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The purpose of this paper is to examine the issue of at‐risk students in a rural district in Midwestern USA.

This field‐based research study used a qualitative embedded case study of a middle and high school informed by an appreciative inquiry theoretical research perspective to identify a positive core of teacher and administrator experiences related to at‐risk students. At‐risk students are those who under‐perform in mandated academic assessments as well as school‐related academic achievement. Social capital and appreciative inquiry served as theoretical perspectives. Focus groups, semi‐structured interviews, and an online survey were the primary data‐gathering methods.

Three findings illustrated the gap between present practice and the ideal state. The research team concluded that there was a foundation of positive core experiences from which to build on the espoused theory of caring professed by teachers and administrators.

The study's results can further teachers' and administrators' understanding of their problem‐based language that emphasizes the deficits of at‐risk students and their parents.

The purpose of this paper is to examine a University's at risk program and ask is the intervention strategy working? The program seeks to assist at risk students who may be experiencing difficulties transitioning, for example from school into university. The program also seeks to identify problems and suggest remediation strategies before attrition.

The effectiveness of the at risk programs is investigated across a population of at risk students from 2006 to 2010. Effectiveness is judged on the basis of outcomes in subsequent semesters where the University's preferred outcome is these students are not identified as at risk again.

The authors have found that the program has some success in assisting students to improve their academic performance; though simply engaging in the process is not enough to ensure improvement. Other variables are at work. At risk students located in Melbourne appear to be far more likely to be at risk again than those in Singapore.

The at risk program is intended to be part of the University's total system of pastoral care. As such it is designed to assist struggling students to successfully complete their studies. With this in mind, this paper has investigated the influence of student engagement in the at risk program on future academic performance.

This research assists Universities’ implementation of pastoral care programs and notes the roles of student characteristics in “success” at University.

To the authors’ understanding no other research of this kind has been conducted. Much of the previous research focuses on attrition, students already lost to a program. This research focuses on those not yet lost to a program, but at risk.

This study aims to propose a learning pattern analysis method which can improve a predictive model’s performance, as well as discover hidden insights into micro-level learning pattern. Analyzing student’s learning patterns can help instructors understand how their course design or activities shape learning behaviors; depict students’ beliefs about learning and their motivation; and predict learning performance by analyzing individual students’ learning patterns. Although time-series analysis is one of the most feasible predictive methods for learning pattern analysis, literature-indicated current approaches cannot provide holistic insights about learning patterns for personalized intervention. This study identified at-risk students by micro-level learning pattern analysis and detected pattern types, especially at-risk patterns that existed in the case study. The connections among students’ learning patterns, corresponding self-regulated learning (SRL) strategies and learning performance were finally revealed.

The method used long short-term memory (LSTM)-encoder to process micro-level behavioral patterns for feature extraction and compression, thus the students’ behavior pattern information were saved into encoded series. The encoded time-series data were then used for pattern analysis and performance prediction. Time series clustering were performed to interpret the unique strength of proposed method.

Successful students showed consistent participation levels and balanced behavioral frequency distributions. The successful students also adjusted learning behaviors to meet with course requirements accordingly. The three at-risk patten types showed the low-engagement (R1) the low-interaction (R2) and the non-persistent characteristics (R3). Successful students showed more complete SRL strategies than failed students. Political Science had higher at-risk chances in all three at-risk types. Computer Science, Earth Science and Economics showed higher chances of having R3 students.

The study identified multiple learning patterns which can lead to the at-risk situation. However, more studies are needed to validate whether the same at-risk types can be found in other educational settings. In addition, this case study found the distributions of at-risk types were vary in different subjects. The relationship between subjects and at-risk types is worth further investigation.

This study found the proposed method can effectively extract micro-level behavioral information to generate better prediction outcomes and depict student’s SRL learning strategies in online learning. The authors confirm that the research in their work is original, and that all the data given in the paper are real and authentic. The study has not been submitted to peer review and not has been accepted for publishing in another journal.

For studies in educational data mining or learning Analytics, the prediction of student’s performance or early warning is one of the most popular research topics. However, research gaps indicate a paucity of research using machine learning and deep learning (DL) models in predictive analytics that include both behaviors and text analysis.

This study combined behavioral data and discussion board content to construct early warning models with machine learning and DL algorithms. In total, 680 course sections, 12,869 students and 14,951,368 logs were collected from a K-12 virtual school in the USA. Three rounds of experiments were conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

The DL model performed better than machine learning models and was able to capture 51% of at-risk students in the eighth week with 86.8% overall accuracy. The combination of behavioral and textual data further improved the model’s performance in both recall and accuracy rates. The total word count is a more general indicator than the textual content feature. Successful students showed more words in analytic, and at-risk students showed more words in authentic when text was imported into a linguistic function word analysis tool. The balanced threshold was 0.315, which can capture up to 59% of at-risk students.

The results of this exploratory study indicate that the use of student behaviors and text in a DL approach may improve the predictive power of identifying at-risk learners early enough in the learning process to allow for interventions that can change the course of their trajectory.

This study reports on the academic support programs targeting first-year business students at La Trobe Melbourne. The at-risk students were offered both a general academic support class and a content-based program. This study was conducted to explore students' perception of the usefulness of these programs. The paper also aims to create a better intervention to attract more at-risk students by exploring the reasons behind the low rate of at-risk students making use of these services.

The specific research uses a mixed method approach to explore a way to best address the academic needs of the first-year international business students, especially those identified as at-risk students in a college in Melbourne where both a general academic program and a discipline-based program were on offer.

The findings indicate that although the content-based program was highly evaluated by students and also attracted more students than the general support module, many at-risk students did not use this service. The low level of English proficiency, the heavy workload, the passive and dependent learning style, the unclear information about the service and the desire to follow only teachers' guidance all prevented at-risk students from making use of the available services. These students need further help and guidance in this transitional period to recognise the assistance provided for them and to make use of these services to enhance their learning.

Recently, various support activities have been designed to assist international students in enhancing their language and academic skills necessary for pursuing their study in Australia. These activities range from credit-based English for Academic Purposes courses, to optional general language and study programs, and more recently, discipline or content-based programs. There is also a tendency in several universities to move from offering general language and study programs to embedding disciplinary programs. Adopting disciplinary-based academic support activities seem to be the right direction in many universities as these activities are more likely to help increase the overall pass-rate and improve student learning outcomes. However, problems seem to remain when many at-risk international students do not seem to go for these services. This study has led some light on how to improve the future language and academic skills to support activities for first-year overseas business students.

Purpose – Through a description of changes in institutional approaches to academic advising, this case study provides strategies for improving retention rates of first-year students deemed ‘at-risk’ of leaving university before second-year enrolment.

Methodology/approach – The study targets first-years who have been identified as ‘at-risk’ in the College of Liberal Arts (CLA) at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Temple is a large public research institution in the United States, home to approximately 35,000 full-time equivalent (FTE) students, of whom, 6,000 are enrolled in the CLA. The current case study focuses on the systematic and intentional processes developed by academic advisors or tutors in CLA to ensure students' progression from their first to second year. Project 2013, named for the intended graduation year of the initial target population, is a proactive retention initiative, and this study delineates the evolution of the innovation, development of the target group, project objectives, implementation of retention strategies, outcomes of the project, successes, limitations and future considerations.

Findings – Through sustained highly personalised interventions with first-year ‘at-risk’ students, the retention rate for this population improved by nearly 7% over the University's average for similar students and met the overall retention rate of the University's general student population.

Practical implications – The outcomes of this project suggest that with careful, strategic planning, clear execution by facilitators and ongoing assessment of such interventions, student retention and, by extension, persistence to graduation should improve significantly enough to warrant strong, ongoing institutional commitment.

The prevailing theory of action underlying accountability is that holding schools and students accountable will increase educational output. While accountability's theory of action intuitively seemed plausible, at the point of No Child Left Behind's national implementation, little empirical research was available to either support or critique accountability claims or to predict the long‐term impact of accountability systems on the success of at‐risk students and the schools that served them. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the work and perceptions of school teachers and leaders as they seek to meet the requirements of educational accountability.

Interviews with 89 administrators, staff and teachers revealed a variety of methods utilized to manage risks associated with low test scores and accountability ratings.

The findings reported in this paper challenge the proposition that accountability improves the educational outcomes of at‐risk students and indicates that low‐performing Texas high schools, when faced with the press of accountability, tend to mirror corporate risk management processes, with unintended consequences for at‐risk students. Low‐scoring at‐risk students were often viewed as liabilities by school personnel who, in their scramble to meet testing thresholds and accountability goals, were at‐risk student averse – implementing practices designed to “force kids out of school.”

In this paper, the authors use theory and research on risk management to analyze the work and perceptions of school teachers and leaders as they seek to meet the requirements of educational accountability. This paper is among the first to use this particular perspective to conceptualize and understand the practices of educational organizations with regards to the treatment of at‐risk students attending low‐performing high schools in the midst of accountability.

An increase (>150%) in the number of children experiencing learning difficulties is occurring due to changes influencing identification processes within our legislative mandates (Kavale, 2005; Kavale, Holdnack, & Mostert, 2005). There are also federal mandates that set the stage for our current practice changes, a specific learning disability (SLD) definition that has remained unchanged, and new initiatives steeped in older approaches that set the stage for complex interpretations (Kavale, 2005; Kavale & Forness, 2003). Can our current and past approaches foster the development of approaches which will better support our at-risk youth and their experience of learning disabilities? Pertinent questions are (a) who is this group of at-risk individuals? (b) what are the characteristics? (c) what approaches best support and deviate the path from a fully-fledged diagnoses of SLD? and (d) what approaches best support and identify the presence of SLD? This chapter will share the current landscape of practice for supporting students who are deemed at-risk for developing learning disabilities or school failure. The chapter explores the historical perspectives of identification and how they have influenced the change to the current initiative of response to intervention/instruction (RtI), its strengths, and its needs. Patterns across the pertinent issues are discussed.

The expansion of alternative education, globally, has coincided with a shift towards greater accountability for ensuring educational access and opportunity, high academic standards and increased graduation rates. While studies suggest the pervasive influence of accountability may be redefining how school leaders provide meaningful learning experiences and facilitating high achievement, little is known about school leaders of alternative schools administering accountability polices. If there are inconsistencies between meaningful learning experiences for at‐risk students and performance‐based standards outcomes, this may suggest issues around equity and alternative schools that should be evaluated. Using a theoretical frame of policy implementation, specifically the authoritative design of policy and social constructs of compliance, this study aims to examine how alternative school leaders implement accountability policies.

This cross‐case study employs a qualitative thematic strategy of data analysis in conjunction with Fairclough's three‐dimensional framework of discourse analysis to examine how seven school leaders at five alternative schools in California and Texas interpret and administer accountability policy.

The theme of reconciliation: tension between compliance and innovation was revealed from the data. The discourses surrounding the nature of students at risk and policy compliance converged, creating a notion that alternative school leaders were losing their autonomy as knowing what is best for their students amidst increasing accountability standards.

While many of the administrators are positioned by their districts to act as an at‐risk student expert when designing or sustaining academic and social programs at their respective alternative schools, they are in the process of losing some of their autonomy because of the pressures derived from accountability standards. However, school leaders continue to take responsive and reflexive actions to create distance between their settings and accountability policy in order to protect their students and schools from external pressures.

The study presents original findings in the area of accountability policy implementation in alternative school settings. This work suggests that the social constructs of compliance and student risk factors converge with the authoritative nature of accountability policy. In turn, tension was created for alternative school leaders as they consider what is best for at‐risk students.

The current literature on the educational progress of immigrant students within the host system is encapsulated in the thesis that these students will face difficulties, and that these difficulties will more often than not lead to a failure to meet the demands of the system for the majority of the immigrant students. An apposite comment by Portes (1996), queried whether the children of immigrants would be able to work their way upwards into “…the middle-class mainstream” or whether they would be blocked in this ascent based on their migrant status, and become part of an “multiethnic underclass or join an expanded multiethnic underclass.” Súarez-Orozco and Súarez-Orozco (1995, 2000) completed this perception by uncovering the implicit viewpoint within which this query was nested. He foregrounded the domination of sensationalism and myth in discussions of the “natural process” of assimilation of minorities. Finally, current discussion on the issue of these so-called at-risk students centres on how they can be made successful at school.