Surveys of 11th- and 12th-grade students from rural schools in 21 states and their parents and teachers revealed significant coefficients of concordance among the three groups' expectations for adulthood. While aspirations for personal and economic success were highly prized, community-minded goals for civic responsibility were ascribed far less…

This study examined situation-specific coping strategies of students with different achievement goals as they take part in inquiry learning. A case study was conducted in a Finnish elementary school. 21 ten-year-old students participated in the study. Two types of data were collected: (1) Students self-reported questionnaires on achievement goals,…

This article focuses on findings from the author's dissertation study on 100 teachers (K-12) from 13 states, who were beginning a video-based distance learning Master's Program at a western United States university during summer term 2000. The purpose of the study was to find out if a specially designed orientation booklet of activities that…

This article reports on a study regarding the school-identification of 1819 first-year students in secondary vocational education. We measured the school-identification of these adolescents and used the perspective of self-regulation to define three blocks of potential determinants, including the students' personal goals (1) their appraisals of…

This paper reports on a continuing study of Australian Aboriginal and Navajo Indian children. The study investigates the relevance and applicability of goal theory to explaining indigenous minority motivation in school settings. Task, ego social solidarity, and extrinsic goal structures were examined as a means of explaining and predicting…

A series of studies conducted in the late 1980s suggested that American adolescents lack adequate knowledge in geography, history, science, and current events. This paper examines motivational predictors of students' knowledge of current events and AIDS. Researchers surveyed 579 middle school students from 4 middle schools, and 1,548 high school…

Little prior research exists on the achievement motivation of Mexican American students. In a rural south Texas junior high school, 120 eighth-grade students completed the 1969 Achieving Tendency Scales and demographic and socioeconomic questionnaires. Subjects were equally divided among four groups: Mexican American males and females and Anglo…

The first-semester orientation course at Irvine Valley College (IVC), in California, a non-required course taught by counselors, covers time management, study skills, academic policies, career and academic major exploration, and support services. In an effort to evaluate the effectiveness of the course, a study was conducted of the 1990 freshman…

This publication contains two reports describing the development and beginning evaluations of two separate programs of the Baltimore (Maryland) School and Family Connections Project designed to increase parents' involvement in their children's learning in urban middle grades schools. The first report, "Reactions of Parents, Students, and…

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…

Studies of the educational development of adults were conducted to (1) identify adults' perceptions of the personal and institutional factors that help and/or impede them in successfully completing the admissions process for entry into postsecondary education and (2) develop and validate interventions that will enhance adults' decision and…

An investigation was conducted to examine the relationship between goal-setting behavior and the Conceptual Level Model (CLM), an interactive theory of development that considers progression or growth to be determined both by the learner's present developmental stage and by the environment he experiences. Conceptual Level (CL) is an index of…

IN THIS NATIONAL STUDY OF THE PREDICTION OF SUCCESS OF THE JUNIOR COLLEGE TRANSFER STUDENT, THE AUTHORS FOUND THAT HIS SUCCESS DEPENDED ON THE INTERACTION OF MANY VARIABLES, SUCH AS HIS OWN ATTRIBUTES AND THOSE OF THE SENIOR INSTITUTION, ITS ACADEMIC STANDARDS AND GENERAL CLIMATE, AND THE ALTERNATIVES OFFERED THE STUDENT. THESE FINDINGS SUGGEST…

A program has been established at an integrated Louisville, Kentucky, junior high school to develop a sense of school and community pride among students and teachers. The formerly all-white district in which the school is located had become increasingly Negro, and as a result "racist" rumors and social unrest had spread in the community.…

The object of the investigations reported here is the perceptions students and teachers have of "actual" classrooms and of their "ideal" classrooms. The data come from 10 junior--level classrooms in each of five high schools. The 10 classrooms were selected as follows: two each in English, mathematics, and social Studies; with the remaining four…