Contemporary teaching and learning approaches expect students--at any level of education--to be active producers of knowledge. This leads to the need for creation of instructional strategies, learning environments and tasks that can offer students opportunities for active learning. Research argues that one of the most meaningful and engaging forms…

This article is an overview of a doctoral dissertation which presents statements from graduates of the University for All Program (PROUNI) from a non-profit Brazilian university, who were admitted to university through this program. The methodology used was qualitative with a focus on textual analysis. The objective is to identify the outcomes…

Although many researchers have pointed out that educational robots can stimulate learners' learning motivation, the learning motivation will be hardly sustained and rapidly decreased over time if the amusement and interaction merely come from the new technology itself without incorporating instructional strategies. Many researchers have…

While consensus exists about the critical role of learners’ motivation in second language acquisition, controlled investigations of the effects of teachers’ motivational strategies are limited. The research reported here used a quasi-experimental design to assess the effects of motivational strategies used by Saudi English as a foreign language…

This two-phase sequential mixed methods study examined the relationship between professional development, whether in the form of traditional professional development, a professional learning community and/or lesson study, and teacher self-efficacy and self-directed learning in order to gain a greater understanding of the role professional…

In the era of No Child Left Behind (ED, 2001), public school administrators have dedicated resources to ensuring all students reach proficiency in basic skills on the state mandated assessments. The focus on reaching proficiency on NCLB assessments is less of a concern for gifted students who exceed grade level expectations and have the potential…

A challenge in the contemporary classroom is that many students do not prepare for class. While technology is a boon in the classroom it can often be an apathy-fostering distraction. To encourage greater student preparation a course was designed with 4 quizzes to be taken first as individuals and then as members of predetermined teams. We reasoned…

This study examined the relationships between undergraduate leaders' self-perceptions of their transformational and transactional leadership behaviors and their sources of work motivation. The sample was comprised of 145 elected and appointed leaders at a mid-west university. The survey included both the Motivation Sources Inventory and the…

With the rapid growth in online programs come concerns about how best to support student learning in this segment of the university population. The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of effort regulation, a self-regulatory skill, and intrinsic motivation on online graduate students' levels of academic procrastination, behavior…

This paper describes a Conceptual Framework underpinning "Systems that Care" in terms of educational systems that take account of motivation, metacognition and affect, in addition to cognition. The main focus is on "motivation," as learning requires the student to put in effort and be engaged, in other words to be motivated to learn. But…

The experience of interest is central to intrinsic motivation for learning, so it is important to understand the nature of interest and its sources. Individual differences in fluid intelligence (Gf) predict finding things more interesting, but it is possible that this effect is merely due to the overlap of Gf with openness to experience, a strong…

While a number of studies have investigated the relationship between motivation and foreign or second language learning outcomes, the process of how such motivation transforms into successful learning outcomes is relatively unexplored. Interviewing a group of four participants, this study seeks to understand how college English as a Foreign…

This is the last in a series of six papers by the Center on Education Policy exploring issues related to students' motivation to learn. This paper explores ways in which schools, teachers, and communities are using nontraditional methods to try to motivate students who don't respond to more traditional strategies. The paper focuses on three such…

The focus of this study was to explore the relationship between the use of cooperative learning strategies and student achievement, and student perceptions of self-efficacy and motivation in mathematics. Teacher perceptions of the impact that cooperative learning strategies have on student achievement, intrinsic motivation, and self-efficacy were…

This article explores, through interview data with 125 respondents in Canada, whether the study of foreign languages can be considered as important as the study of the "core" STEMM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics, medicine) subjects in school and university curricula. Five categories of interviewees, including those…