The study of classroom processes that shape students' motivational beliefs, although fruitful, has suffered from a lack of conceptual clarity in terminology, definitions, distinctions, and roles of these important processes. Synthesizing extant research and major theoretical perspectives on achievement motivation, I propose Motivational Climate…

Active Learning Classrooms are new learning spaces that allow collaborative learning activities to take place easily over the traditional classroom. However, some features of these rooms could be viewed as "distracting" to students' learning such as the multiple interactive screens. The purpose of this paper is to begin the conversation…

The focus of all of this intense interchange was the shape and future of learning institutions. Our charge was to accept the challenge of an Information Age and acknowledge, at the conceptual as well as at the methodological level, the responsibilities of learning at an epistemic moment when learning itself is the most dramatic medium of that…

This article offers wisdom to those seeking to better engage young adolescents: children are inherently curious and eager to learn, and will be more so when adults step aside and give them room to stretch. The author describes tools and suggested practices on how to advance student empowerment to learn. Allowing students to make choices about…

Motivation, one of the leading problems in education, is an ongoing issue for teachers. Motivation is important because it highly contributes to achievement. Teachers have to be certain that their students are being motivated in order to develop a positive outcome. This article suggests some strategies to sustain students' classroom motivation.

In this article, the author discusses the psychosocial benefits of cooperative learning. She discovered that when she relinquished traditional autocratic control and allowed her students to collaborate interactively with classmates to achieve common goals, her students became more invested and engaged in their learning. She also discovered that…

In a study of whether more student control and responsibility in the classroom would cause them to feel more positive about a task and to like their co-workers better, 57 undergraduates were asked to complete an 8 statement questionnaire on how much control they would be willing to allow others working with them. They were placed in pairs with…

In most public schools today, where teachers must function as dispensers of knowledge and judges of correctness while students must function as listeners, repeaters, and memorizers, the learning process is passive. Such a passive learning process is an exhausting, burdernsome, role for the teacher and is draining on students, for it requires them…

Teaching conformity through coercion limits students' willingness to take risks and make decisions regarding their learning. In contrast, a Foxfire classroom environment that meets psychological needs empowers students to make choices about their learning, eliminates fear of failure, allows students to establish their own standards of achievement,…

To develop communication skills among non-participating students, teachers must recognize, diagnose, and treat individual problems of the reticent child. Teachers need to convey the concept of an "open" classroom where all ideas are welcome, to develop questioning and "active listening," to encourage eye contact, to make use of…

Selected results from an aptitude-treatment interaction (ATI) study illustrate the importance of including class analyses in ATI research. The interactive effects of motivational aptitude (including locus of control, academic self confidence, and interests) and cognitive aptitude (as measured by a learning task and the Lorge-Thorndike verbal and…

In 1991, staff at the Business Resource Center (BRC) at Tacoma Community College, in Washington, began to reevaluate their approach to serving students. Up to that point, the BRC had been teacher centered, with staff operating under the assumptions that only the students who succeeded were actually "college material," that students would cheat if…

This guide, designed for second language teachers and teacher trainees, addresses central practical, methodological concerns in effective classroom management and decision making. The first chapter provides background information and assumptions. The second chapter discusses the planning process (lesson preparation, pre-instructional…