Through hierarchical linear modeling, student reports of the avoidance of help seeking were related to student and classroom characteristics of 516 sixth graders. Avoidance of help seeking was related negatively to academic efficacy, but was less strongly related to academic efficacy in classrooms where teachers thought they should tend to…

A recent unpublished study by B. Griesemer (1995) studied the relationship between motivation and self-efficacy for learning among 146 sixth graders. Griesemer used two instruments in that study: one to measure intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation composed of three subscales from the Scale of Intrinsic versus Extrinsic Orientation in the…

Tested the construct validity of an effective psychosocial smoking-prevention curriculum on mediating variables considered responsible for decreasing adolescent smoking initiation, examining Social Cognitive Theory constructs hypothesized as essential for program effectiveness. Results of data from 6th graders in treatment and comparison groups…

Compared determinants of physical activity in active and low-active African-American sixth graders, surveying students and making objective assessments of physical activity over seven days. Results indicated that physical activity self-efficacy, beliefs about physical activity outcomes, involvement in community-based physical activity, perception…

This study explored possible relationships between sixth-grade students' perceptions of themselves and their classroom environments and their help-seeking behaviors in mathematics classes. Researchers administered a city-wide survey to sixth-grade Chicago public school students. Half the students answered items regarding their reading/language…

The viability of self-instructional strategy training was investigated in a study involving 22 learning disabled and 11 normal fifth and sixth graders. Training produced meaningful and lasting effects on composition skills and heightened the sense of self-efficacy of subjects. (TJH)

A study examined the hypothesis that learning strategy coupled with efficacy-building teaching interactions would lead to greater strategic learning than learning strategy instruction alone. A reading comprehension strategy was taught to 184 students from 4 Los Angeles County (California) public and independent schools. Included were 65…

A primary objective of this study was to examine the relations among students' perceptions of the classroom goal orientation as ability-focused goals and their own goals, as well as the relationships between these two components and other motivational factors such as subject-specific self-efficacy and task value. An additional purpose was to…

The focus of this curriculum is on prevention of spinal cord injury (SCI) and traumatic brain injury (TBI). The program is aimed at children because it is early in life that behavioral patterns are formed which become increasingly more difficult to modify as the child enters adolescence. The curriculum is based on principles of child development,…

This report describes the outcomes of a study that examined teacher efficacy in order to generate an exploratory and explanatory theory of teacher efficacy in the context of four heterogeneous fifth and sixth grade classrooms. It investigated how the four elementary teachers identified as being efficacious described the relationships between…

Changes in students' (N=313) present and possible "good student" selves over the transition from elementary school to middle school are examined by this study. Findings indicate that both present and possible selves decline over the transition, and that the decline is greater for males than for females. Holding mastery goals is related to…