As is the case in most OECD countries, boys in Norway are more likely to have lower levels of academic achievement and attainment than girls. While this phenomenon is not recent, it has become increasingly pronounced in recent years and, as a result, is attracting considerable attention from policy-makers in many countries. This paper develops…

This study examined ease of reading, comprehension, and recall and preference for the same scientific content under two conditions: an informational text and a fictional narrative text. Seventy-four third and fourth graders were assessed individually around the reading of fictional narrative and informational texts that were about either snails or…

The study investigated the effects of mathematics anxiety on matriculation students as related to motivation and achievement. Subjects included 88 students who were at the end of their second semester of study. Anxiety and motivation were measured using the Fennema-Sherman Math Anxiety Scale (MAS) and Effectance Motivation Scale (EMS)…

Two studies were conducted to determine how gender and age moderate the long-term and post-failure motivational consequences of person versus performance praise. In Study 1, fourth- and fifth-grade students (n = 93) engaged in a puzzle task while receiving either no praise, person praise, product praise, or process praise. Following a subsequent…

The engagement model of reading development suggests that instruction improves students' reading comprehension to the extent that it increases students' engagement processes in reading. We compared how Concept-Oriented Reading Instruction (CORI) (support for cognitive and motivational processes in reading), strategy instruction (support for…

One of the challenges facing school educators is motivating students to learn science. This study is part of an evaluation of enriched science curriculum introduced in five western Canadian (Alberta) urban schools. The objective was to develop a multidimensional instrument suitable for evaluating the attitudes of students toward science with a…

A study on classroom based training of self-regulated learning was conducted with fourth grade pupils attending German public schools. The participating classes were assigned randomly to either a training group or a control group. The pupils in the training group received 5 weeks of training, as depicted by Zimmerman, Bonner, & Kovach…

Sixteen students, randomly selected from a pool of 91 fourth-graders in a midsize elementary school, were interviewed about their reading choices. The interviews revealed that children had different degrees of motivation, following several patterns. Children chose narrative literature for these reasons: (1) The books related to their personal…

A latent variable structural model was constructed to test the relations among mothers' and fathers' parenting self-efficacy (PSE), their loneliness, and their child's peer-evaluated social competence, self-evaluated loneliness, teacher-evaluated motivational orientation, and academic skills. In order to do this, first the Self-Efficacy for…

This study explored a theory for motivation which included aspects of both attribution theory and goal theory. Motivational variables included beliefs about intelligence (entity or incremental), goal orientation (mastery/learning, performance-approach, performance-avoidance) and avoidant behaviours. Grades 4 and 5 students from a large,…

Problem-Based Learning (PBL) is a contemporary teaching approach that has become increasingly applied way of academic education since its beginnings in the 1960s. Its popularity has grown since it was introduced into medical education and spread to various fields in the last decades. This small group learning approach using major principles of…

Average-ability students often do not take full advantage of learning in mixed-ability groups because they hardly engage in the group interaction. This study examined whether structuring collaboration by group roles and ground rules for helping behavior might help overcome this participatory inequality. In a plant biology course, heterogeneously…

Two studies investigated how goals and self-evaluation affect motivation and achievement outcomes. In both studies, fourth-grade students received instruction and practice on fractions over sessions. Students worked under conditions involving either a goal of learning how to solve problems (learning goal) or a goal of merely solving them…

This action research project implemented and evaluated a program to motivate students to learn through multiple intelligences, cooperative learning, and positive discipline. The targeted population consisted of students in kindergarten, fourth grade, and sixth grade at two grade school and one middle school sites. Evidence of lack of motivation…

A study examined three examples of classroom reading conferences. Subjects (students and teachers) were in grades 4, 7, and 12. Conversations between the teachers and their students serve to illustrate the different learning environments in each classroom. Results indicated that all three teachers wanted to: (1) provide students an opportunity to…