A measure of academic parenting practices was developed through parent and teacher interviews and subsequently administered to 91 Hong Kong Chinese fifth graders, who also rated their mothers' restrictiveness and concern, school motivation, and self-perceived academic competence. Children's actual school grades were obtained from school records.…

This paper reports the first part of a 2-year longitudinal study, which examined the impact of age of entry to school on the reading development of 60 summer-born boys during Key Stage One. The sample was drawn from 18 schools in six Local Education Authorities operating different admissions policies. Thirty-one had attended nursery part-time,…

This article reports on an interpretative inquiry into 14 tertiary vocational students' educational experiences on the Chinese mainland with a focus on their strategy use in learning English. Using sociocultural theory, the inquiry reveals the profound impact that the learning context had on the research participants' strategy use. The data reveal…

This paper describes an intercontinental project with the use of interactive tools, both synchronous and asynchronous, which was set up to internationalize academic learning of Spanish language and culture. The objective of this case study was to investigate whether video-web communication tools can contribute to enriching the quality of foreign…

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…

This study examined the causal and mediating relations between students' learning approaches, self-efficacy beliefs, stages of reflective thinking, and academic performance. Second-year undergraduate students (n = 241; 118 females, 123 males) in the South Pacific were administered the revised version of Biggs' Study Process Questionnaire, the…

The research presented in this paper was carried out in 2002 within the framework of the Russian Academy of Education's comprehensive program "The Sociology of Education." This article is based on the materials from a sociological survey of 2,983 students in the seventh, ninth, and eleventh grades of general education schools in Moscow.…

This study explores concepts of learning used by leaders, focusing on learning for leadership through day-to-day workplace experiences. The participants were drawn from the senior management team within a school, the chair of governors of the school and the local authority school improvement advisor. Concept mapping was used as a participatory…

The School Motivation and Learning Strategies Inventory (SMALSI) is a diagnostic tool that helps educators identify and measure strategies that are actively used by students for learning. It is a self-report inventory for use with students 8 through 12 years of age (SMALSI-Child Form) and also with older students aged 13 to 18 years (SMALSI-Teen…

In an experiment conducted in 7 eighth-grade (Ages 13-14) classes in Singapore, the authors evaluated the effects of the group investigation method of cooperative learning versus the effects of the traditional whole-class method of instruction on students' academic achievement and on their motivation to learn. The authors also investigated…

Most respondents (n=640) who chose not to attend premarital education were influenced by beliefs and attitudes, such as no need for premarital counseling, privacy of marriage, no relationship problems, lack of interest, or unwillingness to discuss personal issues. Nonparticipation was a synthesis of multiple deterrents. Referral, particularly by…

Takes a critical look at the "new literacy studies." Describes an experimental workshop on Training for Organization, a Brazilian method focused on the relationship between literacy and power. (SK)

Team invasion games (TIG) make up a large part of the PE curriculum in Scottish schools. It is important, therefore, to understand the environmental conditions that contribute to pupils' motivation to learn to play TIG. Consequently, this study aimed to identify the teaching behaviours exhibited when teaching TIG using a game-based approach and a…

In Belgium and Brussels, macrocontextual features such as language policy and language legislation have a profound impact on people's language use and on the way languages are learned. In order to explain this impact, the political and economic developments that have determined the current context of learners in Brussels are discussed. Secondly, a…

This study examined goals and agency as the 2 core aspects of self in learning among Chinese adolescents. A sample of 259 adolescents aged 12--19 responded to open-ended probes about themselves. Counter to the common view that Chinese themselves are predominantly social, adolescents expressed many more individual than social goals and agency.…