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Students in alternative education programs often experience differential access to faculty, advisors, university support systems, and the supportive culture established by being on campus. This study is a descriptive-exploratory program evaluation of the distributed learning social work mentoring program at California State University, Chico. The researcher examined the use of mentoring and how it differed between first-generation and non--first-generation students, between rural- and urban-dwelling students, by the age of students, between graduate and undergraduate students, and based on the student's geographic proximity to the main California State University, Chico campus. All demographic groups of students used mentoring for emotional support; self-care; help in managing school, family, and work; and time management. Study limitations and recommendations for future research are included.

Epidemiology is the study of the distribution of disease in human populations. This means that authentically teaching primary data collection in epidemiology is difficult as students cannot easily access suitable human populations. Using an action research methodology, this paper studied the use of a virtual human population (called "The Island") to enable students to experience many features of authentic primary data collection in epidemiological research. "The Island" was used in a course introducing epidemiology and biostatistics for students in non-quantitative disciplines. This paper discusses how "The Island" was introduced into the course, and then evaluates the change. Students were highly engaged, and students and teaching staff responded favourably to the use of "The Island," with 70% of students agreeing or strongly agreeing that "The Island" was easy to use, and 64% agreeing or strongly agreeing that the use of a virtual population was beneficial to their understanding of epidemiology.

This study examines the impact of school closures on the sociospatial distribution of equitable access to schooling following the school closure policy pursued by the Chicago Public Schools in 2013. By examining access in terms of proximity between students and schools, the study estimates the changes in accessibility before and after school closings. The change in accessibility is compared with density maps constructed around a number of variables, including population aged 5 through 14 by race and ethnicity, proportion of families with children younger than 18 years old below the poverty level, and crime incidence during the previous 12 months. The overall results suggest that school closing may cause sociogeographic inequality in access to education.

While the importance of early childhood education is well documented, scant attention is afforded to the access to institutions for early childhood education. Uneven distribution of institutions for early childhood education in segregated metropolitan areas can cause inequality of educational opportunity. By using the Geographic Information System tools, this paper investigates the extent to which both demand and supply in early childhood education is geographically balanced across Seoul, Korea. The analysis finds that kindergartens and daycare centres authorised by the government are evenly distributed across Seoul according to the demand. Yet, market-oriented English kindergartens are disproportionately concentrated in the southern areas of Seoul where families with higher income levels are clustered. These findings suggest that because market-driven institutions for early childhood education are not uniformly distributed corresponding to the demand, home residence according to parents' income and occupation creates a type of educational inequality.

Background: School environments providing a wide selection of physical activities and sufficient facilities are both essential and formative to ensure young people adopt active lifestyles. We describe the association between school opportunities for physical activity and socioeconomic factors measured by low-income cutoff index, school size (number of students), and neighborhood population density. Methods: A cross-sectional survey using a 2-stage stratified sampling method built a representative sample of 143 French-speaking public schools in Quebec, Canada. Self-administered questionnaires collected data describing the physical activities offered and schools' sports facilities. Descriptive and bivariate analyses were performed separately for primary and secondary schools. Results: In primary schools, school size was positively associated with more intramural and extracurricular activities, more diverse interior facilities, and activities promoting active transportation. Low-income primary schools were more likely to offer a single gym. Low-income secondary schools offered lower diversity of intramural activities and fewer exterior sporting facilities. High-income secondary schools with a large school size provided a greater number of opportunities, larger infrastructures, and a wider selection of physical activities than smaller low-income schools. Conclusions: Results reveal an overall positive association between school availability of physical and sport activity and socioeconomic factors.

This article examines the influence of Friedrich Ratzel's idea of the struggle for space and its impact on cultural and national development depicted in German geography and history textbooks from the Wilhelmine era to the Third Reich. Ratzel's concept of bio-geography conceived the state as a living organism that is the product of humanity's interaction with the land and also facilitates humanity's spread across the earth. German textbooks promoted a similar concept of the state in their portrayal of geography and history, the implications of which were appropriated by the National Socialists to support their geopolitical goals.

International student mobility has increased rapidly since 1975. This article examined country differences in outbound student mobility and the correlates of those differences. Previous studies have addressed this question but differ in their conclusions depending on whether they focus on factors associated with student outflows or inflows. UNESCO data were used to examine student outflows from 190 countries and evaluate the merits of the constrained-schooling thesis, which holds that students go abroad because they lack study opportunities at home. Ordinary least squares regression models estimated the relative importance of country structural factors in shaping the country's outbound mobility ratios. The models showed that outbound student mobility was negatively and significantly related to sending country tertiary supply but not to tertiary demand net of other factors. Countries with large populations had fewer students abroad, but small ones had significantly more students abroad if they had less tertiary supply. Countries with higher gross domestic product per capita as well as North countries, in general, were found to have more students abroad. Spanish and Portuguese language countries have fewer students abroad compared with other countries.

The U.S. Census is a geography teacher's toolbox. As a member of the Statistics in Schools (SIS) development team, Chris Bunin was tasked with exploring existing resources to develop lesson plans. Census.gov is a dynamic online reservoir filled with infographics and visualizations, articles and reports, and best practice instructional materials. In this article, Bunin first shares some of the hidden gems he came across that teachers can immediately access to frame lessons and activities. He then provides overviews of a few of the SIS geography lessons.

This study examined how Twitter was used by all U.S. state education agencies (SEAs) for public engagement in education. Drawing on the ecological model of communication, this study analyzed the latest 71,913 tweets from 40 SEAs that had official Twitter accounts. The results of correlation analysis indicate no significant relationship between the SEAs' presence on Twitter and the SEAs' targeted Twitter users, denoting that the SEAs' well-intentioned efforts in communicating with stakeholders and the public by using Twitter might fall short of the public's preferable medium for receiving information. In addition, the results of content analysis suggest that the SEAs primarily used Twitter for one-way asymmetrical information broadcasting, leaving Twitter's two-way symmetrical communication functionality largely untapped. Findings are discussed with respect to the implications for educational organizations' effective use of Twitter through the public's increased participation and collaboration.

Environmental education (EE) researchers hail from diverse disciplines and sociocultural contexts, work in a range of settings, and envision various outcomes. Desiring to better understand their backgrounds, interests, and aspirations for the field, we surveyed EE researchers to explore their theoretical and educational influences and what they find compelling for future research, in light of societal trends. Respondents (n = 86) observed a connection between EE research and the increasingly global scale of environmental issues, rural-to-urban population shift, and emphasis on health and wellbeing. They described a desire to pursue and communicate about research relevant to academics, practitioners, and the broader public.

Diversifying the teaching population is of international concern. Ireland has experienced significant socio-demographic change in the last decades, but we lack adequate data on the backgrounds of student teachers, especially in relation to nationality and ethnicity. In this paper, we examine the nationality/ies, ethnicity/ies and experiences with diversity of Ireland's 2014 undergraduate primary and postgraduate post-primary initial teacher education (ITE) applicants, entrants and non-entrants, part of the focus of the Diversity in Initial Teacher Education in Ireland national research project. The overwhelming majority of respondents claim Irish only nationality, and are of "White Irish" ethnicity. Respondents' constructions of their ethnicity privilege nationality and skin colour. The exclusionary constructions of ethnicity of those self-identifying as "White Irish" reveal the heavy influence of Ireland's post-colonial nationhood. A significant proportion reported having little or no experience with groups different to their own. We end by noting implications on policy, research and ITE programme levels.

Remote Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander schools and communities are diverse and complex sites shaped by contrasting geographies, languages, histories and cultures, including historical and ongoing relationships with colonialism, and connected yet contextually unique epistemologies, ontologies and cosmologies. This paper explores the history of Anangu (Pitjantjatjara, Yankunytjatjara, Ngaanyatjarra and Ngaatjatjarra) populations, including the establishment of incorporated communities and schools across the tri-state remote region of central Australia. This study will show that Anangu have a relatively recent contact history with Europeans and Anangu experiences of engagement with colonisation and schooling are diverse and complex. By describing historical patterns of population centralisation and decentralisation, I argue that schooling and broader education policies need to be contextually responsive to Anangu histories, values, ontologies and epistemologies in order to produce an education approach that resists colonialist social models and assumptions and instead, works more effectively towards a broader aim of social justice. Through assisting educators and policy makers to acquire a clearer understanding of Anangu histories, capacities and struggle, I hope to inform a more nuanced, contextually responsive and socially-just consideration of the provision of Western education in the tri-state region.

Purpose: This paper aims to explore the influence of wealth, transparency and democracy on the number of universities per million people ranked among the top 300 and 500. The highly ranked universities in the world tend to be concentrated in a few countries. Design/Methodology/Approach: ANOVA was used to test the differences between the two groups in terms of three key national variables that are likely to affect higher education. These variables are gross domestic product per capita (GDPPC), transparency and democracy. Cluster analysis was used to find out if there were any groupings of countries based on the number of top-ranked universities and the above three variables. Correlation analysis was also used to confirm the relationship between the key variables and the number of universities among the top 500 and 300 universities per million people. Finally, partial correlations and linear regression were used to identify the most important factor(s) affecting the number of universities among the top 500 and 300 universities per million people. Findings: ANOVA revealed that countries with top-ranked universities had higher GDPPC, transparency and democracy levels than countries with no top-ranked universities. Cluster analysis resulted in two groups of countries: one group of countries with a higher number of ranked universities, higher democracy level, higher transparency and higher GDPPC. The other group had lower values for each of the above variables. Pearson correlations confirmed that the number of top universities per million people is related to the three national variables. Partial correlation and regression revealed that transparency is the only significant factor that directly determines the number of universities among the top 500 in the world. On the other hand, both transparency and GDPPC are significant in determining the number of universities ranked in the top 300 per million people. This means that universities ranked among the top 500 are generally found in countries with higher transparency levels, while top 300 universities are generally found in countries that have both higher transparency levels and higher GDPPC. Research Limitations/Implications: This paper paves the way for further research on transparency and ethics in higher education. The impact of wealth, transparency and democracy can also be measured in other industries, and particularly those linked to learning and innovation. Practical Implications: This paper draws the attention to the fact that top universities are found in richer, more democratic and more transparent countries. It, however, indicates that the single factor associated with the number of universities ranked among the top 500 is transparency. Policy makers should therefore focus on increasing transparency to increase the likelihood of having top-ranked universities. Having universities ranked among the 300 is also linked to having higher GDPPC. This indicates that transparency can drive all other factors associated with having universities ranked among the first 500 in the world, but further improvement of university ranking to first 300 universities also requires greater financial strength. This is understandable given the expense associated with attracting first-class faculty members and having world-class research programs. Originality/Value: This is the first paper that researched the differences between countries having top-ranked universities and countries having no top-ranked universities. It also identified transparency as the single factor affecting the number of top 500 ranked universities per million people. It is also the first paper to have distinguished between having universities ranked among the top 300 in the world and universities ranked among the top 500. It showed that factors expected to be play a key role in determining higher education success such as democracy index and GDPPC were not significant in determining the number of top 500 universities per million people. This paper, however, showed that the number of top 300 universities per million per country depends not only on transparency but also on GDPPC. This paper provides a good understanding of barriers to university excellence in many countries. These barriers may also be pertinent to other institutions where learning is highly significant.

In a world with an ever-increasing population, diminishing natural resources, and greater levels of consumption, sustainability has emerged as a critical concept and it encompasses everything from international policy to lifestyle changes to "green" technologies. While various aspects of sustainability have been adopted by schools and universities, businesses, organizations, and governments, there is a need for more standards-based curricular material that connects directly with sustainability. Geography represents such a natural link, whether it is the three aspects of geo-literacy--interactions, interconnections, and implications--or the direct connection between sustainability and at least four of the National Geography Standards. This binational project between Chile and the United States links sustainability and geography to create 16 standards-based lesson plans that focus on sustainability. The international component is unique, highlighting the significance of sustainability across borders and geographic space, connecting local issues, events, and challenges with the broader global context and with similar occurrences elsewhere in the world. This collaborative project engages scholars in geography education and pre-service social science/geography students at two universities to develop the lesson plans with each lesson plan paired with one from the other country, specifically the state of Iowa in the United States and the region of Coquimbo in Chile. For example, on the topic of renewable energy, there is one lesson plan on challenges to renewable energy in Coquimbo and its counterpart focuses on wind energy resources in Iowa.

Studies of the political attitudes and actions of students in the higher education institutions in Russia suggest that they are closely linked to the country's professional and social structure. It is the lack of opportunity for suitable employment and for meeting their expectations for a better future that helps shape attitudes and may lead to involvement in protest activities.

Although the use of simulation to teach the sampling distribution of the mean is meant to provide students with sound conceptual understanding, it may lead them astray. We discuss a misunderstanding that can be introduced or reinforced when students who intuitively understand that "bigger samples are better" conduct a simulation to explore the effect of sample size on the properties of the sampling distribution of the mean. From observing the patterns in a typical series of simulated sampling distributions constructed with increasing sample sizes, students reasonably-but incorrectly--conclude that, as the sample size, n, increases, the mean of the (exact) sampling distribution tends to get closer to the population mean and its variance tends to get closer to s[superscript 2]/n, where s[superscript 2] is the population variance. We show that the patterns students observe are a consequence of the fact that both the variability in the mean and the variability in the variance of simulated sampling distributions constructed from the means of "N" random samples are inversely related, not only to N, but also to the size of each sample, n. Further, asking students to increase the number of repetitions, N, in the simulation does not change the patterns.

Today's typical minority student attends school with fewer whites than his counterpart in 1970. This apparent resegregation of U.S. schools has sparked outrage and debate. Some blame a rollback of desegregation policies designed to distribute students more evenly among schools; others blame the changing racial composition of the student population. This study clarifies the link between distributive processes of segregation, population change, and school racial composition by framing school segregation as a mode of social closure. I use a novel decomposition approach to determine the relative contributions of distributive processes and compositional change in the apparent resegregation of schools from 1993 to 2010. For the most part, compositional changes are to blame for the declining presence of whites in minorities' schools. During this period, whites and minorities actually became more evenly distributed across schools, helping increase minority students' exposure to whites. Further decompositions reveal the continued success of district-level desegregation efforts, but the greatest barrier to progress appears to be the uneven distribution of students between school districts in the same area. These findings call for new research and new policies to address contemporary school segregation.

Despite an overall increase in college attendance, low-income youth and particularly those in the foster care system are less likely to attend college (Wolanin, 2005). Although youth in foster care report high educational aspirations, as little as 4% obtain a 4-year college degree (Nixon & Jones, 2007). The purpose of this study is to explore differences in educational aspirations and expectations among foster care and nonfoster care youth and to explore key predictors of these differences. Using baseline data generated from Kansas Kids @ GEAR UP (Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs), 1,377 youth were surveyed in regard to their future educational goals, academic self-perception, and level of social support. Results demonstrated that youth from the foster care system report lower educational aspirations and expectations, of which academic self-perception and parental support for education were the best predictors. Limitations and implications for future research will be discussed.

Peru is in the central, western part of South America. It is the third largest country in South America and number 20 in the world. It is the country with the fourth highest population in South America. In 2010, the gross domestic product (GDP) of Peru was 154 billion USD, and its rate of growth was 8.8% (higher than the average for the region for the last 5 years). 56.8% of employed population was in the tertiary sector, 26.7% in the primary and mining sector and only 16.5% worked in manufacturing and construction. These figures are quite stable for the last years with a slight decrease in the primary sector (in 2006, it employed 32.9% of total employees), which went to the secondary sector (it was 14.2% in 2006) and the service sector (52.9% that year). In the period considered, employment has increased significantly in Peru due to economic growth. However, it is important to note that the rate of informality in the economy remains very high, with figures above 60%. The informal sector creates many "bad" jobs, without social insurance and other benefits normally provided by the formal sector. In this paper, the authors first describe the training and development policies; secondly, the higher and non-higher educational systems; finally, they display some statistics related to educational expenditure as well as Peru's strategic educational objectives. (Contains 6 tables, 4 figures and 2 footnotes.)

This briefing examines training and development (T&D) in Quebec, one of 10 provinces and three territories that make up Canada. Quebec has three distinguishing characteristics that encourage analysis of its T&D separately from that of Canada as a whole. First, it is the only North American region with a majority francophone population. Second, government regulation of the labour market is the most extensive in North America. Third, the percentage of workers who are unionized is the highest in North America. The authors first outline the background of T&D in Quebec, mainly by describing the evolution of the education system. Second, they explore the legislation which makes compulsory the investment in T&D for organizations that have a payroll exceeding 1 million Canadian dollars (CAD). The briefing highlights the fact that the legislation and concerted action between the social partners are the main determinants of T&D practices in Quebec. Given the importance of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the Quebec economy, the authors then present an overview of training practices in SMEs. Despite increased participation and investment in T&D, it is still limited in SMEs and this remains a challenge for Quebec. (Contains 8 tables and 2 footnotes.)

The well-known s-shaped diffusion of technology curve generally works well in developed countries. But how does it perform in the very different context of developing countries? Across a wide range of new technologies imported from the developed countries it works poorly. In most cases the penetration rate fails to reach 25% of the population. The reason for this as I see it has to do with the concentration of innovations in the rich countries and the devotion of R&D to rich rather than poor country problems. I redrew the s-shaped curve to reflect these facts. At the other extreme, however, are technologies such as the mobile phone, which have reached a penetration rate in some developing countries that is higher than in certain developed countries. The underlying reason for this unusual experience is thought to be leapfrogging, the conditions for which are especially favourable in the case of mobile phones. Therefore there is a need to redraw the curve that explains the diffusion of most new technologies in developing countries. (Contains 5 tables, 3 figures, and 3 footnotes.)

This study examines local contextual conditions that influence opposition to bilingual education among non-Hispanic Whites, net of individual-level characteristics. Data from the Texas Poll (N = 615) are used in conjunction with U.S. Census data to test five competing hypotheses using binomial and multinomial logistic regression models. Our results support a "racial threat" hypothesis, suggesting that increasing opposition to bilingual education among Whites corresponds to changes in the Hispanic population. We find opposition to bilingual education among non-Hispanic Whites to be most pronounced in areas with substantial growth in an already sizeable Hispanic population, and least pronounced in areas of high growth rates and historically low proportions of Hispanics. Importantly, our results highlight the relevance of the interaction between minority group size and minority growth rates in generating majority opposition to bilingual education programs in the United States. (Contains 1 table, 1 figure and 1 note.)

Spurred by recent writings regarding statistical pragmatism, we propose a simple, practical approach to introducing students to a new style of statistical thinking that models nature through the lens of data-generating processes, not populations. (Contains 5 figures.)

In introductory statistics courses, the concept of power is usually presented in the context of testing hypotheses about the population mean. We instead propose an exercise that uses a binomial probability table to introduce the idea of power in the context of testing a population proportion. (Contains 2 tables, and 2 figures.)

The one-child policy is the only fundamental policy in China that has been kept intact for over three decades, despite the vast socioeconomic changes emerging during this period. While the pressure of population growth still exists, the current control-focused policy has aroused problems and damages that tend to offset its gains. The legitimacy of the policy has been frequently challenged. This article presents a history of the one-child policy in China, challenges to it, and the need for a fundamental change. (Contains 2 figures and 4 footnotes.)