Given the preponderance of deficit-oriented discourse about Black men and adult learners in higher education, there have not been theoretical frameworks put forth to explain the success of Black male adult learners in higher education. Thus, this article describes the Black male adult learner success theory, which builds on Gilman Whiting's…

The paper examines the relationship between the educational environment and the gifted student's motivation. It argues for less use of competition as a motivator, and suggests future research directions. The argument against employing competition as a motivator is based upon the premise that development, cognitive, social-emotional, and moral,…

Symbolic self-completion theory postulates that an individual experiencing a shortcoming in one symbolic dimension of a self-defined goal will emphasize an alternative symbolic dimension; these compensatory efforts are considered self-symbolizing. To test this hypothesis two studies were conducted using college females committed either to raising…

Although many people have studied social intelligence and theorized about it over the past 60 years, no one has been able to provide a clear picture of its nature. Traditional methods have overemphasized the social-cognitive outcomes of human functioning instead of social-behavioral outcomes. Two approaches used to study social intelligence can be…

The past decade has seen a surge in both popular and scholarly work on the issues that affect women's lives. To discover events perceived to have been turning points in the identity formation of Hispanic women, 25 Mexican-American women and 25 Puerto Rican women living in Chicago were interviewed by two female Hispanic interviewers. In addition to…

The relationship between goal orientation and the use of learning strategies and their effects on learning outcomes were investigated. The three goal orientations considered were: (1) task orientation, which involves learning for its own sake; (2) ego orientation, which involves a desire to perform better than others; and (3) work avoidance, which…

Changes in six measures of achievement-related motivation and confidence were tested in a longitudinal study of 138 women and 96 men during their first year at a midwestern university. Findings suggest that, for these measures, assimilation into the campus environment had a positive effect on men but not on women. (Author/BS)