For some youth, thinking about the future -- let alone expressing aspirations for the future -- is a daunting task. This incapacity to aspire is problematic in itself, but particularly as neoliberal societies widely expect young people from adolescence onwards to "have a plan" for their own future. In our research among disadvantaged…

This paper describes the academic consultation services offered to students with disabilities (SWD) at a small university. Each SWD is entitled to meet regularly with an academic consultant. The consultants are trained in offering a variety of services, including organization/time management, note-taking/reading comprehension strategies, goal…

Over the past decade, many student affairs professionals have turned their attention to non-cognitive factors that can play a role in supporting students from underrepresented groups in making it to and through college. The work in this area that has gotten the most attention in recent years has focused on students' sense of belonging and…

Drawing from inquiry on human motivation can serve to inform seasoned educators in questing for a more individualized form of professional development. Experienced music teachers who have moved beyond the formative stages benefit from crafting self-defined experiences that satisfy needs-based states. Research in self-determination theory reveals…

Although the role of individual differences in second language (L2) speech has been extensively studied, the impact of individual differences on the process of second language writing and the written product has been a neglected area of research. In this paper, I review the most important individual difference factors that might explain variations…

As elementary and middle school teachers and students face standards, high-stakes testing, accountability, and one-size-fits all curricula, concerns have arisen that these practices limit the relevance and efficacy of teaching and learning. In this paper, we argue that such practices exact personal costs on students and the teachers expected to…

Within the theoretical framework of achievement goals (Nicholls, 1989), Duda and Nicholls (see Duda, 1989; Duda & Whitehead, 1998) developed the Task and Ego Orientation in Sport Questionnaire (TEOSQ) to assess individual differences in achievement goal orientations. This study searches for validity evidence of the TEOSQ in the case of Spanish…

Children's agentic and communal goals were examined in hypothetical "conflict," "group entry," "victimization," and "positive" situations (N = 310, 11-13 years). Multilevel modeling was used to separate the variation in goals to the between- and within- (i.e., situation-specific) individual levels. About half of the variation in goals was due to…

The recent No Child Left Behind legislation has defined a vital role for large-scale assessment in determining whether students are learning. Given this increased role of standardized testing as a means of accountability, the purpose of this article is to consider how individual differences in motivational and psychological processes may…

We investigated the nature of and linkages between student-generated academic goals, individual differences in self-regulatory thinking (goal process cognition), and exam performance among college students. In Study 1 (N = 365) and in Study 2 (N = 325), we elicited students' self-ascribed most important academic goals for introductory psychology…