Traditional-age Students Research Articles

Relational Spirituality Among Adult Students in Nontraditional Programs

This article presents some of the findings from a recent study on adult students (25 years and older) in Christian nontraditional programs and the implications these findings have for Christian higher education. One goal of the study was to develop a better understanding of adult spirituality. Utilizing a descriptive, cross-sectional survey approach and a causal comparative design, this study obtained data in measures of spirituality from 292 adult students in nontraditional programs and compared those data to that from 375 traditional-aged students in conventional college programs. Both samples were drawn from institutions within the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities (CCCU). The independent variable was age as related to program type: adults 25 years and older in nontraditional programs and traditional-aged students 18 to 24 years in conventional college programs. The dependent variables in this study were measures of spirituality produced by the Furnishing the Soul Inventory (FSI). The FSI is a multidimensional psychometric tool developed around the theory of relational spirituality. Descriptive statistics showed that these adult students reflected a moderate to high degree of spiritual vitality. Results of t tests showed that there were significant differences between the adults and traditional-aged students in measures of spirituality (p < .05). These findings suggest a connection between the age of students and the process of spiritual transformation. An implication for Christian higher education is that through programmatic and pedagogical changes, Christian institutions with nontraditional programs may be able to influence the spiritual vitality of their adult students.

Assessing Learning via Web 2.0 Technologies

Online learning takes place among learners of all ages in both formal and informal contexts. Due to the fact that traditional age students learn differently from non-traditional age students, especially in the virtual environment, educators are encouraged to employ either pedagogical or andragogical assessment methods accordingly. Using pedagogical assessment methods may work for traditional age learners. Likewise, applying andragogical methods may work for non-traditional age learners. Available assessment methods such as objectively-scored tests, subjectively-rated tests and criterion referenced tests will be discussed as well as a new form of assessment--learner self-evaluation. To use the proper tests or methods to assess online learning, educators are encouraged to possess both pedagogical and andragogical knowledge and/or skills. Instructors should use a variety of instructional and assessment methods. The authors of this article provide specific examples of online assessments from both andragogy and pedagogy.

USING A STATE TEACHER CERTIFICATION TEST TO ASSESS AN INQUIRY-BASED SCIENCE EDUCATION PROGRAM

In this study, we looked at the impact of our specially designed inquiry-based science courses for pre-service elementary teachers on their science content knowledge as measured by a high-stakes state certification test for elementary education. We conducted a pre/post-analysis of the certification test scores of 1,003 pre-service teachers. Cohort 1 consisted of 424 students who took the test prior to implementation of our reformed science courses. Cohort 2 consisted of 579 students taking the test after complete implementation. We examined overall test scores, science subscores, total science credits, age, and science transfer credits. We found that the overall test score dropped significantly from cohort 1 to cohort 2, but the science subscores remained unchanged. Our results showed that students who took all 3 of the science content courses vs. none scored significantly higher on the science portion, non-traditional students (older than 25) scored similarly to traditional-aged students, and there was a negative correlation with the number of science courses transferred. Of importance is the fact that students who took the minimal number of science courses and are less interested in science passed the science portion at the same rate (over 90%) as science majors and minors. We conclude that our pre-service elementary teachers can and do learn science content using inquiry as recommended by the National Science Education Standards (NRC, 1996).

Limited Learning on College Campuses

Politicians, policymakers, and private foundations have united in recent years around achieving a common goal: college for all. As President Barack Obama pledged in his first speech to a joint session of Congress in February 2009: “We will provide the support necessary for you to complete college and meet a new goal: by 2020, America will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world.” At the beginning of the 21st century, increasing and ensuring individual access to college presents itself not just as a moral imperative, but an economic necessity. As employment opportunities in manufacturing continue to grow scarcer in the United States, both individual and national global economic competitiveness requires mastery of what many commentators have termed “21st century skills.” These skills, generally thought uniformly taught at U.S. colleges and universities, are defined as including critical thinking, complex reasoning, and written communication. But what if sending students to college did not necessarily ensure that much was learned once there? What if at the beginning of the 21st century many colleges and universities were not focused primarily on undergraduate learning, but instead had become distracted by other institutional functions and goals? We have systematically investigated the state of undergraduate learning in contemporary colleges and universities. Following more than 3,000 traditional-age students as they enrolled in coursework from Fall 2005 to Spring 2009, across a wide range of 29 four-year colleges and universities, we found a set of conditions suggesting that something indeed is seriously amiss in U.S. higher education. In Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses (University of Chicago Press, 2011), we have described some of these disturbing conditions and documented the extent to which many students show little if any growth over the first 2 years of college in their ability to perform tasks requiring critical thinking, complex reasoning, and written communication as measured by the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA). In the report Improving Undergraduate Learning: Findings and Policy Recommendations from the SSRC-CLA Longitudinal Project on which this summary is based, we extend those findings to document the rate of growth on the CLA for the full 4 years of college, academic practices associated with improved student performance, as well as differences across individuals and institutions in the level of learning. The 4 year results confirmed the broad patterns and trends based on 2 years of data analysis identified in Academically Adrift.

But which theory is right? Economic pluralism, developmental epistemology and uncertainty

What do our students need to unlearn in order to consider contending perspectives, and how do we accomplish this? It is not hard to have our students supplant one orthodoxy with another, to accept a theory that we, as their professors, might find more appealing than the neoclassical one, but how do we get them to be able to think through rhetoric of all types, develop moral positions for themselves, and ultimately be comfortable with complexity and uncertainty? This essay draws from my experience teaching two ostensibly unrelated courses – introductory statistics and introductory microeconomics. I discuss the problems my students experienced in understanding theoretical frameworks and that there are contending frameworks. Drawing on the work of Perry and others, I compare the ‘what is-the-right-answer’ disposition of traditional age students with the conceptual difficulties my statistics students have in discerning the difference between uncertainty and relativism. Overlaying these somewhat generic difficulties is a problem specific to teaching contending perspectives in economics. The worldview we are asking our students to question is the one supports a world view that seems natural to them. The essay concludes with a discussion of how we might incorporate the insights of learning theory into how we teach economics from contending perspectives.

Traditional-Age Students Becoming At-Risk: Does Working Threaten College Students' Academic Success?

Using survey information from undergraduate students who work while attending two urban commuter institutions in Indiana, this study explores evidence that on average undergraduates under 21 years of age worked more than 31 hours a week while also enrolled in a full course load. The findings in this study indicate that grade point average and possibly course completion were influenced by working more hours per week.

Parental Marital Status and Young Adult Offspring's Attitudes About Marriage and Divorce

This study examined attitudes toward marriage and divorce among single young adults. Data were gathered from 310 traditional-aged college students regarding their perceived level of commitment to a future marriage and their likelihood to divorce should such a marriage become unsatisfying. Study results indicated that individuals who have experienced parental divorce reported lower levels of marital commitment and more prodivorce attitudes than their peers from intact families. These results suggest that attitudes toward marriage and divorce are partially preformulated beliefs individuals carry into their relationships. Implications for professionals working with young adults are discussed, along with directions for future research.

The Development of Psychological Well-Being Among First-Year College Students

The first year of college constitutes a time of substantial transition for incoming students. For many traditional-age students, adjusting to college can include tasks that are as mundane as doing one’s own laundry for the first time, or as complex as finding meaning in one’s life and deciding on a future career. Clearly, students vary greatly in their ability to cope with and adjust to these new challenges, and some students face far more challenges than others. Those who adapt effectively to their new social and academic environment are much more likely to persist in college and ultimately earn a degree (Tinto, 1993). As a result, a great deal of attention has been paid to improving college students’ first-year experience (for an extensive review, see Upcraft, Gardner, & Barefoot, 2004). A potentially important resource for successfully accomplishing this life transition is positive psychological functioning, otherwise known as psychological well-being (PWB). As Ryff (1989) has demonstrated, the skills and perceptions that comprise PWB are crucial for successfully engaging in meaningful relationships, navigating one’s environment, and realizing one’s fullest potential throughout the lifespan. In other words, PWB is important not only for students making the transition to college, but also for individuals at any age. This study explores the factors associated with PWB among incoming college students and the experiences that contribute to changes in PWB during the first year. CoNCeptuAl FrAmework

Baccalaureate Success of Transfers and Rising 4-Year College Juniors

Background/ContextA longstanding debate continues concerning whether community colleges democratize education by expanding enrollment or divert students from attaining a bachelor's degree. The extant evidence is contradictory, but recent findings suggest that community colleges are serving to democratize education without a sizeable diversion effect preventing students from ultimately earning the bachelor's degree. The diversion effect appears to be much smaller than previously stated.Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of StudyThe main objective of this study is to compare the effect of being a successful community college “transfer” student instead of a “rising junior” in a 4-year college on bachelor's degree attainment (250 transfers and 790 rising juniors). This study examines the effect of socioeconomic status (SES) and institutional selectivity on the bachelor's degree completion of transfer students and rising 4-year college juniors.Data Collection and AnalysisWe analyze the National Education Longitudinal Study (NELS:88/2000) high school senior class of 1992 to compare the degree completion outcomes of two samples—transfer and rising junior students—with equivalent degree aspirations. Logistic regression is used to estimate the differences in attainment. Interactions are included to examine the effect of SES and institutional selectivity. To address the problem of selection of students into institutions, we control for proxy variables for students’ motivation. In addition, a Heckman two-stage regression model is estimated using the average state tuition in the state where the student finished high school as the instrumental variable. Finally, to adjust for unobserved institutional characteristics related to the state where the institution is located, a model that includes a state-level dummy variable indicating those that have strong transfer and articulation systems is estimated to more fully control for state characteristics.Findings/ResultsThree main findings emerge from this inquiry. First, the negative effect of being a transfer as opposed to a rising junior diminishes substantially after controlling for differences in SES. The negative effect “disappears” in the sense of not being statistically significant, after corrections for self-selection bias and the addition of variables controlling for transfer policies in the state where the student attended college. Second, and consistent with prior research, degree completion rates increase with selectivity of the 4-year institution attended. Third, the results show that when we allow the effects of community college attendance to vary by SES by introducing an interaction term, there are no statistically significant differences between the completion rates of low-SES transfer and low-SES rising junior students.Conclusions/RecommendationsOur main conclusion is that previous estimates have overstated the diversion effect. Alongside other recent contributions to the democratization-ver-sus-diversion-effect debate, this study provides an additional piece of evidence demonstrating that the diversion effect is much smaller than was previously estimated. Community college practitioners should feel confident in counseling traditional-age students who want to earn the bachelor's degree to transfer, because the evidence shows that they are as likely to succeed as their 4-year college counterparts.

Accounting for Student Success: An Empirical Analysis of the Origins and Spread of State Student Unit-record Systems

This event history analysis explores factors driving the emergence over recent decades of comprehensive state-level student unit-record [SUR] systems, a potentially powerful tool for increasing student success. Findings suggest that the adoption of these systems is rooted in demand and ideological factors. Larger states, states with high proportions of students of traditional college-going age, and states subject to federal civil-rights monitoring, were more likely to adopt SUR systems, suggesting influences of demands posed by size and legal constraints. In addition, states with more liberal citizen ideology were more likely to adopt the systems. Interestingly, the strength of private colleges and universities in a state worked against the adoption of SUR systems, suggesting that privacy and autonomy concerns were important deterrents to adoption. The results of this analysis illuminate the factors that inhibit and enhance SUR systems’ organizational and philosophical acceptance, and thus ideally can contribute to future policymaking in this arena.

Applying Queer Theory in Practice with College Students

Grounded in a narrative inquiry study of traditional-aged lesbian college students' perceptions of the relationships among their multiple social identities, this article explores implications of queer theory in practice with college students. This case study examines the emancipatory impact of queer notions and a queer theoretical framework on one of the study participant's evolving perceptions of her sexual, gender, and ethnic identities, and discusses the broader implications of queer theory in higher education and student affairs practice.

Sources of Social Support and Self‐Efficacy for Adult Students

This study explored the sources of social support and self‐efficacy for college students 25 years and older (adult students), using a cross‐sectional mixed method approach. Differences in academic self‐efficacy were found between adult students nearing graduation and those at the beginning of their educational pursuits. Graduating adult students received less family support than did entry‐level adult students. Results suggested the need for counselors to bolster adult students' abilities to seek support.

Differential Predictors of Persistence Between Community College Adult and Traditional-Aged Students

This study examined the differential predictors of institutional persistence between adult and traditional-aged degree-seeking, first-time enrollees at a public, multicampus 2-year community college in southeast Virginia. Differential predictors of institutional persistence were found between the traditional-aged and adult students. For traditional-aged students, encouragement and support, academic integration, fall grade-point average, and an expressed intent to leave were most predictive of institutional persistence. Chief among the predictors of persistence for adult students were social integration, institutional commitment, degree utility, encouragement and support, finances, an expressed intent to leave, and academic integration.

Participation in college sports and protection from sexual victimization

Some sport sociologists have argued that sport is a male‐dominated institution and sexist culture in which female athletes experience various forms of discrimination, including sexual victimization from coaches and male athletes. Previous research does indicate that female athletes suffer higher rates of sexual victimization from authority figures in sport than their non‐athletic counterparts in education and the workplace, although many studies fail to differentiate adequately between sexual harassment, sexual abuse, sexual assault, and other descriptions that imply variations in the severity of victimization. Researchers have also speculated that athletic participation can protect female athletes from sexual victimization through a variety of social‐psychological mechanisms such as team membership, physical strength, and self‐confidence. This paper reports on the first descriptive analysis to test the “sport protection hypothesis” among both female and male athletes, using cross‐tabulation secondary analyses of data from the National College Health Risk Behavior Survey, conducted in 1995 by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (N = 4,814). United States college students of traditional undergraduate age (18–24) were included in the sample (N = 2,903). Limited support for the protection hypothesis was found. Student athletes were significantly less likely to report sexual victimization during their late high school and early college years than their non‐athletic counterparts. A gender gap in the pattern of reported sexual victimization also appeared between males and females across all student age groups, with females reporting more sexual victimization than males. However, no significant gender gap was found among athletes. The results are discussed in relation to student gender, athletic status, and concomitant health benefits and also to debates about agency and resilience among athletes

A Constructive Development Approach to Assessing Variations within a Community College Population

This study utilized a constructive-developmental approach to accomplish 3 purposes: to create a developmental stage profile for a population of students attending a single community college, to analyze variations within and between subpopulations, and to explore the implications for administrators and planners seeking to provide supportive environments for different populations of students. The resulting profile indicated a wide range of variation within the overall population and significant variations between traditional and non-traditional age students. Implications for educational programming and supportive services were identified by using a constructive-developmental approach as an interpretive framework.

Does Age of Entrance Affect Community College Completion Probabilities? Evidence From a Discrete-Time Hazard Model

Research has consistently shown that older students—those who enter college for the first time at age 25 or older—are less likely to complete a degree or certificate. The authors estimate a single-risk discrete-time hazard model using transcript data on a cohort of first-time community college students in Florida to compare the educational outcomes of older and traditional-age students. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the authors’ results suggest that after controlling for cognitive mathematics ability, older students enrolled in Florida community colleges have a higher conditional probability of completing a degree or certificate in the observed event period.

The effect of local labor market conditions in the 1990s on the likelihood of community college students’ persistence and attainment

This study analyzes the influence of local labor market conditions on the year-to-year persistence and attainment decisions of a sample of traditional-aged students who attended community colleges during the 1990s. The findings suggest that the enrollment and attainment decisions of these first-time community college students were not made purely as a response to changes in tuition costs, but rather the result of a more interconnected process whereby changes in tuition, local labor market conditions, and the relative change in both are considered. For those who are sensitive to these relative costs, the likelihood of dropping out is increased. Of those who remained enrolled, the evidence suggests that an increase in tuition appears to provide an incentive or extra motivation to finish a degree, especially an associate’s degree. This finding does not support the raising of in-state tuition to improve student outcomes; rather it draws attention to the complexity involved in student persistence and attainment decision-making.

Stepping Stones to a Degree: The Impact of Enrollment Pathways and Milestones on Community College Student Outcomes

This paper presents findings from a study of the experiences and outcomes of older and younger community college students. We developed a discrete-time hazard model using longitudinal transcript data on a cohort of first-time community college students in Florida to compare the impact of enrollment pathways (such as remediation) and enrollment milestones (such as attaining a certain number of credits) on educational outcomes of older students—those who enter college for the first time at age 25 or later—with those of traditional-age students. Results suggest that reaching milestones such as obtaining 20 credits or completing 50 percent of a program is a more important positive factor affecting graduation probabilities for younger students than it is for older students. We also found that although enrollment in remedial courses decreases the odds of graduating for all students, older students who enroll in remediation are less negatively affected than are younger ones who take remedial classes.

A Community Approach to Suicide Prevention: A Look at American Campuses

AbstractUniversity counselling centre professionals in the United States have reported an increased complexity of presenting problems, including concerns related to depression. Whether arising from depression or another disorder, suicide does occur on American campuses and is the second leading cause of death in students of traditional college age. Drawing from mainstream and professional sources, this article provides a description of various institutional changes, ranging from policy changes to information dissemination, that are designed to prevent suicide on college campuses in the United States.

Drinking Like a Guy: Frequent Binge Drinking Among Undergraduate Women

The purpose of this exploratory study was to examine why there has been an increase in frequent binge drinking among the most recent generation of female undergraduate students. Specifically, we examined whether female undergraduate women associated being able to “drink like a guy” (e.g., drink large amounts of alcohol, drinking competitively) with gender equality. Focus groups were conducted in March of 2003 with 42 female undergraduate women who consumed alcohol. Participants were recruited from respondents of a random sample survey of undergraduate students attending a large, public university and reflected the demographic characteristics of this population: traditional-age college students (i.e., attending college between 18 and 22 years of age), who were primarily white from middle or upper middle class families and living on or near the college campus. Focus groups were based on drinking trajectories during college (Stable High, Stable Low, Decreasers, Increasers) and sorority status. While women of all drinking levels reported feeling pressure to drink “heavily” because of the favorable impression they could make on their male peers, primarily women who were frequent binge drinkers throughout college felt that “drinking like a guy” described their own drinking behaviors. While women reported that being able to “drink like a guy” provided them with a sense of equality with their male peers, analysis of the transcripts suggests that “drinking like a guy” had less to do with gender equality and more to do with emphasizing women's (hetero)sexuality. Findings are discussed in terms of how “heavy alcohol consumption” affords college women positive attention from their male peers, but likely increases their vulnerability to sexual assault and alcohol use related health problems.