Educational outcomes vary dramatically across schools in the United States. Many underperforming schools, especially in Chicago, also deal with high levels of violent crime on school grounds. Exposure to this type of frequent violence may be an important factor shaping already disadvantaged students' educational experiences. However, estimating…

Community plays an important role in childhood education. This research has identified the community factors that affect learners' achievement through the use of case studies. Qualitative data were captured by semi-structured interview and data interpretation was underpinned by concepts derived from human capital and social capital theories. This…

E-government is often defined as the public organization's use of information and communication technologies for the production and delivery of information and services. Since the early 1990s, e-government initiatives have been understood as a technological innovation mechanism aimed at reaching greater levels of efficiency, effectiveness, and…

In a continuation of their prior research which focused on the differences in Emotional Intelligence (EI) levels between Chinese and American business students and the academic variables associated with those scores, the authors extend their efforts to investigate those personal (non-academic) characteristics of both American and Chinese business…

This study uses geospatial and regression analyses to examine the relationships among social disorganization, collective efficacy, social control, residence restrictions, spatial autocorrelation, and the neighborhood distribution of registered sex offenders (RSOs) in Chicago. RSOs were concentrated in neighborhoods that had higher levels of social…

Education is widely acknowledged to be a means for advancing environmental sustainability. Many schools have recently introduced the idea of sustainability into their educational agenda and curriculum. This study uses an innovative method of communicating the principle of sustainability, the "Ecological Footprint" Analysis, which…

The purpose of this research was: 1. To investigate social context, environment, way of life and community culture. 2. To gather the views and opinions regarding environmental conservation and restoration. 3. To synthesize a process of environmental education communication based on community cultural activity area. 4. To evaluate the efficacy of…

In a representative sample of the Italian population (N=2,002), surveyed in January 2008, we studied the direct and interactive effects exerted on fear of crime by direct and indirect victimization, on the one hand, and perceived level of disorder of participants' community, on the other hand. Indirect victimization fostered fear of crime among…

Using a sociopolitical perspective to understand the alignment of community values and school policies, we conducted focus groups in three geographically close but economically varied neighborhood in one Midwest urban area. The article presents findings related to constituent values, social capital, and school policies, including charter school…

This report adds to the growing body of research as it examines economic mobility across 96 U.S. metropolitan areas and the role of place in Americans' prospects of moving up or down the economic ladder. It also offers insight on why and how location matters. Although a host of factors, such as state and local policies and labor market conditions,…

In response to increasing research and policy interest in the neighborhood context of early school success, this study examined relations among neighborhood social networks, home literacy practices/resources, and children's expressive vocabulary in a suburban at-risk sample in the USA at the beginning of the school year. In a Structural Equation…

This study describes changes in cognitive persistence, a key measure of mastery motivation, between the ages of 10 (grade 4) and 14 (grade 8). Prior research in the field of mastery motivation has focused mainly on early childhood. No longitudinal research findings have been published about age changes in mastery motivation during the school…

Each issue of this annual newsletter focuses on a particular area of the Kettering Foundation's research. The 2014 issue focuses on taking stock of the civic arena, which includes organized projects in civic renewal, civic engagement, civic education, and civic capacity building in communities. This issue contains the following articles that…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to understand how high-performing schools develop and sustain improvement culture. While school culture has consistently been identified as an essential feature of high-performing schools, many of the ways in which culture shapes specific improvement efforts remain unclear. The paper draws on new research from…

In this study, we examined the bilingual language development among Korean American first-graders in two southern California cities and explored the opportunities for language use available to them in various spaces: at school (one dual language immersion school and one traditional English-only public school), at home, and in the community. Data…