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The purpose of this study was to examine patterns and factors influencing exclusion rates and achievement on large-scale assessments in Canada. Data analysis employed a case study to examine policies and practices of exclusion, absenteeism, and social promotion related to large-scale assessments at the international, national, and provincial levels. In addition, information was solicited from assessment experts regarding exclusion rate practices. Findings revealed significant increases in student performance, which paralleled significant increases in exclusion rates. At the provincial level, the analysis led to the discovery of the relationship between social promotion policies and a document guiding assessment practices in Canada (i.e., Principles of Fair Assessment Practices). This relationship was the rationale given for excluding poor performing students, not learning or physically disabled students, from participating in large-scale assessments. Recommendations include an alignment of exclusion policies between the three levels of administration, documenting students who are unable to participate on large-scale assessment because they are operating too far below grade level as a result of being social promoted, and to over sample provinces and schools with high absenteeism on assessment days. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study aimed at identifying the relationship between modern media and the promotion of CEDAW, a "case study" at Palestine Technical University - Kadoorie, main campus. The study community consisted of all the male and female employees at Palestine Technical University - Kadoorie. The researchers used the descriptive analytical method to suit the subject of the study. The study sample, 114 employees, was selected by the available random sampling method. The researchers published an online questionnaire consisting of (29) paragraphs, distributed over six areas to reach to the objectives of the study. The research outcome was concluded to publish the articles of the international convention on the media and to accord its clauses with the local laws. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Portugal, after the liberal victory in 1834, many intellectuals of humble extraction proceed along a successful life course that pushes them often on important functions and makes them win a considerable reputation. Using a corpus of life stories of the concerned intellectuals, this article examines how certain factors contribute to their promotion, namely their initial experiences and learnings, as well as their later political interventions to change Portugal and to assure the position of the intelligentsia to which they belong. The final synthesis puts forward a set of constants as a contribution to explain this process of rising mobility in cases of low social origins. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Studia Historica. Historia Contemporánea is the property of Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Introduction. Due to the current phenomenon of globalization, it is increasingly necessary to provide an inclusive and intercultural vision to the education. Not responding adequately to this demand can lead to situations of exclusion, segregation, and discrimination for students. The Colombian government has proposed several actions to strengthen this approach and avoid those problems. However, these actions must be analyzed in depth to demonstrate the promotion of inclusive and intercultural education in institutions. Objective: the purpose of this research is to determine the level of knowledge and execution of inclusive and intercultural practices at Llano de Palmas School (Colombia). Materials and methods: this research applies a case study design. The methodology used is descriptive quantitative (Hernández et al., 2010), implementing the questionnaire on the recognition and applicability of inclusive and intercultural competency. Results: the data analysis reveals that inclusive and intercultural education is hardly encouraged on a regular basis in the school (10 %), with a widely inadequate promotion (90 %) through sporadic implementations (49 %), not being applied at all (36 %), or being completely unaware of their development status (5 %). Conclusions: the results obtained indicate that the knowledge and execution of inclusive and intercultural practices at Llano de Palmas School is remarkably low. This situation demands the design and application of specific strategies for more effective promotion, as well as the analysis of different educational contexts to determine the current situation of the country in this regard. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present research seeks to reinforce the role of economic TV. shows in promotion for the financial inclusion concept within the Iraqi Central Bank strategy of the years (2016-2020). It aims at finding out different levels of exposure to economic TV. shows, and their patterns. It also aims to obtain information of the data, which these shows introduce to reinforce the concept of financial inclusion and their contribution in reducing poverty rates and creating security and economic stability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Health inequalities continue to exist in both developed and developing countries. The increasing commodification of health through market justice places physicians in situations where difficult decisions need to be made. Recognizing how the social determinants of health contribute to health inequalities is one of the first steps required to reduce poor patient outcomes in marginalised groups. In Canada, medical schools are accountable to the public to produce physicians that are able to provide culturally-appropriate care to diverse populations. Paulo Friere advocated for a 'critical consciousness' when approaching education. This critical consciousness helps medical students and physicians advocate for their population, who may be marginalised and silenced in the current political climate. Medical schools should provide students with the opportunity to be meaningfully engaged in a social justice curriculum either as part of their professional learning or as a separate instructional project. Instruction should be based on theories such as those of John Rawls or Norman Daniels to demonstrate how health is a basic human right for the underprivileged. This review examines the role of medical education in creating physicians who are able and willing to adopt a social justice perspective in the treatment of their patients. I argue that developing a culturally competent medical curriculum will support social justice pedagogy for the benefit of the population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Tiempos Modernos is the property of Tiempos Modernos and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Assessment in institutions of higher learning has been researched worldwide. However, there are gaps in research exploring the implications of assessment practices for learners' access to the kind of knowledge enabling them to participate in their communities' socio-economic transformation. This is the case in the African Great Lakes region, including Rwanda. This paper investigated the assessment practices at the University of Rwanda-College of Education to establish whether they enable students to access powerful knowledge for socio-economic transformation, which promotes critical thinking and creativity, or the knowledge of the powerful, which promotes memorization of knowledge produced by experts. The study adopted mixed methods, where 361 questions from 20 examinations papers for 2014/2015 and 2015/2016 academic years were analysed using Bloom's revised taxonomy. Interviews with lecturers and group discussions with students were conducted. The findings revealed that assessment practices heavily encourage the knowledge of the powerful, with limited focus on the socioeconomic transformative knowledge. Such practices are unlikely to lead to national socioeconomic transformation, which the government expects from education. The paper recommends revisiting assessment practices in Rwandan higher education to instil in the graduates the required knowledge for active contribution to socio-economic transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper researches the practice of social promotion, where students who fail due to a lack of comprehension of grade level material are promoted along with their classmates who passed. Student and parent interviews, student surveys, and data from students’ graduation records are used to determine that social promotion does not improve the students’ education, instead students who are socially promoted are more likely to dropout of high school, less likely to graduate high school on time or at all, and the alternative practices are needed if students are to be successful and graduate high school. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Tiempos Modernos is the property of Tiempos Modernos and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article reveals the fact that Art journalism is a process that requires the simultaneous aggregation and achievement of some of specific activities, thereby giving society certain functions. They derive, on the one hand, from the specificity of the AJ and, on the other hand, from the general functions of the media: of information, interpretation, socialization, entertainment and, of course, cultural. Due to its specificity, art journalism has generated a series of derivative functions, characteristic only to it, the most relevant ones being: promoting culture, forming culture and promoting cultural dialogue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Curriculum is a site of political, racial, gendered, and theological dispute. Teachers who acknowledge this and see the implications for democratic living embrace their teaching practice as curriculum leaders and participate in complicated conversations. With the focus on gender equity as a democratic ideal, this article explores the lived experiences of some South African female teachers. From the findings, it became evident that some teachers still experience their school contexts as pervaded with patriarchy and sexism, and often fear confronting these traditional discourses. Engaging with subject matter that is likely to cause conflict or confrontation is avoided by some teachers because they do not feel comfortable in such contexts. However, some teachers do emerge as activists for gender justice and create awareness of injustice. These teachers are curriculum leaders who advocate for social change. This article concludes by putting forward some suggestions for how teachers can promote social change through their teaching practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Buggey, T., Crawford, C., & Rogers, C. L. (2016). Self-modeling to promote social initiations with young children with developmental disabilities.Focus on Autism and Other Developmental Disabilities.doi: 10.1177/1088357616667591. Source of funding and declaration of interests: No sources of funding or conflicts of interest were reported. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In several countries, students are tracked into secondary school types. This paper studies whether parents or teachers assess students' potential performance more adequately. We evaluate a reform in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia in 2006. The reform replaced parents' choice about their children's school type by a binding teacher recommendation. The dependent variable is educational attainment measured by grade retention rates. We find that teacher recommendations cause less grade retentions. The effect is mainly driven by students from better situated districts. This finding may capture that with free parental choice, parents select too demanding tracks for their children. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Antisocial behavior is strongly associated with academic failure in adolescence. There is a solid body of evidence that points to parenting style as one of its main predictors. The objective of this work is to elaborate a reduced, valid, and reliable version of the questionnaire by Oliva et al. (2007) to evaluate the dimensions of parenting style and to analyze its psychometric properties in a sample of Spanish adolescents. To that end, the designed questionnaire was applied to 1974 adolescents 12-18 years of age from Asturias (Spain). Regarding construct validity, the results show that the model that best represents the data is composed of six dimensions of parenting style, just as in the original scale, namely affection and communication; promotion of autonomy; behavioral control; psychological control; self-disclosure; and humor. The psychological control factor negatively correlates with the other factors, with the exception of behavioral control, with which it positively correlates. The remaining correlations among the factors in the parenting style questionnaire are positive. Regarding internal consistency, the reliability analysis for each factor supports the suitability of this six-factor model. With regard to criterion validity, as expected based on the evidence available, the six dimensions of parenting style correlate in a statistically significant manner with the three antisocial behavior measures used as criteria (off-line school aggression, antisocial behavior, and antisocial friendships). Specifically, all dimensions negatively correlate with the three variables, except for psychological control. In the latter case, the correlation is positive. The theoretical and practical implications of these results are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the outlooks of black parents raising sons in a suburban school setting in a town that I call Rolling Acres. Dominant narratives about black males center on urban environments where hazards of violence, failing schools, and socially disorganized neighborhoods are prevalent. However, black parents in suburban settings are not immune to racial hazards when raising black boys. This article engages two domains of distinct concern for the parents of black boys: academics and social life. Through a series of in-depth interviews and participant observations with 18 families in a suburban context, I argue parents of black boys, though sometimes divided along gender lines, were concerned with a host of race-related challenges such as social promotion, special education classification, dating preferences, the stereotyping of black boys, and the strain between being cool and academically successful. These concerns demonstrate the importance of understanding how black families, and boys in particular, wrestle with the racialized and gendered power structures even in well-resourced settings. This paper adds to the emerging body on suburbia by highlighting the continued significance of raceandgender for black residential families sending their children to suburban schools. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

University-based enabling programs have become an important pathway to university for non-traditional students. There is increasing interest in understanding the mechanisms that facilitate retention and success of enabling pathway students, with the aim of developing effective strategies for maximising opportunities for university access and participation. The current study focuses on an Australian enabling program that has achieved and sustained high retention rates, with three-quarters of its 2115 students that enrolled during the last seven years (2008 - 2014) retained until the end of the program. Further, 90 per cent of retained students were successful in receiving an offer to university; and 94 per cent of students that received an offer subsequently enrolled in an undergraduate course. Multivariate regression analysis revealed that demographic and prior educational factors explained little about student retention in the program. The main reasons cited for withdrawal were medical or emotional issues, and family problems or responsibilities. Overall, this data suggests that both pre-program conduct and in-program practices may enhance student retention outcomes. Specifically, practices that support the development of strong peer and tutor-student relationships, and that foster community connections, are thought to provide a significant and positive influence on student retention in enabling programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Biographies and personal narratives are important for helping us understand how individuals make sense of their experiences and lives. This article explores the educational life histories of two adult Black women that we call Lauren and Shantel. Although both women graduated from US high schools, neither received the basic education and learning supports that would prepare them for successful adulthoods. This study demonstrates the long-term cumulative effects of social promotion and retention on the life outcomes of poor people of color and underscores the importance of prioritizing both students' academic and socioemotional needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of impact factors has grown substantially in academia and publishing far beyond their original intended use. They are now used extensively in academic and research assessments as well as in the promotion of journals, publishers, institutions and individuals. The implications of such metricisation for understandings of research quality are discussed as well as for research strategies, the commercialisation of academic publishing, the disciplining of academic knowledge and publishing strategies, knowledge development and the further neoliberalisation of higher education. The paradoxes and problems of current and potential future directions are discussed including with respect to the development of open access publications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the official declarations of the India-Brazil-South Africa Dialogue Forum (IBSA), the three states claim a shared understanding of human rights and a deep commitment to the international promotion and protection of these rights. This article considers these two propositions in light of the actions of the IBSA states on the United Nations Human Rights Council. After examining the positions of the IBSA states on seven controversial country-specific cases (Belarus, Darfur and Sudan, Iran, Israel, North Korea, Sri Lanka, and Syria) and four controversial thematic domains (economic rights, racism, freedom of expression, and sexual orientation), I conclude that the three states do not have the same views about human rights. Furthermore, I find that the IBSA states often do not support pro-human rights initiatives in the Council, although Brazil stands apart from India and South Africa for its greater willingness to support stronger human rights positions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the research available on the negative aspects of retention, many teachers are not fully aware of the research and tend to think of retention as the best way to help struggling students achieve academically. The purpose of this article is to delineate some of the negative as well as some of the positive aspects of retention. A literature review of retention including its negative aspects, positive aspects, and implications will follow. Having a more comprehensive picture of retention might lead to decisions that will be more beneficial for students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unlike the frequent research that analyzes the effects of various demographic, economic and political factors on fiscal deficits of governments, this research focuses on studying whether certain structures of public spending policies are associated with situations of fiscal imbalances. Using a panel data model with endogenous variables and taking into account various socioeconomic factors as instruments, we have observed that the spending policies of Basic public services, Social protection and social promotion, Preferential services, and Promotion of economic activity have different significant effects on the position of the budgetary balance in the Spanish municipal governments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a conversation, speakers and listeners will often influence each other's memories, and in doing so, promote the formation of a shared, or collective, memory. One means by which a mnemonic consensus emerges is through socially shared retrieval-induced forgetting (SSRIF). When listeners attend to the speakers' selective retrieval of previously encountered events, they forget unmentioned but related information more than they forget unrelated, unmentioned previously studied information. As a consequence, both speaker and listeners come to remember--and forget--the event in a similar way. SSRIF appears to be dependent on listeners concurrently retrieving the information with the speaker. We asked here whether such concurrent retrieval is a function of group membership, thereby underscoring the connection between a basic mnemonic mechanism--retrieval-induced forgetting--and a social function of communicative interaction--building a shared representation. In Experiment 1, Princeton students listening to a speaker selectively recall previously studied material showed SSRIF when the speaker was identified as a fellow Princeton student, but not when he or she was identified as a Yale student. In Experiment 2, activating a common student identity before the listening task triggered concurrent retrieval in Princeton students when listening to both Princeton and Yale speakers. Thus, similar patterns of selective forgetting are more likely to occur between speakers and listeners if they belong to the same social group. Basic mnemonic mechanisms seem to be adapted to promote the emergence of shared mnemonic representations that preserve group membership and group identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cultural and scientific personalities from the army, military experts and creators of the doctrine have collaborated with the radio from the beginnings of radiophony, the educational role of this new, persuasive communication channel being evident not only for Romania or the Romanian army but also for all the countries that had radiophony services. This happens in the context of the end of the crisis and the start of economic and social development, promoting culture, creating a solid class of peasants with a certain social status, in villages, together with the priest, teacher and gendarme, increasing of the number of subscriptions and development of the Romanian radiophony. The radio has been used as a means of persuasion of the population for the war effort through broadcasts intended for pre-military boys, then for the entire population or soldiers. Operational means of connecting military and their families, an effective tool in maintaining a good morale of the troops and a satisfactory state of mind of the population with relatives in theatres of operations, Po?ta militară radio has proven effectiveness through millions of letters sent along its four years of existence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated what the school policy change from grade retention to social promotion revealed about education in Tianjin, China. I interviewed four school teachers, one academic administrator and one school counselor in Tianjin, China. The findings showed that three participants were in favor of social promotion, while the other three were strongly against it. However, no matter how different their views were, when asked how they helped low-achieving students meet grade-level curricular reqrirements, they gave the same answer, which was to increase tutoring hours without modifying their teaching method. Based on this finding, three suggestions are provided for both preservice and in-service teachers in order to improve their pedagogical skills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Recerca is the property of Universitat Jaume I and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Beginning in the early twenty-first century, “Stop Snitchin”—a technique of not speaking to police—was at the forefront of urban hip-hop culture. With the exponential growth of social media, however, the idiom switched to “YOLO”—You Only Live Once. This phrase has glamorized American values of individualism and exceptionalism, thus contradicting “Stop Snitchin,” as people use social media as a platform to display their exploits and apply “YOLO” to dismiss criminal and deviant behavior. This article examines the intersections of social media, crime, and deviance as well as the influence of the prison industrial complex on social promotion of crime and deviant behavior. Using cultural criminology, this article seeks to identify how power is achieved through different forms of impression management, moving from silence to broadcasting in three ways: (1) chance, (2) announced, and (3) rehearsed performances. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Policies on social promotion and retention, although formulated to regulate academic success and failure in the field of K-12 education, have become burdensome and are now considered damaging to the public education system. The various stakeholders in education, including students, teachers, education policy makers, parents, and employers are all undermined by the pass or fail mentality of the current system. As failure continues to mean that a student is either retained or promoted without the necessary mastery of skills and knowledge deemed age appropriate, all of these stakeholders pay a price or absorb a cost that can hardly be made up. Because of these costs, a more comprehensive probe on current policies is needed to either throw away ineffective ones or improve on viable ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The assessment of attitudes toward school with the objective of identifying adolescents who may be at risk of underachievement has become an important area of research in educational psychology, although few specific tools for their evaluation have been designed to date. One of the instruments available is the School Attitude Assessment Survey- Revised (SAAS-R). Method: The objective of the current research is to test the construct validity and to analyze the psychometric properties of the Spanish version of the SAAS-R. Data were collected from 1,398 students attending different high schools. Students completed the SAAS-R along with measures of the g factor, and academic achievement was obtained from school records. Results: Confirmatory factor analysis, multivariate analysis of variance and analysis of variance tests supported the validity evidence. Conclusions: The results indicate that the Spanish version of the SAAS-R is a useful measure that contributes to identification of underachieving students. Lastly, the results obtained and their implications for education are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies indicate that retention negatively impacts students' behavior, attitude, and attendance, but it is still practiced in schools around the country. Social promotion undermines students' futures when they fail to develop critical study and job-related skills; however, it too is still practiced in many schools throughout the United States. These practices are ruining public education as we know it, and unless we innovate and find alternative strategies to replace them, the US. K-12 education system will continue to underperform. This article posits that retention and social promotion are equally undesirable choices, and that schools can reduce the need for these either-or options by using alternative approaches. A review of the current literature and practice suggests promising alternatives to social promotion and retention. These alternatives focus on preventing the failure cycle that results in poor performance so that social promotion and retention can segue into an effective, high-performance methods of intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista de Antropología Social is the property of Universidad Complutense de Madrid and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Revista Electrónica Interuniversitaria De Formación del Profesorado is the property of Asociacion Universitaria de Formacion del Profesorado (AUFOP) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Paideia – i.e. Greek culture, comprising, amongst other things, language, literature, philosophy and medicine – was a constituent component of the social identity of the elite of the Roman empire: as a number of influential studies on the Second Sophistic have recently shown, leading members of society presented themselves as such by their possession and deployment of cultural capital, for example by performing oratory, writing philosophy or showcasing medical interventions. As the ‘common language’ of the men ruling the various parts of the empire, Greek culture became a characteristic of, and thus a de facto condition for, leading socio-political positions. Whilst most elite men would have taken for granted a good cultural education no less than a leading position, an outstanding command of the classical Greek language, literature and tradition as displayed in epideictic performances allowed some orators, philosophers and doctors to move distinctively up the social ladder, sometimes reaching the ears of, and thereby wielding influence over, the emperor himself. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The present article's goal is to reveal the Romanian universities malfunctions' in recruiting and guiding the students towards specific higher education specializations. Incapable of becoming a social selector and thus a mechanism of social promotion, the university developed itself into a source of intellectual unemployment in an agrarian society. Thus, it is reasonable to create a causal link between intellectual unemployment and the ascent of the nationalistic political trends in the 1930s, as it was the legionary movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The rural, forest roads are basic and important elements in the economic progress and social promote procedures for health, income, Facilitate Future Development, Technology Transfer and education potential of the communities of remote areas in Malaysia. Using chemical material additives such as waste polymer, cement, lime and sulphuric acid treated mineral oil as the soil stabilizers used to improve these roads was the main aims of this study. We studied an evaluation to develop the durability and geotechnical strength properties of tropical laterite soils. Their behaviour was tested to determine their influence into the surface of tropical remote access roads. It was found that the increase in strength of cushioned laterite soil reaches to maximum after 14 days for both soaked and unsoaked conditions in unconfined compressive strength test (UCS), the considered chemical stabilizers are recommended for using on low cost unpaved roads to reduce construction and maintenance charges as well as assurance the unpaved roads strength in rainy weather and dust-free in dry conditions. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Copyright of Actualidades Pedagógicas is the property of Revista Actualidades Pedagogicas and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Actualidades Pedagógicas is the property of Revista Actualidades Pedagogicas and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Actualidades Pedagógicas is the property of Revista Actualidades Pedagogicas and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Actualidades Pedagógicas is the property of Revista Actualidades Pedagogicas and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Actualidades Pedagógicas is the property of Revista Actualidades Pedagogicas and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Despite a continuing record of interest over the years, few studies have documented the demographics of grade retention or the relationship between it and academic achievement across multiple grades and groups of students. In this research, we were interested in the characteristics and consequences of retaining students in elementary (K–5) and middle (6–8) schools. We documented rates of retention that were lower than those reported in the literature and different for gender, ethnic background, limited English proficiency, exceptional student classification, and grade. Our findings support the increasing interest in stopping the use of grade retention as a method of academic intervention and speak to the need to identify and use research-based education interventions to provide remedial instruction for struggling. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In an effort to reduce failure and drop-out rates, schools have been implementing minimum grading. One form involves raising catastrophically low student quarter grades to a predetermined minimum—typically a 50. Proponents argue it gives struggling students a reasonable chance to recover from failure. Critics contend the practice induces grade inflation and social promotion. The authors performed a quantitative study of seven years of grading data from one school where minimum grading had been implemented to better evaluate these competing claims. Statistical analyses revealed no evidence that minimum grading was inducing either grade inflation or social promotion. These and other related findings have implications for educators looking to institute reforms that lead to fairer and more accurate student assessment. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A total of 137 third- through eighth-grade students were asked to respond to a series of statements concerning 6 male peers described as having various undesirable characteristics (i.e., poor student, poor athlete, extremely overweight, extremely aggressive, extremely shy, or having the symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder). The aggressive peer and the overweight peer consistently elicited the least favorable reactions from the children. For all 6 peers included in the study, the more strongly the children agreed that a peer was at fault for his undesirable characteristic, the less favorably they anticipated responding to that peer. In contrast, the children's expectations concerning a peer's desire to change, effort to change, and success in changing an undesirable characteristic were generally unrelated to their anticipated responses to that peer. The children demonstrated the general belief that desire backed by effort leads to success in overcoming an undesirable characteristic, but lack of effort leads to failure regardless of the peer's desire or lack of desire to change the characteristic. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The social promotion is linked to the attainment of a new sight of school, projected, towards your environment, meanwhile the participative management it is related with the institutional step, understand as the search of the administrative and academic productivity, as of a new concept of the management action, which breaks with the vertical address and embosses the shared decision making, anticipated these contained in the educational Venezuelan project. The objective of this investigation was determining dimensions of the variable participative management and social promotion in teachers and directors of urban schools of the Trujillo municipality, Trujillo state, Venezuela. Descriptive investigation, of field and correlational, based on the inquiry and with the questionnaire as instrument of collection of information. Went 11 the directors and 38 the teachers. Result: the directors consider good and the educational mail the step and the social promotion, with positive and strong correlation between both variables. It concludes. That for the educational, but not for the directors, the step is closed in the educational affected, distant facilities of the concept of participative management and to him stops to side, the important role of social promoter that they must exhibit all involucrate actors in the formal education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Standardized academic testing, under-performing schools, demands for high standards in America's schools and current levels of student dropouts have resulted in renewed calls for "getting tough on student retention." The push for student retention is demanded by school boards and others in spite of the overwhelming research evidence that student retention in-grade does not support the improvement of student academic performance or personal behavioral qualities. Social promotion whereby students move to the next grade level even though they have not mastered the academic requirements of a particular grade also is being questioned due to its unsatisfactory academic results. At this time in history, education researchers and practitioners do not have "best answers" to the on-going problem of student promotion. This article briefly discusses relevant research on student promotion and then gives primary attention to alternatives to student retention and social promotion. Emphasis is placed on the paramount importance of early identification of unsatisfactory learning performance and the continuous monitoring of student performance for each individual student. School organizational considerations such as new and/or expanded student learning strategies are presented. Re-engagement of students in the learning process, the need for teacher and administrator student advocacy, and efforts for preventing student failure are discussed. Strengthening parental involvement and recommendations for programs of professional development are considered from the perspective of fostering greater links to student achievement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

School policy regarding student failure of courses at the K-12 level generally focuses on grade retention or social promotion, neither of which addresses the students' needs. Grade retention has never been effective in helping students gain mastery of course objectives. To reduce the numbers of social promotions, many states require 8th graders to earn a passing score on state-mandated standardized tests. If students do not earn the required score, they are not allowed to matriculate to the next grade, regardless of their teacher-assigned course grades (Ezarik, 2003). A relatively unique approach to help students who have failed one or more courses at the high school level is a credit recovery program. Though details of such programs vary from district to district, the one unifying aspect for any credit recovery program is the opportunity for students to earn credit for a course failed. The purpose of this paper is to describe a pilot credit recovery program implemented in a large suburban high school in the Midwest. Historical, longitudinal student data revealed that freshmen who fail at least one course are four times more likely to fail to graduate in four years (R. Hankey, personal communication, July, 2009). With this is mind, the school developed a pilot credit recovery program for freshmen who had failed at least one course; online and traditional curricula were provided. The short-term goal was to provide an opportunity for freshmen to recover credits lost due to failure; the long-term goal was to reduce the dropout rate for freshmen who had failed at least one course, and consequently contribute to a higher graduation rate for the freshman class. This paper presents the results of the first cohort of students who completed the pilot program after their freshman year and who have now completed their second year of high school. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]