Young athletes want to be successful in many aspects of their game. Unfortunately, some athletes allow their desire to be successful to turn into perfectionistic behaviors that do not benefit them and can lead to burnout. Coaches have a responsibility and want to help their athletes through their unhealthy perfectionism, but many coaches do not…

The purpose of this article is to examine a series of professional dispositions and provide practical examples of purposeful behaviors and tangible decision-making strategies related to the topics of collaboration, respect, reverence for learning, reflection, flexibility, and responsibility. Implications for necessary intentionality both within…

Teachers struggle to reach all students and to lead them to mastery of the various disciplines they teach. However, only a few student display persistence and tenacity to accomplish academic assignments and goals set by teachers, schools, and districts. This paper explores the concept of persistence and how to develop persistence in students.…

We describe the rise in intergenerational narcissistic behavior amongst college students and educational issues that this trend creates in the classroom, including entitlement and academic dishonesty. As these behaviors impose costs on faculty, other students, and society, we use a game-theoretic approach to exhibit the efficacy of creating and…

Communication tools have been popular in web-based learning systems because of their ability to promote the interaction and potentially alleviate the high dropout issue. In recent years, with the increased awareness among researchers about the individual difference of the students, more and more personalized learning supports have been developed.…

With the limited success of social skills training on particularly disruptive behaviors, researchers have begun to develop a more holistic approach grounded in "temperament" research that focuses on supporting underlying traits as they emerge during development. Based on this approach, this column provides a theoretical basis and…

A newly identified character trait defined as "passion and perseverance for long-term goals," grit adds to our understanding of student behavior. While certain parts of grit can be taught, research is only beginning to examine how educators can do so.

Cheating is highly prevalent in American high school students and across the globe. Although numerous approaches are in place to combat this issue, most character education approaches have focused primarily on fostering moral integrity (a strength of moral character). Here, we argue that a broad character education approach to addressing cheating…

Being able to accurately evaluate students' cognitive, affective, and psychomotor development at the beginning of a course is critical for teachers to create meaningful learning experiences for them. Initial student evaluation provides teachers with quick perceptive and practical knowledge of student characteristics as well as a diagnosis of what…

This paper presents an argument for how second language acquisition (SLA) research should be carried out if a researcher is genuinely interested in learner grammar (i.e., knowledge of language), its acquisition and use. SLA research has expanded greatly over many years and currently spans many subfields, but researchers share one main goal: to…

Quiet students are sometimes misunderstood in the college classroom. Students may be quiet for reasons related to personality traits, learned behaviors, or situational factors, but regardless, their silences may be misinterpreted by their instructors as a lack of engagement in their courses. In fact, quiet students are often very engaged in the…

Millennials are a unique generational cohort populating the classroom, leaving university professors with the challenge of appropriately preparing them for the chaotic workforce. One challenge is their lower levels of resiliency. When faced with setbacks, Millennials tend to give up instead of bouncing back. This lack of resiliency is negatively…

The nation's PK-12 education ecosystem is poised to embrace programs intended to enhance soft skills. Soft skills are generally defined by exclusion as personal qualities other than the formal knowledge transmitted by schools that affect student adjustment, i.e., the effort that students put into their work and their social skills. Such soft…

Children with symptoms of oppositional-defiant and conduct disorders (ODD/CD) pose significant challenges within educational settings. The worldwide prevalence among 6-18 year olds is 3.3% for ODD and 3.2% for CD (Canino, Polanczyk, Bauermeister, Rohde, & Frick, 2010). Students with conduct problems often display aggressive and antisocial…

In this reflective interview with Terry Friedrichs--a hands-on academic-learning specialist and researcher with gifted students with Asperger Syndrome--he defines these pupils, describes their "straightforward" and confusing traits, and recounts his initial and later instructional experiences with them over several decades. The piece…