Stability and change in students' achievement goals (AGs) are of great relevance for educational research and practice. In two separate meta-analyses, we investigated the rank-order stability (93 studies, 569 effect sizes, 54,736 students), as well as the mean-level change (157 studies, 1,170 effect sizes, 81,464 students) in AGs throughout…

Educators often use stories, humor, surprise, images, or other ploys to catch students' interest. This form of interest, often called "situational interest" because of how it is triggered by contextual cues, can facilitate learning to some degree. Yet it also may carry risks. This article proposes one such potential risk: flawed…

Although research on motivational regulation, as an important subprocess of self-regulated learning, has increased considerably in the past two decades, previous findings stem mainly from cross-sectional data and between-person analyses. The aim of this research was to explore the longitudinal associations between self-efficacy for motivational…

Autonomous motivation for self-set goals (pursuing goals for more intrinsic and less extrinsic reasons) has been linked to affective well-being. Using intensive longitudinal data, the present article examines the link between university students' autonomous study motivation with affective well-being and targets fulfillment of the basic…

Both personalization and utility value (UV) interventions have emerged in educational psychology as ways to increase students' interest in learning an academic subject, and potentially improve learning outcomes. However, empirical results for each approach have been mixed and these approaches have worked differently for different groups of…

Student engagement has been established as a robust predictor of several positive outcomes related to academic development and success. Increasing our knowledge on what variables affect engagement can assist lecturers and other educational agents in maximizing student engagement within the university setting. The purpose of this study was to…

Novel and unpredictable learning environments are a feature of school-to-college transitions that erode students' academic control, emotional resilience, and achievement (Perry, Hall, & Ruthig, 2005). Although motivation interventions can benefit college students (Koenka, 2020), few studies have examined treatment efficacy for students of…

Previous research on document selection has found that college-level readers are generally able to differentiate trustworthy from less trustworthy sources. Yet, a preference for selecting trustworthy sources may depend on features of the reading situation and readers' beliefs in science. In the current study, college students were tasked with…

The provision of feedback with complex information beyond the correct answer, that is, elaborated feedback, can powerfully shape learning outcomes such as transfer, that is, the ability to extend what has been learned in one context to new contexts. However, an understanding of neurocognitive processes of elaborated feedback during…

This research introduces the "Mindfulness Mindset Scale," a concise and reliable tool designed to measure beliefs about the malleability of mindfulness skills. Study 1 (N = 285) revealed a single-factor structure through exploratory factor analysis, further validated in Study 2 (N = 286) using confirmatory factor analysis. Studies 3a (N…

Unscaffolded problem-solving before receiving instruction can give students opportunities to entertain their exploratory hypotheses at the expense of experiencing initial failures. Prior literature has argued for the efficacy of such preparatory activities in preparing students to learn from instruction. Despite growing understanding of the…

Writing cohesive texts is a crucial but challenging skill to master. Recently, cognitive tools that provide students with a graphical representation of their texts in the form of concept-maps have been shown to support students' writing. Despite its beneficial effects, the addition of a graphical representation may have the disadvantage that…

Math anxiety has received increasing focus in recent years, yet the causes for developing math-anxiety remain unclear. Whereas previous research focused on physiological/environmental causes, we examine the link between math-anxiety, dispositional mindfulness, and self-centeredness (operationalized as self-prioritization and decentering). The…

The article presents the results of a randomized experimental study of a writing curriculum for college developmental writing courses based on strategy instruction with self-regulation integrated with practices common in college composition. Students in a full semester course learned strategies for planning and revising based on rhetorical…

Prior research has proposed that boredom and academic performance are reciprocally causal of one another. The present study sought to better understand the relationship between boredom and academic performance by, for the first time: distinguishing between boredom proneness, state boredom, and judgments of task boringness; conducting experiments…