My research is rooted in improving K-12 educational practice using motivational facets made possible through adaptive tutoring systems. In an attempt to isolate best practices within the science of learning, I conduct randomized controlled trials within ASSISTments, an online adaptive tutoring system that provides assistance and assessment to…

Students are provided with a mystery concerning dogs that are paralyzed. This motivates a laboratory exercise to measure parameters from the dog's "blood" to determine whether the paralysis is due to pesticide poisoning or an autoimmune attack on nerve myelin. Most of the materials are available from the grocery store. The real-world nature of the…

We highlight major themes emerging from the articles in this special issue. These themes include (a) the importance of theoretical frameworks and clearly defined constructs for guiding the development of interventions, (b) a consideration of intervention effects on ethnic minority children, (c) the importance of positive social interactions and…

Discusses a two-year action research study conducted at a high school that transformed reluctant students into lifelong readers by emphasizing intrinsic motivation as opposed to programs that use rewards to motivate students to read. Explains how to design an action research question. (LRW)

This article presents an activity for early-in-the-year parents' night. The beginning of a new school year is an exciting time. The authors, as teachers, like to capture that excitement by engaging their 10th-grade biology students in an inquiry project demonstrating the nature of science and scientific inquiry. They developed the Next Step…

The paper describes an individualized approach to teaching social science research methodology. The approach is intended to make psychology research in college level courses an exciting and rewarding experience for advanced undergraduate and graduate students. Advantages of this approach over more traditional approaches include that it requires…

This paper describes a framework for research in Information Systems/Information Technology (IS/IT) instruction that is grounded in existing theory and research from education literature. A recently developed model that integrates instructional design and learning motivation theories provides a theoretical basis for future efforts of researchers…

The goal of this book is to increase the usefulness and relevance of research to educational practice, particularly in the area of improving student learning. It proposes and describes an experiment: the establishment of a Strategic Education Research Program (SERP). The SERP plan calls for a large-scale and sharply defined program of research,…