This study investigated young children's commitment to a joint goal by assessing whether peers in collaborative activities continue to collaborate until all received their rewards. Forty-eight 2.5- and 3.5-year-old children worked on an apparatus dyadically. One child got access to her reward early. For the partner to benefit as well, this child…

Goshen Elementary PTA's membership shrank the first year the author was PTA president. In the back of her mind, she was bothered by the fact that their membership numbers had dropped. So, after she attended a regional session with her vice president on growing membership, she got the courage to propose something different. They discussed with…

Helping others is often more complicated than fulfilling their requests, for instance, when an individual requests something that is not suited to achieving her or his ultimate goal. Are children indiscriminate helpers, responding to any object-directed action or request, or do their helping actions prioritize ultimate goals over specific…

In integrating theoretical perspectives of self-determination and goal-setting, this study proposes a conceptual model with moderating and mediating effects exploring gender issue in autonomy-supportive learning in higher education as research context. In the proposed model, goal-setting attributes, i.e., individual determinants, social…

The use of educational games for teaching and training is nowadays well-known, although its effectiveness in terms of learning and motivation has not been firmly corroborated. A first reason for this is that research on instructional design research often does not reach the fields of game development and game design. Consequently, instructional…

Many college students hold ambitious goals for upward social mobility via post-college careers. However, in the current economic recession such optimistic expectations are not a given. The present study examines how college students' current social status and beliefs in causal factors for socioeconomic status (SES) attainment lead to diverging…

Leading a school today takes courage, energy and lots of knowledge. Today's principals certainly manage the site and keep all aspects key to running a school smoothly at their fingertips. In addition, leaders today also must have curricular knowledge, model instructional leadership and build community among the constituents. Sometimes, new leaders…

Goal contagion occurs when a perceiver interacts with a partner whose behavior implies he/she is pursuing a particular goal and the perceiver accurately infers and subsequently pursues the partner's goal. Goal contagion was assessed in conversations between unacquainted individuals. In 2 experiments, the ways in which goal specificity, inference…

This short case study gives insight into a theatre-making project with young lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans-identified people. The author reflects on the capacity of collaborative arts practice to open discussion around identity and allow space to re-imagine lived experience through metaphor and mythology. She focuses on the central role of the…

The coaching profession demands a high level of accountability and responsibility for the coach. Challenged to achieve success on the scoreboard and promote the positive personal growth of the athlete, a coach seeks guidance from their coaching philosophy. A coaching philosophy is built on a set of standards by which a coach influences, teaches,…

Performing a cognitive task while maintaining upright stance can lead to increased or reduced body sway depending on tasks and experimental conditions. Because greater sway is commonly taken to indicate loosened postural control, and vice versa, the precise impact of cognitive load on postural stability has remained unclear. In much of the large…

The present study examined the relevance of teachers' individual goal orientations for the attendance of further training and sick leave in the teaching profession. Regression analysis indicated a positive effect of learning goal orientation (i.e., the desire to improve one's teaching skills and knowledge) along with a negative effect of work…

Although prior work has shown that mastery-approach achievement goals are related to positive learning behaviors (e.g., more interest, perseverance, and self-regulation), less is known about how these goals interact with instruction to influence knowledge transfer. To address these issues we conducted a laboratory experiment investigating how two…

The concept of school choices has been historically referenced as options in educational philosophies, learning theories, curriculum designs, and program structures. Throughout time, "schools of choice" were defined by areas such as the Three Rs, the progressive movement of student-centered self-selected interest topics of study, classical…

Previous studies have reported that infants selectively reproduce observed actions and have argued that this selectivity reflects understanding of intentions and goals, or goal-directed imitation. We reasoned that if selective imitation of goal-directed actions reflects understanding of intentions, infants should demonstrate stability across…