Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to build on the foundational theories of personality and motivation to explore the role of competitiveness and of ethnicity in relation to student academic performance. Survey data from 328 students across four sites (Australia, Denmark, Hong Kong and Korea) provided self-rated responses to items measuring…

The Achievement Goal Framework describes students' goal orientations as: task-based, focusing on the successful completion of the task; self-based, evaluating performance relative to one's own past performance; or other-based, evaluating performance relative to the performance of others. Goal orientations have been used to explain student success…

Because of the continued increase in obesity rates and decrease in children's physical activity and fitness levels, this study investigated the relationship between habitual physical activity and perceived competence, enjoyment of physical activity, and cardiorespiratory fitness among upper elementary school children. This study used the…

Determining how learners use MOOCs effectively is critical to providing feedback to instructors, schools, and policy-makers on this highly scalable technology. However, drawing inferences about student learning outcomes in MOOCs has proven to be quite difficult due to large amounts of missing data (of various kinds) and to the diverse population…

Students perform better in school to the extent they are able to engage fully, cope adaptively, and bounce back from obstacles and setbacks in their academic work. These three processes, which studies suggest are positively inter-connected, may comprise a self-sustaining system that enables "motivational resilience." Using…

Achievement goal theory (Dweck, 1986) initially characterized mastery goals and performance goals as opposites in a good-bad dualism of student motivation. A later revision (Harackiewicz, Barron, & Elliot, 1998) contended that both goals can provide benefits and be pursued together. Perhaps both frameworks are correct: Their contrasting views…

This article presents data from a study of an intergroup dialogue (IGD) course in an urban Midwest MSW program guided by Derald Wing Sue's multicultural education model. IGD was used as an innovative pedagogy to meet the Council on Social Work Education mandate for cultural competence and social justice education. Results showed significant gains…

Community colleges are a crucial channel for achieving postsecondary education success, especially for minority and nontraditionally aged students. Nonetheless, community colleges are inadequate to meeting national goals for postsecondary educational attainment. Most notably, the lack of a strong guidance of academic interventions stifles a…

The present study proposes a tripartite model of L2 reading strategy use, reading motivations, and general learner beliefs by examining the relationships among them in an L2 context. Reading strategy instruction was performed for 360 first-year university students enrolled in a reading-based course, in expectation of affecting their motivations…

This study was designed to forge stronger theoretical and empirical links between achievement goal theory and attribution theory. High school students ("N" = 224) completed a self-report survey that assessed 3 types of achievement goals, 7 types of attributions, and self-efficacy. Results indicated that students' adoption of achievement…

Despite the increase in their college enrollment, nontraditional students in U.S. postsecondary institutions are less likely to stay in college until they earn their degree. What could explain nontraditional student high attrition rates and overall success beyond what their demographic characteristics reveal? The purpose of this study was to…

A classic distinction in the literature on achievement and motivation is between fear of failure and success orientations. From the perspective of self-worth theory, these motives are not bipolar constructs but dimensions that interact in ways that make some students particularly vulnerable to underachievement and disengagement from school. The…

The purpose of this disquisition is to increase knowledge about the factors and outcomes of success in doctoral education. Enhanced understanding about the factors and outcomes of success could help optimize effectiveness of the complex systems that educate doctoral students. To achieve the purpose of this disquisition, three manuscripts were…

This article explores satisfactory learning experiences of adult learners in Flemish formal adult education. Satisfaction is an important issue in motivational psychology. We used the Comprehensive Lifelong Learning Participation Model of Boeren, Nicaise and Baert and explored whether satisfactory experiences relate to characteristics of the…

College matriculation rates are increasing but graduation rates are failing to parallel the increased enrollment. One reason for this discrepancy may be that many college students are unable to regulate their own learning. This dissertation examined the Self-Regulated Learning (SRL; Pintrich, 2004) model in students taking Statistics in Psychology…