Most academic science educators encourage teachers to provide their students with access to more authentic science activities. What can and do teachers say to increase students' interests in participating in opportunities to do real science? What are the discursive "resources" they draw on to introduce authentic science to students? The purpose of…

Reports research in which 66 Black inner city students in grades 3 to 6 were interviewed about their perceptions of themselves as math learners. Focuses on student responses to questions about the causes of problem difficulty and the effects of that difficulty on their inner speech, feelings, and motivation to learn. (CB)

A phenomenological interview process in two stages was employed to elicit the life stories of six academically gifted college students. Participants' stories were edited with themes identified and interpreted by the researcher. A sample life history of a high achieving female college senior is provided. Commentary by the researcher focuses on the…

Collaborating closely with a 10th-grade science teacher, we designed a Web-based learning environment (Web-LE) to improve student motivation to learn science. Factors believed to enhance intrinsic motivation (challenge, control, curiosity, and fantasy) were integrated into the instructional design of the Web-based learning tool. The Web-LE was…

Communication-based teaching techniques are described that lead German language students from input to output in a stimulating and motivating learning environment. Input activities are most useful for presenting speech acts, vocabulary, and grammar; output activities, for fine-tuning those areas as well as for expanding students' productive…

As online learning continues to be utilised in diverse ways from courses being delivered fully online through to class websites used to supplement face-to-face classes, and as the technologies continue to develop, research into the effectiveness of this mode of online delivery needs to be an ongoing process. These research findings need to be fed…

The first (exploratory) phase of the Learning in Science Project focused on science teaching/learning in the Form 1 to 4 level (ages 10 to 14) and sought to identify problems and difficulties in several areas. Provided in this paper are comments obtained during structured interviews (from students, ex-students, teachers, headmasters, science…

The relationship between teachers' and students' personal constructs regarding intrinsic motivation in the mathematics class were examined in this study. Participants were six middle-school mathematics teachers and 30 students from 5 classes. Videotape, direct observation, individual interviews, and repertory grid tasks focused on the ways in…

In general, studies investigating sex differences in mathematics performance have empirically analyzed students' responses from standardized tests. This paper reports a study to extend the investigation of sex differences related to mathematics performance by examining cognitive and motivational factors as well as standardized test scores. Boys…