Research on effective teaching and learning shows that when students set and monitor their own learning goals, it significantly narrows achievement gaps. While teacher-written objectives are important for clarity, when these objectives are re-written as personal statements, they evolve from what a teacher needs to teach to what students want to…

Research on engagement in schools as well as research from the Challenge Success-Stanford Survey of School Experiences on how high school students' perceptions of classroom practices correlate with their engagement levels shows that more students are engaged in school when educators emphasize practices that promote learning and mastery. Authors…

Background: Achievement goal theory is a popular motivational theory within education and psychology, with several review papers summarizing the extensive work done in these fields. Although reviews exist in these specific fields, none exists within science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education. This is a considerable gap in…

Background: Achievement goal theory is a popular motivational theory within education and psychology, with several review papers summarizing the extensive work done in these fields. Although reviews exist in these specific fields, none exists within science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education. This is a considerable gap in…

Guided by the content specificity perspective of motivation, the purpose of the study was to identify the extent to which student motivation level is a function of content variations. Motivation intervention studies were reviewed and categorized into content-focused and motivation-only learning contexts for meta-analysis. Original and calculated…

The standards-based learning and grading movement of the past twenty years has ushered in a critical shift in assessment that demands clarity in both what is being measured and how well students are learning. Seeing the value in this evolution, a wave of schools has invested enormous effort to institutionalize the policy and practices of the…

In this paper, we explore associations among undergraduate students' perceptions of professor cultural competence, students' perceptions of professor growth mindset, and students' motivation to engage in intercultural interactions. In two studies (N[subscript study 1] = 351, N[subscript study 2] = 277), we find that when students perceive their…

Achievement goals are associated with varied students' outcomes, such as academic achievement and well-being. Exploring factors shaping adolescents' achievement goals, such as perceptions of significant others' goals, may benefit efforts to advance positive student outcomes. Prior research focuses on perceived teacher goals and considerably less…

Collaborative argumentation has been recognized as a powerful means to facilitate conceptual change of scientific concepts for which students have robust misconceptions. However, eliciting and maintaining collaborative argumentation that yields such productive outcomes is known to be difficult. Specifically, social-motivational antecedents have…

Spaced practice is a recognized effective study approach that fosters mastery of learning and retention of information. In this paper, we share one instructor's experience in introducing a spaced practice intervention in a large general chemistry course and in encouraging students to continue the strategy in the next semester organic chemistry…

The primary objective was to investigate the relations between college students' achievement goals and their engagement in self-regulated learning using a person-centered approach. College students (N = 364) completed surveys that assessed mindset, self-efficacy, anxiety, achievement goals, and self-regulated learning. Latent profile analyses…

Writing motivation has been deemed a critical aspect of the writing process because motivation affects how students engage with the writing process, how much effort and time they exert in the tasks, and the quality of their written products (Graham, 2018). Writing motivation has been the focus of recent studies on how to improve the discouraging…

Students have misconceptions about many scientific topics they encounter in the classroom--such misconceptions are especially rife in subjects with counterintuitive concepts. Several studies have copiously documented students' misconceptions in different science domains. Research shows that students' misconceptions can be resistant to change and…