Metamotivational knowledge is a burgeoning area of study. It refers to people's knowledge about motivation, and it has been shown to contribute to motivation and behavioral outcomes. The current study bridges metamotivational knowledge with self-determination theory (SDT), one of the most prominent theories of academic motivation. SDT proposes…

Drawing upon interview data collected from six American professors who have taught in a Sino-US collaborative programme, this study explores these Western educators' perceptions of their Chinese students. Adopting the theoretical lens of cultural non-essentialism, this study finds that these educators formed an appreciative and contextualized…

This research was designed to examine how teachers and students from various cultures (China vs. USA) might present distinct behavioural features in learner-centred classrooms. The findings of the research would serve the purpose to answer the question regarding whether and how learner-centred instruction could better support the learning of…

This research examined whether the benefits of parents' involvement in children's learning are due in part to value development among children. Four times over the 7th and 8th grades, 825 American and Chinese children (M age = 12.73 years) reported on their parents' involvement in their learning and their perceptions of the value their parents…

Little is known about how components of executive function (EF) jointly and uniquely predict different aspects of academic achievement and how this may vary across cultural contexts. In the current study, 119 Chinese and 139 American preschoolers were tested on a battery of EF tasks (i.e., inhibition, working memory, and attentional control) as…

At the elementary school level, two studies (Eicher, Piersma, & Wood, 1975; Liu 2004) were conducted to investigate school children's knowledge, perceptions, and understanding about China. Findings from these studies implied that the U.S. children's knowledge of China was predominantly related to their exposure to Chinatown or Chinese…

The paradoxical findings about students' mathematics self-concept and academic achievement shown in international and comparative studies prompt this exploration of the function and development of mathematics self-concept. That is, when examining data within individual countries, a positive relationship exists between students' self-concept and…

This study examines the developmental patterns of perceived control beliefs among a total of 1720 urban Chinese, rural Chinese, and American students in second through sixth grade. Children's perceived control beliefs were measured with the Revised Control, Agency, and Means-end Interview (CAMI). The results show that the latent structures of…