Research has shown that youth and their communities benefit from civics education, with its aim to prepare citizens for democracy. However, civics education for adolescents in the United States is not equitable, and determining how to best measure aspects of civic development in younger adolescents is a challenge. In this qualitative study, we…

Prior studies identified effective, but mainly non-digital, homework aids. This research involved 18 middle school students in a lo-fi prototyping study to integrate traditional homework support tools with intelligent tutoring systems (ITS), leveraging rich log data for personalized learning. Feature investigations in standardized diaries, goal…

Achievement goal theory research, which investigates students' perceptions of the classroom climate, has mainly focused on teacher practices from a deductive perspective. However, this appears to hinder a fuller understanding of all the factors that influence students' perceptions of the classroom goal structures (CGS). Therefore, using a…

The Wake County Public School System (WCPSS) conducts a student survey in the spring of each year to determine the level of student engagement in and out of the classroom. Students who actively participate in their learning process generally experience higher academic achievement (Wang & Hofkens, 2020). The survey contains items from the…

This study examined the reciprocal relationship between students' perceptions of science learning environment, measured through promoting choice, interaction and mutual respect, and teacher feedback, and students' achievement goals of mastery-approach and performance-approach goals. A total of 407 sixth and eighth grade students participated in…

Measurement limitations have hindered research on learned helplessness (LH) and mastery orientation (MO) in the classroom. We reduced the 24-item Student Behavior Checklist to a 6-item scale and tested the abbreviated measure for evidence of reliability and validity in a sample of 5th and 6th graders (N = 299). We then replicated findings in an…

This study aims to examine the relationship between approach achievement goals, the fear of shame embarrassment failure, and coping strategies in secondary school science courses. Academic coping was handled in four dimensions: positive, projective, denial, and non-coping. The sample of the study included 249 sixth, seventh, and eighth-grade…

The purpose of this qualitative descriptive study is to examine how 3rd-8th grade teachers describe their use of educational technology for experiential learning in mathematics in the Southwestern United States. David Kolb et al. (2001) experiential learning theory guided the two research questions on the level of use and how teachers described…

The present study investigates the role of perceived reason for being bullied on the outcomes of bullying. Using a sample of bullied youth from the 2017 administration of the PNA survey (n = 3,373), the present study tested the moderating effect of perceived reason for bullying on the relation between type of bullying experienced and depressive…

There is a need to investigate motivational constructs for students traditionally underrepresented in educational research. In this study, we measured academic self-handicapping behavior, achievement goal orientations, and achievement in math and literacy in 327 urban, middle school students. Moderated mediation regression analyses were conducted…

It is often assumed that students' personal achievement goals are most beneficial when they match the goal structures of the classroom, but interaction between achievement goals and goal structures is not well researched. In this study, we aim at providing a nuanced picture of the direct, interaction, and nonlinear effects of achievement goals and…

Urban middle school students (N = 1,057; M[subscript age] = 12.06) viewed Facebook-like profiles of peers who varied by race/ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation and indicated the social class (SC) of those peers along two dimensions--family income and social class position. As hypothesized, most profiles were perceived as middle class and…

Scholars have differentiated other-oriented (OO) purpose (i.e., a personally meaningful life aim intended to contribute to the world beyond the self) and self-oriented (SO) purpose (i.e., a personally meaningful life aim without intention to contribute beyond the self). OO purpose is associated with adolescent thriving, yet little is known about…

This paper reports on findings from the first Western Australian Survey of Educators of Sexuality Education, which aimed to assess the state of relationships and sexuality education (RSE) in the state of Western Australia. Key findings show that secondary school teachers provided more hours of RSE instruction than the national average. However,…

Purpose: This study evaluated the effects of a goal setting intervention on aerobic fitness (AF) in 6 to 8 grade students. Method: Students at the intervention school received a lesson on SMART goal setting. Students in the comparison school served as a measurement-only group. AF was assessed via the PACER multi-stage shuttle run test pre and post…