Students are quite interested in stories about young people throughout history. Students want to know what it was like to be a kid during the U.S. Civil War, during the Great Depression, or during the tumultuous Vietnam War period. They want to know what going to school was like, what young people did for entertainment and recreation, and what…

Cluster analysis and analysis of variance procedures were used to identify students' domain-specific epistemological belief profiles and to examine differences in students' beliefs, motivation, and task performance. Four hundred eighty-two undergraduates completed measures regarding their beliefs about knowledge, competency beliefs, and…

This longitudinal field study examined the relationship between goal orientation and self-regulatory processes in an achievement context. Data was obtained from 132 students over a 10 week period. Results indicated that: (a) learning goal orientation was positively related to how much resources participants allocated to their goals and the degree…

Previous research has concluded that an institution's ranking in the annual "U.S. News and World Report" "Best Colleges" issue impacts admission outcomes and pricing decisions at schools in the Consortium for Financing Higher Education. This article expands on the previous work by analyzing the effects of the "U.S. News and World Report" rankings…

This article describes new presentation tools and game shows that can make the classroom into a learning stage. RM Easiteach Studio, a presentation software from RM Educational Software, provides teaching tools for use on any interactive whiteboard. Classroom Jeopardy[R] from Educational Insights includes a scoreboard/base control unit, three…

A survey of a group of distance graduate students showed their strong preference for easy and fast information retrieval and a significant association between motivation for using information and field of study. Motivation and field of study also explained differences in primary information source selection and use of home institution libraries.

This article presents a theoretically grounded model of motivation and self-regulation that places personally valued future goals at its core. We attempt to integrate two lines of theorizing and research that have been relatively independent of one another: the social-cognitive perspective on self-regulation (e.g., Bandura, A., 1986) and theories…

Research in educational psychology and sport psychology indicates that school achievement depends on students' capacity to self-regulate their own learning processes. The purpose of this study was to investigate the self-regulation components employed by students in a natural physical education setting. Twenty-three French students, 14 and 15…

Two studies were conducted to examine the effects of motivational climate on motor-skill development and perceived physical competence in kindergarten children with developmental delays. In Experiment 1, two intervention groups were exposed to environments with either high (mastery climate) or low autonomy for 12 weeks. Results showed that the…

The purpose of the study was twofold. Firstly, we aimed at distinguishing groups of students with differing general orientations to university studies. Secondly, our goal was to establish a connection between orientations and students' intentions to discontinue their studies as well as their actual absences. The participants of the study were all…

This study constructed questionnaire measures of cooperative and competitive orientations, and pilot-tested them with 1,176 elementary school-age 4-H members and non-members. A measure of parent support was also obtained from these children. Factor analyses revealed that competitive and cooperative learning orientations are orthogonal and not…

It has long been recognized that varying achievement goals elicit varying motivational patterns with varying behavioral consequences. Several sets of contrasting goal orientations have been proposed to explain differences in language students' achievement behaviors. A total of 135 third-year (n = 54 male; n = 81 female) students in a preservice…

Karratha is a town in Australia's remote north-west, 1600 km north of a capital city, Perth. It was a long way from "musical civilization" and a totally different teaching situation for a music teacher used to English classrooms. The first challenge was the dominance of sport at the school, but Peter Younghusband tells how he worked to…

Students can be proactive and engaged or, alternatively, lack initiative and responsibility for their learning. Self-regulated learning involves learning strategies and mental processes that learners deliberately engage to help themselves learn and perform better academically. The results of this study provide empirical support for the theoretical…

Growth in distance education is increasing the need to examine students' learning strategies in distance and blended learning environments. Students' cramming or spaced-review behaviors were measured and compared across delivery formats as well as examined related to course achievement and attitudes across a term. Although theory would predict…