Academic Performance of College Students

Academic performance and advisement of university students: a case study. Ads by Google Online University Online University programs 100% Online, 100% Supported! WaldenUniversity. com Subject: Academic achievement (Analysis) College students (Case studies) Student guidance services (Analysis) Authors: Addus, Abdussalam A. Chen, David Khan, Anwar S. Pub Date: 06/01/2007 Publication: Name:  College  Student  Journal Publisher:  Project  Innovation  (Alabama) Audience:  Academic Format:  Magazine/Journal Subject:  Education Copyright:  COPYRIGHT  2007  Project  Innovation  (Alabama) ISSN:  0146-3934 Issue:Date:  June, 2007 Source Volume:  41 Source Issue:  2 Topic: Canadian  Subject  Form:  School counselling Product: Product  Code:  E197500 Students, College Geographic: Geographic  Scope:  North Carolina Geographic  Code:  1U5NC North Carolina Ads by Google Chevening English Test Sit Your PTE Academic Test Now Easy Sign Up & Results In 5 Days! Pearsonpte. com/Chevening Become a Doctor in the US Study at Offshore Campus, Practise Medicine in the U. S. Apply Today! www. AUAMed. org Harvest West Christian Leadership Training Certificate, Diploma and Degree www. harvestwest. edu. au Online MBA Course at LSBF UK Global MBA degree, 100% online.Choose MBA specialisation now! www. LSBF. org. uk/MBA-Online Learn Financial Modeling Step-by-Step, Self Study & Classes Buld DCF, LBO, M&A, Comps Models www. WallStreetPrep. com Accession Number: 163679000 Full Text: The lack of adequate background and/or preparation, among other things, causes many students to withdraw from college or to graduate with low grades, which often makes it difficult for them to obtain suitable jobs. This paper examines the academic performance and efforts to seek assistance for academic and related problems of undergraduate students at North Carolina A&T State University.To that effect, the grade reports of business and economics majors and respon ses to a survey of students enrolled in business and economics courses were qualitatively analyzed. The results of the analyses indicated that many students experienced academic deficiency and did not seek assistance when faced with problems. The results also revealed that many of the students who sought assistance rated the services they received as ineffective and indicated their preference for school-level advisement services.The development of a school-specific academic monitoring and advisement center would alleviate these problems. Such a center, with a comprehensive and extended advisement and counseling program, will be more effective than university-wide services in improving student academic performance and marketability upon graduation. ********** Teaching, research and service are usually used as a yardstick to measure faculty contributions to higher education institutions. Major universities have long stressed the importance of research activities relative to teaching.O ver the last two decades, many of smaller teaching institutions, including the Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) where research activities were recognized only to the extent that they would keep educators and the knowledge they transmit to students current, have been under pressure to acquire external funds for scholarships, faculty development, and meeting accreditation standards (Fielding 1985). As these institutions, particularly the HBCUs, placed more emphasis on faculty research productivity, they are faced with the challenge of striking a balance between teaching and research activities.Nevertheless, most colleges and universities recognize that teaching is the ultimate goal of their institutions (Wiley 1993). The main factors considered for improving teaching effectiveness among other things, include teaching approaches and techniques and faculty availability for student assistance and advisement. However, students in higher education institutions must be m otivated and committed to make reasonable efforts toward handling various activities, such as reading, written assignments, class discussion, presentation and examinations, effectively.Accordingly, the students' commitment to attain a good education, their study habits and cooperation, their motivation and efforts to seek assistance, when needed, are equally critical for learning. Thus, since the provision and consumption of education service occur simultaneously, the students' active participation in the process is a necessary condition to transform teaching to effective learning (Norales and Addus 2003). This paper assesses the academic performance and efforts of undergraduate students to seek assistance for academic and related problems at North Carolina A&T State.The paper (1) examines the academic performance and deficiencies of the students in terms of their overall grade point averages; (2) identifies the relative magnitude of student academic and related problems from freshm an to senior classifications; (3) presents student evaluation of the effectiveness of advisement and counseling services available to students; and (4) recommends the development of a school-specific academic monitoring and advisement center to improve student academic performance and marketability upon graduation.Methods and Instrumentation The 1998 grade point averages (GPAs) of undergraduate business and economics majors were used to determine the levels of student academic performance and deficiencies, with the application of chi-square statistic test to the relevant data. The student grade reports (the most recent data available) were obtained from the North Carolina A&T State University's School of Business and Economics. In addition, data from students were collected through a student survey of 2002.The sample for the student advisement and counseling effectiveness questionnaire consisted of students enrolled in business and economics courses at North Carolina A State Univers ity. The questionnaire items were designed to elicit responses from students to determine the magnitude of student academic and related problems, efforts to seek assistance to solve their problems, evaluation of effectiveness assistance they received, and preference for the location of advising and monitoring services within the University.The results of this study can be used as a source of data that can provide information on the curriculum effectiveness at North Carolina A State and other universities. Such data can assist educators in curriculum planning and development so that they can better meet the needs of students. Student Academic Performance and Survey Results The results of this study are based on the examination of the School of Business and Economics student GPAs and the student advisement and counseling survey of students enrolled in business and economics courses at North Carolina A State University.The results are centered around (1) the student academic performanc e levels and deficiencies; (2) the magnitude of student academic and related problems; (3) the students efforts to seek assistance to solve problems; (4) the student evaluation of effectiveness assistance received; and (5) the student preference for the location of advising and monitoring services. The following are the findings of the study based on student grade point averages and student advisement and counseling services questionnaire responses. Student Academic performanceThe school of Business and Economics at North Carolina A State University consists of accounting, business administration, business education and economics and transportation/logistics departments. The distributions of grade point average of students enrolled in the School during the 1998 fall semester are presented in Table 1. For the data in the Table, the chi-square test statistic is significant. This indicates that grade distributions by classification are statistically different. Generally, the number of students with low grade point averages decreased from freshman to senior classifications.In other words, more freshmen maintained lower grades relative to seniors, and more seniors maintained higher grade point averages than freshmen. More specifically, the data indicates that, in the School of Business and Economics, 55% of freshman, 14% of sophomore, 16% of junior, and 6% of senior students maintained below 2. 00 grade point averages. The decline in the proportion of students with lower grades from the freshman to senior levels is an indication of either grade improvements, transfer from one program to another or withdrawal and/or suspension/dismissal from the university.In their senior year, 41% of students maintained a GPA of below 2. 50, 23% below 2. 25, and 6% below 2. 00. For all classifications, 53% of students maintained a GPA of below 2. 50, 39% below 2. 25, and 26% below 2. 00. The School of Business and Economics cannot afford to ignore 23% students who may graduate with a GPA of lower than 2. 25 and 41% below 2. 50, only to find it difficult to find professional jobs of their choice in their respective fields.Apparently, students need to be monitored, encouraged and assisted to play an active role in their pursuit to achieve their education and career objectives. Student Survey Results Of some 206 students who responded to the survey, 52% were female and 48% were male students. By classification, 10% were freshmen, 30% sophomore, 37% junior and 23% senior students. In terms of general fields of study, 68% majored in business and economics and 32% in other areas, including arts and sciences, education and engineering (Table 2).These figures suggest that the survey represents a balanced coverage on gender, student classification, and various fields of study. Magnitude of Student Academic and Related Problems: Of 154 who sought assistance, 52% were female and 48% were male students. By classification, 9% were freshmen, 30% sophomore, 37% junior and 2 5% were senior students (Table 3). The data in the Table is indicative of the fact that the number of problems faced by students generally declined from freshman to senior year of their study.Of 52 students who did not seek assistance, 52% were female and 48% were male students. By classification, 17% were freshmen, 30% junior, 37% sophomore and 19% senior students. A total of 56% who did not seek help were junior and senior students. The reasons indicated for not seeking assistance are that 19% did not have any problems, 17% did not have time to seek assistance, 19% did not know the availability of assistance, 14% did not believe such assistance would be useful, and 15% indicated a combination of the above factors (Table 4).Student Efforts to Seek Assistance: Out of 206 students who sought assistance, 60% consulted with their academic advisors and 30% with course instructors or respective departments. Only 4% indicated to have sought assistance with the University Center for Succes s (Table 5). Student Evaluation of Assistance Effectiveness: Of 154 students who sought help, 72% indicated that the assistance they were offered was effective resulting in grade improvements, enhanced self-confidence, remaining in major for the better, and changing major for the better.However, 28% indicated that the assistance they received was not effective at all (Table 6). Student Preference for Advising and Monitoring Services: Of 206 survey respondents, 147 (71%) indicated their preference for student monitoring and counseling services at school/college level (as opposed to counseling at the university level); and 92% indicated that they would seek assistance more often if such services were available at school/college level (Table 7).The Case for Academic Monitoring and Advising Center The findings of this study reveal that relatively low grades and high failure rates were maintained by upper level undergraduate students with the possibility of marketability problems. The fi ndings further show that 28% of survey respondents said the assistance services they received were not effective. Another 28% of the respondents, of which 56% were juniors and seniors, did not seek help to resolve their academic and related problems.In addition, 71% of respondents indicated their preference for a school-level assistance services, and the overwhelming majority (92%) said they would seek help more often if such services were available at the school level. It follows that a school-specific academic monitoring and advisement center (AMAC), with a comprehensive agenda for student advisement and counseling, will be effective in improving student academic performance and marketability.The need for the AMAC is underscored by other studies. The main problems affecting student academic performance include inadequate background, working long hours, lack of time to study and seek advice, lack of time management skills, bad study habits and skills, and lack of self-confidence. M any students are also faced with various impediments in their pursuit of higher education and career objectives, including financial problems, family responsibilities, and social and extracurricular activities.Some of these activities do not only take away from the time needed for sleeping, attending class and studying, but they also cause considerable stress resulting in negative effects on academic performance as measured in terms of GPA (Womble 2001). The results of a survey of 239 university students enrolled in business and economics courses at North Carolina A State University indicated that most students did not have sufficient time to read the textbook and study, and that their absence from class was work related.The majority (56 %) of the students stated that they could not take lecture notes while listening, and 29 % said they could not understand the lecture (Norales and Addus 2003). Kelly et al (2001) classified college students into short sleepers (individuals who slept six or fewer hours a day), average sleepers (individuals with seven or hours of sleep a day), and long sleepers (individuals sleeping nine or more hours a day). They found that the individuals who represented long sleepers reported higher GPAs than the first two groups.Many students are admitted to a university as a result of their performance in examinations that do not demand the same preparation levels required to succeed in higher education. Thus, one of the main factors affecting the academic performance of college and university students is the lack of adequate preparation skills (Beswick and Ramsden 1987). Entwistle et al (1989) studied the academic performance of electrical engineering students and found that low course grades were associated with inadequate study skills, and that many students had not established adequate independent study strategies required to succeed in higher education.Eikeland & Manger (1992) looked into factors affecting student achievement, especial ly those factors related to high failure and dropout rates. The findings showed that organized study habits had a positive impact on self confidence during the students' first semester, but such study habits did not have a direct effect on grades until as late as their fourth semester in college. In a survey of close to 350,000 students attending four-year public and private colleges, over 70 items related to the students' educational experiences on the survey instrument were grouped into 12 factors. 1) The survey results indicated that out of these factors, public college/university students rated academic advising as the most important aspect of their educational experiences. Private college/university students rated academic advising second to only instructional effectiveness in importance. When students were asked to rate five items (2) comprised academic advising, both public and private college/university students rated the academic advisor's approachability and the academic a dvisor's knowledge about major requirements as strengths–meaning most important and most satisfying (Noel-Levitz 2003).In general, the success or failure in higher education are not explained by the student attributes or faculty teaching efficiency in isolation, but by the complex interactions between students and the learning environments they experience (Entwistle 1990). Thus, students are in need of comprehensive advisement, counseling and support services including time management, stress management, efficient study style, habits and skills, reading, writing, and lecture note taking skills, and other support services.These must help students enhance their capacity to master the relevant subject, self confidence, verbal and written communication, academic performance, and to be competitive and productive members of the community. Academic Monitoring and Advising Center The findings of this study, along with the discussion of relevant literature, suggest that a school-speci fic AMAC, with a comprehensive agenda for student advisement and counseling, will be effective in improving student academic performance and marketability.The primary purpose of the AMAC is to enhance student academic performance and produce marketable graduates by providing extended assistance and guidance to students in academic activities and related areas. At North Carolina A State University there are university-wide student support services, including the Center for Student Success (which is focused on student retention) and school-level academic assistant services. In addition, there are programs which are designed to mentor students with high academic standing, in collaboration with potential employers, to prepare them for the real world work environment upon graduation.However, many students who for various reasons fail to perform to their potential levels deserve to be uplifted through a similar program provided by the AMAC. Compared with university-wide academic counselin g services available for students, the AMAC will be more effective for needy students can be given individual and unique attention suited to their specific needs by their respective schools. In addition to regular advisement provided by academic advisors, the AMAC will provide counseling services for students who fail to reach a minimum GPA of 2. 0 during each semester. To start with, such students will be able to discuss issues regarding specific courses and their course loads with an advisor from the AMAC, and receive advice on how to successfully manage their time and handle their course loads. Also, the AMAC if necessary, can suggest changes in course, course loads and schedule to help the students balance their time between school and work. As mentioned above, one of the biggest problems that many students have is lack of time and time management skills.If this problem is solved early, students will be able to maintain a more marketable GPA. The AMAC will continuously monitor s tudents and evaluate their grades throughout each semester to insure that these students continue to do well in the school, and graduate within a reasonable period of time. Students who need assistance must be identified at the appropriate time and be given intensive advice and counseling. It will maintain a data base for all students in the School of Business and Economics with an overall GPA of 2. 0 or less. The data can be collected from student applications, academic records, and surveys (Seidman, 1996). The AMAC will coordinate its activities with university programs designed to provide remedial services to students with deficient backgrounds. It will refer students to other departments and and University support services for problems outside its responsibilities. Such intensive intervention will likely help not only improve academic performance, but also retain students and enable them to graduate with decent grades.Student participation in the AMAC's program shall enhance the ir capabilities to improve their academic standing through sound advice and counseling which will positively influence their attitude toward learning and grades, time management skills and study habits. The AMAC will further facilitate development of university policies and programs designed to overcome academic deficiencies and encourage students to stay in school and achieve their academic and career objectives.Conclusions Academic advising is a very important aspect of students' educational experiences in higher education. In order to enhance teaching and learning effectiveness, higher education institutions must listen to their students unique needs and priorities by assessing assistance services available to students. The results of such assessments can be used to develop targeted action plans for serving specific student population.The results of the analyses of data obtained from the School of Business and Economics grade reports and a survey of students enrolled in business and economics courses at North Carolina A State University, along with other relevant literature, imply that many college students need a school-specific academic monitoring and advisement services at an early stage of their college career. It is apparent that it becomes difficult, if not impossible, for junior and senior students to make meaningful grade improvements due to the short span of time available to them during their last years of study before graduation.This may pose a serious marketability problem for some of the graduates of these programs with low grades. In the real world of ever increasing globalization and more competitive job market environments, college students need to acquire higher skills and GPAs. The proposed AMAC is certainly a first step to guide needy students in this direction. References Beswick, D. and Ramsden, P, (1987). How to Promote Learning with Understanding. Working Paper 87:1. Melbourne: Center for the Study of Higher Education, University of M elbourne. Eikeland, O. J. and Manger, T. (1992).Why Students Fail During Their First University Semesters. International Review of Education 38(5), 489-503. Entwistle, N. J. (1990). How Students Learn and Why They Fail. Paper Presented at Conference on Talent and Teaching, University of Bergen. Entwistle, N. J. , Hoursell, D. , Macaulay, C. , Situnayake, G. and Tait, H. (1989). Success and Failure in Electrical Engineering Courses in Scotland. Summary of a Report to the SED. Edinburgh: Department of Education and Center for Teaching, Learning and Assessment. University of Edinburgh. Fielding, G. J. (1985). Transportation Education, Part Two.Report of Joint Conference, Eno Foundation Board of Directors and Board of Consultants. Transportation Quarterly, 39(2), 207-233. Kelly, W. E. , Kelly, K. E. and Clanton, R. C. (others) (2001). â€Å"The Relationship between Sleep length and Grade-Point-Average among College Students,† College Student Journal. Noel-Levitz Research (2003). â€Å"Academic Advising Highly Important to Students,† www. noellevitz. com. Norales, Francisca O. and Addus, Abdussalam A. (2003). â€Å"University Students' Learning Efforts,† Texas Business and Technology Educators Association Journal, Vol.VII, No. 1. Seidman, A. (1996). Retention revisited: R = E, ID + E & In, Iv. Journal of College Student Retention. 71(4), 18-20. Wiley, III, Ed (1993). Re-Emphasizing Teaching. Black Issues in Higher Education. Womble, Laura P (2001). â€Å"The Impact of Stress Factors on College Students' Academic Performance,† Working Paper, University of North Carolina, Charlotte, N. C. ABDUSSALAM A. ADDUS Associate Professor DAVID CHEN Associate Professor ANWAR S. KHAN Professor Emeritus Department of Economics and Transportation/Logistics North Carolina A State University Notes 1) the factors are: academic advising, campus climate, campus Life, campus Support Services, concern for the Individual, instructional Effectiveness, recruitmen t and financial aid effectiveness, registration effectiveness, responsiveness to diverse population, safety and security, service excellence, and student centeredness. (2) the items are: the academic advisor's approachability, the academic advisor's knowledge about major requirements, the academic advisor's concern about the student's success as an individual, the academic advisor's assistance to set goals and work toward, and the clearness and reasonableness of major requirements.Table 1 Grade Distribution of Students in the School of Business and Economics by Classification, Fall 1998 Grade Range Classification Freshman Sophomore Junior No. % No. % No. % 3. 50-4. 00 20 6 46 19 20 10 3. 00-3. 49 26 7 44 18 32 16 2. 50-2. 99 45 13 62 25 45 23 2. 25-2. 49 33 9 33 13 33 17 2. 00-2. 24 37 10 28 11 34 18 Below 2. 00 200 55 35 14 31 16Total 361 100 248 100 195 100 Chi-square: 278. 38 * Grade Range Classification Senior All No. % No. % 3. 50-4. 00 18 7 104 10 3. 00-3. 49 42 17 144 13 2. 5 0-2. 99 90 35 242 24 2. 25-2. 49 47 18 146 14 2. 00-2. 24 44 17 143 13 Below 2. 00 14 6 280 26 Total 255 100 1059 100 Chi-square: 278. 38 * Note: * Statistically significant at 5 percent probability level.Source: School of Business and Economics, NC A&T State University. Table 2 Profile of Survey Respondents Item Frequency Percent Gender (n = 206): Male 99 48. 1 Female 107 51. 9 Classification (n = 206): Freshman 21 10. 2 Sophomore 61 29. 6 Junior 77 37. 4 Senior 47 22. 8 Major Area Unit (n = 206): Business and Economics 140 68. 0 Other Areas * 66 32. * Include Arts and Science, Education, and Engineering. Table 3 Distribution of Number Problems for Students who Sought Assistance * (n = 154) Classification Number of Problems and Gender One Two Three Four Five Six Total Plus Classification: Freshman 4 1 3 2 1 2 13 Sophomore 16 4 7 9 8 2 46 Junior 14 14 12 6 4 7 57 Senior 6 7 14 7 3 1 38Total 40 26 36 24 16 12 154 Gender: Male 19 15 15 11 8 6 74 Female 21 13 19 13 8 6 80 Total 40 26 3 6 24 16 12 154 * Problems include adding/dropping courses, choosing major, changing major, improving grades, time management, internship opportunities, personal problems which affect academic performance. Table 4 Distribution of students who did not Seek Assistance (n = 52) frequency Percent of Total Classification:Freshman 9 17. 3 Sophomore 14 29. 9 Junior 19 36. 5 Senior 10 19. 3 Total 52 100. 0 Gender: Male 25 48. 1 Female 27 51. 9 Total 52 100. 0 Reason for not Seeking: Did not have problems 10 19. Did not have time 9 17. 3 Did not know availability of assistance 10 19. 2 Did not believe it is useful 7 13. 5 Combination of last three 8 15. 4 Other reasons 8 15. 4 Total 52 100. 0 Table 5 Student Efforts to Seek Assistance for Academic Problems (n = 154) Assistance sought from Frequency Percent Academic Advisor 89 59. 7 Department/Course instructor 44 29. University Center for Success 6 4. 0 SOBE resource Lab 3 2. 0 University Counseling Service 3 2. 0 Career Counseling 2 1. 4 Financial Aid 2 1. 4 Table 6 Student evaluation of Effectiveness of Assistance Sought (n = 149) Item frequency Percent Grade improved 13 8. 7 Enhanced self-confidence 4 2. 7 Remained in major 15 10. 1 Changed major for better 16 10. 7 Two or more of above 60 40. 3No effect 41 27. 5 Table 7 Student Preference for Counseling/Monitoring Services Location (n = 206) Item Frequency Percent Prefer student Counseling at school level Yes 147 71. 3 No 44 21. 4 Indifferent 15 7. 3 Would seek assistance more often if Available at school/college level) Yes 92 44. 7 No 15 7. Not sure 45 21. 8 Indifferent 54 26. 2 Gale Copyright: Copyright 2007 Gale, Cengage Learning. All rights reserved. Economic Scene Colleges Are Failing in Graduation Rates Top of Form Bottom of Form †¢ Share By DAVID LEONHARDT Published: September 8, 2009 If you were going to come up with a list of organizations whose failures had done the most damage to the American economy in recent years, you’d probably have to start with the Wall Street firms and regulatory agencies that brought us the financial crisis.From there, you might move on to Wall Street’s fellow bailout recipients in Detroit, the once-Big Three. Multimedia [pic] From the Most Selective Colleges, More Graduates Related The College Dropout Boom Economix: Which Colleges Are Doing Their Job? Reader Responses: Failing Colleges Readers’ Comments Share your thoughts and read responses to readers' comments from David Leonhardt on the Economix blog. †¢ Read All Comments (113)  » But I would suggest that the list should also include a less obvious nominee: public universities.At its top levels, the American system of higher education may be the best in the world. Yet in terms of its core mission — turning teenagers into educated college graduates — much of the system is simply failing. Only 33 percent of the freshmen who enter the University of Massachusetts, Boston, graduate within six years. Less than 41 percent graduate from the University of Montana, and 44 percent from the University of New Mexico. The economist Mark Schneider refers to colleges with such dropout rates as â€Å"failure factories,† and they are the norm.The United States does a good job enrolling teenagers in college, but only half of students who enroll end up with a bachelor’s degree. Among rich countries, only Italy is worse. That’s a big reason inequality has soared, and productivity growth has slowed. Economic growth in this decade was on pace to be slower than in any decade since World War II — even before the financial crisis started. So identifying the causes of the college dropout crisis matters enormously, and a new book tries to do precisely that. It is called â€Å"Crossing the Finish Line,† and its findings are based on the records of about 200,000 students at 68 colleges.The authors were able to get their hands on that data because two of them are pillars of the education establishment: William Bowen (an economist and former Princeton president) and Michael McPherson (an economist and former Macalester College president). For all the book’s alarming statistics, its message is ultimately uplifting — or at least invigorating. Yes, inadequate precollege education is a problem. But high schools still produce many students who have the skills to complete college and yet fail to do so. Turning them into college graduates should be a lot less difficult than fixing all of American education. We could be doing a lot better with college completion just by working on our colleges,† as Robert Shireman, an Education Department official who has read an early version of the book, says. Congress and the Obama administration are now putting together an education bill that tries to deal with the problem. It would cancel about $9 billion in annual government subsidies for banks that lend to college students and use much of the money to in crease financial aid. A small portion of the money would be set aside for promising pilot programs aimed at lifting the number of college graduates. All in all, the bill would help.But it won’t solve the system’s biggest problems — the focus on enrollment rather than completion, the fact that colleges are not held to account for their failures. â€Å"Crossing the Finish Line† makes it clear that we can do better. †¢ The first problem that Mr. Bowen, Mr. McPherson and the book’s third author, Matthew Chingos, a doctoral candidate, diagnose is something they call under-matching. It refers to students who choose not to attend the best college they can get into. They instead go to a less selective one, perhaps one that’s closer to home or, given the torturous financial aid process, less expensive.About half of low-income students with a high school grade-point average of at least 3. 5 and an SAT score of at least 1,200 do not attend the bes t college they could have. Many don’t even apply. Some apply but don’t enroll. â€Å"I was really astonished by the degree to which presumptively well-qualified students from poor families under-matched,† Mr. Bowen told me. They could have been admitted to Michigan’s Ann Arbor campus (graduation rate: 88 percent, according to College Results Online) or Michigan State (74 percent), but they went, say, to Eastern Michigan (39 percent) or Western Michigan (54 percent).If they graduate, it would be hard to get upset about their choice. But large numbers do not. You can see that in the chart with this column. In effect, well-off students — many of whom will graduate no matter where they go — attend the colleges that do the best job of producing graduates. These are the places where many students live on campus (which raises graduation rates) and graduation is the norm. Meanwhile, lower-income students — even when they are better qualified — often go to colleges that excel in producing dropouts. â€Å"It’s really a waste,† Mr. Bowen says, â€Å"and a big problem for the country. As the authors point out, the only way to lift the college graduation rate significantly is to lift it among poor and working-class students. Instead, it appears to have fallen somewhat since the 1970s. What can be done? Money is clearly part of the answer. Tellingly, net tuition has no impact on the graduation rates of high-income students. Yet it does affect low-income students. All else equal, they are less likely to make it through a more expensive state college than a less expensive one, the book shows. Conservatives are wrong to suggest affordability doesn’t matter.But they are right that more money isn’t the whole answer. Higher education today also suffers from a deep cultural problem. Failure has become acceptable. Students see no need to graduate in four years. Doing so, as one told the bookâ€℠¢s authors, is â€Å"like leaving the party at 10:30 p. m. † Graduation delayed often becomes graduation denied. Administrators then make excuses for their graduation rates. And policy makers hand out money based on how many students a college enrolls rather than on what it does with those students. There is a real parallel here to health care.We pay doctors and hospitals for more care instead of better care, and what do we get? More care, even if in many cases it doesn’t make us healthier. In education, the incentives can be truly perverse. Because large lecture classes are cheaper for a college than seminars, freshmen are cheaper than upperclassmen. So a college that allows many of its underclassmen to drop out may be helping its bottom line. If you look closely, you can still find reasons for optimism. A few colleges, like the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, have intensive programs that have raised graduation rates.The State of West Virginia has begun tyin g student aid to academic progress, and graduation rates there have risen. Washington Monthly magazine has published a new college ranking based in part on graduation rates. (Kudos to Penn State, among others. ) When students fill out an online form for federal financial aid, the Obama Education Department now informs them of the graduation rate at any college in which they express interest. But an enormous amount of work remains, and it’s hard to think of any work that’s more important to the American economy.Last year, even in the grip of a recession that has spared no group of workers, the gap between what a college graduate earned and what everyone else earned reached a record. Workers with bachelor’s degrees made 54 percent more on average than those who attended college but didn’t finish, according to the Labor Department. Fifty-four percent — just think about how that adds up over a lifetime. And then think about how many students never cros s the college finish line. E-mail: [email  protected] com Public blames students for their failure at college By Eric Gorski Associated Press Published: Monday, Dec. 3 2010 12:39 a. m. MST | | | | | | | | | | | | |Share | |Twitter |Pinterest | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |0 | |0 |0 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | [pic] †¢ View 2 photos  » Summary The public pins most of the blame for poor college graduation rates on students and their parents and gives a pass to colleges, government officials and others, a new Associated Press-Stanford University poll shows.Nov. 16, 2011 [pic] The public pins most of the blame for poor college graduation rates on students and their parents and gives a pass to colleges, government officials and others, a new Associated Press-Stanford University poll shows. All sectors of American higher education received high marks for quality. That extends to for-profit colleges, despite recent criticism of dubious recruiting tact ics, high student loan default rates and other problems at some schools. â€Å"As is often the case, the truth lies somewhere in between,† said William A. Sederburg, Utah's Commissioner of Higher Education. We know higher education campuses can really do a lot more to improve retention. †¦ It is also true that a lot of students show up on campus without direction in their lives and without focus on what they want to do. Those are students that are most likely to drop out. † But a belief that students are most at fault for graduation rates may be a troubling sign for reformers who have elevated college completion to the forefront of higher education policy debates and pushed colleges to fix the problem, said Michael Kirst, professor emeritus of education and business administration at Stanford. The message is, ‘Students, you had your shot at college and failed and it's your fault, not the college,'† Kirst said. When asked where the blame lies for graduat ion rates at public four-year colleges, 7 in 10 said students shouldered either a great deal or a lot of it, and 45 percent felt that way about parents. Others got off relatively easy: Anywhere between 25 percent and 32 percent of those polled blamed college administrators, professors, teachers, unions, state education officials and federal education officials. Taking a closer look at the numbers:Republicans are likelier than Democrats to blame federal officials for today's college graduation rates — 34 percent of Republicans and 25 percent of Democrats point at them. There's a small partisan difference on the student blame question: Seventy-seven percent of Republicans and 68 percent of Democrats fault students heavily. Minorities are more prone than whites to blame professors and teachers for college graduation rates, with 40 percent of minorities but just 29 percent of whites doing so. Fifty-seven percent of minorities blame parents for college graduation rates, while just 40 percent of whites do.Sara Goldrick-Rab, assistant professor of educational policy studies and sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the results are deeply troubling and mean elite colleges and universities have succeeded in diverting blame from themselves. â€Å"Those supporting the completion agenda need to push back — hard — and emphasize the role colleges play in supporting or undermining student success,† she said. Such a push back may not be necessary in Utah, however, judging from Sederburg's attitude: â€Å"It's clearly not just students' faults. I think we have a significant role to play. After long emphasizing access to college, higher education policy debates have shifted only recently to focusing on getting students through. The Obama administration has called for the United States to again lead the world in number of college graduates by 2020. The goal in Utah is to increase retention rates by 8 percent on average over the next decade, Sederburg said. The Utah System of Higher Education's 2020 Plan for Higher Education, found at www. higheredutah2020. org, contemplates several strategies to increase retention — such as enhancing advising and intervention advising if a student is off track to graduate.Getting students into the right courses is also important. Midterm feedback may give students a chance to correct their trajectory. â€Å"It's a different approach if you are a Salt Lake Community College than if you are at the University of Utah,† said Cameron Martin, the office of the commissioner for higher education's associate commissioner for economic development. Each institution has to look at its strategies to see what works for them. BYU, for example, encourages students to graduate by providing a clear map for each program of study. It also tries to help students understand what the credit limits are to enter each program. If students are in danger of exceeding the appropriate amount o f credits and have yet to declare a major, our University Advisement office will reach out to them to help provide further direction,† said BYU spokesman Todd Hollingshead. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Lumina Foundation and others have directed money and attention to states and colleges to improve completion rates, and several states are taking action. Stan Jones, president of Complete College America, which championed such efforts, disagreed that the poll spells trouble for reform. This will play out like the high school dropout issue,† he said. â€Å"The more it becomes a subject of public discussion the more advances we will make on confronting the college dropout problem. † Just over half of first-time students who entered college in 2003-04 had not earned a degree or credential within six years, the Education Department reported recently. That's slightly worse than students who started in 1995-96. Experts caution it is tricky to measure success and co mpare graduation rates because today's older, less-traditional college tudent population takes more time to finish school and is harder to track. The AP-Stanford poll found most people were happy with the quality of higher education in their states. Despite severe budget cuts and spiraling tuition at many public four-year colleges, those schools received the highest marks: Seventy-four percent in the poll called them excellent or good. But others institutions got strong marks, too: Four-year private nonprofit colleges (71 percent), two-year public colleges (69 percent), private for-profit colleges (66 percent) and private for-profit trade schools (57 percent).That's a rare glimpse at public opinion about for-profit colleges, which have been fighting proposed regulations that would that would cut off federal aid. The poll also found overwhelming agreement that there is a link between the nation's prosperity and the quality of its education system. Overall, 88 percent say economic pro sperity and quality education are closely entwined. Nearly 80 percent said that having all Americans graduate from a two- or four-year college would help the economy.Yet most in the poll are unwilling to invest more in the nation's school systems in order to obtain that economic payoff — just 42 percent favor raising taxes to pay for better education. The poll was conducted September 23-30 by Abt SRBI Inc. It involved interviews on landline and cellular telephones with 1,001 adults nationwide, and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3. 9 percentage points. Stanford University's participation was made possible by a grant from the Gates Foundation. Contributing: Michael De Groote, Deseret News, and Alan Fram of the AP

Inpatient and Outpatient Hospital Services Essay

The main difference between inpatient and outpatient services is that inpatient care is performed by an inpatient facility that is prepared for patients to be able to stay overnight if need be. This inpatient care can be provided by a hospital, skilled nursing facility, or a long term care facility. A skilled nursing facility (SNF) is designed to provide rehabilitation services and/or skilled nursing to injured patients after they no longer need to be in a hospital setting. The skilled nursed help the patient and assist with their recovery. A skilled nursing facility is operated by licensed nurses, with the assistance of a medical physician. A few examples of care given at a skilled nursing facility would include dressing changes, intravenous injections, and tube feeding. A nursing home is an example of a long-term care facility, which provides custodial care for patients who suffer from chronic disabilities or prolonged illnesses. Outpatient care, is also referred to as ambulatory care, is somewhat different from inpatient care in a hospital or skilled nursing facility setting. Outpatient care involves care that does not require and overnight stay. This kind of care is found in a family physician office, ER visit, physical, speech or occupational therapy, and home health care. Due to the different settings and types of treatment received at inpatient or outpatient facilities, there are different codes for all the different procedures. An inpatient care example would be an overnight stay and care that is a round-the-clock due to a surgical procedure received. If it was outpatient care the service or treatment would have been in the doctor’s office or facility. Outpatient care codes differ than inpatient due to their different settings and what services can be performed. Coding for inpatient and outpatient are different, diagnostic coding for inpatient care follow the rules of the Uniform Hospital Discharge Data Set (UHDDS). Inpatient coding differ from physician and outpatient coding, because the main diagnosis is generally determined after study in a hospital setting and coding an unconfirmed condition as the admitting diagnosis is permitted. Inpatient codes can be more complex than outpatient, in general there are more codes used in inpatient care than outpatient.

Strange Fruit

Jazz music has always existed as a voice for black musicians and audiences. The sounds and rhythms are extremely unique and colorful. It certainly changed America in the 1920's with the swing movement and it put jazz on the map. During this time many white people started to be influenced by this infectious music, and started to enjoy it. Many white people also discriminated against blacks and treated them as less than equal. A goal for an artist named Billie Holiday was to make America listen to the cries of a black man, a black man who was just lynched.Jazz music had to be recognized with its roots. Billie Holiday believed Jazz music had to defend the black people. No better way of being heard than through the voice of Holiday. She attempted to fight for black rights through her song â€Å" strange fruit†, a political song that struck a chord for many Americans. Her original name was Eleanor Fagan, born April 7, 1915. Billy Holiday was an American jazz singer, one of the grea test from the 1930s to the 1950s. Also known as â€Å"Lady Day, Holiday first acquired a taste of music listening to her father, who was a traveling musician.She was fortunate not to be deprived of music during the popular jazz age of the 1920's. At the young age of 15 she started listening to jazz. She listened to the popular recordings of trumpet player Louis Armstrong and singer Bessie Smith . She decided to sing and she made her professional singing debut in 1931 at a small Harlem nightclub. She then continued to record for the first time only two years later. The jazz world did not recognize her music until 1935. She toured briefly with the Count Basie and Artie Shaw orchestras before becoming a big nightclub solo attraction in 1940.Her vocal style is considered to be one of the most original ever achieved; she sang with unique personality and distinguished herself as a professional artist. She never had technical training, and she was still able to create a beautiful and warm round vocal effect. Her vintage years were around 1936-43, when her professional and private relationship with the saxophonist Lester Young started. The team recorded some of the best musical examples of interplay between a vocal and instrumental line. Around her time jazz was being listened to by many people.Many white people were swinging to the beats of Duke Elington, who was probably one of the most famous swing composers. A large majority of the white society was definitely wrapped up in the new phenomenon of jazz. What's so amazing is that many whites were racist towards the composers of the music they enjoyed. The roots of jazz come from Africa, and it is derived from African rhythms and the blues. During the birth of jazz, the political situation for blacks in America was horrible. Black's were oppressed and discriminated by whites.They were hated in society, and during this time many blacks were being lynched in the South. I guess one could say that Jazz was an outlet for the blacks. It was their anthem of pride, and their creation to rightfully claim in a society that believed blacks shouldn't have rights. If white people in society were going to kill blacks simply because they were black, but at the same time enjoy their music, then wasn’t this a contradiction? Billie Holiday was an artist who made this point clear. She saw it as her duty to spread the truth about the horrors of black oppression.If the people were going to listen and enjoy black music, then they would also have to know about the violence and hate black people lived with in the South. At the height of her career the infamous song she sang was â€Å"strange fruit†, which was a highly charged political song. The song was about blacks being lynched in the south; a horrible and abhorrent act. Holiday was one of the first black musicians with the guts to release such an important political message in a song. A schoolteacher named Lewis Allan had written it for her. He was a ble to create a vision of how mobs of white men killed black men by hanging them from trees.His work wouldn't have had half the impact if Holiday didn't make it her own. Many people objected to the song. It was unlike any other popular song, but it was a huge hit. Here was a song that opened the doors for the Civil Rights movement. There was no better way for the people to experience the pain than through her voice. There was no better way at the time to reach the people of America than through a star who was loved, admired and black. There was another star who was admired loved, admired and black, and his name was Louis Armstrong. Born in New Orleans on August 4, 1901, Louis Satchmo† Armstrong was a victim of poverty and discrimination. At the age of eleven, Armstrong began to develop an interest in music, harmonizing on street corners and playing a toy horn. He was in and out of the home throughout his teenage years and was taken under the wing of Peter Davis, who taught him music. Under Davis's teaching, Armstrong joined a band, and his talent blossomed. He left the Waif's Home in 1914, and began to play the cornet all around New Orleans. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s Armstrong maintained one of the most grueling continual tours of all time.He began playing with the large bands that were popular at the time. His popularity and fame though, favored many white people in America With his increasing fame came the criticism of a black community that felt he was not living up to the responsibilities of the times. The late fifties brought with them the civil rights movement, and many blacks saw Armstrong as an â€Å"uncle tom,† playing for primarily white audiences around the world. Though he stated that these claims were not true, Armstrong was then in his sixties and primarily concerned with continuing to travel and perform.He didn’t want to get involved with the Civil Rights issues like Holiday started to do. He probably felt that trying to protect blacks would take away from his fame and popularity. Holiday was really one of the few black musicians who started very early with the rallying cries for the Civil Rights movement; a change for the way black people were treated. In the Nineteen-Forties, Holiday started using the illegal drug heroin. Soon her body needed more and more of the drug. It began to affect her health. In Nineteen-Forty-Seven, Billie Holiday was arrested for possessing illegal drugs.She was found guilty and sentenced to nine months in prison. When she was released, New York City officials refused to give her a document that permitted her to work in any place that served alcoholic drinks. This meant Holiday no longer could sing in nightclubs and jazz clubs. She could sing only in theaters and concert halls. Ten days after her release from jail, she performed at New York's famous Carnegie Hall. People filled the place to hear her sing. One of the songs she sang that night was â€Å"Strange Fruit†. † Her last years were a real struggle against the destructive drug heroin.It eventually took her life; but her later recordings show that, although her voice was ravaged, her technique was still amazing. She died young, but not before leaving a serious scar in the music world and in the United States. Her song was not pretty, and it wasn’t supposed to be. The song was meant to be raw and powerful, which it was for its time. She distinguished herself as one of the most famous black musicians to sing about what she thought was most important, not only for herself and for her people, but also for what the music was about.

Google (Diversity) Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Google (Diversity) - Essay Example Since employees are hired and retained at the Company purely on the basis of their professional merit, this helps to ensure that bright and smart people from every group of persons, including minorities, women, disabled people, etc are all represented at Google. The achievement of diversity is an important objective of the Company. It is not restricted merely within the HR department of the Company, but is actually an integral part of Company policy. The Company specifically has several support programs to provide a means for girls and people from minority groups to take up the study of subjects such as Science, Math and engineering (www.greatplacetowork.com) by working in partnership with other organizations. For example, Google works in tandem with Citizen Schools, Sally Ride Science Festival, FIRST Robotics, TechBridge and Expanding your Horizons, all of which are geared towards encouraging the participation of traditionally unrepresented groups such as women and minorities. Google aids in funding programs conducted by these educational institutions, such as organizing after school programs and competitions, as well as by providing mentoring relationships and technical skill workshops specifically for these particular groups. Google work practices and working environments are also tailored to meet the needs of female employees. For instance, the Company allows flexibility in working hours, mothers rooms and family programs, as well as transgender restrooms, thus demonstrating its commitment towards ensuring that minority groups such as women and trans-sexuals are also made to feel welcome and a part of the Google team.(www.google.com). Google comprises several different Employee resource groups, such as the Google Women Network, Google Disability Network, Hispanic Googler Network, Asian American Googler Network, etc. These support groups provide opportunities for interaction and networking among members of

A Discussion of the Marketing Concept and the Implementation of those Essay

A Discussion of the Marketing Concept and the Implementation of those Concepts - Essay Example Music in the Macro-Environment 8 3.1 Evolving forms of Listening 8 4. Final Thoughts 11 4.1 Bagozzi’s Ideas on Transactional Exchange 11 4.2 Conclusion 13 References 14 Marketing and the macro-environment: A discussion of the marketing concept and the implementation of those concepts. 1. Introduction The development of a macro-environment has meant that the field of marketing has had to expand its methods and beliefs as the meanings of consumerism have shifted to a global field of engagement. While a global state of business means that there are more opportunities, it also means that the competition is increased through innovation and local brands that may have an advantage over an international company originating out of foreign lands. Through using concepts and ideas that directly engage the issues that arise when entering into a new market, marketing becomes defined by those issues and the ways they lend towards engaging the consumer in a variety of environments. Marketing involves a series of elements that introduce the consumer to needs in relationship to social expectations. In addition, marketing is involved in the selling of not only tangible ideas, but intangible concepts such as political ideologies, universities, communities, and performers. Exchange becomes defined by the various environments that are involved in marketing. The actors within an exchange are involved in a wider variety of interests within the environments where the macro-environment is concerned. In addition the relationships between the actors is far more complex as barriers between people, in relationship to law, and in relationship to differences in traditions must be navigated in order to appropriately navigate the stream from sales to customer. As the macro-environment influences changes in marketing, it is essential to discuss Bragozzi’s interpretation of exchange. Exchange is defined by Bragozzi using generalities that have relevance, but require some expansion a s popular culture has increased; the consumerist attitude has enveloped society, and as the macro-environment has required a more extensive explanation of exchange. 2. Key Developments and Marketing Responses 2.1 Marketing Marketing is the creation of activities that facilitate the exchange in a consumer context. The idea of exchange is developed through the equality that is created through assigning value and giving one thing of a specific value in exchange for something that represents the same value. The most common example is the exchange of money for goods and services, the goods and services being assigned a specific value that is reflected in a monetary figure. Actual value and social value are often two different ideas. As discussed by Bragozzi, often one part of the exchange or both parts will have negative impact, thus creating an inequality in the exchange. Marketing is the creation of what might be termed as an environment around a product. The environment around a produ ct has its own identity, a culture and belief system through which the product is presented to the consumer. Marketing invites the consumer, through exchange, to become a part of that culture through ownership. 2.2 Key Concepts in Marketing One of the key ideas that are central to marketing is that designing for a product or of a product is central to creating the need that promotes purchase. Creativity is the cornerstone of design, where visuals and text must be in concern with one another in order to have impact. In addition, the culture that is created around the product is a core of how the design must convey the message. Design is developed through a series of elements that come together to convey the most powerful message possible. Within that message is an attempt to convince the

Reward Principles and Performance Management in Organisations Assignment

Reward Principles and Performance Management in Organisations - Assignment Example The researcher states that the primary objective of performance management is to develop capacity in terms of both abilities and required skills for employees to achieve the set targets in an organization. Further, it enables individuals within an organization to discover their full potential, which enhances excellent performance in their tasks within an organization. In addition, it aims at enabling non-performers within an organization to do what is required. Communication is also an important component in this area where management aims at ensuring proper and organized communication within an organization. Also, reward strategies should also be considered to ensure that the performing employees are rewarded in the right way in order to motivate them. Performance management implementation in organizations faces a myriad of challenges. They can be either internal or external; hence, it is the role of management to ensure that all these challenges are handled with immediate effect. F irstly, the process experiences integration issues within the organization. Communication and cooperation must be enhanced in all the departments that are involved in this system. In most cases, the culture that has been adopted by the employees within an organization always has an impact in these areas. This is because they are people involved in departments, which are expected to enhance the efficiency of the system in an organization. All systems within an organization must be harmonized to ensure the success and reliability of this system. This also comes in hand with design challenges within the system. In some organization, some of the tools, which are designed for the system, do not address immediate needs of an organization in this area. The heads of the departments involved are supposed to seek consultation from experts in the field of ICT and interact with colleagues from other organizations who have implemented a similar strategy within their organization and it has been successful.

Role of haraam Practices on behavior and performance of employees Case Study

Role of haraam Practices on behavior and performance of employees - Case Study Example She started to come late, misbehave with other employees and take long lunch breaks. Maryam was a lady who work on time and respond fast to the work. However, after four years of her job, she started getting late to her job. When anyone asks the reason, she gave a standard answer that there is a family problem. She was  a  single mother having two babies. Her seniors think that there might be any problem relating to family. However, she continued her habit of getting late after getting warned by the seniors. The observation about her drinking habit was realized at that time although no one had seen Maryam while drinking (Zia-ur-Rehman & Rashid, 2012). The other employees noticed the change in the behavior of Maryam. She started to shout at juniors,  misbehaved with seniors had noticed that her behavior had changed due to her drinking habits. Haleema, who was senior of Maryam,  had started to find out the problem so that the solution would become possible. She inspected about her attitude and realized that there is a problem of drinking with her (Zia-ur-Rehman & Rashid, 2012). It was noticed by Haleema that Maryam started to take much time for lunch breaks. She even sleeps after coming back from a long break. Haleema asked Maryam that if there is some problem she can share it with her. She was kind to Maryam but she was also aware of the organization (Zia-ur-Rehman & Rashid, 2012). Maryam attitude was not beneficial for the organization. The seniors did not like to fire her from the job. However, consistent negative attitude lead the seniors to fire Maryam from her job. Haleema and her boss fired Maryam from job without contacting employee assistance program (EAP), which is concerned with all the job problems. 1. Haleema can not terminate Maryam without running into legal problems because Maryam is the employee of the organization for last four years, and nobody have seen her doing haraam practices with his or her eyes. . Haleema should

Rousseau's view on language Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Rousseau's view on language - Essay Example This means that at first the worlds did not have meaning per se and acquired stable meaning only later in history when speech lost its original characteristics. Furthermore, Rousseau suggests that the theories which argue that the origin of language might be easily explained by the necessity of the people to communicate about future actions and coordinate them are mistaken. He points out the fact that when a person is crying, the situation is understandable without any words as the person feels compassion and might comfort the other person without even knowing the language. As has been mentioned before, one would make no mistake pointing out that speech and song originate for a common source: the desire to convey inner feelings. While they were developing together, there are several factors that accelerated evolution of the former, such as the invention of writing. Indeed, people started to record what they say much earlier than they invented ways to record

Youth Violence Dissertation Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Youth Violence - Dissertation Example Recent arrest data show that 2.14 million juveniles were arrested by law enforcement agencies in 2005 (Carr, 2008). These arrests covered the full range of crimes including, homicides, forcible rape, robbery and aggravated assault. Furthermore, youth accounted for one in every six arrests for all violent crimes in the United States (Snyder, 2000). Background Prior research suggests that an association between race and violent offending exists with racial minorities offending at a disproportional rate compared to Whites (Thornberry et al., 1998). Plausibly, this relation exists because racial minority peer groups mediate the race-violence relationship. Alternatively, because racial minorities tend to be among the population that is most impoverished, minorities may be more likely to be antagonistic due to their aversive social and economic conditions (Bernard, 1990). Ultimately, the influence of peer association and socioeconomic status could have a greater influence on Blacks than no n-Blacks. Literature Review Relationship between Race and Violent Crime in Youths Several longitudinal delinquency studies examine the causes and correlates of youth delinquency. The Denver Youth Study used a sample of 1,527 boys and girls from high risk neighborhoods in Denver. These 1,527 boys and girls were a sample of 7, 9, 11, 13, and 15 year olds in 1987 (Huizinga, et al., 1998). The Denver Youth Study found that over a 5 year period (1987-91) most of the Black youths in the sample were in fact both victims and perpetrators of violent crime (Huizinga, et al., 1998). Loeber, et al. (1998) conducted research on 1,517 inner city boys from Pittsburgh in the Pittsburgh Youth Study. The sample consisted of first, fourth, and seventh graders from inner city Pittsburgh where 30 percent of sample were pre-screened students who exhibited especially disruptive behavior. The remaining 70 percent were a random sample selection of the remaining population. The Pittsburgh Youth Study found h igh levels of involvement in serious delinquency among its sample. No differences between Black and White boys were found at age 6, but differences gradually developed with prevalence of serious delinquency at age 16 reaching 27 percent for Blacks and 19 percent for Whites (Loeber, et al., 1998). Criminal violence is an enduring issue in urban America and this concern may not be equally serious for all communities. One of the more overt differences is between the violence levels of Blacks and Whites (Krivo & Peterson, 2000). Black violent offending has ranged from 6.2 to 9.5 times that of Whites over the past twenty years. Krivo and Peterson (2000) argued that one possibility for the racially differing rates of offending occurring is because the crime-generating processes are conditioned by the social situations of Blacks and Whites. Possible Mediators of the Race-Violence Relationship Socioeconomic Status Elliott (1994) with results from the longitudinal National Youth Survey posit ed that racial differences in violence varied across socioeconomic status, where employed Blacks and Whites had similar, continuous violent behavior in contrast to unemployed Blacks who were significantly more likely to behave more violently than unemployed Whites. It is certainly plausible that the nature of socioeconomic status has great influence on the violent behavior of people. Paschall, et al. (1998) found that impacts of socioeconomic disadvantage on violent behavior were clearly more profound for Black young adults than White young adults. Socioeconomic status could perhaps provide another explanation for differences in exposure to both violence and violent peers. Racial differences in violence may be a result of the lower socioeconomic sta

Final Exam Article Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Final Exam - Article Example This implies that the approach offers a more holistic outlook of the presidency, noting that it takes different variables into account. The third advantage is that it explicates the historical changes in the boundaries of presidential power. The fourth advantage is that it explicates what the president is mandated to do – according to customs and law. The disadvantage of this approach is that the approach does not explain the activities and the roles that the president engages in, irrespective of the fact that it defines the roles that the president does not take. Secondly, this approach has little explanation of the reasons behind the roles of the president and the importance of the roles he takes – within the specified boundaries. This implies that the rationales underlying presidential duties are not explored under the model; therefore it limits the understanding of its audience. The psychological approach focuses on the psychological qualities of a president and the relationship between these qualities to his responsibilities. The advantages of this approach include that it explains what presidents do and the reasons behind these actions; it explains presidential conduct, decision-making; organization of staffs and outcomes, which expresses the importance of certain psychological qualities (Bowles, 1999). The second advantage is that it compels the audience to evaluate presidential candidates and office holders, on the basis of many areas, including their personal and personality attributes; this outlook offers a micro-perspective conception to the study of the presidency (Robert & Zeckhauser, 2011). The disadvantages of this approach include that it emphasizes the personality traits of presidents and does not offer attention to any other factors. The second disadvantage is that the approach does not pay any attention to the laws, the constitution, the customs and other significant sets of values and provisions, which are instrumental in the

Civil War Position Paper Essay Example for Free

Civil War Position Paper Essay The American Civil War almost tore early America and its population apart. Still today people debate weather slavery was the primary cause for the war. In this paper I will explain why I believe slavery was not the primary cause of the American Civil War. Also I will point out many other factors that may have played a bigger role in the cause of the Civil War. Southern states believed STRONGLY in states’ rights. States’ rights are the belief that one should be loyal to their state instead of the country as a whole, also they believed that states should be able to make their own laws to their liking without having to answer to the country. This alone created tension between the southern states and the northern states for northern states felt that the constitution clearly stated that states can create laws as long as they do not conflict with the laws of the country. In addition to the tension between the north and south congress placed a tax on goods bought outside of the country otherwise known as tariffs. In 1828 and 1832, congress raised tariffs higher and higher. These taxes were hated by the southern states for they did not have many factories unlike they’re northern counterparts, and thus they paid tariffs more often. In one instance a southern state refused to pay the tariff nullifying the tax congress had placed this event known as the nullification crisis drove the wedge between the north and south further The bloody fighting between northern and southern voters in Kansas was another step in the path of the civil war. Due to the popular sovereignty act suggested by Senator Stephen Douglas the people where able to vote on whether that territory would’ve been a free state or a slave state, this caused voters from both the north and the south to pour into these states hoping to tip the scale in their favor in doing this conflict between the two erupted as homes were burned and people were murdered. In conclusion I do not believe that slavery was the primary cause of the civil war. My reason for thinking this is because of all the events that the country had to push though on top of slavery. For starters states rights, tariffs, nullification crisis, the Kansas Nebraska act, and the bleeding Kansas scare all played a bigger part in the cause of the civil war rather then slavery.

Salvador Dali Essay Example for Free

Salvador Dali Essay Salvadore Felipe Jacinto Dali Y Domenech was born on May 11, 1904 . in Figueras, Spain. He was a Spanish Surrealist painter and printmaker by trade. Dali is commonly regarded as having been â€Å"artistically influential for his explorations of subconscious imagery†. As an art student in Madrid and in Barcelona, Dali assimilated a vast number of artistic styles and displayed unusual technical facility as a painter. It was not until the late 1920s however, that two events brought about the development of his mature artistic style. The first of these was Dalis discovery of Sigmund Freuds writings on the erotic significance of subconscious imagery and the second was Dalis affiliation with the Paris Surrealists, a group of artists and writers who sought to establish the greater reality of mans subconscious over his reason. To bring up images from the depths of his subconscious mind, Dali began to introduce hallucinatory states in himself by a process he described as paranoiac critical. In essence, the paranoiac critical meant looking at one thing and seeing another. In my opinion, this is an extended version of the face seen in the fire. Heads turn into a distant city, a landscape resolves itself as a still life, inexplicable combinations are seen to lurk magically beneath the skin of the world and thus the foundation for much Dalis artistic philosophy is established. Once Dali hit on this method, his painting style matured with extraordinary rapidity, and from 1927 to 1937 he produced those paintings which made him the worlds best known Surrealist artist. Dali depicted a dream world in which commonplace objects are â€Å"juxtaposed, deformed, or otherwise metamorphosed in a bizarre and irrational fashion†. Dali portrayed these objects in meticulous, almost painfully realistic detail and usually placed them within bleak, sunlit landscapes that were reminiscent of his Catalonian homeland. Much of my research indicates that the most famous of these enigmatic images is probably The Persistence of Memory (commonly known as Soft Watches) which was painted in 1931. In this painting, limp, melting watches rest in an eerily calm landscape. Moving to Paris around 1928, Dali frequented the Cafe Cyrano, the headquarters of the Parisian surrealists, and in 1929, he first exhibited his own surrealist paintings. Dali continued to study the writings of Sigmund Freud and subsequently declared an ambition to systemize confusion. In addition to such paintings as The Persistence of Memory, other famous works such as The Sacrament of the Last Supper which was painted in 1955 and is currently on display at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., have become widely known as part of the definitive record of twentieth century art. In Dalis books, of which he wrote many himself, canvases, like The Persistence of Memory seem like looking down the wrong end of the telescope at a brilliant, clear, shrunken and poisoned world whose deep mannerist perspective and sharp patches of shadow invite the eye but not the body. I doubt whether one could imagine walking on that stretched, satiny beach among the oozing watches. This atmosphere of voyeurism lent force to Dalis obsessive imagery of impotence, of violence and of guilt. Even in his most extreme moments of anticlerical shock, however, research indicates that Dali remained a Spanish Catholic. He inherited from Spanish devotional art a paralyzing morbidity about flesh. He seemed to like anything that was not erect: running Camembert, soft watches, sagging loaves of flesh held up by crutches. Naturally all this was much more shocking fifty years ago than it is today: Dali was regularly denounced by Fascists and Stalinists alike as a decadent threat to youth. When he could no longer annoy either the bourgeoisie or the self- appointed guardians of the proletariat, he mortally offended the avant-garde by embracing Franco and the Pope, and was duly drummed out of the surrealist group for it Dalis reaction, natural in such an enfant terrible (approx. translation: terrible child), was to become more royalist than the King and more ostentatiously greedy than his Palm Beach and Hollywood patrons. If the net result was a tacky, phosphorescent caricature of Genius at Work, an embarrassment to most aficionados, it is still inconceivable to such eccentric art buffs that Dali the bad boy will ever be expelled from the pantheon of modern imagination. With the Spanish director, Luis Bunuel, Dali also made two surrealistic films. The first was, Un Chien Andalou ( French for An Andalusian dog) produced in 1928 and the latter was LAge Dor (The Golden Age) produced in 1930. Both of these films are commonly described as being grotesque but filled with highl y suggestive images. The production of Dalis art and films was both complimented and further popularized by his maintenance of in image similar to the one reflected in his works;: His eccentric appearance consisting ordinarily of a flowing cape, handlebar mustache, and popping eyes helped to make Salvadore Dali recognized worldwide. In the late 1930s, Dali switched to painting in a more academic style under the influence of the Renaissance painter Raphael, and as a consequence, that was another example of why he was expelled from the Surrealist movement. In the later years of his life, Dali spent the majority of his time designing theater sets, interiors of fashionable shops, and jewelry as well as exhibiting his genius for flamboyant self-promotional stunts in the United States, where he lived from 1940 to 1955. In the period from 1950 to 1970, Dali painted many works with religious themes, though he continued to explore erotic subjects, to represent childhood memories, and to use themes centering on his wife, Gala. Notwithstanding their technical accomplishments, these later paintings are apparently not as highly regarded as the artists earlier works. Salvadore Dali died on January 3, 1989 in Figueras and is now often regarded as one the greatest twentieth century artists yet. With some artists, death is only a ratification of decay: it releases them from the humiliations of their late careers. So it was with Salvador Dali, who when he died at the age of 84 was perhaps the archetype of that 20th century phenomenon, the embarrassing Genius. He was the first modern artist to exploit fully the mechanism of publicity. He appropriated the idea of the artist as demonic obsessive. He dealt with the question Why should your fantasies matter?. Clearly, Salvadore Dali utilized communication and all forms of contemporary imagery to make not only his works, but himself into a legend. Bibliography: Ades, Dawn, Dali and Surrealism (1982); Dali, S.,Salvador Dali: Diary of a Genius (1990); De Liano, I. G., Dali (1984); Descharnes, Robert, Dali (1984); Etherington-Smith, M., The Persistence of Memory: A Biography of Salvador Dali (1993). Various internet sites

Reflection on the Role of Consumption in Everyday Life

Reflection on the Role of Consumption in Everyday Life Meghan Tenorio Consumption in Everyday Life Eating a hamburger. Buying a t-shirt. Buying a car. Buying gasoline. Just a few things that everyone will do or will most likely do in their lifetime. Consumption is the using up of goods and services by consumer purchasing or in the production of other goods. Someone in the field of international studies can be looking for a relationship between consumption and its role in the environment, national identity, gender, and economic development. Consumption’s role in daily life is inevitable, and as we advance further into the 21st century we can see just how much it connects the people as a whole. â€Å"A pound of sugar is only a quantity, a convenient load, not an object in itself. The book, however – and here it prefigures the durables of our time – is a distinct, self-contained object, exactly reproduced on a large scale. One pound of sugar flows into the next; each book has its own eremitic self-sufficiency† (Anderson 34). This quote is just an example of the simultaneous consumption of the newspaper-as-fiction. Consumption may never be predictable. While â€Å"particular morning and evening editions will overwhelmingly be consumed between this hour, and that, only on this day, not that; sugar, the use of which proceeds in an unclocked, continuous flow; it may go bad, but it does not go out of date† (Anderson 35). Consumption is also not limited to one thing at a time; it may be and usually is simultaneous. As the same newspaper reader reads on the subway or in the barbershop while getting his hair cut, he is performing multiple acts of consumpt ion at once. This assures the reader that the world is visibly rooted in the act of consumption in everyday life. Print-capitalism, a possible form of consumption, is a way that communities can achieve a sense of national identity and connect on a profound level. â€Å"Hence, the printer’s office emerged as the key to North American communications and community intellectual life† (Anderson 61). Assuming that consumption is a social process says that our identity focuses on symbolic aspects rather than the actual material consumption. In the book Eaarth by Bill McKibben consumption is spoken about in the sense of environment – water, land, and especially forms of energy. It is one of the main reasons that the earth is where it is right now – slowly (or perhaps not as slowly as we thought) degrading into earth where any kind of adaptation will prove impossible. As he states, â€Å"Global warming is no longer a philosophical threat, no longer a future threat, no longer a threat at all. It’s our reality. We’ve changed the planet, changed it in large and fundamental ways†¦ We need now to understand the world that we’ve created, and consider – urgently – how to live in it† (McKibben Xiv). The Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius offers the idea a century ago that we were â€Å"evaporating our coal mines into the air,† and calculated that this could eventually raise temperatures, but nobody seemed to pay much attention. We’re not going to get back th e planet we once had. â€Å"We’re like the guy who ate steak for dinner every night and let his cholesterol top 300 and had a heart attack. Now he dines on Lipitor and walks on the treadmill, but half his heart is dead tissue† (McKibben 16). Through high levels of consumption, we’ve burned the coal and the oil, and released the first dose of carbon, that carbon that raised the temperature enough to start the process in motion. Once it’s in motion there is nothing to shut it off but can only be slightly lessened. Without even realizing it â€Å"†¦now, we’ve turned our cars and factories into junior volcanoes, and so we’re not just producing carbon faster than the plant world can absorb it; we’re also making it so hot that the plants absorb less carbon than they used to† (McKibben 23). From the time that we wake up, the second we turn on that coffee pot till the second we turn off the lights and go to bed (don’t forge t the furnace or the air-conditioner that is probably still running) we are burning coal and gas and oil. Our tendency for consumption – not only consumption but more specifically over-consumption – is why we are where we are environmentally. â€Å"Richard Heinberg, the analyst who was one of the first to alert the world to the impending oil peak, once compiled a list of things made from oil that ran from computer chips, insecticides, anesthetics, and fertilizers, right through lipstick, perfume, and pantyhose to aspirin and parachutes† (McKibben 30). These are just a few products that we all consume in one way, or another. This consumption, the overuse of oil, is leading to global warming. It is possible to slow down the growth but only with the cooperation on a small scale – â€Å"small, not significant; dispersed, not centralized† (McKibben 120). All this can add up to the results we are looking for. This means reshaping our society. Growth and expansion requires a kind of centralization: a concentration of resources and the need for consumption. What we are looking for is the opposite. Our earth may never be the same, but at least we will still have an earth to thrive on in whatever shape or form. Consumption has a huge involvement in economic development in the way that whatever we consume benefits the economy. This holds true to many products: food, beauty products, intangible items, and even something as simple as a plain white cotton t-shirt. In the book The Travels of a T-shirt in the Global Economy by Pietra Rivoli it shows many examples of how consumption all over the world can have effects on the growth of the economy in the U.S. The shirts that have the â€Å"Made in China† label are usually made out of cotton that comes from Texas. Texas cotton doesn’t brag about where it was born and raised: †Desolate, hardscrabble, and alternately baked to death, shredded by windstorms, or pummeled by rocky hail, west Texas will never have much of a tourist trade† (Rivoli 3). However, there is a very good chance that your t-shirt and mine were born there in a city called Lubbock, the self-proclaimed â€Å"cottonest city† in the world. Cotton may see m like an unlike candidate for economic success in the United States, but the consumption rates prove it to be a good candidate as most of cotton comes from the U.S. Cotton growers can also appeal to other aspects of consumption than only t-shirts. â€Å"Connoisseurs agree that when it comes to frying chips, cottonseed oil is best† (Rivoli 52). Colgate-Palmolive is also a major customer when it comes to cottonseed oil. This just proves the fact that consumption occurs in multiple ways at once – from the cotton to the cottonseed oil – and, therefore, can help the economic growth and stability more rapidly. Although, because of the abundance of cotton growers in the U.S., other countries fail to find economic stability through cotton production itself as well as the U.S. has. Consumption is an everyday thing and starts as soon as you wake up right up until you turn the lights off at night. It has its benefits up to a set point but also needs to be regulated if we want to maintain a livable planet. Consumption can be a social act, as well as materialistic. Either way, consumption as a whole benefits our national identity and economic development, though if not taken down to the local level it could be harmful to our environment and planet as we know it. Works Cited Anderson, Benedict R. OG. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso, 1991. Print. McKibben, Bill. Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet. New York: Times, 2010. Print. Rivoli, Pietra. The Travels of a T-shirt in the Global Economy: An Economist Examines the Markets, Power and Politics of World Trade. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley Sons, 2005. Print.

Environmentalism in Watership Down by Richard Adams Essay -- essays re

The small group of rabbits that left their original warren, Sandleford, to find a new home often uses their little spare time to listen to stories generally told by Dandelion. These stories are often about the Thousand Enemies and how they are a threat to the rabbits, especially El-ahrairah. Humans are presented as one of the â€Å"Thousand.† The author of the book, Richard Adams, displays man in a negative way because of this. Man is portrayed as violent, nonsensical, and abusive to the natural way of life. In the book, Watership Down, Richard Adams portrays the life and style of man in a negative way. In both their old warren and on their journey, the group of rabbits encounters urban development and the city life which relentlessly interfere with their plans. The inciting point is the cause of sub-division development ("Literature in Brief Information about Watership Down.") and humans post a notice in the field where the rabbits live that says: â€Å"THIS IDEALLY SITUATED ESTATE, COMPRISING SIX ACRES OF EXCELLENT BUILDING LAND, IS TO BE DEVELOPED WITH HIGH CLASS MODERN RESIDENCES BY SUTCH AND MARTIN, LIMITED, OR NEWBURY, BERKS† (Adams 8). This residential construction ignites Fiver’s â€Å"visions† which causes the group to leave Sandleford Warren. In a later chapter, Holly and Bluebell seek out Hazel and his group and voice their willingness to join. At the same time, Holly relays the story of what happened in their old warren, Sandleford. Men with the white sticks in their mouths and made the air turn bad to kill the rabbits. Soon after, bulldozers flattened the area, with no regard whatsoever for the well-being of the rabbits. Richard Adams could be seen as taking use of development to get his rabbits to a better place, but such vio... ... them technically part of the man. Because of their connection to man, Richard Adams exposes animals like cats and dogs, which are man’s possessions, in a distasteful way. All in all, Richard Adams has a very negative view when it comes to man: human development and their creatures. His writing really gets into the mind of a rabbit, and through these rabbits he celebrates the natural, undisturbed world in which the rabbits live ("Literature in Brief Information about Watership Down."). Whether the rabbits simply hear about humans or even encounter them, they are generally displayed in a bad way. There may be a few times when there is a caring human, or a courteous animal, but that occurs very rarely. Richard Adams, in his book Watership Down, celebrates the natural created world before humans â€Å"destroyed† it. Websites used: www.answers.com/topic/watership-down-2

Arousal Essay -- essays research papers

Discussion: Arousal is an integral element that is needed when preparing ones-self for sporting competition ( or practice for that matter). According to Weinberg and Gould, the athlete must become aware of his or her psychologigal states before they can control any thoughts or feelings they may have. This means when preparing for competition it is important to create an arousal state that is indicative of the competition you are competeing in and be aware of that state in order to set yourself up psychologically to compete. The athlete must energize him/herself when feelin flat and be aware of what he or she is doing in order to enhance his/her sport performance. With that said, if arousal levels are too high then sport performance can be hindered due to the athletes attention be focused on more than just the competition.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Anxiety is a pshychological state that, if uncontrolled, can hinder a performance greatly. Individuals must be able to cope with this anxiety in a positive mannner so that it doesn’t consume them and cause catastrophic results. Anxiety as a form of arousal is beneficial if kept in check because it make the athlete aware of what is about to transpire.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  When dealing with arousal it is important to understand the theories behind it. The Drive Theory states that â€Å"as an individuals arousal or state anxiety inreases ,so too does his or her performance†. The Inverted - U Hypothesis states if arousal is too...

the koran Essay -- essays research papers

The Koran The document â€Å"the Koran† is written through God’s impact on people’s present situation and their situation in the next world, which is called the revelation of God. Further revelations to Muhammad were copied word for word in what came to be the Qur†an, or Koran. The message offered Arabs a faith founded on a book. The Koran also tells us that Muhammad was sent to all in order to present a message understandable to everyone in the world, the Koran had to speak a language that everyone could understand. Muhammad was simply God’s messenger and that he merited no special veneration or worship (Kishlansky 211). The Koran had to address the simple and the sophisticated, the shepherd and the philosopher, the scientist and the artist. The Koran elaborates on the ways in which the followers of the prophets, specifically the Jews and the Christians, have or have not lived up to the visionary messages. It issues instructions on how to live a life pleasing to God. It tells people that they should pray, fast, and take care of the needy. â€Å"If ye make your alms to appear, it is well; but if ye conceal them, and give them unto the poor, this will be better for you, and will remove some of your sins: and God is well informed of that which ye do (Kishlansky 146). This means if you give yourself to others you will be rewarded by God. It goes into great detail concerning human interrelationships - such as laws of inheritance and marriage in a manner reminiscent of parts of the Hebr...

Best Practices & Most effective strategies for Curriculum Design in K-12 education in America Essay

Curriculum is a plan for learning that includes targeting a student population, conducting a needs assessment, and writing a mission statement. It includes developing goals, objectives, content, teaching strategies, and assessment tools. Alignment is critical in curriculum development from purpose and philosophy, to goals and objectives, to content and activities, and to assessment and evaluation. Working through a process of asking and answering who, what, where, why, when, how questions is essential in designing and developing curriculum. A curriculum serves several purposes that include: †¢ Explicit statements of ideology underlying the instruction (why are you teaching it, and why is the teaching the way it is? †¢ General long-term aims (what are students intended to gain from following the course? †¢ Specific, testable, short-term objectives (what will they be able to do as a result of following the course? ) †¢ Resources to be used (what is needed to deliver the course? ) †¢ The delivery methods to be employed (how is it to be taught? ) †¢ Timing of the units and their sequencing (when is it to be taught and in what order? ) †¢ Assessment procedures and the balance of assessments to be made (how, when and why will it be examined? ) †¢ A methodology for evaluating how well the course has been received (how will instructor acquire feedback from the students about the course? ). K-12 education is defined as educational technology in United States, Canada and other countries for publicly supported grades prior to college. The K stands for kindergarten and 12 denotes 1st to 12th grade before the 13th that is the first year of college. Curricular Theory and Theorists The word curriculum has its origins in the running/chariot tracks of Greece. It was, literally, a course. In Latin curriculum was a racing chariot; currere was to run. A useful starting point for us here might be the definition offered by John Kerr and taken up by Vic Kelly in his standard work on the subject. Kerr defines curriculum as, ‘All the learning which is planned and guided by the school, whether it is carried on in groups or individually, inside or outside the school. [1] This gives us some basis to move on. For the moment all we need to do is highlight two of the key features: †¢ Learning is planned and guided. We have to specify in advance what we are seeking to achieve and how we are to go about it. †¢ The definition refers to schooling. We should recognize that our current appreciation of curriculum theory and practice emerged in the school and in relation to other schooling ideas such as subject and lesson. In what follows we are going to look at four ways of approaching curriculum theory and practice: †¢ Curriculum as a body of knowledge to be transmitted. †¢ Curriculum as an attempt to achieve certain ends in students – product. †¢ Curriculum as process. †¢ Curriculum as praxis. Curriculum as a body of knowledge to be transmitted Many people still equate a curriculum with a syllabus. Syllabus, naturally, originates from the Greek. Basically it means a concise statement or table of the heads of a discourse, the contents of a treatise, the subjects of a series of lectures. In the form that many of us will have been familiar with it is connected with courses leading to examinations. For example, when teachers talk of the syllabus associated with, say, the Cambridge GSCE exam. What we can see in such documents is a series of headings with some additional notes which set out the areas that may be examined. A syllabus will not generally indicate the relative importance of its topics or the order in which they are to be studied. Those who compile a syllabus tend to follow the traditional textbook approach of an ‘order of contents’, or a pattern prescribed by a ‘logical’ approach to the subject, or the shape of a university course in which they may have participated. Thus, an approach to curriculum theory and practice which focuses on syllabus is only really concerned with content. Curriculum is a body of knowledge-content and/or subjects. Education in this sense is the process by which these are transmitted or ‘delivered’ to students by the most effective methods that can be devised [3]. Where people still equate curriculum with a syllabus they are likely to limit their planning to a consideration of the content or the body of knowledge that they wish to transmit. ‘It is also because this view of curriculum has been adopted that many teachers in primary schools, have regarded issues of curriculum as of no concern to them, since they have not regarded their task as being to transmit bodies of knowledge in this manner’. Curriculum as product The dominant modes of describing and managing education are today couched in the productive form. Education is most often seen as a technical exercise. Objectives are set, a plan drawn up, and then applied, and the outcomes (products) measured. In the late 1980s and the 1990s many of the debates about the National Curriculum for schools did not so much concern how the curriculum was thought about as to what its objectives and content might be. It is the work of two American writers Franklin Bobbitt, 1928 and Ralph W. Tyler, 1949 that dominate theory and practice within this tradition. In The Curriculum Bobbitt writes as follows: The central theory is simple. Human life, however varied, consists in the performance of specific activities. Education that prepares for life is one that prepares definitely and adequately for these specific activities. However numerous and diverse they may be for any social class they can be discovered. This requires only that one go out into the world of affairs and discover the particulars of which their affairs consist. These will show the abilities, attitudes, habits, appreciations and forms of knowledge that men need. These will be the objectives of the curriculum. They will be numerous, definite and particularized. The curriculum will then be that series of experiences which children and youth must have by way of obtaining those objectives. This way of thinking about curriculum theory and practice was heavily influenced by the development of management thinking and practice. The rise of ‘scientific management’ is often associated with the name of its main advocate F. W. Taylor. Basically what he proposed was greater division of labor with jobs being simplified; an extension of managerial control over all elements of the workplace; and cost accounting based on systematic time-and-motion study. All three elements were involved in this conception of curriculum theory and practice. For example, one of the attractions of this approach to curriculum theory was that it involved detailed attention to what people needed to know in order to work, live their lives and so on. A familiar, and more restricted, example of this approach can be found in many training programs, where particular tasks or jobs have been analyzed and broken down into their component elements and lists of competencies drawn up. In other words, the curriculum was not to be the result of ‘armchair speculation’ but the product of systematic study. Bobbitt’s work and theory met with mixed responses. As it stands it is a technical exercise. However, it wasn’t criticisms such as this which initially limited the impact of such curriculum theory in the late 1920s and 1930s. Rather, the growing influence of ‘progressive’, child-centred approaches shifted the ground to more romantic notions of education. Bobbitt’s long lists of objectives and his emphasis on order and structure hardly sat comfortably with such forms. The Progressive movement lost much of its momentum in the late 1940s in the United States and from that period the work of Ralph W. Tyler, in particular, has made a lasting impression on curriculum theory and practice. He shared Bobbitt’s emphasis on rationality and relative simplicity. His theory was based on four fundamental questions: 1. What educational purposes should the school seek to attain? 2. What educational experience can be provided that is likely to attain these purposes? 3. How can these educational experiences be effectively organized? 4. How can we determine whether these purposes are being attained? Like Bobbitt he also placed an emphasis on the formulation of behavioural objectives. Since the real purpose of education is not to have the instructor perform certain activities but to bring about significant changes in the students’ pattern of behaviour, it becomes important to recognize that any statements of objectives of the school should be a statement of changes to take place in the students. We can see how these concerns translate into an ordered procedure and is very similar to the technical or productive thinking steps set out below. 1. Diagnosis of need 2. Formulation of objectives 3. Selection of content 4. Organization of content 5. Selection of learning experiences 6. Organization of learning experiences There are a number of issues with this approach to curriculum theory and practice. The first is that the plan or programme assumes great importance. For example, we might look at a more recent definition of curriculum as: ‘A program of activities by teachers designed so that pupils will attain so far as possible certain educational and other schooling ends or objectives [4]. The problem here is that such programmes inevitably exist prior to and outside the learning experiences. This takes much away from learners. They can end up with little or no voice. They are told what they must learn and how they will do it. The success or failure of both the program and the individual learners is judged on the basis of whether pre-specified changes occur in the behaviour and person of the learner. If the plan is tightly adhered to, there can only be limited opportunity for educators to make use of the interactions that occur. It also can deskill educators in another way. For example, a number of curriculum programs, particularly in the USA, have attempted to make the student experience ‘teacher proof’. The logic of this approach is for the curriculum to be designed outside of the classroom or school. Educators then apply programs and are judged by the products of their actions. It turns educators into technicians. Second, there are questions around the nature of objectives. This model is hot on measurability. It implies that behaviour can be objectively, mechanistically measured. There are obvious dangers here: there always has to be some uncertainty about what is being measured. We only have to reflect on questions of success in our work. It is often very difficult to judge what the impact of particular experiences has been. Sometimes it is years after the event that we come to appreciate something of what has happened. For example, most informal educators who have been around a few years will have had the experience of an ex-participant telling them in great detail about how some forgotten event brought about some fundamental change. Yet there is something more. In order to measure, things have to be broken down into smaller and smaller units. The result, as many of you will have experienced, can be long lists of often trivial skills or competencies. This can lead to a focus in this approach to curriculum theory and practice on the parts rather than the whole; on the trivial, rather than the significant. It can lead to an approach to education and assessment which resembles a shopping list. When all the items are ticked, the person has passed the course or has learnt something. The role of overall judgment is somehow sidelined. Third, there is a real problem when we come to examine what educators actually do in the classroom, for example. Much of the research concerning teacher thinking and classroom interaction, and curriculum innovation has pointed to the lack of impact on actual pedagogic practice of objectives. One way of viewing this is that teachers simply get it wrong as they do not work with objectives. The difficulties that educators experience with objectives in the classroom may point to something inherently wrong with the approach, that it is not grounded in the study of educational exchanges. It is a model of curriculum theory and practice largely imported from technological and industrial settings. Fourth, there is the problem of unanticipated results. The focus on pre-specified goals may lead both educators and learners to overlook learning that is occurring as a result of their interactions, but which is not listed as an objective. The apparent simplicity and rationality of this approach to curriculum theory and practice, and the way in which it mimics industrial management have been powerful factors in its success. A further appeal has been the ability of academics to use the model to attack teachers. There is a tendency, recurrent enough to suggest that it may be endemic in the approach, for academics in education to use the objectives model as a stick with which to beat teachers. ‘What are your objectives? ‘ is more often asked in a tone of challenge than one of interested and helpful inquiry. The demand for objectives is a demand for justification rather than a description of ends. It is not about curriculum design, but rather an expression of irritation in the problems of accountability in education. [5] Curriculum as process We have seen that the curriculum as product model is heavily dependent on the setting of behavioural objectives. The curriculum, essentially, is a set of documents for implementation. Another way of looking at curriculum theory and practice is via process. In this sense curriculum is not a physical thing, but rather the interaction of teachers, students and knowledge. In other words, curriculum is what actually happens in the classroom and what people do to prepare and evaluate. What we have in this model is a number of elements in constant interaction. It is an active process and links with the practical form of reasoning set out by Aristotle, which is as follows: Teachers enter particular schooling and situations with an ability to think critically in action and with an understanding of their role and the expectations others have of them, and a proposal for action which sets out essential principles and features of the educational encounter. Guided by these, they encourage conversations between, and with, people in the situation out of which may become thinking and action. They continually evaluate the process and what they can see of outcomes. Curriculum as praxis Curriculum as praxis is, in many respects, a development of the process model. While the process model is driven by general principles and places an emphasis on judgment and meaning making, it does not make explicit statements about the interests it serves. It may, for example, be used in such a way that does not make continual reference to collective human well-being and to the emancipation of the human spirit. The praxis model of curriculum theory and practice brings these to the centre of the process and makes an explicit commitment to emancipation. Thus action is not simply informed, it is also committed. It is praxis. Critical pedagogy goes beyond situating the learning experience within the experience of the learner: it is a process which takes the experiences of both the learner and the teacher and, through dialogue and negotiation, recognizes them both as problematic. It allows, indeed encourages, students and teachers together to confront the real problems of their existence and relationships. When students confront the real problems of their existence they will soon also be faced with their own oppression. The process model is modified to fit the praxis model, which is as follows: Teachers enter particular schooling and situations with a personal, but shared idea of the good and a commitment to human emancipation, an ability to think critically in action, an understanding of their role and the expectations others have of them, and a proposal for action which sets out essential principles and features of the educational encounter. Guided by these, they encourage conversations between, and with, people in the situation out of which may become informed and committed action. They continually evaluate the process and what they can see of outcomes. Proposed Curriculum Design: A curriculum prepared for the targeted students of K-12 education must be tailored to meet their needs for a fast and productive mental growth. Therefore a curriculum for k-12 education must be prepared so that it supports all children and young people from 3 – 18 to develop as successful learners, confident individuals, responsible citizens and effective contributors, ready to play a full part in society now and in the future. As part of the review process we need to develop clear guidance which sets out expectations of what children and young people should learn and also promotes flexibility and space so that teachers can use their professional judgment creatively to meet children’s needs. Therefore, before beginning to design a curriculum for k-12 education, one must capture the essence of what young people will learn over the course of their schooling and express this through the experience and outcome statements. Curriculum Designing Guidelines Purpose The construction of experiences and outcomes that effectively provide progression in each curriculum area and convey the values, principles and purposes of A Curriculum for Excellence is central to the success of the program. In particular, it is important that you reflect relevant aspects of the four capacities in your work. If we can get this right these outcomes and experiences will have a significant, positive, impact on classroom practice and hence on the learning experience of all children and young people. It is an exciting prospect. Starting point In phase 1 each early review group should be asked to simplify and prioritise the curriculum (from age 3 to 15 in the first instance) retaining what currently works well and making changes where these were justified by research evidence. The output from phase 1 of the review process and the rationale for your curriculum area, research and other national and international comparators are your starting points. Your work will be based on the relevant parts of the Curriculum Frameworks: for Children 3 – 5, 5 – 14 guidelines, Standard Grade, and National Qualifications. It is important that experience and outcome statements you write at each Curriculum for Excellence level provide appropriate cognitive demand. The framework for outcomes The experiences and outcomes will sit within a framework of advice to teachers. Curriculum Area The eight curriculum areas are: Expressive Arts, Health and Wellbeing, Languages, Maths, Religious and Moral Education, Science, Social Studies and Technologies. Rationale The rationale provides an overview of the curriculum area states its main purposes and describes its contribution to the values and purposes. Subsets of the curriculum area Each curriculum area is subdivided either into fields of learning – or ‘subjects’ (e. g. Expressive Arts into art, drama, dance and music) or into aspects of learning in that area (e. g. Languages into listening and talking, reading and writing) Lines of development These identify learning tracks in each subset of the curriculum area. They are expressed in different ways in each area of the curriculum. For example within expressive arts they identify the skills to be developed: creating, presenting and evaluating in art, drama, dance and music; within science they describe broad areas of knowledge and understanding to be developed; biodiversity, being human and cells in Our Living World. Experiences and outcomes Within each line of development, experiences and outcomes describe the expected progression in learning for children and young people. Essential outcomes Essential outcomes are a small number of high level statements, derived from the main purposes described in the rationale, that encapsulate what learning in that curriculum area provides for all children and young people. Taken together, the essential outcomes are intended to sum up the expectations for the broad general education of all young people. The focus of your work will be writing the experiences and outcomes for your curriculum area. It is likely that there will be interplay between what you produce and the ‘essential outcomes’ , which are the ones helping to shape and refine the other in an iterative manner. Outcomes should be written in the clearest possible English. Where possible these should be accessible to children and young people, but not at the expense of clarity. It is also important to try to write lively and engaging experiences and outcomes. Best Practices of Writing the Curriculum Ultimately the intention is to produce streamlined guidance for the entire curriculum in a single document. We also intend to make the outcomes available in electronic format to allow curriculum leaders and teachers to identify and blend outcomes from both within and beyond curriculum areas. Several stages will be required to achieve this. Curriculum for Excellence Achievement framework In the first stage of work the aim is to produce experience and outcome statements up to Third level with provisional work done to Fourth level. Both Third and Fourth level have particular significance. Third level is important because it defines the point at which a young person has experienced a broad general education and has satisfied the essential outcomes in all curriculum areas. At this point there may be opportunities to choose what she or he wishes to study, typically with a greater degree of speciality and in greater depth to Fourth level and possibly beyond. For some pupils, their choices will result in continued, lateral progression, in curriculum areas at Third level. Fourth level is important because it will enable transition into the formal qualifications system. Experiences and outcomes at this level will tend to be more specific than those for earlier levels. The outcomes and experiences written during this stage will be subject to refinement through the engagement process. Writing an excellent outcome Always remember that the experiences and outcomes should have an impact on classroom practice and learning. The outcomes should not be written in the form of assessment criteria, nor should they constrain learning. Every outcome should therefore be tested against the following criteria: 1. It should express learning that is clear to the teacher, and where possible the young person. This will promote the application of formative assessment strategies. 2. It should indicate the purpose of the outcome and/or direct the selection of learning activities for all children and young people. 3. It should allow evaluation of the outcome. In other words, it should be clear from the outcome what evidence might be observed to demonstrate progress by the child or young person. Also bear in mind that there is no intention to produce an elaborated curriculum. Outcomes should therefore offer and support opportunities for enrichment and development for those young people with additional support needs who may not progress beyond the first levels. As you complete blocks of work a further test is to consider the extent to which you have prioritised and simplified existing guidance and to ask yourself if any changes are robust and justifiable. As a general rule outcomes should begin with the ‘I can’ stem. Experiences describe purposeful and worthwhile tasks, activities or events that contribute to motivation, personal development and learning. As a general rule they should be signalled using the ‘I have’ stem. The following additional general parameters will help you get started. †¢ Simplification and prioritisation should result in time and space being made to operate the seven principles of curriculum design. For example, teachers should have time for greater depth of study, to introduce topics or ideas in a relevant context or to respond to local events or circumstances and to ensure progression. †¢ Assume your outcomes can be taught within the time allocations typically applied in schools at present.