Research has confirmed the common belief that instructional outcomes are influenced by "extraneous variables." It is important to separate the contributions of the teacher from the contributions of extraneous factors to student learning, and that is the purpose of the IDEA system's adjusted ratings. To adjust scores on the IDEA Center's…

Playing the role of constructive critic of articles in this special issue, I adopt the term self-reliance to refer to work habits, work styles, volition, and self-regulated learning. Starting with the belief that developing self-reliance is an important goal of education, I examine key issues that influence the likelihood of reaching this goal. I…

Like its two predecessors, "Preventing School Dropouts" [C1991] and "Preventing School Failure" [C2000], this third edition is a book about teaching. Although primarily written for teachers, tutors and parents may also find this book helpful. It is a collection of carefully selected teaching techniques aimed at helping young adults learn important…

This study aimed at investigating the contribution of motivational beliefs, cognitive, and metacognitive strategy use to Turkish high school students' achievement in biology. In order to investigate the specified purpose of the study, 519 tenth-grade students were administered the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (Pintrich, Smith,…

Examination of motivational dynamics in academic contexts within self-determination theory has centered primarily around both the motives (initially intrinsic vs. extrinsic, later autonomous vs. controlled) that regulate learners' study behavior and the contexts that promote or hinder these regulations. Less attention has been paid to the goal…

Three developments lend support to the idea that schools must help teach study skills: (1) advances in cognitive psychology that suggest children are active learners; (2) society's concern for at-risk students; and (3) growing demands for improved student performance. There is evidence that systematic study skills instruction does improve academic…

Analysis of two studies related to academic achievement (Atkinson, Lens, and O'Malley, 1976; Entwisle and Hayduk, 1978) and of the effective-schools literature provides a picture that helps us to understand why the ability of poor children is not reflected in their school performance and what schools might do to remedy this situation. The…

This article reports on the characteristics of students classified as being over or underachievers. The concepts of over and underachievement are most frequently defined in terms that relate to expectations based on ability measures. During the past 30 years there have been attempts to isolate the causal determinants of achievement. Variables such…

Students' engagement and persistence on academic learning tasks often require their use of volitional strategies to protect against distractions and facilitate task completion. In this article we discusses factors that both positively and negatively influence students' ability to regulate their learning activities and the supporting role that…

Previous research has generally failed to find a relation between the way students approach the task of studying and their exam grades. The present study investigated why it is that a deep approach to studying, which has been shown to result in a higher quality of learning, does not consistently result in higher exam grades. The participants in…

"Deep" approaches to learning, as defined by Biggs (1987) and others, would generally mean that a student is interested in the academic task, searches for meaning in the task, personalizes the task, integrates aspects of the task into a whole, sees relationships between this whole and previous knowledge, and tries to theorize about the…

The purpose of the study was to explore the effects of various practical instruction procedures on academic performance. Six sections of an introductory sociology course were assigned various experimental conditions involving quizzing and incentives. Examinations were administered at intervals during the course and once after course completion.…

Research was conducted to determine accounting professors' perceptions of the abilities of their accounting majors, particularly the communications and quantitative skills of these majors, as well as their motivation and study habits. Findings and implications are presented, and recommendations and conclusions are discussed. (CT)