Reviews of social comparison processes in school contexts have concluded that individual differences in propensity to compare with others are likely to be important in the classroom, but that there is a paucity of evidence testing this key proposition. To address this gap, we developed and validated a new measure of propensity to engage in…

Interacting with native speakers in various types of virtual exchanges is becoming increasingly accessible for language learners and teachers around the world. The present study examined the experiences of beginning and intermediate level learners of Spanish in the United States as they interacted weekly with native Spanish speakers over the…

With a growing interest in research on educational processes, there is a need to overview suitable latent variable models for students' learning experiences in real-time. This tutorial provides an introduction to intraindividual (multilevel) structural equation models (ISEM) for the analysis of process data (e.g. intensive longitudinal,…

Students' ability beliefs about running activities in physical education/athletics classes were investigated longitudinally from the perspectives of Nicholls' conceptions of ability and Dweck's implicit theories of ability. The data for this study were provided by 44 students (20 boys; 24 girls) who participated in a larger longitudinal project on…

Under the framework of self-determination theory, choice is a supporting factor for autonomy in the classroom. The provision of choice in the classroom is a distinct feature of higher education, through which students experience a shift from mandatory tasks to those are more learner-controlled. This study explores Chinese master's students'…

Technologies bring a new era of content presentation for online teaching and learning. With more instructors adopting new tools to design online teaching materials, students are often put into learning contexts with certain new design components. Assessing learner experience and outcome in these contexts is challenging because of the complexity…

Viewing student engagement as a multidimensional construct, this study explored the motivation and engagement of undergraduate students in China. A sample of 1131 students from 10 full-time universities in Beijing participated in a survey. The results showed that the Motivation and Engagement Scale for university/college students is a promising…

Guided by assumptions from the cognitive-affective theory of learning with media, we conducted a teaching experiment to corroborate past correlational research that suggested instructor misbehaviors, in the form of antagonism toward students, impede students' cognitive learning. Participants were 472 undergraduate students who were randomly…

In order to enhance our understanding of inter-individual differences in scholastic motivation, this study examined if self-determination predicts the school engagement of four different motivation types (MT) in a large sample of adolescent students (N = 1088) from Brandenburg, Germany: (1) peer-dependent MT, (2) teacher-dependent MT, (3)…

Person-centered analyses of achievement goals have been scarce in studies of elementary school children. In this investigation, the authors examined the natural combinations of achievement goals (mastery, performance-approach, performance-avoidance) among 3rd grade students (N = 195) and how clusters differed in self-, teacher-, and peer-reported…

In their commentary, D. W. Johnson, Johnson, and Roseth (2012) provided some laudatory statements about our article, but they also expressed a number of concerns. The concerns focus on the following issues: types and definitions of competition, our choice of control group, the nature of performance-approach and performance-avoidance goals, the…

The self-regulation of motivation represents a key feature of self-regulated learning. Recent studies have documented that students use a variety of strategies to sustain their learning motivation and that most of these strategies have positive effects. However, less is known about how students integrate the various motivational strategies into an…

Within achievement goal theory debate remains regarding the adaptiveness of certain combinations of goals. Assuming a multiple-goals perspective, we used cluster analysis to classify 1002 undergraduate students according to their mastery and performance-approach goals. Four clusters emerged, representing different goal combinations: high…

Findings from a survey of undergraduates demonstrate links between students' experience level and their perceptions and expectations of large classes. The authors made a number of hypotheses, including that students prefer active-learning experiences but expect passive-learning experiences, that experienced students prefer large classes but…

A study into the differences in enrollment motivation of undergraduates is presented. Traditional age students are seen as more responsive to external demands and establishing social relationships. Adult students are more interested in learning for its own sake. (Author/MLW)