During the affluent noughties it was sometimes said of government that it had "more visions than Mystic Meg and more pilots than British Airways". In 2011, the pilots, the pathfinders, the new initiatives are largely gone--implementation is the name of the game--but the visions remain. The latest one, as it affects adult learners, is in…

The present study investigated the effects of approach versus avoidance motivation on declarative learning. Human participants navigated a virtual reality version of the Morris water task, a classic spatial memory paradigm, adapted to permit the experimental manipulation of motivation during learning. During this task, participants were instructed…

In the present research, a 3 x 2 model of achievement goals is proposed and tested. The model is rooted in the definition and valence components of competence, and encompasses 6 goal constructs: task-approach, task-avoidance, self-approach, self-avoidance, other-approach, and other-avoidance. The results from 2 studies provided strong support for…

Hope, the ideas and energy for the future, is one of the most potent predictors of the success of the youth. Based on the Gallup Student Poll, an online school-based measure of student hope (and engagement and well-being), half of American students are hopeful. Hopeful students are energetic, full of life. They're able to develop many strategies…

The relationship between emergent spatial understanding in different cognitive domains, including navigation and language, has rarely been studied using methods that allow for the examination of individual differences. In this study the authors explored emergent place learning and its relationship to early spatial language, namely prepositions, in…

Individual initiative is required to successfully master career transitions in adolescence, and also parents play an important role in this process. Past research largely omitted co-agency in transition-related activities between adolescents and their parents, which could be described in terms of self- and other-regulation. The present pilot study…

The central goal of this study is to clarify to what degree former education and students' personal characteristics (the "Big Five personality characteristics", personal orientations on learning and students' study approach) may predict study outcome (required credits and study continuance). Analysis of the data gathered through questionnaires of…

The influence of achievement goals and social goals on help-seeking from peers in an academic context was examined in two studies. A total of 551 high school students participated in the two studies. The results across the studies demonstrated strong convergence, revealing that mastery-approach, mastery-avoidance, and friendship-approach goals…

The Program for Arthritis Control through Education and Exercise, PACE-Ex[TM}, is an arthritis self-management program incorporating principles and practice of self-management, goal setting and warm water exercise. The purpose of this program review is to examine the impact of PACE-Ex on participants' self-efficacy for condition management,…

This article introduces the notion of genetic essentialist biases: cognitive biases associated with essentialist thinking that are elicited when people encounter arguments that genes are relevant for a behavior, condition, or social group. Learning about genetic attributions for various human conditions leads to a particular set of thoughts…

This essay focuses on advanced-level German instruction and advocates an open, flexible approach to integrating the recommendations of the much-discussed 2007 MLA report on "Foreign Languages and Higher Education." Specifically, language, literature, film, and cultural studies are combined to allow for the development of transcultural competence…

It is often assumed that the religious culture of a state can shape policies within the state, particularly concerning morality issues such as abortion or homosexuality. However, the precise manner in which religion shapes these policies has not been clearly specified. Drawing from social movements and policy literature, we argue that the…

This paper will examine the attitudes of progressive educators toward poverty in developing countries. The reformers who formed the New Education Fellowship (NEF) in 1921 will be the subjects. They expanded their thinking from concerns about student freedom to efforts to encourage social reform, and by 1946 they participated in the creation of…

This study evaluated the effectiveness of a web-based personalized normative feedback program, electronic Check-Up to Go (e-CHUG), in decreasing heavy drinking among 1st-year university students. Results indicated high-risk students receiving the e-CHUG program during 1st-year orientation activities reported significantly greater reductions in…

This article makes a contribution to understanding informal argumentation by focusing on the discourse of reading groups. Reading groups, an important cultural phenomenon in Britain and other countries, regularly meet in members' houses, in pubs or restaurants, in bookshops, workplaces, schools or prisons to share their experiences of reading…