According to sociological rational choice theory, students' class-specific educational decisions at key transition points significantly contribute to educational and social inequalities. Yet, while theory missed to clearly accentuate all relevant actors' influences on students' decisions, research generally failed to adequately empirically account…

School choice positions parents as consumers who select schools that maximize their preferences. This account has been shaped by rational choice theory. In this essay, Terri Wilson contrasts a rational choice framework of "preferences" with John Dewey's understanding of "interest." To illustrate this contrast, she draws on an…

The purpose of this research was to gain insight into the decision-making factors, priorities and process used when adding sports to NCAA Division I institutions. The media often focuses on gender equity and financial parameters when discussing athletic decision-making, but this study seeks to go beyond speculation and add to intercollegiate…

Compared elements of rational choice theory and integration theory on the basis of their power to explain variance in academic progress. Asserts that the concepts should be combined, and the distinction between social and academic integration abandoned. Empirical analysis showed that an extended model, comprising both integration and rational…

This study examines factors that deter students in Austria, Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands from studying abroad. Using an adaptation of the Rubicon model of action phases, the path to gaining study abroad experience is conceptualised as a process involving two thresholds: the decision threshold and the realisation threshold. Theoretical…

Drinking behavior, from abstinence to alcoholism, has been explored from a wide range of intellectual positions, academic disciplines, and ideological stances. The Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACOAs) movement is probably the most rapidly expanding enterprise in the alcoholism arena. Social movement theory seeks to describe, explain, and…

The rational number knowledge of student teachers, in particular the equivalence of fractions, decimals, and percentages, and their comparison and ordering, is the focus of this article. An instrument comprising multiple choice, short answer and constructed response formats was designed to test conceptual and procedural understanding. Application…

The digital age and global technological advancement have brought about unprecedented changes in a wide range of global sectors. The educational sector, as a sector that produces a wide range of professionals, necessitates numerous changes and advancements in educational administration. The introduction and integration of boot camps is one method…

The commonly accepted idea that the only rational measure of the worth of a gamble is its expected value or some subjective counterpart such as expected utility is examined. Also discussed are the changes called for in theories of rational choice when prescriptions of rational models violate common sense. (Author/GK)

Presents a model to examine how social influence processes affect individuals' attitudes toward communication media and media use behavior, integrating two research areas: media use patterns as the outcome of objectively rational choices and social information processing theory. Asserts (in a synthesis) that media characteristics and attitudes are…

Questions why managers choose one communication medium in preference to another. Proposes a role for social factors in media selection. Finds, employing a large field-collected sample, strong support for Information Richness Theory, a rational-choice model connecting managers' media choice to task characteristics like variety and analyzability.…

Reviews literature on status attainment, with emphasis on the relationship between status and education in the United States. Concludes that the status attainment process in the United States may depart substantially from the rational choice model favored by human capital theory. (DB)

Human capital theory was developed to study how individual agents make rational choices or how they invest in human capital to maximize their welfare. One of the leading founders of this perspective, Becker, argues that schooling, on-the-job training, medical care, migration and searching for information about prices and incomes are different…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to know the extent to which a decision-making framework assists in providing holistic, comprehensive descriptions of strategies used by school leaders engaging with distributed leadership practices. The process by which principals and other education leaders interact various school-based actors to arrive at a…

In "Moderating the Debate: Rationality and the Promise of American Education," Michael Feuer raises concerns about the consequences of basing educational policy on the model of rational choice drawn from economics. Policy making would be better and more realistic, he suggests, if it were based on a newer procedural model drawn from cognitive…