Goal setting is utilized by adults regularly to foster success. It has also been shown to benefit academic achievement. This 8-week study sought to determine the effects of goal setting on motivation, self-efficacy, and math achievement in elementary students. The quasi-experimental study included 70 students in 3rd and 4th grade math classes.…

The purpose of this single case study was to evaluate the effects of a multicomponent motivational intervention that consisted of explicit timing, immediate feedback through self- scoring, goal setting, and positive reinforcement on the arithmetical skills of three third graders with learning disabilities. An ABA reversal multiple-baseline…

The NCAA Read to the Final Four Literacy competition was initiated in a partnership between the Houston Independent School District (HISD), NCAA Team Works®, Houston NCAA Final Four Local Organizing Committee, Houston Public Library, the University of Houston, and CYCLE (Changing Young Children's Lives through Education). The competition was…

Person-centered analyses of achievement goals have been scarce in studies of elementary school children. In this investigation, the authors examined the natural combinations of achievement goals (mastery, performance-approach, performance-avoidance) among 3rd grade students (N = 195) and how clusters differed in self-, teacher-, and peer-reported…

Improving foundational academic skills for elementary level students continues to be a challenge for classroom teachers. This study implemented weekly progress monitoring procedures using curriculum-based measurement assessments in conjunction with weekly individual student-teacher graphing and goal-setting conferences to determine the effect the…

This action research is a quantitative study of personal goal setting and how it affects the academic performance of third grade students on weekly Math, Reading, and Language Arts assessments in a proactive effort to increase individual performance on standardized tests. The students' weekly performance was indicative of their expected…

The relationships of teachers' epistemological beliefs, motivation, and goal orientation to their instructional practices that foster student creativity were examined. Teachers' perceived instructional practices that facilitate the development of multiple perspectives in problem solving, transfer, task commitment, creative skill use, and…

Using data for school improvement is a key goal of Race to the Top, and now is the time to make data-driven school improvement a priority. However, many educators are drowning in data. Boost your professional learning community's ability to translate data into action with this new book from Pam Robbins and Robert T. Hess. "The Data Toolkit"…

This study used a trichotomous achievement goal model to explore and describe what actually happened in terms of students' achievement goals and disruptive behaviors in an after-school physical activity program. Participants included 158 students in grades 3-6. They completed questionnaires assessing their achievement goals and disruptive…

Background/Context: Working theories about student goal orientation, understanding of intelligence, and affective mediation of task engagement inform current beliefs about students and learning and motivation. Much research has focused on identifying effective teaching strategies to raise the achievement of disadvantaged students; however, less is…

Age differences in intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and the relationships of each to academic outcomes were examined in an ethnically diverse sample of 797 3rd-grade through 8th-grade children. Using independent measures, the authors found intrinsic and extrinsic motivation to be only moderately correlated, suggesting that they may be largely…