Motivational interviewing (MI) is an effective method of promoting change in adults, but research on adolescents is limited. This study tests the efficacy of MI for promoting academic achievement in middle school students. Participants were 103 6th-, 7th-, and 8th-grade students randomly assigned to either a MI (n = 50) or a waitlist control…

Students' beliefs that success in science depends on exceptional talent negatively impact their motivation to learn. For example, such beliefs have been shown to be a major factor steering students away from taking science and math courses in high school and college. In the present study, we tested a novel story-based instruction that models how…

In 2012, WestEd received a "Development" grant from the U.S. Department of Education's Investing in Innovation (i3) competition to develop and implement Internet-based Reading Apprenticeship Improving Science Education ("iRAISE"). "iRAISE" was implemented in Michigan and Pennsylvania and was provided to over 100…

This is the second of three reports from MDRC's evaluation of the Success for All (SFA) scale-up demonstration, funded under the U.S. Department of Education's Investing in Innovation (i3) competition. The report presents updated findings on SFA's implementation and impacts in the scale-up sites participating in the evaluation. The i3 evaluation…

This study examines the impact of "Disaggregate Instruction" on students' science learning. "Disaggregate Instruction" is the idea that science teaching and learning can be separated into conceptual and discursive components. Using randomly assigned experimental and control groups, 49 fifth-grade students received web-based…