In the L2 Motivational Self System (L2MSS) motivation is conceptualized to be generated by discomfort associated with the learner's experience of a discrepancy between their current L2 self, and their ideal L2 self. However, in the L2MSS model, this discrepancy is not operationalized. A questionnaire containing measures of current L2 selves was…

In biotechnology education research (BTER), the multifaceted construct of attitude has seldom been problematised in depth despite that the majority of studies in BTER during the last two decades have focused on students' attitudes towards modern biotechnology. Most studies on attitudes in science education use a single-factor model in…

Little empirical evidence is available on what drives young people to engage in higher education. Such knowledge is crucial in order to motivate students to make the most of their potential. This study surveyed a total of 294 Swedish high school students. The result shows that intentions play a mediating role between students' attitudes and the…

National goals and performance standards were introduced in Sweden during the 1990s as part of a curriculum reform. The intention was to detect shortcomings among students and provide support to those students who did not reach the passing grade in one (or several) subject/s. Despite this reform, approximately one-fourth of the students do not…

The aim of the present study was to test whether teacher-student relationship (TSR) quality and student-student relationship (SSR) quality at class level and class moral disengagement (CMD), considered together in a single model, were related to class prevalence of victims (CPV) of bullying. A sample of 899 Swedish children was recruited from 43…

English is today learnt in multitudes of settings worldwide, making it difficult to characterize relationships between motivation and context in generalized terms (Ushioda 2013). In settings where students have extensive encounters with English outside school, a reluctance to invest effort in formal learning has been observed. To investigate ways…

The purpose of the study was to investigate if academic and social self-concept and motivation to improve in academic school subjects mediated the negative effect of summative assessment (grades) for low-ability students' achievement in compulsory school. In two previous studies, summative assessment (grading) was found to have a differentiating…

This study examined how psychosocial conditions at school are associated with prosocial behaviour, a key indicator of positive mental health. Participants were 3,652 Swedish Grade 9 students from the Health Behaviour in School-aged Children study. Structural equation modelling demonstrated that students who experience more manageable school…

Background: This study explored the credibility of Swedish third-grade students' self-assessments of their reading achievement by relating those assessments to two different criteria--teachers' judgments and students' reading test scores. Student gender and socioeconomic status (SES) were introduced to determine to what extent, if any, these…

In the multilingual mathematics classroom, the assignment for teachers to scaffold students by means of instruction and guidance in order to facilitate language progress and learning for all is often emphasized. In Sweden, where mathematics education is characterized by a low level of teacher responsibility for students' performance, this…

In this paper, we examine the nature of interest in science as represented in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2006 data. We discuss the interconnections between measures of knowledge, affect, and value as components of interest in science. Working from a perspective acknowledging that many of the models of motivation…