Search

We examined whether undergraduates' achievement goal orientations could be represented as profiles and whether profiles were linked to self-reported motivation, epistemic beliefs and academic achievement. Data collected during an undergraduate course were analyzed using a clustering technique. Using the 2 × 2 goal model (Elliot & McGregor, 2001), we identified five achievement goal profiles. Our findings suggest the interaction of goal orientations supports varying interpretations of students' motivation and learning beliefs. Although no statistically significant differences in achievement were found across clusters, a High-Approach-Low-Avoidance cluster displayed an adaptive profile that was most positive towards learning and self but least anxious about exams. In contrast, a Performance-Avoidance-Dominant cluster demonstrated a maladaptive pattern of lowest self-efficacy and task value, and higher anxiety. Further, High-Approach-Low-Avoidance and Low-Performance-Avoidance clusters recognized that knowledge is not simple and authority could be questioned, compared to the other groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The trajectory of scholarship about self-regulated learning (SRL) originates in mid-19th-century writings about learners' sense of responsibility in self education. Although Descartes's 17th-century writings implied mental activities consistent with metacognition, a central feature of SRL, these were inarticulate until Flavell and colleagues' studies circa 1970. Since then, research on metacognition and its role in SRL has approximately doubled every decade. Foundations for modeling SRL include Skinner's behaviorism, which acknowledged learners' choices about reinforcers for behavior, and Bandura's social learning theory, with its construct of agency. Research in the 1980s gathered data about SRL mainly using interviews, self-report questionnaires, and think-aloud protocols. These methods were quickly supplemented by observations of behavior and traces of learning activities tightly coupled to features of SRL. Today, SRL research is prominent across a broad spectrum of educational topics. Its importance will grow with trends toward lifelong learning and self-directed inquiries that survey vast information on the Internet, where students control what and how they will learn. Implications for future research include reconceptualizing "error variance" as arising partially due to SRL and capitalizing on software technologies that massively increase access to data about how and to what effects learners self-regulate learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Today's gold standard for identifying what works, the randomized controlled trial, poorly serves each and any individual learner. Elements of my argument provide grounds for proposed remedies in cases where software can log extensive data about operations each learner applies to learn and each bit of information to which a learner applies those operations. Purpose of Study: Analyses of such big data can produce learning analytics that provide raw material for self-regulating learners, for instructors to productively adapt instructional designs, and for learning scientists to advance learning science. I describe an example of such a software system, nStudy. Research Design: I describe and analyze features of nStudy, including bookmarks, quotes, notes, and note artifacts that can be used to generate trace data. Results: By using software like nStudy as they study, learners can partner with instructors and learning scientists in a symbiotic and progressive ecology of authentic experimentation. Conclusion: I argue that software technologies like nStudy offer significant value in supporting learners and advancing learning science. A rationale and recommendations for this approach arise from my critique of pseudo-random controlled trials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Links between students' achievement goal orientations and learning tactics were investigated using software (gStudy) that supports a variety of learning tactics and strategies. An achievement goal questionnaire was administered to 307 students enrolled in an introductory educational psychology course. Data tracing study tactics were logged for 80 of these students who prepared for a test by studying a textbook chapter presented as a multimedia document. Using correlations and canonical correlations, we found relationships between goal orientations and activity traces indicating different forms of cognitive engagement. Notably, mastery goal orientation (approach or avoidance) was negatively related to amount of highlighting, a study tactic that is theorized to be less effective than summarizing and other forms of elaborative annotation for assembling and integrating knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Playing the role of constructive critic of articles in this special issue, I adopt the term self-reliance to refer to work habits, work styles, volition, and self-regulated learning. Starting with the belief that developing self-reliance is an important goal of education, I examine key issues that influence the likelihood of reaching this goal. I assume first that learners are agents. This human quality ubiquitously affects theorizing, researching, and teaching. I examine the nature of this influence in relation to three issues: How learners experiment to develop self-reliance, conditions that influence how learners express and extend self-reliance, and considerations about how to advance theory and practice in the service of enhancing self-reliance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a more fine-grained analysis of feedback's roles in dynamic cognitive activities that unfold during self-regulated learning. Synthesis of a model of self-regulation; Analysis of cognitive processes; Functions of knowledge and beliefs in cognitive engagement; Process of selecting goals.

This article focuses on the experiments relating teachers' use of higher cognitive questions to student achievement in the U.S. This article reviews such studies to summarize the evidence about the effects of teacher higher cognitive versus fact questions on student achievement. This review identified a variety of other problems in research on teacher effects that are relatively easier to remediate by making better applications of existing methodological knowledge. When treatments are known to have direct effects on student processing which leads to learning, when treatments are replicable, and when stronger methodological practices are used to examine treatment effects, then the long sought-for theories of teaching may be easier to generate and to test.

The article examines the student perceptions of experimentally manipulated teacher structuring, soliciting and reacting behaviors that would mediate the effects of educator variables on student achievement. Path analysis is applied to determine the direct and indirect influence of teacher behavior on student's academic achievement within this closed system. The structuring dimension of teacher behavior is consisted of outlining the lesson plan, the stating of objectives at the start of a lesson and the evaluation of the main points covered in the discussion.

Two experiments were done in which sixth-grade students participated in 10 ecology lessons, each involving reading/viewing of curriculum materials plus a teaching treatment. In Experiment I, four treatments were arranged in three equivalent Latin squares so that each of 12 trained teachers teachers tought each treatment. The treatments varied presence-absence of recitation and presence-absence of probing (a follow-up question to improve a student's initial response) and redirection (asking another student to respond to the question). Experiment II followed the same design, except the treatments varied presence-absence of recitation and percentage of higher cognitive questions (25%, 50%, and 75%) within recitations. Student's information recall, attitudes toward curriculum topics, and ability to respond both in written and oral form to higher cognitive questions were assessed. In both experiments, recitation substantially improved learning, especially information recall and higher cognitive responding. Probing and redirection in Experiment I had no effect on learning. In Experiment II, recitations with 50% higher cognitive questions were unexpectedly the least effective in promoting information recall, relative to recitations with 25% or 75% higher cognitive questions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three self-report manures of self-concept were administered in counter- balanced order to 488 sixth grade children as the basis for a multitrait- multimethod study of self-concept measurement. The subscales on these instruments were clustered into facets representing physical, social, and academic self-concept. The analyses indicate that all three facets demonstrate some degree of convergent validity, particularly physical self-concept, but discriminant validity is not established. Results also indicate that the response requirements of the instruments affect construct interpretations. Although developers of set-concept inventories strongly imply the existence of significantly different facets of self-concept by the separation and naming of subscales, there is little evidence for this implication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aptitude-treatment interactions (ATI) are relatively unexamined in research on teacher effectiveness but may be important in describing the teaching-learning process. In an experiment on teacher effectiveness, 399 sixth-grade students were taught ecology for nine lessons. Trained teachers used one of eight factorially defined teaching treatments which varied teacher behaviors of structuring, soliciting, and reacting. Generalized regression analyses on dependent variables (multiple choice, attitude, and perception (teaching showed aptitudes to be major predictors relative to teacher, treatment, and ATI effects. ATI effects were more frequent and stronger predictors than treatment effects in almost till cases, though ATI terms usually absorbed only one to two percent of variation in the criterion variables. The methodology and findings of this study suggest changes for research on teacher effectiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analyzes the comparability of representations of self-concept across groups of learning disabled (LD), normal and gifted children for the Sears and Coppersmith inventories. Similarity of nomological network relations of self-concept among three groups; Comparison between the physical and social facets of LD and gifted children; Implications for validity research and evaluation studies.