A child's acquisition of adaptive behavior and skills may constitute his or her most important goal during infancy and early childhood. In addition, adaptive behavior data often are required when making decisions under Part C of the 2004 Individuals With Disabilities Education Improvement Act. This study reports the results of a factor analysis of…

This study characterizes the reading and writing motivations of kindergarten children. Four hundred fifty-one children participated in the study, answering questions measuring value, self-concept, and enjoyment of reading and writing. A factor analysis validated the conceptual motivational constructs. Findings indicate that kindergarten children…

Examination of measurement invariance provides a powerful method to evaluate the hypothesis that the same set of psychological constructs underlies a set of test scores in different populations. If measurement invariance is observed, then the same psychological meaning can be ascribed to scores in both populations. In this study, the measurement…

Despite its widespread use, there has been limited examination of the underlying factor structure of the Psychological Sense of School Membership (PSSM) scale. The current study examined the psychometric properties of the PSSM to refine its utility for researchers and practitioners using a sample of 504 Australian high school students. Results…

This study augments existing literature in understanding student perceptions about the geosciences; we examined the choice of major and science courses taken by 645 students at a large southeastern research university. Differences were examined between underrepresented minority (URM) and nonminority students. We compared responses regarding not…

This study investigates cognitive abilities of pre/primary school children without and with spina bifida in Uganda. Qualitative semi structured interviews and quantitative functioning scales measurements were combined and conducted with 133 parents, 133 children with spina bifida, and 35 siblings. ANCOVA was used to test for differences in…

The open source course management system Moodle, which a great number of organizations worldwide have adopted, is designed to help instructors deliver course materials to their students from a social constructivist perspective. The aim of this research is evaluate the acceptance and use of Moodle as an open source application from the viewpoint of…

The purpose of this study was to understand teachers' conceptualizations of creativity and its difference among 3 countries. The conceptualization of creativity denotes the concept and exhibition of creativity, the traits of creative students, and the fostering and hindering factors for creativity in school settings. A questionnaire was…

Operation ARIES! is an Intelligent Tutoring System that is designed to teach scientific methodology in a game-like atmosphere. A fundamental goal of this serious game is to engage students during learning through natural language tutorial conversations. A tight integration of cognition, discourse, motivation, and affect is desired to meet this…

The main purpose of this descriptive research study is to investigate the conceptual and psychometric properties of a self-efficacy perception scale developed for determining self-efficacy perception of 3rd and 4th grade Turkish pre-service teachers, who took Turkish as a Foreign Language (TFL) course theoretically in undergraduate level, towards…

Problem Statement: The sense of belonging to school can be described as the perception of students as individuals, respecting their existence, and supporting them in the social environment of the school. Academic achievement is a factor that is related to the sense of belonging to school. In many studies the direct link was revealed between sense…

Our effectiveness as instructors lies ultimately in how well our students can understand and apply the concepts we teach. In response to the growing importance of accountability in the educational process and the abundance of social networking technology and communication tools available for possible classroom use, this paper will use The Unified…

The Epistemic Beliefs Inventory (EBI), as a theory-based and empirically validated instrument, was originally developed and widely used in the North American context. Through a strict translation procedure the authors translated the EBI into Chinese, and then administered it to 451 students in 7 universities in mainland China. The construct…

Due to societal changes there is a growing need for distant and adult learning. The reason to participate in education and the choices that students make may differ. In this study the factors age, gender, rate of studies and parenthood have been analysed in order to see how these relate to different motivational factors for choosing a web-based…

The present study is based on the empathizing-systemizing (E-S) theory of cognitive science. It was hypothesized that the influence of students' gender on their motivation to learn science is often overestimated in the research literature and that cognitive style is more important for motivation than students' gender. By using structural equation…