The purpose of this research was to examine relationship between the eighth-grade gifted students' perceptions of science learning environment constructive learning environment perception (CLEP) and their motivations motivation to learn science (MLS) to learn science with their intellectual risk-taking (IRT) and science achievement (SA). For this…

This study aimed to investigate relationships between Turkish middle school students' perceptions of parental involvement, students' basic psychological needs, and their engagement in science. Parental involvement was addressed with four dimensions: parents' educational aspiration, parental communication, parents' participation, and parental…

This study analyses the relationships among educational performance, field dependence-independence cognitive style and factors traditionally associated with performance and style, to build a comprehensive model of factors associated with the levels of education performance of students in Bogotá. A total of 3003 students, of grades 8 and 10, from…

This study reports on the initial development and validation of the Student Subjective Wellbeing Questionnaire (SSWQ) with a sample of 1,002 students in Grades 6-8. The SSWQ is a 16-item self-report instrument for assessing youths' subjective wellbeing at school, which is operationalized via 4 subscales measuring school connectedness, academic…

Youth aggression is a serious global issue, but research identifying personality traits associated with aggression has focused on adults. Little is known about whether similar associations exist during adolescence; even less is known about these associations across cultures. This study examined links between personality and physical aggression in…

Self-determination theory posits that satisfaction of the needs for autonomy, competence and relatedness represents the basic nutriments for humans' optimal functioning. It also postulates that with greater the degree to which these three needs are equally satisfied, the quality of motivation is further enhanced. Yet, this premise has remained…

Hands-on making (e.g., "Maker") has become prevalent in current educational settings. To understand the role that students' epistemic curiosity plays in hands-on making contests, this study explored its correlation to students' positive affect and continuance intention to participate in a hands-on making contest called…

This study tested moderators of the theory of planned behavior (TPB) based on geographical region, gender, race, and income among adolescents in an exercise context using multigroup path analyses. Participants were eighth- and ninth-grade students from Louisiana (LA; N = 448, M[subscript age] = 14.37 years) and Pennsylvania (PA; N = 681,…

This study examined mother-adolescent conflict as a mediator of longitudinal reciprocal relations between adolescent aggression and depressive symptoms and maternal psychological control. Motivated by family systems theory and the transactions that occur between individual and dyadic levels of the family system, we examined the connections among…

Background: Peer victimization is associated with increased internalizing problems and reduced school adjustment. Research into the main effect and the buffering effect of social support on these internalizing problems has produced inconsistent findings, and none has tested the buffering effect of social support on school adjustment. Moreover,…

Teachers' support of basic psychological needs, self-efficacy, achievement goals, life satisfaction and academic achievement level was measured in a sample of 240 secondary school students (8th and 10th grades). Correlation analysis showed significant positive relations between all of the variables, except for the relation between need support of…

The California Department of Education (CDE) has long asserted that success Algebra I by Grade 8 is the goal for all California public school students. In fact, the state's accountability system penalizes schools that do not require all of their students to take the Algebra I end-of-course examination by Grade 8 (CDE, 2009). In this dissertation,…

The purpose of the current study was to extend the research on number sense to the middle school level and to simultaneously consider socioemotional elements related to the construct at this developmental stage. Its genesis was initially rooted in an ongoing and dramatic emphasis by U.S. policymakers, researchers, and educators on improving…

TIMSS (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study) is an international assessment of mathematics and science at the fourth and eighth grades that has been conducted every four years since 1995, with the most recent assessment in 2011. PIRLS (Progress in International Reading Literacy Study) is an international assessment of reading…

This study examined reciprocal associations among adolescents' negative feedback-seeking, depressive symptoms, perceptions of friendship quality, and peer-reported social preference over an 11-month period. A total of 478 adolescents in grades 6-8 completed measures of negative feedback-seeking, depressive symptoms, friendship quality,…