Search results

The purpose of this paper is to understand US federal government policy during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic and the connections to graduate education. Using the multiple streams framework, the paper outlines these actions through various streams (problems, policy and political) and perspectives (defining problems, articulating options and mobilizing responses).

The primary sources of data collected for this study were US federal government policies from March 2020 through May 2021. Policies were examined through introduction, implementation and alteration (when possible) within the specific time period of the study. The policies outlined in this paper were connected to the US Department of Education, and to a lesser extent, the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation and other federal agencies. Data analysis was a two-fold process. First, the individual policy was considered as a single case and second, a cross-case comparison occurred across the multiple cases.

Analysing the study’s data in the problem stream provides a strong indicator of how the pandemic was perceived as a challenge for US graduate education. The pandemic served as a focusing event and illuminated the connections of graduate education to key institutional functions, including research and teaching. Broadly, US federal policy actions in this area focused on giving institutions resources and flexibility to support graduate students and allow them to continue their academic work while also seeding funding and incentives to continue the movement of knowledge, activities and people in the research pipeline. Actions in the policy stream aligned with the decentralized nature of the US higher education system and allowed for choice by academic institutions within the parameters of options.

This paper extends extant literature related to policy-making and graduate education to consider policy-making during a time of crisis. The paper offers methodological and conceptual ideas for consideration in future research.

First-generation college students in the United States are a unique demographic that is often characterized by the institutions that serve them with a risk-laden and deficit-based model. However, our analysis of the transcripts of open-ended, semi-structured interviews with 22 “first-gen” respondents suggests they are actively deft, agentic, self-determining parties to processes of identity construction that are both externally imposed and potentially stigmatizing, as well as exemplars of survivance and determination. We deploy a grounded theory approach to an open-coding process, modeled after the extended case method, while viewing our data through a novel synthesis of the dual theoretical lenses of structural and radical/structural symbolic interactionism and intersectional/standpoint feminist traditions, in order to reveal the complex, unfolding, active strategies students used to make sense of their obstacles, successes, co-created identities, and distinctive institutional encounters. We find that contrary to the dictates of prevailing paradigms, identity-building among first-gens is an incremental and bidirectional process through which students actively perceive and engage existing power structures to persist and even thrive amid incredibly trying, challenging, distressing, and even traumatic circumstances. Our findings suggest that successful institutional interventional strategies designed to serve this functionally unique student population (and particularly those tailored to the COVID-moment) would do well to listen deeply to their voices, consider the secondary consequences of “protectionary” policies as potentially more harmful than helpful, and fundamentally, to reexamine the presumption that such students present just institutional risk and vulnerability, but also present a valuable addition to university environments, due to the unique perspective and broader scale of vision their experiences afford them.

The objective of this paper is to examine the effect of spending one extra year in high school on early marriage and childbirth.

The study takes advantage of the education reform in 2007 that extended the years of high school education by one to conduct a quasi experiment. The marriage and fertility outcomes of women who completed a four-year senior high school education are compared to those who completed a three-year senior high school education.

The findings from the study indicate that the one-year extension in high school education led to a 4.75 percentage point reduction in the probability of ever marrying by age 27 and a 6.7 percentage point reduction in the probability of ever given birth. The authors demonstrate that the extension of the duration of high school education by one year has a heterogeneous effect, as it reduced the fertility and marriage outcomes of rural girls more than urban girls. The study reveals opportunity costs and confinement effects as possible mechanisms through which the policy affected early marriage and birth.

This study is one of the few studies that examine the impact of the duration of secondary school education on fertility and marriage. For Africa in particular, there is no such study. Thus, this study provides a unique contribution to the literature since available studies on this subject matter can only be found in advanced economies. Unlike other studies in Africa that use a design that provides the combined effect of duration of schooling and school enrolment on fertility and marriage, this design enables the authors to only look at the effect of duration of schooling on fertility and marriage.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-04-2023-0323

Data literacy empowers college students, equipping them with essential skills necessary for their personal lives and careers in today’s data-driven world. This study aims to explore how community college students evaluate their data literacy and further examine demographic and educational/career advancement disparities in their self-assessed data literacy levels.

An online survey presenting a data literacy self-assessment scale was distributed and completed by 570 students at four community colleges. Statistical tests were performed between the data literacy factor scores and students’ demographic and educational/career advancement variables.

Male students rated their data literacy skills higher than females. The 18–19 age group has relatively lower confidence in their data literacy scores than other age groups. High school graduates do not feel proficient in data literacy to the level required for college and the workplace. Full-time employed students demonstrate more confidence in their data literacy than part-time and nonemployed students.

Given the lack of research on community college students’ data literacy, the findings of this study can be valuable in designing and implementing data literacy training programs for different groups of community college students.

Despite to useful relevance to better understand how group-level identity develops, few studies have explored the identity theory in the esports field and, in particular, considering the impact of a fan's role identity. The current study aims to explore esports fan role-identity vis-à-vis the relationship with the sponsor and the sponsee so as to understand the effects on their behavioral intentions.

Using a sample of 356 esports fans who attended the 2021 FPF eFootball Open Challenge, a Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) analyzed the psychometric properties of the constructs and a subsequent Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) examined the effects of fan identity on two types of behavioral intentions and sponsor–sponsee relationship.

Results indicate that fans who highly identify with esports have the highest attachment to the event and tend toward having a positive word-of-mouth intention. Esports fans who have a higher brand identification reported a positive attitude toward the event's sponsor brand and tend to purchase its products. Moreover, the study findings also provide evidence of the bidirectional interaction between the way in which fans attach with the esports event and its sponsor brand, leading to greater reciprocity in their identity formation.

This study helps to understand how the fan identity process can enhance its fate and develop mutually, building role overlapping identity in the esports sponsor–sponsee relationship. Complementarily, it supports of how the marketeers and managers must analyze the importance of being a fan to the individual in order to understand how its self-identity can shape the future behavior.

This chapter explores the development of middle leaders in the specific context of Catholic schools. It considers the interplay between contemporary thinking on educational leadership and the insights of Catholic theology and ministry. Two key themes foundational to this interplay are examined: the connection between leading and following, and the central importance of relationships for leadership. For each of these themes, the reader is provided with related questions for middle leaders in a Catholic school context, an activity for engaging with leaders, and an exercise inviting middle school leaders to reflect on their own experience and the context within which they lead.