Objective: We aimed to examine the psychometric properties of the Scale of Perfectionism and Excellencism (SCOPE) in a novel sample, Australian adolescents. Method: The cross-sectional sample consisted of 350 participants (79 male, 271 female; mean age 17.9 years, age range = 15-20 years) from a secondary 10 school and university who completed a…

The purpose of this research was to explore gender differences and cultural differences in school motivation among students from eight culturally diverse groups from Western and non-Western societies. The selected groups come from Hong Kong, the Philippines, Singapore, Australia, the Netherlands, and Qatar. More than 10,000 secondary school…

Graduate-entry, following a science degree, is the preferred pathway into many medical schools, however little is known about how the learning approaches of medical students compare to those of science students. This study compared the learning approaches and achievement orientations of science students with those aiming to enter graduate-entry…

Women continue to be under-represented in science fields in Australia and internationally. Efforts to fix the 'leaky pipeline' producing this inequality are frustrated by declining enrolments in higher-level school science subjects. Researchers and policymakers need a better understanding of the factors which influence girls' decisions to take…

Using mobile technology and experience sampling in junior high school, real-time motivation and engagement were explored at four-levels: between lessons (up to 2 lessons per day; Level 1), between days (5 days per week; L2), between weeks (4 weeks; L3), and between students (113 students; L4). Findings for a 'random effects' model revealed…

People participate in vocational education and training (VET) for a variety of reasons and at different stages of their life. Some undertake VET to gain the vocational skills necessary to enter the labour market for the first time, while others enter in order to upgrade existing skills, learn new ones, or simply for personal interest. Successful…

Recent scholarly discussions about massive open online courses (MOOCs) highlight pedagogical and practical issues that separate MOOCs from other learning settings, especially how theories of learning translate to MOOC students' motivation, participation, and performance. What is missing from these discussions is the purpose of the MOOC. We report…

Intrinsic motivation is considered the dominant factor in the motivation of adult students in continuing postgraduate education. However, the strength of an intrinsic motivation to learn does not explain the phenomenon of dropout where the student withdraws and does not return or where the student withdraws and then recommences their postgraduate…

Despite over three decades of legislation and initiatives designed to tackle the traditional gender divide in the science, technology and design fields, only a quarter of the registered architects in Australia are women. There are no statistics available for other design disciplines, with little known about why women choose design as a career path…

The current study explored the reasons that primary school teachers reported were tipping points for them in deciding whether or not and when to refer a child to the school student support team for excessive anxiety. Twenty teachers in two Queensland primary schools were interviewed. Content analysis of interview transcripts revealed six themes…

This study assessed the role of prior personal best goals in predicting subsequent academic motivation and engagement. A total of 1160 high school students participated in a longitudinal survey study exploring the extent to which personal best and mastery and performance (dichotomous) achievement goals predict students' academic motivation and…

Participation in society is increasingly dependent on educational achievement. Accordingly, society as a whole is committing more resources to education to prevent the adverse outcome of students moving through the school system only to emerge without the knowledge and skills that they might be expected to attain. In this paper, we explore the…

The Motivation and Engagement Scale-University/College (MES-UC) was used to identify student typologies on the basis of adaptive and maladaptive academic cognitions and behaviours. The sample comprised first-year (n = 390), second-year (n = 300), and third-year (n = 251) undergraduate students with 4 student typologies identified: high…

The middle years of school represent a time of educational turbulence, serving to marginalise some students from educational opportunities. Much research has focussed on individual cognitive factors influencing educational engagement, with less attention directed towards social interactions. Theoretically positioned within an expectancy-value…

Participation in sport during high school has been linked with a range of educational and developmental benefits. However, there is limited research investigating the benefits of participation in sport from the perspective of Aboriginal former youth sports participants. The purpose of the current research was to investigate how participation in…