Student motivation for achievement is a particular concern in college teaching. The desire for students to learn for the sake of learning is strong, yet this often leads to "dumbing down" the curriculum. In this article, I present a case analysis of motivational dimensions of instructional practice in college classrooms using a social cognitive…

Simple examples are really encouraging in the understanding of rearrangements of infinite series, since many texts and teachers provide only existence theorems. In the absence of examples, an existence theorem is just a statement and lends little confidence to understanding. Iterated sums of double series seem to have a similar spirit of…

Adolescents from grade 9 in Sydney Australia (N = 60) were interviewed regarding why they would or would not consider pursuing maths-related careers. Open-ended interview data explored the comprehensiveness of explanations within the Expectancy-Value framework. The Expectancy-Value model is the major motivational framework for explaining students'…

In this article, the author, an elementary school teacher at Totoket Valley Elementary School in North Branford, Connecticut, describes how she uses music of the 1950s as a vehicle for teaching skills. She has found that selecting songs that have fun, peppy, and clean lyrics, and also lend themselves to teaching a particular skill, is a great way…

This article explains how a learning contract helps Mr. Watson, a sixth grade middle school teacher find solutions to his problems regarding his student, Samantha's lack of motivation and self-confidence. A learning contract is a written agreement between teacher and learner in which the learner undertakes to complete mutually agreed upon tasks in…

It is important for college teachers to motivate their students because student motivation correlates with a student's academic achievement. This study was concerned with exploring what intrinsically motivates college students to continue attending class; what brings them to class because of a desire to be there, not because of external factors…

Although the number of urban Catholic schools has declined in recent years, Nativity model middle schools, first developed by the Jesuits over 35 years ago, have appeared throughout the nation to address the need for effective alternative education for urban children placed at risk. The present study compares the effectiveness of two types of…

The emergence of accelerated learning as a strategy to simultaneously motivate and challenge secondary students offers a prime example of reform driven by the need to better align schools and colleges with economic and social realities. Accelerated learning is a cluster of programs, such as Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate,…

The Sport Participation Model Questionnaire (SPMQ) was given to two hundred and sixty-four subjects to determine if significant differences existed in the composite scores of parents, coaches, youth sport participants, high school participants and college students; if the groups differed in their responses to pooled items; and if subject groups…

This investigation focused on the interrelationships among the frequency of cheating behaviors, impulsiveness, personal efficacy, and academic motivation. Sixty-one undergraduate students from a small private Catholic college in the Northeast completed the Academic Integrity Scale, subscales from Kurtines' (1978) Autonomy and Paulus' (1983)…

Using a composite example of field trips from several years of traveling to Yellowstone with high school biology students, the author illustrates how to raise the cognitive level of science instruction and student learning through science field trips. The author examines what teachers can do to raise the level of both teaching and learning in all…

This study investigated student views of online instruction in higher education courses. Data were collected from 199 online students using a Web-based instrument. The instrument consisted of items that were expected to be associated with effective online teaching. One overall effective teaching item was regressed onto twenty-five items in order…

The present study examined the extent to which motivation contributes to the prediction of school achievement among elementary school children beyond general mental ability ("g"). The sample consisted of "N" = 1678 nine-year-old UK elementary school children who took part in the Twins Early Development Study (TEDS). Teachers…

Imagine being able to engage students in learning statistics. Teachers would need their students to have access to a large database of real data, preferably about students. It would be even better if students were part of the database. Ideally, the data would enable students to ask questions of interest to them. For a teacher, it would be…

Mary-Anne Stoutsenberger has been the NASA Tribal College and University Program Manager at NASA Headquarters, Washington DC, since 2000. As NASA's liaison to the tribal colleges, she has seen firsthand how Native American students can flourish and succeed when they are surrounded with people who recognize and nurture their potential. She has…