Singapore educational context contains some of the most provocative and ideological features in a mature education system – school choice, selectivity and tracking. The facts that schools follow the same curriculum, students take standardized examination and teachers have similar pre-service training makes Singapore a suitable case to study peer effects. The policy to give an option to a small group of students, who missed the cutoff for an academically more demanding, to decide their educational track allows me to study the impact of peer quality. Specifically, students at the margin of the cutoffs have a choice to study with better peers at an accelerated learning pace at the expense of a low rank order in class i.e. ‘Second in Rome’ effect or study with weaker peers at a slower learning pace and longer duration but enjoy a high rank order in class i.e. ‘First in Village’ effect. In both settings, students are exposed to the same curriculum albeit at a difference pace with the ‘Second in Rome’ completing the curriculum in 4 years while the ‘First in Village’ group complete theirs in 5 years. I applied the regression discontinuity strategy to compare the performance of students at the margin of the thresholds.

No abstract available. / Thesis (M.Ed.)-University of Durban-Westville, 1977.

The purpose of this exploratory study was to examine “pockets of success” through the voices of participant stakeholders in low socio-economic status urban high schools and communities to identify opportunities and structures that can improve postsecondary outcomes for students. Examining those pockets of success to rise above the dynamics that obstruct pathways to success, and identifying opportunities for students to transcend their social, economic, and human condition, are the impetuses for the study. The study design is grounded in portraiture, created by Lawrence-Lightfoot and Hoffman-Davis (1997), to detail the intricate dynamics and relationships that exist in high schools. Portraiture steps outside of the traditional boundaries of quantitative and qualitative research to converge narrative analysis with public discourse in a search for authenticity. Identifying what the participants value, how they create and promote opportunities for students, the school’s role in rebuilding the surrounding community, and the community’s priority for graduates, provided the groundwork. The review of the literature reconstructs the term “opportunity” in the context of the urban high school, aligning it with the moral purposes of education. It traces the history of educational and social justice barriers for minority students, outlines the impact of leadership decision-making on the evolution of the urban high school, and addresses increasing the capacity of schools to create opportunities for students to succeed. Participants revealed the foundations for success, challenges and goals toward success, conduits to facilitate that success, and collaborations required to build an agenda to couple school-based stakeholders, civic groups, and national organizations to the creation of a national platform to improve outcomes for urban public high school students in disenfranchised communities. / Includes bibliography. / Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2013.

This study investigates student school transitions during adolescence, and how the maintenance and disruption of social ties during this school change affects students' academic trajectory through high school. School transitions are a compulsory part of the American system of education and are characterized as the movement of students between schools. Students follow these institutional pathways when they change schools, and which pathway followed plays a role in how they adjust to the new school. Some transitions are normative and are a part of the organization of schools, such as the transition from middle to high school. Some involve deviation from the traditional path, such as transferring during high school. In either case, transitions interrupt students' academic trajectory through school and involve a transformation of school-based social relationships that affect academic success. Effects of transitions have been underconceptualized in current empirical research, particularly with regard to the nonacademic realm of schools. This dissertation extends research on school transitions by broadening our understanding of how student movement between institutions affects their academic trajectory and how this is linked to three crucial aspects of student transitions: institutional pathway, social relationships made in schools and the opportunity for new social ties at the receiving school. Results reinforce that both affective attachment and extracurricular involvement are related to students overall academic trajectory. This is the case even after those ties are disrupted and reconfigured by changing schools. Results also suggest that social opportunity at the receiving institution is protective against low academic outcomes in the transition to high school, particularly among students who are socially and academically disengaged in middle school. Finally, results point to similarities among students who follow divergent institutional pathways, either in the transition to high school or for those who transfer during high school. Specifically, these students fare better after a school change by the end of high school, net of where they started academically, if they are disengaged from the sending school.

M. Tech. Comparative Local Development / After two decades of democratic transition in South Africa, social exclusion continues to persist in the country. Research studies, thus far, have given little attention to the correlation between social exclusion and pre-tertiary education failures in South Africa, yet the two are closely linked. The objective of this study is to assess whether social exclusion is impacting pre-tertiary education success in South Africa, and as such perpetuating the social exclusion cycle for the poor in the country.

This study introduces a different kind of collaborative research whereby two researchers co-design and co-conduct the research and draw their own conclusions from the shared data. The data, gathered using qualitative tools such as surveys, questionnaires, and interviews, was further enriched as a result of having two individuals from different backgrounds interpreting the data. The data collected from 14 university students who were once identified as ESL students in British Columbia, Canada, were transcribed then analyzed using NUD*IST qualitative computer software. The focus was on their perceptions of ESL programs, immigration process, and socio-cultural factors that contributed to their academic and social integration success. Participants' own words centered mostly on their relationships with families, friends, and ESL teachers as major factors contributing to their success. ESL programs served as their safety nets as the majority suggested that their journey into social and academic mainstreams had undesirable effects on their experiences. Three major factors were identified as having both helped and hindered their adaptation and integration into Canadian school and society: family influence, bicultural identities, and segregation. Results from this study suggest a number of theoretical and practical implications. First, this study need to be replicated in different contexts using a longitudinal approach to document how immigrant ESL students construct their experiences within and outside of school overtime. Secondly, research need to aim at understanding the tension between students' home and school cultures and encourage involvement and collaboration between ESL students, parents, and teachers. In addition, examining how ESL students interact with their mainstream counterparts may provide helpful guidelines for schools to foster an environment whereby unity and support exist between the two groups. This study concludes with both researchers' reflection on each other's thesis. This step led to a critical reexamination of their interpretation. Differences and similarities emerged from this process. The similarities both researchers shared provided a greater degree of validity and reliability to this project. On the other hand, the differences that emerged served to enrich the data by providing two perspectives to the same problem.

This research project attempted to examine the relationship between parental involvement / Thesis (M.Ed) - University of Kwazulu-Natal, 2005.

This study introduces a different kind of collaborative research whereby two researchers co-design and co-conduct the research and draw their own conclusions from the shared data. The data, gathered using qualitative tools such as surveys, questionnaires, and interviews, was further enriched as a result of having two individuals from different backgrounds interpreting the data. The data collected from 14 university students who were once identified as ESL students in British Columbia, Canada, were transcribed then analyzed using NUD*IST qualitative computer software. The focus was on their perceptions of ESL programs, immigration process, and socio-cultural factors that contributed to their academic and social integration success. Participants' own words centered mostly on their relationships with families, friends, and ESL teachers as major factors contributing to their success. ESL programs served as their safety nets as the majority suggested that their journey into social and academic mainstreams had undesirable effects on their experiences. Three major factors were identified as having both helped and hindered their adaptation and integration into Canadian school and society: family influence, bicultural identities, and segregation. Results from this study suggest a number of theoretical and practical implications. First, this study need to be replicated in different contexts using a longitudinal approach to document how immigrant ESL students construct their experiences within and outside of school overtime. Secondly, research need to aim at understanding the tension between students' home and school cultures and encourage involvement and collaboration between ESL students, parents, and teachers. In addition, examining how ESL students interact with their mainstream counterparts may provide helpful guidelines for schools to foster an environment whereby unity and support exist between the two groups. This study concludes with both researchers' reflection on each other's thesis. This step led to a critical reexamination of their interpretation. Differences and similarities emerged from this process. The similarities both researchers shared provided a greater degree of validity and reliability to this project. On the other hand, the differences that emerged served to enrich the data by providing two perspectives to the same problem. / Education, Faculty of / Language and Literacy Education (LLED), Department of / Graduate

Understanding what schools can do to help low-income and high-achieving students succeed academically was one of the prime motivations of this dissertation. In Mexico, low-income students perform in the lowest quartiles of standardized tests, and their future is not promising. In order to understand what factors can help low-income students succeed at school, I reviewed the school effectiveness and resilience literature as to understand the different factors that determine academic achievement of students coming from low-income backgrounds. Through a thorough quantitative analysis of the Programme of International Student Assessment (PISA) 2009 and the Formato 911 databases, I identified the different factors that helped low-income students succeed at school. I first analyzed the student, family, and school factors that determined students’ academic achievement in Mexico, in order to get a general idea of what determined achievement of students in Mexico, as a country. Then, I went further and focused more on my sample of interest and analyzed the student, family, and school factors that were associated with a higher probability of showing higher scores on tests, even when struggling with a lack of resources. The most noteworthy finding from the analyses conducted to understand what determined students’ achievement in Mexico, as a country, was that academic performance was mainly explained by students' individual characteristics. Characteristics, including whether the student had a low or high socioeconomic status, whether he or she was in the appropriate grade, whether the student was a girl or a boy, whether he or she attended preschool, whether the student lived with his or her mother, and the attitude he or she had toward school, seemed to be associated with how the student scored on standardized tests. The school level variables that had a positive association with the students’ performance were the schools’ mean Index of Economic, Social and Cultural Status (ESCS), whether the school was private, and the percentage of indigenous students in the school. By estimating cross-level interaction effects, I found the interaction between ESCS and whether the school was located in a rural area and whether the school was a distance education program to be statistically significant. The aforementioned outcomes showed that one additional standard deviation of income had a very small effect on the academic achievement of students living in rural areas or attending a distance education program school. Another interesting finding is that the number of teachers enrolled in the incentives program offered by the government, Carrera Magisterial, was not statistically significant in any of my models, showing that this program was not effective in improving the education that middle school and 15-year-old students received in Mexico. I also analyzed the different factors that increased the probability of low-income students obtaining scores that were higher than would have been predicted given their socioeconomic status. I named these learners resilient students. I found a student’s attitude toward school, whether the student repeated zero, one or two or more primary school grades, whether they student attended a private or a Telesecundaria school, and the average class size of the school to be statistically significant variables. Attitude toward school seemed to have the largest contribution to increasing the probability of being categorized as resilient, almost half of a standard deviation, and remained positive and statistically significant in the analysis. The analysis showed that improving a student’s attitude toward school in one standard deviation, increased the probability of that student being resilient by 24 percentage points. However, it is hard to tell if students who are succeeding are doing so because of their attitude or if successful students have a better attitude because they are doing well in school. In any case, this variable was highly statistically significant and was similar to a noncognitive ability measure, which, according to the literature, includes skills omitted in most of the analyses of the determinants of achievement. One of most relevant findings of this study is that the number of teachers enrolled in the incentives program of the government, Carrera Magisterial, was not statistically significant in any of my models, showing that this program was not effective in improving the education that middle school and 15-year-old students received in Mexico. One of the implications is that the government should not consider the possibility of restoring that program in the Mexican education system. Preschool education, attitude towards school, gender, and time-spent in class are factors that highly related with the success of low-income students. Additional analysis and data is needed in order to perform further analysis on the impact that these determinants have on students achievement. Finally, this study revealed that Telesecundarias play an important role in helping economically disadvantaged students gain access to education in locations where no teachers or other school resources are available and are also positively associated with academic success.

Building on research that has focused on understanding how peers contribute to students' engagement, this dissertation explores the extent to which peer group influences on students' engagement may add to and be contextualized by qualities of the relationships they maintain with their teachers and their parents. To focus on how each of these adult contexts work in concert with peer groups to jointly contribute to changes in students' engagement, the two studies used data on 366 sixth graders which were collected at two time points during their first year of middle school: Peer groups were identified using socio-cognitive mapping; students reported on teacher and parent involvement; and teachers reported on each students' engagement. In both studies, models of cumulative and contextualized joint effects were examined. Consistent with models of cumulative effects, peer group engagement, parent involvement, and teacher involvement each uniquely predicted changes in students' engagement. Consistent with contextualized models suggesting differential susceptibility, peer group engagement was a more pronounced predictor of changes in engagement for students who experienced relatively low involvement from teachers. Similarly, peer group influences on changes in students' engagement were stronger for students who experienced relatively low involvement from their parents. In both cases, these peer effects were positive or negative depending on the engagement versus disaffection of each student's peer group. Both studies also used person-centered analyses to reveal cumulative and contextualized effects. Most engaged were students who experienced support from either both teachers and peers, or both parents and peers; the lowest levels of engagement were found among those students who affiliated with disaffected peers who also experienced either their teachers or parents as relatively uninvolved. Both high teacher and high parent involvement partially protected students from the motivational costs of affiliating with disaffected peers. Similarly, belonging to engaged peer groups partially buffered students' engagement from the ill effects of low teacher and parent involvement. These findings suggest that, although peer groups and teachers and parents are each important individually, a complete understanding of their contributions to students' engagement requires the examination of their joint effects.