Search

A culture of innovation in an educational makerspace arises from student ownership rather than from the presence of high-tech tools. Owning the learning experience opens unexplored horizons to students because [...]

The purpose of this case study was to investigate the evolutions of interest and beliefs about Arabic as a foreign language among three Western faculty members at an education college in United Arab Emirates. The study used four data resources which were: interviews, field notes, reflective journals and an information form. After four months of learning Arabic, data from all resources were analyzed. Findings showed that while two participants became more interested in learning Arabic in general interests in Arabic became more diversified and detailed among all participants, negative beliefs about Arabic difficulty changed to positive ones and student centered teaching methods were found helpful instructional factors in the evolutions of participants' interest and beliefs about Arabic. Discussing beliefs of learners about Arabic at the beginning of learning is recommended. Keywords: Arabic; foreign language learning; beliefs evolution; interest evolution; instructional factors; Western learners, Introduction United Arab Emirates (UAE) is a small and oil rich country in the Arabian Gulf. Over the last ten years, UAE witnessed fundamental and rapid changes in its educational [...]

Issues concerning the role of school counselors and principals in promoting students' motivation and academic achievement are discussed. The potential for a partnership between counselors and principals to work towards and attain common goals is stressed.

The proposition, derived from self-determination theory (SDT), that autonomy-support has a positive effect on self-motivation and well-being, is examined in two distinct cultural settings. Participants were 264 high school students from Russia and the United States who completed measures of perceived parental- and teacher-autonomy-support, academic motivation, and well-being. Means and covariance structure analyses were used to examine the cultural comparability of measured constructs. Results supported the hypotheses that Russian adolescents would perceive parents and teachers as more controlling than U.S. students; and in both samples, perceived autonomy-support would predict greater academic self-motivation and well-being. Results are discussed in terms of SDT's postulate of a basic human need for autonomy in the context of cultural variations.

One-hundred and twenty lower division and 43 upper division undergraduate students enrolled in a small Midwestern university were randomly assigned to three experimental educational settings: a live classroom, a video classroom, and an audio with Powerpoint display classroom. The lower division students viewed a brief lecture presented in the live classroom and simulcast to the other two settings. The upper division students viewed a 45 minute lecture presented in the live classroom and simulcast to the other two settings. The impact of the settings on participant learning, motivation, and perceived teacher immediacy was assessed in both studies. Perceived instructor immediacy was significantly higher for the live setting. For the longer lecture, motivation, perceived learning, affect toward the instructor, and willingness to enroll with instructor all varied significantly and were highest in the live setting. Actual short-term learning varied significantly and was highest for the Powerpoint classroom. Student cognitive style was assessed, but the researchers found no significant variation based on this variable. Keywords: distance education, immediacy, motivation, perceived and actual learning, affective and behavioral learning, technology, Gregorc cognitive style, and PowerPoint

Relying on an interdisciplinary link between identity management and student motivation research, this study describes teacher communication activities that students in two graduate preprofessional classrooms identified as face-relevant. Ethnographic methods found 7 instructional communication activities during which students reported feeling one or more of their face needs addressed (i.e., supported or threatened). Findings and extant research are cited to demonstrate the positive motivational consequences of instructor face-support during these face-relevant interactions. Results extend previous communication research on motivation, immediacy, and influence in the classroom. Keywords: motivation, facework, instruction, communication competence, immediacy, power, influence