Substance use and abuse are problematic in the lives of adolescents, including interpersonal problems and scholastic problems. Risk for substance use has commonly been assessed at the individual level. This paper examines risk of adolescent substance abuse as a variable impacted by environmental or contextual factors surrounding the individual.…

Despite the acknowledged importance of assessment in education, there has been minimal research into the preparation of preservice teachers for the important role of involving preservice teachers in marking, grading, moderating and providing feedback on student work. This article reports on a pilot project in which preservice teachers participated…

Recent calls asking science teachers to increase student authority by diversifying instruction appear stalled by a lack of empirical evidence supporting the actual implementation of any such shifts. To better support the practical integration of more student-directed inquiry into the science classroom, we consider one teacher's day-to-day…

This exploratory article relies on qualitative data generated from observations and focus group interviews to investigate what motivates citizens to vote in school board elections and how they choose among candidates. Our review of literature suggests that capture theory, dissatisfaction theory, retrospective voting, partisanship, issue voting,…

Researchers interested in health-related learning have recently begun to study processes people use to self-regulate their health and their ability to prevent or control chronic disease. This paper represents a social cognitive view of self-regulation that involves three classes of influence on self-regulating behavior: personal, behavioral, and…

In this study, I set out to gain a better understanding of the learning strategies typically used by sociology majors, whether and to what extent they engage in metacognitive strategies, and whether teaching about learning results in students reporting greater use of self-regulatory behaviors. I discuss the importance of self-regulated learning…

The study examines the experiences of international postgraduate student's (IPSs) transition at a university and adds to the literature as it focuses on student-based support for transition where mostly past research has focused on university-based support. The study utilises social support theory and Illeris' concepts on learning to explain why…

Media have become ever-present factors in most college students' lives (Turan, Tinmaz, & Goktas, 2013). Despite this infiltration, students (and most of the public) remain remarkably unaware of the significant role the media can play in the construction of a social reality and, in turn, how individuals act and interact on a daily basis…

This study investigates how Internet self-efficacy helps students to transform motivation into learning action, and its influence on learning performance. In this study, the effects of Internet self-efficacy on motivation and the learning performance of online college students were examined using social cognitive theory. The subjects of this study…

Social system perspective which belongs to systems theory has been elaborated comprehensively using its founders' ideas, and characteristics of schools have been explained consulting to this perspective. The course of social system idea has been reviewed along with its relation to other systems. How researchers who assumes schools as social…

This article will utilise data collected during SLItaliano, an Italian language course run in the Virtual World (VW) of Second Life® (SL®) in 2012. The course was offered to third level students of Italian as a Foreign Language (FL) in an Irish college, the Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT). It was designed and coordinated by the researcher and…

Many organizations have invested heavily in training. However, only a small percentage of what is learnt from training is applied or transferred to the workplace. This study examines factors that influence training transfer. A conceptual model based on the Theory of Reasoned Action is hypothesized and tested. The sample consisted of 123 full-time…

This study relied on sociocultural understanding of teacher learning, which highlights how teacher candidates construct their own learning and adjust or extend their instructional values, priorities, and beliefs within their teaching contexts (Johnson, 2009). It used activity theory as a conceptual framework (Engeström, 1999) and explored how…

There has been some debate and research that suggests the arts are well-suited to be combined with science, technology, engineering, and math disciplines making the STEM acronym STEAM. STEM education is an educational and political priority in the United States and is valued as a means of strengthening national security and ensuring global…

This article examines efforts made by a teacher preparation program to provide pre-service teachers with an introduction to the rural context, strategies for place-based pedagogy, and a field experience in rural schools. The study explores the influence of these efforts, along with how students' sense of place and educational upbringing, might be…