develop transitional programs that acknowledge credentials and prior work experience in order to address the underutilization of these qualified professionals and allow immigrant engineers to gain employment within their field. To this end, the study examined personal narratives of immigrant engineers who have experienced unemployment despite high levels of educational attainment, and circumstances that contribute to immigrant engineers’ unemployed status. The paper presents a discussion and recommendations for future research in the area of qualification without suitable employment.  

Sociology, Gender and Educational Aspirations: Girls and their Ambitions

This study helps develop an overall understanding as to why some students achieve where others don't. Debate on the effects of class on educational attainment is well documented and typically centres on the reproductive nature of class whilst studies of the effect of class on educational aspirations also predict outcomes that see education reinforcing and reproducing a student's class background.Despite a number of government initiatives to help raise higher education participation to 50 per cent by 2010, for the working class numbers have altered little. Using data from an ethnographic case study of a low-achieving girls school, the author explores aspirations and argues that whilst class is very powerful in explaining educational attainment, understanding educational aspirations is somewhat more complex. The purpose of this book, therefore, is to question and challenge popular assumptions surrounding class-based theory in making sense of girls' aspirations and to question the usefulness of the continued over reliance of such broad categorisations by both academics and policy makers

Catching-up: The educational mobility of migrants’ and natives’ children in Europe

Migrants into European countries are often less educated than European natives. We investigate whether migrants' children are able to catch up to their native counterparts in educational attainment, and analyze the drivers of differences in intergenerational educational upward mobility between natives' versus migrants' descendants. We find that migrants' children are more likely than natives' children to surpass their parents' educational attainment in the majority of countries studied. Their parents' low education is often the strongest determinant for their ability to move up in education class across generations.

Early developmental, temperamental and educational problems in ‘substance use disorder’ patients with and without ADHD. Does ADHD make a difference?

Introduction: The prevalence of ADHD among patients with substance use disorder (SUD) is substantial. This study addressed the following research questions: Are early developmental, temperamental and educational problems overrepresented among SUD patients with ADHD compared to SUD patients without ADHD? Do this comorbid group receive early help for their ADHD, and are there signs of self-medicating with illicit central stimulants? Method: An international, multi-centre cross-sectional study was carried out involving seven European countries, with 1205 patients in treatment for SUD. The mean age was 40 years and 27% of the sample was female. All par- ticipants were interviewed with the Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview Plus and the Conners' Adult ADHD Diagnostic Interview for DSM-IV. Results: SUD patients with ADHD (n = 196; 16.3% of the total sample) had a significantly slower infant develop- ment than SUD patients without ADHD (n = 1,009; 83.4%), had greater problems controlling their temperament, and had lower educational attainment. Only 24 (12%) of the current ADHD positive patients had been diagnosed and treated during childhood and/or adolescence. Finally, SUD patients with ADHD were more likely to have central stimulants or cannabis as their primary substance of abuse, whereas alcohol use was more likely to be the primary substance of abuse in SUD patients without ADHD. Conclusion: The results emphasize the importance of early identification of ADHD and targeted interventions in the health and school system, as well as in the addiction field.

The Social Geography of Education: Neighborhood, Class Composition, and the Educational Achievement of Elementary School Students in Zurich, Switzerland

Despite an impressive amount of research and policy intervention no robust pattern of neighborhood effects on educational attainment has previously been identified. Adequate theoretical modeling and the sensitivity of the results to the method of the study are the major challenges in this area of research. This paper elaborates the social mechanisms of neighborhood effects and applies various methodological approaches to test them. Using data from Switzerland, the research reported here has detected heterogeneous effects of neighborhood on elementary school students’ educational achievement in Zurich. Although modest in comparison with the effects of classroom composition, these effects appear to be mediated primarily through social integration into a local peer network and are differentiated according to students’ gender and their social origin.

Demographic and clinical correlates of comorbid substance use disorders in psychosis : multivariate analyses from an epidemiological sample

Background: While there has been substantial research examining the correlates of comorbid substance abuse in psychotic disorders, it has been difficult to tease apart the relative importance of individual variables. Multivariate analyses are required, in which the relative contributions of risk factors to specific forms of substance misuse are examined, while taking into account the effects of other important correlates. Methods: This study used multivariate correlates of several forms of comorbid substance misuse in a large epidemiological sample of 852 Australians with DSMIII- R-diagnosed psychoses. Results: Multiple substance use was common and equally prevalent in nonaffective and affective psychoses. The most consistent correlate across the substance use disorders was male sex. Younger age groups were more likely to report the use of illegal drugs, while alcohol misuse was not associated with age. Side effects secondary to medication were associated with the misuse of cannabis and multiple substances, but not alcohol. Lower educational attainment was associated with cannabis misuse but not other forms of substance abuse. Conclusion: The profile of substance misuse in psychosis shows clinical and demographic gradients that can inform treatment and preventive research.