Purpose: This study examines how and whether expectancy for success and task values influence students' persistence in work placement learning tasks (persistence). Also, it examines the mediating role of task values in the expectancy for success and students' persistence nexus. Design/methodology/approach: This is a two-study finding. In Study 1,…

Grit, the personal characteristic of perseverance and passion for long-term goals, plays a vital role in college students' success and well-being. This study aimed to investigate the contribution of optimism (a personal factor) and college mattering (a social factor), as well as their underlying mechanism on grit among college students. Data was…

Personal best (PB) goal setting refers to the pursuit of individual improvement through striving to outperform a previous best level of performance or effort. Although promising evidence has been building, numerous empirical questions remain to be answered, including how PB goal setting may operate alongside various contextual predictors of…

The aim of this study was to investigate the extent to which life purpose explained the variance in college students' levels of resilience and persistence amidst COVID-19 pandemic. This study utilized a cross-sectional design and focused upon the three dimensions of life purpose: awareness of purpose, awakening to purpose, altruistic purpose.…

While previous research has established that faculty and their interactions with students have had the greatest impact on student retention and satisfaction for centuries, limited studies have been done to understand how faculty are influencing Generation Z, our newest generation of students in higher education. This study examined how the…

The emergence of Positive Psychology in second language acquisition has placed greater emphasis on the vital role of engagement in learning English as a foreign language (EFL). Although previous research has established that EFL learners' engagement is affected by ideal L2 self, boredom, and grit respectively, sporadic studies have attempted to…

This research study explored the level of student engagement that transfer students experience and how these levels can predict their persistence. This quantitative study utilized secondary data from the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE). George Kuh's Theory of Student Engagement guided this study and influenced the development of the…

There are few longitudinal studies of adolescent students' choice to persist in post-compulsory education. Hence, the present study introduces a longitudinal model that describes the interplay between sociological and psychological explanations of adolescents' choice to persist in post-compulsory education in the UK. Data on parental education,…

In Chile many university students do not persist to graduation. Some students dropped out in the first year, others later. The objective of this study, based on students admitted to but not graduating from selective universities, was to identify factors associated with their academic success and length of persistence before withdrawal. The 707…

Persistence in distance learning has become problematic. This quantitative nonexperimental study examined whether perceived connectivity, perceived internal locus of control, and age predict persistence in online master's degree programs. Rotter's locus of control theory, Moore's transactional distance theory, and Rovai's composite persistence…

This dissertation is composed of three studies linking general education astronomy to student performance, course-taking, graduation, and identity. The first study examined demographic and academic predictors of astronomy performance among a cohort of N=1,909 community college students enrolled in astronomy courses in a large suburban community…

Not every student who enrolls in a teacher training program completes it and obtains a degree. Students dropping out of vocational teacher training is a particularly concerning trend in Germany, where there is a significant shortage of vocational education and training (VET) teachers. Against this backdrop, it is crucial to understand why students…

Purpose: The main purpose of this study is to evaluate the extent of dropout students and identify the relationship between risk factors of dropout and the survival time of students. Design/methodology/approach: The Kaplan-Meier estimator (KM), also known as the product-limit technique, is a nonparametric model function that is commonly used in…

Transfer students comprise half of all undergraduate students, yet their educational experiences may differ in meaningful ways from those of traditional students. Importantly, the transfer student population is diverse and not monolithic. Achievement emotions, which occur in an iterative pattern with past experiences informing current and future…

Student dropout is a major concern in studies investigating retention strategies in higher education. This study identifies which variables are important to predict student dropout, using academic data from 3583 first-year students on the Business Administration (BA) degree at the University of Barcelona (Spain). The results indicate that two…