What constitutes effective parenting? An international consensus has evolved that effective parenting makes important contributions to children's achievement. But the fundamental question is what constitutes effective parenting. Most of the research that has been done in answering this question has been done within existing school frameworks…

According to self-determination theory, when teachers establish an autonomy supportive climate in the classroom, students demonstrate high levels of self-determination and are intrinsically motivated. The aim of this study was to identify factors leading teachers (N=336) to report that they create such a climate. We conducted a path analysis in…

The purpose of this article is to describe the results of an action-research, service-learning project aimed at increasing and enhancing urban students' knowledge and motivation to learn. The project was an extension of the students' classroom experience through a community-based, service-learning project. The study sought understanding of how…

"Rural education": the phrase conjures up unflattering images of broken blackboards and slates, lackadaisical teachers and students, rote learning and of outdated teaching techniques and suppressed creativity. Yet, these images are completely out of consonance with modern India and a knowledge-based society. This article describes a new…

Globalization is on everyone's tongue, and the discussion is not only limited to economic exchange, but expands to the intermingling of cultural values. To be truly successful in the international arena, whether as an immigrant, student, businessperson, or tourist, openness toward other cultures is vital and the most obvious door to those cultures…

Software that teaches users to sing in tune and in rhythm while providing real-time pitch tracking was used in a study of struggling middle school readers. The software, Carry-a-Tune (CAT) was originally developed to improve singing; however, since it involves a repeated reading format, we used it to determine its effect on comprehension and…

Background: Most studies have investigated college and high school students' epistemological beliefs in Western contexts, with few studies examining how beliefs about learning are related to children's strategies and comprehension in the Chinese cultural context. Aims: The present study investigated Chinese elementary school children's beliefs…

In this study I examined how Taiwanese junior high school students' perceptions of autonomy support were related to their motivational characteristics, and the ability of these constructs to explain students' academic engagement. A total of 343 eighth-grade students completed a self-report survey assessing their perceptions of autonomy support…

A survey of 77 Asian and Asian-American university students enrolled in first- and second-year Chinese language courses investigated the students' motivations for studying the language and their expectations of what they will gain from studying it. Results indicate two factors accounting for beginning Chinese language study: interest in cultural…

This report compares two approaches to incentive motivation in 82 college juniors and seniors, average age 21 years. One method uses will as a motivator; the other method focuses on skill or effective strategy use for enhancing recall and understanding of a particular body of information. In the first approach, a semiweekly test or spotquiz was…

"Deep" approaches to learning, as defined by Biggs (1987) and others, would generally mean that a student is interested in the academic task, searches for meaning in the task, personalizes the task, integrates aspects of the task into a whole, sees relationships between this whole and previous knowledge, and tries to theorize about the…

A study examined the experiences and perceptions of 27 female welfare recipients who were required to go back to school or lose their welfare benefits. The women were observed as they participated in a highly interactive career and life planning (C&LP) class that met 5.5 hours per day 4 days per week for 1 month. A random sample of the women was…

Findings of a study that examined the relationship of students' perceptions of parents' and teachers' involvement and autonomy support to student motivation are presented in this paper. Based on a larger process model of academic achievement (Ryan and Stiller 1991), students' perceptions of parent and teacher autonomy support and involvement were…

Some affective/emotional factors in the foreign language learning situation that tend to hinder the learner in learning the target language are analyzed. Beginning with an explanation of theory concerning the "affective filter" and learning, the discussion proceeds to research findings on self-concept and their relationship to the affective filter…

Topic knowledge, discourse knowledge, and contextual awareness are now considered crucial for "good writing" by many writing researchers. It is time for writing instructors to stop conducting composition classes as though substantive knowledge is a far lesser issue than "rhetorical skill." Composition teachers can offer…