In this chapter, the focus is on understanding the unique learning motivations shared by contemporary students in Confucian heritage cultures.

Gamification is increasingly being implemented in higher education to engage students. This article presents a gamified pedagogical exercise intended to motivate students to consider how their in-person and digital behaviors affect their personal brands. Students receive and lose points for various behaviors and reflect on whether these behaviors…

Genomics is a core course for bioscience-majored undergraduates in many universities. However, the teaching of genomics faces many challenges such as the need for rapid updating of related knowledge, content overlap between genomics and molecular biology, lack of motivation of students in the traditional passive classroom-learning model, the…

Babies and infants love mathematics. Give babies a set of blocks, and they will build and order them, fascinated by the ways the edges line up. Children will look up at the sky and be delighted by the V formations in which birds fly. Count a set of objects with a young child and then move the objects and count them again, and they will be…

This article describes how a class of year 9 (age 13-14) students engaged in a research-informed and negotiated action science project to address socio-scientific issues. The project was informed by the 'STEPWISE' curriculum framework. Evidence suggests that students benefited from collaborative problem-solving, developing confidence, motivation…

Gameful pedagogy is "an approach that takes inspiration from well-designed games to create learning environments that support student motivation" (Holman, 2018, p. 1). According to Self-Determination Theory (Ryan & Deci, 2000), students are intrinsically motivated when their basic psychological needs for autonomy (the need to make…

A high-poverty, previously low-performing elementary school in Maine shifted its from looking mainly at achievement and test scores to focusing on ways to create motivated, confident, engaged students. They created Rise and Shine, through which all 3rd-5th graders start each day with a fun, challenging activity chosen from a big menu--from…

The early emergent stage of writing consists of drawing and scribbling. This article provides a rationale for teachers to reframe their dispositions toward scribbling and reshape their interactions with writers in the early emergent stage. These teaching tips were derived from the authors' study of teacher, parent, and young students' perceptions…

Education changes the brain. The purpose of this meta-review is to afford teachers access to the most up-to-date research regarding principal neuro-processes of adolescent development and behavior to improve students' well-being and motivation in the classroom. This includes facets such as emotional, social, risk and reward mechanisms, stressors,…

Author Mays Imad, who is a neuroscientist, writes that throughout her teaching career she has watched talented, creative, high-potential students walk away from the sciences because they feel that the STEM curriculum lacks ethical, political, and creative significance. One of her students wrote to her, "Life is hard and the world feels drab…

The purpose of this article is to critically apply the mastery TARGET structures (task, authority, recognition, grouping, evaluation and time) to the cooperative learning (CL) model in physical education. The premise is that the TARGET structures are highly applicable to the CL model and that combining both approaches will optimize student…

This article describes a new competence-oriented teaching rationale for a science course, developed in Germany through close cooperation between teachers and researchers, that seeks to improve scientific literacy at upper-level secondary school (ages 15-17). Its aim is to help students become independent and competent experimenters by combining…

Undocumented immigrant students represent 2% of the total U.S. higher education population. Due to their citizenship status, many undocumented high school students encounter barriers to college access including prohibitive admissions policies, increased tuition rates, and funding restrictions. Some undocumented students experience anxiety,…

Social mobility and improving the performance of disadvantaged pupils is a focus for policy in England, Northern Ireland and Wales. The findings from PISA 2018 provide a unique opportunity to explore the impact of disadvantage on pupils aged 15, to contextualise achievement outcomes with information about home-life and school, as well as providing…

Games have been socially entrenched throughout history as a form of entertainment. Current rapidly changing technological advances have permitted an increasingly prominent means of utilizing these entertainment sources in an instructional capacity for educational purposes. As a result, serious games focus on engaging learners in activities which…