Effective goal-directed behavior relies on a network of regions including anterior cingulate cortex and ventral striatum to learn from negative outcomes in order to improve performance. We employed fMRI to determine if this frontal-striatal system is also involved in instances of behavior that do not presume negative circumstances. Participants…

The relationships of teachers' epistemological beliefs, motivation, and goal orientation to their instructional practices that foster student creativity were examined. Teachers' perceived instructional practices that facilitate the development of multiple perspectives in problem solving, transfer, task commitment, creative skill use, and…

This article describes composites of actual students, but examples of hardworking immigrant students and their families can be found in every state. Many young immigrants are negotiating their place in society. They believe in the American Dream and struggle with issues of poverty, language, cultural assimilation, and the desire to further their…

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), also known as the "Stimulus Act" and "Economic Recovery Act," was signed into law by President Obama on February 17, 2009. As a response to the economic downturn that Americans are all experiencing, the ARRA is an effort to jumpstart the economy, create or save millions of jobs, and make long-term…

Many CES schools have been wonderful to watch over the years. These schools have surpassed expectations in their percentage of graduates, scholarships awarded students for post-secondary schools, and graduates who as adults have better health, intact families, occupations, and participation in their communities than comparable students from…

In this article, the authors discuss what works for them in their first-year composition classes. In order to promote critical thinking and goal setting within her developmental writing and first-year composition classes, Susan Plachta begins their first class session by completing the standard introductions and syllabus discussions and finishes…

This paper reports on accidental ethnographic research. It arose unexpectedly out of the everyday teaching of first-year pre-service primary teachers at an Australian university. Via narrative, self-reflexivity, and student responses, we explore the interwoven workings of heteronormative, gendernormative and misogynist discourses when a chapter…

The present study explored the relationships of preservice teachers' levels of commitment to teaching and their beliefs and perceptions of teaching as a career. Participants were undergraduate students enrolled in a teacher education program at a major university in the southeast. Sixty-seven preservice teachers completed a survey in which they…

Increasing numbers of school districts are starting the higher education drumbeat by the freshman year of high school, employing 21st-century technology such as the popular career-based software developed by Naviance to help students map their school and life journeys. But what is the first step in inspiring those teens to define and pursue their…

Motivation is a complex, multidimensional element needed for learning and performance. There are a multitude of theories of motivation in the literature. No one theory fully explicates motivation. To understand and make better use of the motivation construct, it is necessary to study multiple theories and multiple theoretical constructs that are a…

The authors examined relations among student perceptions of classroom achievement goals, self-efficacy, perceived instrumentality of classroom work, and sense of belonging within a classroom. Participants were 249 high school students. The authors also examined how cognitive engagement was predicted by those variables along with personal…

Assessment is an important component for quantifying learning in higher education. With the current trends at the state and federal level, what's now merely encouraged may soon become a mandate. This article contains concise guidelines with examples designed to help instructors develop a comprehensive assessment program that provides useful…

Differentiation of self, a cornerstone concept in Bowen theory, has a profound influence over time on the functioning of the individual and his or her family unit. This 5-year longitudinal study tested this hypothesis with 50 developing nuclear families. The dimensions of differentiation of self that were examined were goal direction and…

The purpose of this study was to explore how heterosexual college students understand and make meaning of their life experiences and how they incorporate those into their sexual orientation consciousness. We interviewed 14 undergraduate and graduate self-identified heterosexual students, ten women and four men, ranging in age from 20 to 24.…

Research Findings: The purpose of this study was to examine parenting style in the domain of emotion socialization through studying the relationships among parenting styles, emotion-related parental practices, and parental goals of Hong Kong-Chinese mothers. Data were collected from 189 Hong Kong-Chinese mothers of 6- to 8-year-old children. Hong…