The aim of this article is to explain a faculty development approach used with faculty who teach general education courses. The purpose of the professional development was to help faculty intentionally create a class environment that engages students. Key to this process was introducing faculty to a research-based motivation model that they could…

Student evaluations of teaching (SETs) are important at most colleges and universities. One purpose of this study was to determine the extent to which motivational climate was associated with SETs. Another purpose was to determine whether course ease was associated with SETs. Participants included 2,949 undergraduate students from 30 courses at a…

Because of the importance of students' and teachers' implicit beliefs about intelligence, we designed a study to determine: (a) How is intelligence defined--as a malleable or fixed entity--in introductory educational psychology textbooks? and (b) To what extent are classroom applications of intelligence topics included in the textbooks? We…

The purpose of this study was to assess administrators' professionally and personally inviting behaviors and examine whether administrators' reported behaviors were correlated with school rankings, job satisfaction, school climate, or time spent on instructional leadership. Overall, both principals and assistant principals reported engaging in…

Teachers and principals don't always agree about the effects on education of accountability systems based on high-stakes testing. Mr. Jones and Mr. Egley look at the implications of these differing perceptions and suggest some strategies for creating a climate in which teachers and administrators can move forward on improving student learning.…

We queried Florida elementary teachers about how they perceived their principals' professional and personal inviting leadership behaviors during a time when many teachers and principals felt a lot of pressure due to test-based accountability. Despite the pressure, teachers reported that their principals demonstrated fairly high levels of inviting…

This study examines how rural elementary school administrators perceive the effects of high-stakes testing in comparison to suburban and urban elementary administrators. High-stakes testing had a greater impact, both positively and negatively, on rural administrators than on their counterparts in suburban and urban schools. Specifically, the…