Search

Academic rigor has long been considered important for students’ learning and development in higher education. However, findings about students’ outcomes from previous studies of rigor are mixed, in...

While previous research has examined outcomes related to academic rigor, mixed findings have resulted from differing conceptualizations of rigor as well as varying methodological approaches. Defining rigor as those in-class practices and assignments that require students to engage in deep learning and demonstrate cognitive complexity, we use longitudinal student-level data from 46 four-year institutions in the USA to examine the relationship of academic rigor with undergraduate development of critical thinking skills and two aspects of self-motivated learning (need for cognition and positive attitudes towards literacy). We find that academic rigor is positively related to both aspects of self-motivated learning at the end of the first year of college, with an advantage for students who enter college with low ACT scores and those with less positive attitudes about reading and writing. Rigor is positively related to all three outcomes at the end of the fourth year, with the magnitude of these relationships tending to increase from the first year to the fourth year. Further, by disaggregating the composite measure of rigor into subscales that separate rigorous in-class practices from rigorous exams and assignments, we find that the relationship between rigor and intellectual development is sometimes driven by one form of rigorous practice, with in-class rigor especially benefitting the critical thinking skills of first-generation students. These findings have important implications for instructors, administrators, and scholars in higher education.

This study was conducted using cluster analysis as well as discriminant analysis to empirically identify types of faculty based on their patterns of performance of scholarship reflective of one or more of Boyer's four domains of scholarship.

The primary goal of this study was to examine the impact of active learning on a student's level of overall social integration and perception of his or her institution's commitment to student welfare.

Student Success in College: Creating Conditions that Matter, by George D. Kuh, Jillian Kinzie, John H. Schuh, Elizabeth J. Whitt, and Associates. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2005. ISBN 0787982202. Student Success in College: Creating Conditions that Matter by George D. Kuh, Jillian Kinzie, John H. Schuh, Elizabeth J. Whitt, and associates addresses the long-standing issue of the utility of theory and research to professional practice. They address this important issue by asking what properties and conditions are common to those colleges and universities that achieve higher than predicted levels of student engagement and graduation. Put differently, the documentation of effective educational practice constituted the aim of their research project. Accordingly, they named this Project DEEP (Documenting Effective Educational Practices). Through the pursuit of this question and the effective educational practices it richly documents, this book makes an important contribution to practice and clearly demonstrates the usefulness of research to practice. For the community of scholars organized around the study of higher education, the contribution of this volume lies in its heuristic value to theory development and further research. This yolume consists of four parts and 14 chapters. Part 1 includes an introductory chapter that describes the methodology used to identify a set of higher performing baccalaureate-granting institutions. From this set of collegiate institutions, the Project DEEP team selected a diverse set of 20 colleges and universities: research universities, liberal arts colleges, and residential and commuter institutions. Kuh and his colleagues assert that effective educational practices can be found at a wide variety of colleges and universities. The DEEP research team conducted two visits to the campuses of the 20 selected colleges and universities, during which they reviewed documents, visited classrooms and laboratories, observed faculty and staff meetings, and talked with more than 2,700 people. Appendix A of the volume describes in greater detail the research methods used. Through the campus visits and review of pertinent documents, the DEEP research team identified six properties and conditions common at each of the 20 colleges and universities. Part 2 of this volume includes six chapters (chapters 2 through 7), each of which is devoted to one of the six attributes that foster student success. These six chapters extensively describe the focal properties and conditions used by DEEP colleges and universities. Such extensive descriptions facilitate their application by other colleges and universities. The following titles of these six properties and conditions give a general sense of their essence: "Living Mission and 'Lived' Educational Philosophy," "An Unshakable Focus on Student Learning," "Environments Adapted for Educational Enrichment," "Clear Pathways to Student Success," "An Improvement-Oriented Ethos," and "Shared Responsibility for Educational Quality and Student Success." Higher education practitioners will find the contents of these six chapters immensely valuable to practice. Part 3 of this volume consists of five chapters, a chapter devoted to each of the five clusters of effective educational practices that the DEEP team used to identify the 20 overperforming colleges and universities: academic challenge, active and collaborative learning, student-faculty interaction, enriching educational experiences, and supportive campus environments. The National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) encompasses each of these five clusters. These five chapters describe the policies and practices of the DEEP colleges and universities reflective of the focal cluster of educational practice. Higher education practitioners will also find the polices and practices described in each of these five chapters useful and worthy of possible implementation by their college or university. …

The authors compare the ideal versus actual academic reward structures at a representative sample of nondoctoral four-year institutions and make recommendations.

This chapter reports the results of research into how frequently students perceive faculty to engage in classroom improprieties and what they tend to do about it.

When the instructor violates the norms of teaching, there is an impact on student learning.

This chapter provides a 2X2 model for organizing the effects of both teacher and student improprieties on teaching and learning and puts the subsequent chapters in focus using that model.

Class size, instructional approach, and teacher behavior constitute a set of factors that influence college student learning (Pascarella & Terenzini, 1991). However, a predominant focus on such factors belies the complexity of college teaching and learning. The articles that comprise this issue of the Peabody Journal of Education reflect the complexity of these two processes by acknowledging that teaching and learning at the collegiate level take place within a system of both external and internal influences. The articles in this issue identify influences on college student learning that have not customarily been viewed as affecting this learning, either directly or indirectly. These influences are political, organizational, social, and psychological in nature. The influences delineated in these articles spring from either a conceptual foundation or empirical evidence. They range from state-level policies and practices (political) to professorial pedagogical content knowledge (psychological). Thus, the articles of this issue offer a fresh perspective on college student learning and increase our knowledge and understanding of this complex phenomenon. Political forces shape college student learning in indirect ways. In the first article, James C. Hearn and Janet M. Holdsworth identify such ways by focusing on state-level policies and practices that influence college

This article classifies 47 recommendations gleaned from the articles appearing in this special issue of the Journal of College Student Retention. These recommendations are classified according to their consistency with Tinto's three principles of effective retention. These 47 are ordered by the institutional domain most likely to implement a given recommendation. These recommendations are viewed as multiple, powerful levers to reduce college student departure.

A number of recommendations to improve undergraduate education have been put forth in the higher education literature. However, we maintain that the implementation of these recommendations at our colleges and universities is unlikely if norms or “group standards of appropriate and inappropriate behavior” do not support these recommendations. Consequently, this study investigated the normative support for 6 selected recommendations to improve undergraduate education at teaching-oriented colleges. Results indicate support for 3 of the 6 recommendations: “systematic program of advisement,” “providing students with prompt, formative feedback on assignments,” and “fostering an egalitarian classroom climate.” These are the same recommendations supported by norms at higher education institutions that are more focused toward research and graduate education. The implications suggest that the normative structure that supports teaching improvement efforts may be more similar among various institutions than previous research might have indicated.

This study sought to determine if the average level of student critical thinking at a college (i.e., the institutional context) influenced individual students' critical thinking skills. Analyses were based on data from 23 highly diverse two- and four-year institutions participating in the National Study of Student Learning with controls for 15 potentially confounding influences. The findings were modestly positive for students completing their first year but insignificant by the end of the third year.

The dean of students at Vanderbilt University's Peabody College calls every first-year student twice during the school year. The high-touch approach, as resource-intensive as it is, has proven well worth the effort.

Academic disciplines with soft paradigmaticdevelopment tend to have an affinity for more readilyenacting practices designed to improve undergraduateeducation than do hard paradigmatic developmentdisciplines. This study extends the affinity disciplinehypothesis to Chickering and Gamson's seven principlesof good practice. The affinity discipline hypothesisgarners empirical support for four of the sevenprinciples of good practice: encouragement offaculty-student contact, encouragement of activelearning, communication of high expectations, andrespect for diverse talents and ways of knowing.Implications for theory and practice are suggested by the findings ofthis study.

Because most college and university faculty have considerable autonomy in the conduct of their teaching, norms that guide appropriate and inappropriate behavior for this role are needed. Recently, a set of four norms—interpersonal disregard, particularistic grading, moral turpitude, and inadequate planning—for undergraduate teaching have been delineated. This research addresses the question of whether entering graduate teaching assistants accurately anticipate these norms prior to beginning graduate study. The findings indicate that both faculty and beginning teaching assistants share subscription to the four norms of undergraduate teaching. Questions about the role of the graduate socialization process in the learning of teaching norms are raised and future research directions are suggested. Implications for practice are also proposed.

This chapter identifies academic disciplines that are more likely to embrace approaches instrumental to the improvement of undergraduate education.

Undergraduate admissions selectivity is a common defining characteristic of the academic quality or excellence of a given college or university. This assertion is borne out by the relationship that institutional reputation and resources -- both common approaches to assessing institutional quality -- have with admissions selectivity [2]. The reputational approach defines institutional quality in terms of an institution's place in the hierarchy of colleges and universities [2], whereas the resource approach delineates quality by applying such criteria as SAT or ACT scores of entering freshmen, the number of books in an institution's library, or the scholarly productivity of an institution's faculty [2]. Selectivity is the best single predictor of the reputation or prestige of a college or university [3, 32] and is highly associated with such resource criteria as faculty salaries, endowment per student, and educational and general expenditures per student [3]. Thus, undergraduate admissions selectivity appears to be an adequate indicator of the perceived academic quality of a college or university [3, 4, 20]. Moreover, the role of institutional selectivity as an important index of academic quality or academic standards is well rooted in the academic folklore beliefs held by academics and the lay public alike. This folklore reads as follows: "an 'excellent institution' is one that 'maintains high standards,' and high standards in turn means highly selective admissions policies" [2, p. 41]. Furthermore, a common belief of this academic folklore is that students attending a highly selective institution learn more and develop their intellectual skills more fully than do their counterparts at less selective institutions [1, 28]. If selectivity is an index of academic standards or quality, then institutional selectivity should exert the influence on student achievement and intellectual development suggested by academic folklore. This contention has been pursued by empirical research [1, 5, 6, 27, 30, 31, 33]. From their review of the findings of this research, Pascarella and Terenzini [28] conclude that the effects of institutional quality (selectivity) on student learning are small and inconsistent when various student entry characteristics are statistically controlled. They offer several interpretations for the failure of this body of research to validate the folklore touting a positive relationship between institutional selectivity and student academic achievement and intellectual development [28]. The first of these interpretations is that institutions of putatively varying degrees of quality have the same general influence on students. A second explication is that the samples used in these studies are restricted to a narrow range of academically able students. The data-analytic approaches used prevent the identification of the unique effects of institutional attributes and precollege (entry) student characteristics, because student learning is likely to be influenced by the joint effect of these two categories of variables. Such is a third interpretation advanced by Pascarella and Terenzini [28]. A fourth explanation is that institutional level variables such as institutional selectivity may be too broad to discern the anticipated effects, for such effects may be occurring at the level of the academic department. The lack of a common educational experience among students is a fifth accounting offered by Pascarella and Terenzini [28]. However, another perspective can be advanc]ed. This perspective is that academic quality is manifested in such course-level academic processes as the type of questions faculty ask students during class, the nature of term paper assignments or other written exercises, and the type of examination questions written by faculty [10]. Put differently, academic quality is embedded in process at the course level rather than in the achievement of various cognitive outcomes. Academic standards are manifested in such processes through the level of academic demands or rigor expected of students. …

As most faculty have autonomy in their teaching, social control mechanisms to guide teaching in the interests of clients are needed. Thus, this study posed the question: What is the normative system for undergraduate college teaching? To answer this question, the College Teaching Behaviors Inventory was administered to a sample of 800 faculty holding appointments in biology, history, mathematics, and psychology at Research I Universities and Comprehensive Colleges and Universities II. Principal components analysis was used to identify four patterns of teaching norms: interpersonal disregard, inadequate planning, moral turpitude, and particularistic grading. Analysis of variance was used to test for differences in the degree of impropriety accorded to these normative patterns by academics in the two types of institutions and in the four academic disciplines included in this inquiry. Although institutional differences were observed for interpersonal disregard and inadequate planning, disciplinary differences were not found for any of the four normative patterns. Conclusions and implications of these findings are presented.

The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between research measured by publications and teaching measured by the performance of scholarly-based course activities. Using data collected from a sample of 174 Ph.D. male faculty holding an appointment in either chemistry of psychology at Liberal Arts College-Selectivity I, positive relationships between the performance of scholarly-based course activities and both career publications rate and current publication productivity were obtained. The results suggest that role complementarity between research and teaching exists.

The influence of student problems, which are often cited by students as reasons for withdrawal, is compared with the influence of constructs derived from Tinto's student attrition model. The findings suggest that data from post-hoc attrition studies should be used cautiously.