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Adolescents with and without disabilities must be college and career ready to be prepared to engage in adult life, and recent policy efforts confirm this prioritization (Mishkind, 2014). Even so, [...], Nonacademic skills related to college and career readiness (CCR) have become more prevalent in the literature as proposed conceptual models and frameworks, yet little empirical research exists in their support. We employed latent variable modeling to empirically test a previously proposed six-domain framework of CCR for adolescents with and without disabilities. Results support four specific factors of CCR: Academic Engagement, Critical Learning Processes, Mind-Set, and Transition Knowledge. Using a bifactor model, we confirmed one general factor (CCR) and one specific factor (Transition Knowledge), established measurement invariance on the basis of disability, and found latent mean differences between these groups; students without disabilities had greater overall CCR and transition knowledge. Findings support the use of a CCR measurement model with two potential factor scores in future research and practice and may inform efforts to measure CCR nonacademic skills.

It is well established that children's language abilities are critical to their academic success. Studies have consistently shown that language supports children's reading abilities in early and later grades (Catts, [...], Purpose: This study was designed to (a) identify sociodemographic, pregnancy and birth, family health, and parenting and child care risk factors for being a late talker at 24 months of age; (b) determine whether late talkers continue to have low vocabulary at 48 months; and (c) investigate whether being a late talker plays a unique role in children's school readiness at 60 months. Method: We analyzed data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, a population-based sample of 9,600 children. Data were gathered when the children were 9, 24, 48, and 60 months old. Results: The risk of being a late talker at 24 months was significantly associated with being a boy, lower socioeconomic status, being a nonsingleton, older maternal age at birth, moderately low birth weight, lower quality parenting, receipt of day care for less than 10 hr/week, and attention problems. Being a late talker increased children's risk of having low vocabulary at 48 months and low school readiness at 60 months. Family socioeconomic status had the largest and most profound effect on children's school readiness. Conclusions: Limited vocabulary knowledge at 24 and 48 months is uniquely predictive of later school readiness. Young children with low vocabularies require additional supports prior to school entry.

With an aim to better understand higher education's potential for fostering personal development and social change, this study explores how students' actorship in studies and civic engagement changed over time while enrolled in undergraduate programs at Halmstad University, Sweden. Additionally, it explores the relation among these students' actorship, structural and psychosocial influences, and consequences in terms of formally obtained and self-reported achievements. Data were collected using three questionnaires in a time-step designed study, initially including 2004 students from 16 programs. Analyses revealed a trend of stable or decreasing actorship. Actorship was found to be strongly associated with gender and what programs the students attended, but not with social background factors such as parents' education and family type. Psychosocial influences and actorship were marginally related to students' achievements in terms of obtaining credits, but were more positively related to students' own reports about gaining the knowledge and skills that would be useful for their future life and work. This, in combination with the students having high intentions to actively influence their future work, was interpreted as an indication of readiness to be social actors. This in turn suggests that readiness is a significant dimension in higher education, which might be further interpreted by applying theories about the Zone of Proximal Development., Author(s): Anders Nelson[sup.1] Author Affiliations: (1) School of Health and Welfare, Halmstad University, Halmstad, Sweden Introduction There are a large number of concepts within theories on higher education, including agency [...]

In the United States there are significant gaps in college-going between high-income and low-income students and between White students and African American and Latino/a students. A number of factors contribute [...]

National trends and goals have pushed beyond the dropout crisis and are now focused on raising the percentage of graduates prepared for college and career. This study examined a longitudinal [...]