This article describes the design decisions, technical approach, and evaluation of the animation and interface components for an agent-based system that allows learners to learn by teaching. Students learn by teaching an animated agent using a visual representation. The agent can answer questions about what she has been taught and take quizzes.…

Empowered learners are more motivated to perform classroom tasks, and they feel more competent in the classroom, find the required tasks more meaningful, and feel they have an impact on their learning process. Previous work has concluded that empowerment is primarily influenced by teacher behavior, which is not consistent with contemporary…

Background: The latest report by the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS), issued in 2006, indicated that Hong Kong Primary 4 Chinese students outperformed children from 45 countries and provinces in reading comprehension tests that measured their higher-order reading proficiency. However, the study gave no indication of how…

In this article, the authors examined whether there were different motivational profiles within a sample of kindergarteners (N = 110) learning science. The authors identified 3 profiles involving children's perceived competence in, liking, and ease of learning science by using cluster analysis. High motivational beliefs characterized the largest…

A model is presented showing hypothesized common and parallel antecedents of employee organizational development activity (ODA) versus professional development activity (PDA). A common antecedent is expected to affect both ODA and PDA, while a parallel antecedent is expected to affect its corresponding work referent. This model was tested using a…

The Education Department released a report last week, "Parent Expectations and Planning for College," that offers new insights into the factors influencing whether parents expect their children to enroll at four-year colleges. It suggests that many young people who could succeed at such institutions are not being encouraged by their families or…

When scaffolding is done correctly, students are encouraged to develop their own creativity, motivation, and resourcefulness. How teachers interact with students and how students interact with one another as they complete a task is important to students' ability to perform the activity. This article shows how scaffolding can be effectively applied…

A problem facing science educators is determining the most effective means of science instruction so that students will meet or exceed the new rigorous standards. The theoretical framework for this study was based on reform and research efforts that have informed science teachers that using constructivism is the best method of science instruction.…

The purpose of this study was to examine whether teacher candidates with mastery- and performance-approach orientations would perceived their education courses as depicting a goal structure consistent with their personal orientations, use of self-regulatory strategies, and motivation for learning. A latent class analysis procedure was used to…

Background: There are two approaches to the differential examination of school motivation. The first is to examine motivation towards specific school subjects (between school subject differentiation). The second is to examine school motivation as a multidimensional concept that varies in terms of not only intensity but also quality (within school…

Guided by Green-Demers, Leagult, Pelletier, and Pelletier's (2008) assumption that amotivation (absence of motivation) is a multidimensional construct, we designed this study to investigate the influence of inadequate teacher-to-student social support on amotivation of high-school physical education students. Five hundred and sixty-six ninth…

Energy education has been conducted to equip learners with relevant energy conservation knowledge for many years. However, learners seldom put the knowledge into practice and even have few ideas about how to reduce energy consumption. To this end, there is a need to address this issue to improve the efficiency of energy education. One of the…

A risk associated with the use of games in training and education is that players "game the game," instead of focusing on their learning goals. The term "gamer mode" is proposed to describe this attitude. A player with a gamer-mode attitude strives to achieve goals that are optimal for winning the game, but suboptimal with…

The author wrote a piece called "What Our Children Should Learn about 9/11." In that piece, the author made just four simple points. These include: (1) children should know the facts; (2) once they had a grounding in the facts, the children should not abjure moral judgment; (3) children should learn to make both analytical and moral…

Drama in Education (DIE), as an artistic and educational experience, is sufficiently evidenced in the literature as a dialogical, liberating practice of education. This article discusses a practitioner research project in a second chance adult education school in Greece, where the use of a DIE teaching and learning approach was explored in an…