How Does High School Extracurricular Participation Predict Bachelor’s Degree Attainment? It is Complicated

This study answered novel questions about the connection between high school extracurricular dosage (number of activities and participation duration) and the attainment of a bachelor’s degree. Using data from the Common Application and the National Student Clearinghouse (N = 311,308), we found that greater extracurricular participation positively predicted bachelor’s degree attainment. However, among students who ultimately earned a bachelor’s degree, participating in more than a moderate number of high school activities (3 or 4) predicted decreasing odds of earning a bachelor’s degree on time (within 4 years). This effect intensified as participation duration increased, such that students who participated in the greatest number of high school activities for the most years were the most likely to delay college graduation.     

“Now It's Not School,It's For Real!”: Negotiated Participation in Media Vocational Training

By taking up the strand in Lave and Wenger's writing on situated learning that directs attention to social dynamics and issues of power and positioning, the present article argues for the fruitfulness of including the concept of negotiated participation in approaches to teaching and learning. Based on a fieldwork in vocational media production projects, this study demonstrates the tensions and contradictions that came out of the hybrid nature of these vocational practices in high school. Establishing the professionally relevant modes of participation in the projects was fraught with struggles in which the project members had to bracket institutionalized school routines as well as handle and negotiate particular work life conditions (including cooperation with old timers in the target professions). It is argued that the way institutional contradictions are manifested and negotiated in everyday teaching and interaction can inform our understanding of the premises for multifunctional educational praxis.     

Beijing Yingcai Middle School

The residential Beijing Yingcai School attracts students from across China because of the quality education it offers.     

Beijing Chinese Opera School

A seven-year-old learns the role of the hero Zhuge Liang (with fan in hand)     

Beijing Shengji Art School

IN 1996 Beijing Shengji ArtSchool came into being, anart cradle morket that lies inBeijing's West Mountains withbeautiful scenery and peaksrising one higher than theother. The specializedboarding middle schooloccupies 30.000 squaremeters, the buildings 12,000square meters. The complexhouses Chinese national andfolk dance, drama (film andtelevision) performance andother specialties, and now hasover 300 students in theschool.     

The Qingdao Young Reporters School

Arank of young journalists is active in Qingdao, Shandong Province. In 1993, at a conference during the 11th Qingdao Municipal People's Congress, people saw children, carrying cameras easily and confidently and taking photos for provincial-and city-level leaders seated at the rostrum. They were young journalists from the Qingdao Young Reporter's School, so they can be said to be professionally trained.     

Foreign Middle School Students in Beijing

In recent years, as China's reform policies continue to progress, more and more foreigners are working in China. Their school-age children attend local schools. The following pictures show the life of some foreign middle school students in Beijing.     

Foreign Teacher Sends Girl to School

WHEN we talk about "Teacher Du" at the Hebei Institute of Finance and Economics in Shijiazhuang, we cannot help but think of the large, smiling man who often carries an oversized camera bag. In fact, his name is Norbert duBois, an English teacher from the east coast of the United States. DuBois is fond of photography and has a wide circle of acquaintances. He has     

Women and the Environment: Declaration Encourages Active Participation

JUNE 5, 1994 has been mandated World Environment Day. On this day the first meeting on Women and the Environment in China was held in Beijing and the Declaration of Chinese Women on Environment was established. According to the declaration, environmental pollution and the destruction of the ecology have posed a serious threat to the survival of the human race. It has become a great issue of common concern. The functions of women in procreation and social development are directly affected by the deterioration of the environment. It is the common interest of the populations of the world to protect the environment. The declaration notes that Chinese women are greatly concerned about the environmental conditions of their     

Pension Participation: Do Parents Transmit Time Preference?

A wide range of economic and health behaviors are influenced by individuals’ attitudes toward the future—including investments in human capital, health capital and financial capital. Intergenerational correlations in such behaviors suggest an important role the family may play in transmitting time preferences to children. This article presents a model of parental investment in future-oriented capital, where parents shape their children’s time preference rates. The research identifies a dual role for a parent’s time preference rate in the process of shaping the offspring’s attitude toward the future, and discusses paths through which parents may socialize children to be patient. The model’s implications are studied by investigating the parent–child correlation in pension participation using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics     

A Historical Perspective on High School Students’ Paid Employment and Its Association with High School Dropout

Discussions about the role of paid employment in high school students’ lives usually involve untested assumptions about historical trends in the frequency, intensity, and selective nature of students’ employment behaviors. Using several nationally representative data sources, we find few changes in rates of employment or hours worked per week among adolescents since 1940 or among students since 1980. We observe important changes in recent decades in racial/ethnic and gender differences in employment and intensive employment. Finally, we observe that the relationship between students’ intensive employment and high school completion has been stable and persistently significant since the late 1960s.

Han Yuling,a Primary School Headmaster

Han Yuling studies teaching conditions in different classes through the closed circuit television monitoring system in the school.、碑‘.边‘.幽‘山J‘“·尸一:马尸殊尹叫如护{Han Yuling,a Primary School Headmaster     

Singing Star's School Hugely Popular Across China

AFTER winning an award at the Third National Singers' Contest sponsored by China Central Television in 1988, Hang Tianqi gained star status in China. Hang's attempts at writing lyrics and composing songs is not news but the September 1993 opening of the Tianqi Art School on the compound of the Air Force Political Department's Drama Troupe has given Hang a new chance to display her talents. Today, the first art school in China to be named after a contemporary singing star has become well known across the country. Huge ad campaigns have helped to spread the word about the school, but Hang's name did much to enhance it's fame. Within a year, nearly 20,000 people have enrolled in the school's correspondence courses. The students are located all over     

Increased Family Involvement in School Predicts Improved Child–Teacher Relationships and Feelings About School for Low-Income Children

ABSTRACT

Family involvement in school, children's relationships with their teachers, and children's feelings about school were examined longitudinally from kindergarten through fifth grade for an ethnically diverse, low-income sample (N = 329). Within-families analyses indicated that changes in family involvement in school were directly associated with changes in children's relationships with their teachers and indirectly associated with changes in children's feelings about school, with student–teacher relationships mediating this latter association. Increases in family involvement in school predicted improvements in student–teacher relationships, and, in turn, these improvements in student–teacher relationships predicted improvements in children's perceptions of competency in literacy and mathematics as well as improvements in children's attitudes toward school, more generally. These results are consistent with systems theories of child development and help answer why family educational involvement matters for low-income children. This research was supported by a grant to the authors from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (5R03HD052858-02). Principal investigators of the School Transitions Study were Deborah Stipek, Heather Weiss, Penny Hauser-Cram, Walter Secada, and Jennifer Greene, who were supported in part by grants from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, The Foundation for Child Development, and the William T. Grant Foundation.     

Political Participation and Late-Life Learning: A Cross-Cultural Study of Older People’s Participation in Seniors’ Interest Organisations in Australia and Spain

Understanding what older people learn from their civic participation is of critical importance both for individuals and organisations. This link has been neglected in prior research, and the evidence across diverse cultural contexts is particularly limited. However, the political context of older people’s life experiences and participation is important in their participation. The intent of the present study is to explore the learnings experienced by older people through participation in seniors’ interest organisations, across Australia and Spain. Participants included 52 active members of political organisations focused on issues for older people. A questionnaire was used for data collection; participants’ responses to an open-ended question regarding what they have learnt from their participation in seniors’ interest organisations are analysed here. Participants’ answers were subjected to a multi-stage thematic analysis. Findings show three key themes relating to learnings about themselves, such as self-improvement or skills or knowledge; learnings about others, such as cooperation with others and understand that people have different views; and learning about society, such as inequality and the need to fight for injustice. The findings suggest some interesting similarities and differences across contexts, which appears to reflect the different political contexts of the two countries.     

Does High School Employment Develop Marketable Skills?

While decades of academic research have consistently demonstrated a positive relationship between high school employment and adult earnings, the literature is empirically silent in regards to why this association exists. This study uses data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (NLSY97) to examine the hypothesis that high school employment develops “marketable skills” in the form of occupation-specific human capital. By analyzing wage variation attributable to the commonality of skill portfolios across respondents’ high school and adult (age 20 and 23) occupations, this study fails to find consistent evidence that the types of skills utilized in high school employment are correlated with adult earnings. Within the framework of the human capital model, this would suggest that the positive, post-school economic gains of in-school work are largely attributable to increases in general human capital (e.g., workplace socialization, character building).     

Going To School With Mother On My Back

Whether a family is happy or not depends much on the way one looks at life. What kind of family is in this article, happy or unhappy? You are sure to get your answer after reading the story of Li Qiang, a first year student from Shaanxi Normal University.     

Participation in the city: where do women fit in?

Women's priorities have often been ignored in the design of human settlements, the location of housing, and the provision of urban services. New forms of urban partnership are needed to develop participatory processes which include women and men at all stages of urban development. Participation is most commonly associated with political participation or activity. The author gives an overview of the "gendered city", then looks at how men and women benefit and contribute to urban life, through examples of opportunities for making a living and for using urban resources and services. She then moves away from participation as entitlement to consider participation as empowerment, looking at some problems faced by women in public office and grassroots organizations. The paper concludes in arguing that a gender perspective will not inform urban policy and planning processes automatically. Sections discuss gender and poverty in the city, making a living in the city, urban planning as a gender issue, getting around the city, access to resources and services, violence in the city, women's participation in urban governance, women's representation in public office, community organization and advocacy, men and gender issues, and forging linkages through participation.     

A Township Girls' School in the 1920s

THIS old photograph, taken in the early 1920s, was passed down to me by my eldest sister, an educator. It is a group photo of students from Fanzhen Girls' Primary School, a church school in Xinan Township, Anxin County in Zhili (now Hebei) Province. In the school, which was located by my hometown of Baiyangdian, 43 students of varying ages and grades studied in a single classroom. The middle-aged     

“This Ain’t My School!” Criminality,Control, and Contradictions in Institutional Responses to School Truancy

While previous research has explored the causes and consequences of school truancy, few studies have considered the meanings of institutional responses. This paper offers an ethnographic analysis of a pilot program promoted as a “progressive” form of truancy intervention. Midvale Truancy Center claimed to focus on education, rather than punishment. In practice, however, the crime control tactics used to capture, isolate, and discipline truants often overshadowed the Center’s educational objectives, locating the Center in a liminal space between school and detention facility. The Center’s competing goals—revenue creation, truancy deterrence, and organizational survival—resulted in rehabilitation being pushed aside in favor of normalization and behavioral control. These findings illustrate a recent larger cultural turn toward control and punishment (Garland 2001), and the encroachment of crime control tactics into the civil sphere.