Rural schools face the challenges of motivating and retaining students, often in the face of severe resource constraints. This paper synthesizes fifteen years of the author's rural research on secondary students' school-related motivation, distilling it into strategic principles for rural teachers and administrators. Effective motivational…

Rural schools, students, teachers, administrators, families and community leaders face unique challenges from those of their urban and suburban counterparts. This paper investigates motivation in rural secondary schools, with a particular focus on mathematics, from teacher and student perspectives. It integrates recent research on math learning…

This research examined how rural high school students' self-perceptions and environmental perceptions influence their engagement, expectations, and achievement, and how those relationships differ by geographic rural location. Participants were 224 students in four rural, public high schools in two U.S. states, Colorado and Indiana. Path models…

This study examined rural high school teachers' characteristics and their apparent influences on teachers' motivating strategies. Participants were 46 teachers, across subjects and grade levels, in nine rural public high schools. A multimethod approach was used, with questionnaires, narrative reports, and interviews assessing teachers' individual…

Motivating environments include elements across the whole school-as-system, with contributions made by teachers, students, administrators, and factors outside the school in the surrounding community. Positive motivating environments can support self-determination and intrinsic motivation of both students and teachers despite a number of risk…

This paper extracts and elaborates rural secondary teachers' most effective reported motivating strategies. From the data generated by two years of mixed method research in rural secondary schools, these strategies emerged as among the most successful. Selection of best practices was based on a synthesis of what both teachers and students reported…

This research investigated relationships among characteristics of students and learning environments influencing variables related to motivation for learning and achievement in rural high schools. Participants were 625 students in all four grades, in 19 rural, public high schools. Questionnaires assessed two environmental factors, three…

This study examined the influence of high school teachers' perceptions and individual difference characteristics on teachers' use of motivating strategies in their classrooms. Participants were 75 teachers in 19 rural, public high schools. A mixed method approach was used. Quantitative measures included demographics, individual differences,…

Motivating high school students is a complex and challenging task. Add the resource shortfall and issues that result from the small size and remoteness of rural districts, and it may seem a nearly impossible undertaking. Motivation theory and research offer potential tools for teachers to use, but what are the needs of rural students, and what…

The authors investigated predictive relationships among student characteristics that influence motivation for learning and achievement. Participants were students (N = 900) from all 4 grade levels in 18 rural public high schools in the southwestern United States. The authors used AMOS 4.0 (J. L. Arbuckle & W. Wothke, 1996) to test a…