Even a casual reading of the extensive literature on student development in higher education can create confusion and perplexity. One finds not only that the problems being studied are highly diverse but also that investigators who claim to be studying the same problem frequently do not look at the same variables or employ the same methodologies. And even when they are investigating the same variables, different investigators may use completely different terms to describe and discuss these variables. My own interest in articulating a theory of student development is partly practical—I would like to bring some order into the chaos of the literature—and partly self-protective. I and increasingly bewildered by the muddle of f indings that have emerged from my own research in student development, research that I have been engaged in for more than 20 years. The theory of student involvement that I describe in this article appeals to me for several reasons. First, it is simple: I have not needed to draw a maze consisting of dozens of boxes interconnected by two-headed arrows to explain the basic elements of the theory to others. Second, the theory can explain most of the empirical knowledge about environmental influences on student development that researchers have gained over the years. Third, it is capable of embracing principles from such widely divergent sources as psychoanalysis and classical learning theory. Finally, this theory of student involvement can be used both by researchers to guide their investigation of student development—and by college administrators and

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Student involvement: A developmental theory for higher education.

http://socialfamily535.pbworks.com/f/slavin1996%5B1%5D.pdf

Research on cooperative learning and achievement: What we know, what we need to know.

Longitudinal sociometric data on adolescent friendship pairs, friends-to-be, and former friends are examined to assess levels of homophily on four attributes (frequency of current marijuana, use, level of educational aspirations, political orientation, and participation in minor delinquency) at various stages of friendship formation and dissolution. In addition, estimates are developed of the extent to which observed homophily in friendship dyads results from a process of selection (assortative pairing), in which similarity precedes association and the extent to which it results from a process of socialization in which association leads to similarity. The implications of the results for interpreting estimates of peer influence derived from cross-sectional data are discussed.

Homophily, Selection, and Socialization in Adolescent Friendships

Prior research on dropouts has often focused on high schools and examined the issue from either the individual perspective or the institutional perspective. Using data from the National Educational Longitudinal Survey of 1988 and a new form of hierarchical linear modeling (HLM), this study focuses on dropouts from middle school and examines the issue from both individual and institutional perspectives. At the individual level, the results identified a number of family and school experience factors that influence the decision to leave school, with grade retention being the single most powerful predictor. But disaggregating the analysis also revealed that there are widespread differences in the effects of these factors on White, Black, and Hispanic students. At the institutional level, the results revealed that mean dropout rates vary widely between schools and that most of the variation can be explained by differences in the background characteristics of students. But restricting the analysis to lower SES ...

Dropping Out of Middle School: A Multilevel Analysis of Students and Schools

Integrated schools may still be substantively segregated if friendships fall within race. Drawing on contact theory, this study tests whether school organization affects friendship segregation in a national sample of adolescent friendship networks. The results show that friendship segregation peaks in moderately heterogeneous schools but declines at the highest heterogeneity levels. As suggested by contact theory, in schools where extracurricular activities are integrated, grades tightly bound friendship, and races mix within tracks, friendship segregation is less pronounced. The generally positive relation between heterogeneity and friendship segregation suggests that integration strategies built on concentrating minorities in large schools may accentuate friendship segregation.

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Nathan W. Ackerman

Papers

The adolescent society