Parental depression has been identified as a risk factor for children's and adolescents' internalizing problems. In the current study, we aimed to investigate the role of maternal parenting behaviors (i.e., responsiveness and autonomy-support) and adolescents' representations of attachment to their mother (i.e., anxiety and avoidance) in the…

This paper presents a meta-analytic review (k = 237, N = 44,668) of the adjustment to college literature. The review, based on studies using the Student Adaptation to College Questionnaire, is organized around three primary themes: (1) the structure of students' adjustment to college, (2) the relationship of adjustment to college constructs with…

Using a critical postmodern framework, this article analyzes the relationship of the decision-making processes of anarchism and neoliberalism to that of deep democracy. Anarchist processes are found to share common core principals with deep democracy; but neoliberal processes are found to be antithetical to deep democracy. To increase the joy in…

Transitions to adulthood are usually defined by markers such as leaving school, starting a first job, leaving the parental home, forming a first union, marrying and having a first child. Youth policy remains strongly influenced by these linear transitions, and by the metaphor of a "pathway" from school to work and adulthood, taking…

Prior research highlights the mismatch between adolescents' growing capacities for autonomy and the limited opportunities for influence in U.S. secondary schools. Youth-led participatory research (YPAR), an approach in which young people research and advocate for change on problems of concern to them, could increase students' autonomy in secondary…

Martin Gaite's only Franco-era play contests some fundamental Catholic and Francoist prescriptions for the female. The fact that it was not published or performed for nearly forty years is likely due at least in part to patriarchal censorship. The work dramatizes the personal development of two half-sisters who defy various gender norms and…

Understanding the nature of brain development in adolescence helps explain why adolescents can vacillate so often between mature and immature behavior. Early and middle adolescence, in particular, are times of heightened vulnerability to risky and reckless behavior because the brain's reward center is easily aroused, but the systems that control…

In his most recent book, "Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us," Daniel Pink argues that people are essentially motivated by three key drivers: (1) Autonomy: The desire to direct their own lives; (2) Mastery: The urge to get better at something that matters; and (3) Purpose: The yearning to do what they do in service of…

The primary purpose of this study was to investigate the roles of two moderators--perceived competence and perceived autonomy--in the relationships of achievement goal orientations with a broad range of learning-related variables, including interest, effort, learning strategy use and academic achievement. Perceived competence and autonomy played…

Montessori's theories, developed more than 100 years ago, certainly resonate with current psychological research on improving education. Autonomy, interest, competence, and relatedness form the foundation for three contemporary efforts to organize the vast literature on motivation into a parsimonious theory. These four elements also comprise…

Assessment for Learning (AfL) has gained increasing international prominence in both policy and practice but some of its proliferation, notably the national strategy in England, has been accompanied by distortion of essential features. This paper presents an understanding of authentic (in the sense of genuine) AfL informed by literature and…

With the growing international market for pre-experience MA in ELT/TESOL programmes, a key curriculum design issue is how to help students develop as learners of teaching through and beyond their formal academic studies. We report here on our attempts at the University of Warwick to address this issue, and consider wider implications for research…

The present study aims to investigate teachers' readiness for promoting learner autonomy. It attempts to do so by exploring the perceived importance of and the use of strategies for promoting learner autonomy among Japanese high school teachers of English as a foreign language (EFL). The paper reports on the research findings from two studies, one…

It is important to reveal strategies which foster students' reading motivation in order to break through the declining trend in reading motivation throughout children's educational careers. Consequently, the present study advances an underexposed field in reading motivation research by studying and identifying the strategies of teachers excellent…

Grolnick and Ryan (1987) assume that an autonomy supportive environment leads to higher learner engagement and thus to greater achievements and deeper understanding of content. In school, knowledge acquisition (rote learning as well as conceptual learning) are regarded as most important. In this study, we examined the effects of teachers' autonomy…