EDUCATION

On College Campuses Diversity Is Becoming Difficult To Measure Students Are Keeping Their Race And Ethnicity Hidden
EDUCATION, IMPACT

On College Campuses Diversity Is Becoming Difficult To Measure Students Are Keeping Their Race And Ethnicity Hidden

Campus diversity is becoming difficult to measure as students keep their race and ethnicity hidden on college applications. When the Supreme Court struck down race-based admissions at American colleges and universities just over a year ago, many predicted U.S. campuses would become much less diverse. But in part due to students who decide not to disclose their race or ethnicity, coupled with universities’ selective use of statistics, it is not clear how much the decision has affected diversity on campus. As higher education institutions begin reporting the racial makeup of the class of 2028 – the first to be affected by the 2023 decision – the data is hard to interpret, confusing and inconclusive. As a sociologist who has studied how institutions of higher education collect and report...
If President-Elect Trump Dismantled The US Department Of Education What Would It Mean
EDUCATION, TOP FOUR

If President-Elect Trump Dismantled The US Department Of Education What Would It Mean

What would it mean if President-elect Trump dismantled the US Department of Education? In her role as former chief executive of World Wrestling Entertainment, Linda McMahon oversaw an enterprise that popularized the “takedown” for millions of wrestling fans. But as President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of education, the Trump loyalist may be tasked with taking down the very department Trump has asked her to lead. If Trump does dismantle the Department of Education as he has promised to do, he will have succeeded at something that President Ronald Reagan vowed to do in 1980. Just like Trump, Reagan campaigned on abolishing the department, which at the time was only a year old. Since then, the Republican Party platform has repeatedly called for eliminating the Education ...
Teens Bullied In High School Can Feel Less Optimistic About The Future
EDUCATION

Teens Bullied In High School Can Feel Less Optimistic About The Future

Being bullied in high school can make teens less optimistic about the future. The effects of bullying on teens’ mental health are well-documented. But could bullying also shape their future aspirations? Our latest research reveals that teens who are bullied in ninth grade become more pessimistic about their educational and career prospects beyond high school. Specifically, being bullied increases teens’ risk for depression, which leaves them feeling hopeless about the future. As a developmental psychologist who studies adolescent well-being, I set out to better understand the long-term effects of bullying on teens’ expectations for the future. My research team recruited 388 high schoolers who had recently started ninth grade. We asked them to complete surveys every several months for ...
When They Use AI For Teaching Strategies Teachers Feel Most Productive
EDUCATION, TOP FOUR

When They Use AI For Teaching Strategies Teachers Feel Most Productive

Teachers feel most productive when they use AI for teaching strategies. Teachers can use generative AI in a variety of ways. They may use it to develop lesson plans and quizzes. Or teachers may rely on a generative AI tool, such as ChatGPT, for insight on how to teach a concept more effectively. In our new research, only the teachers doing both of those things reported feeling that they were getting more done. They also told us that their teaching was more effective with AI. Over the course of the 2023-2024 school year, we followed 24 teachers at K-12 schools throughout the United States as they wrestled with whether and how to use generative AI for their work. We gave them a standard training session on generative AI in the fall of 2023. We then conducted multiple observations, inter...
It Doesn’t Have To Be But For First-Generation Students College Can Be Confusing
EDUCATION, TOP FOUR

It Doesn’t Have To Be But For First-Generation Students College Can Be Confusing

College can be confusing for first-generation students – but it doesn’t have to be. In his new book, “Degrees of Risk: Navigating Insecurity and Inequality in Public Higher Education,” sociology professor Blake R. Silver examines some of many ways that college students can slip through the cracks at public colleges and universities. In the following Q&A with The Conversation U.S., Silver expounds on what he discovered while doing research for his book – and how higher education leaders can better serve their students. How are colleges creating uncertainty? Colleges don’t set out to make life complicated for their students, but they often play a direct role in creating and amplifying uncertainty. This is one of the central findings of my new book. Following a period of compa...
Amid Backlash Fewer College Students Indicate They Are Nonbinary
EDUCATION, LGBTQ

Amid Backlash Fewer College Students Indicate They Are Nonbinary

Fewer college students indicate they are nonbinary amid backlash. The national backlash against trans and nonbinary young people may have led fewer nonbinary students to disclose their gender identity in their applications to college for this fall. That is according to my analysis of how students who applied to college through the Common App identified their gender. The Common App is a good barometer because more than 1 million students use it annually to apply to more than 1,000 U.S. schools. For the most recent admissions cycle, 1.88% of students, or 23,620 individuals, chose a nonbinary gender term to describe themselves, down from 2.2%, or 25,959 individuals, in the last cycle. That may not seem like a large drop, but it is a huge change from the past few years, when the number o...
Running For Their Lives — School Shooting Drills — Are There Better Ways To Keep Students Safe From Shooters
EDUCATION

Running For Their Lives — School Shooting Drills — Are There Better Ways To Keep Students Safe From Shooters

Today’s school children practice running for their lives – but there are better ways to keep students safe from shooters. A 6-year-old girl lost one of her white Adidas lace-up sneakers as she and her 21 classmates practiced fleeing for their lives after an imaginary intruder entered their school. The girl’s teacher told her to keep moving without her shoe, then grabbed it herself and gave it back to the girl when the class settled into their designated safe location. The girl recently recounted the story of losing her shoe during a morning car ride to school. It was just one of several times the girl or her siblings described what they were supposed to do – run “over to that fence,” “across that field” or “into those woods” – if an intruder enters their school building. The reason I...
Teaching Scientific Theories In US Schools Under Attack By Politicians
EDUCATION, TOP FOUR

Teaching Scientific Theories In US Schools Under Attack By Politicians

Politicians step up attacks on the teaching of scientific theories in US schools. Scientific theory has had a rough time in America’s public schools. Almost 100 years ago, science teacher John Scopes was convicted of violating a Tennessee law that prohibited teaching the theory of evolution. Although his conviction was overturned on a technicality in 1927, laws banning classes on Darwin’s theory stuck around for another 40 years. They were ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1968. Over the past few decades, conservative or religious groups that object to including the theory of evolution in science classes have tried a different approach. Now, they argue, if the “scientific” theory of evolution is taught, other views, such as “intelligent design” – a stand-in for creat...
More In-School Support Needed For Students With Mental Health Struggles
EDUCATION

More In-School Support Needed For Students With Mental Health Struggles

Students with mental health struggles linked to absenteeism and lower grades, showing clear need for more in-school support. Parents are reporting worse mental health for their children than they did a decade ago, but different groups of children are struggling with mental health in markedly different ways. That’s what our team at the University of Southern California’s Center for Applied Research in Education found using a widely used mental health screening measure. More specifically, we found that preteen boys – the subgroup with the worst scores – struggle more in areas that include externalizing behaviors like hyperactivity, inattentiveness and conduct problems. For teen girls – the subgroup with the second-worst scores – struggles were especially pronounced in more internal pro...
Will AI Bots Ever Replace Human Teachers? Unlikely
AI, EDUCATION, TOP FOUR

Will AI Bots Ever Replace Human Teachers? Unlikely

AI pioneers want bots to replace human teachers – here’s why that’s unlikely. OpenAI co-founder Andrej Karpathy envisions a world in which artificial intelligence bots can be made into subject matter experts that are “deeply passionate, great at teaching, infinitely patient and fluent in all of the world’s languages.” Through this vision, the bots would be available to “personally tutor all 8 billion of us on demand.” The embodiment of that idea is his latest venture, Eureka Labs, which is merely the newest prominent example of how tech entrepreneurs are seeking to use AI to revolutionize education. Karpathy believes AI can solve a long-standing challenge: the scarcity of good teachers who are also subject experts. And he’s not alone. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Khan Academy CEO Sal Kha...