Informal programs provide multiple pathways to STEM degrees and careers and support students' interest, engagement, attitude, motivation, and academic achievement in STEM. Examining high-achieving rural students' profiles in informal STEM settings using their cognitive and psychosocial characteristics is crucial to understanding and supporting…

Discrete emotions provide a lens for understanding students' subjective experiences in physical education (PE). Enjoyment of PE is one discrete emotion that receives a great deal of attention because it promotes students' interest and engagement. However, the implications of students' negative emotions toward PE remain less clear. Therefore, the…

The purpose of the current study was to examine the effectiveness of virtual reality as a creative adaptive learning tool to help participants control their perceived stress and, in turn, their psychological well-being. The study leveraged humanistic learning theory to conceptualize findings. 353 participants were recruited from five high schools…

Mindset (beliefs about the malleability of intelligence) has been studied in a variety of contexts for decades. Recent research highlights the importance of contextual factors in moderating mindset's impact on student outcomes. The commonly-used original mindset measure is context-general. Recently, a mindset measure that is specific to science…

Our study explored: (a) the feasibility of prescribing laughter to university students; (b) the efficacy of the prescription on creativity, well-being, affect, and academic efficacy (AE); and (c) the practicality of the Applied Creativity Test (ACT) conceived for this study. A convenience sample of healthy students (n = 70) aged 18-28 (78% female;…

Meta-analyses suggest that instructional quality in the classroom and the quality of teacher-student relationships (TSR) predict positive social-emotional and achievement-related outcomes. Psychoanalytic theory asserts that positive teacher-student relationships are particularly important for outcomes in classrooms with more students with severe…

The COVID-19 disruption presented considerable challenges for university students, requiring the sudden need for increased engagement in remote learning environments and the ability to cope with academic and familial demands. To examine how students self-regulated their learning during the disruption, we surveyed undergraduates (n = 226) enrolled…

The present study investigated the mediating role of motivational self-talk strategies (i.e., mastery self-talk, extrinsic self-talk, and efficacy enhancement self-talk) in the relationships between achievement goals and academic engagement (i.e., involvement, withdrawal in the face of difficulties, avoidance of challenges, and disruptive…

There is a need to investigate motivational constructs for students traditionally underrepresented in educational research. In this study, we measured academic self-handicapping behavior, achievement goal orientations, and achievement in math and literacy in 327 urban, middle school students. Moderated mediation regression analyses were conducted…

This study examined the cross-lagged relationships between students' autonomous motivations (intrinsic motivation and identified regulations) and approach goals (mastery and performance) in school. The sample included 449 students (52% girls) in Grades 7 and 8 (secondary 1 and 2). Results showed that intrinsic motivation (IM) positively predicted…

The theory of planned behavior and the dual process attitude-to-behavior MODE model framed an examination of how White teachers' (N = 241) implicit and explicit attitudes toward White versus non-White students were related to their classroom instructional practices in 2 school districts with a high percentage of Arab American and Chaldean American…

This study uses student panel data to examine the association between algebra placement and student motivation for mathematics. Changes in achievement goals, expectancy, and task value for students in eighth-grade algebra are compared with those of peers placed in lower-level mathematics courses (N = 3,306). In our sample, students placed in…

Helping low-achieving students with learning disabilities and/or emotional-behavioural difficulties to develop the component skills for Self-Regulated Learning (SRL), such as setting and monitoring learning goals, is important for their success, both in and beyond school. This study examined the effects of a goal setting intervention on…

Disruptive classroom behaviors are a major schooling dilemma in urban schools. While several contextual and motivational factors have been statistically associated with disruptive classroom behaviors, one overlooked factor has been home-school dissonance. The current study examined the relationship between 260 middle school students' reports of…

We examined perceived emotional support and expectations from parents, teachers, and classmates in relation to Mexican American adolescents' (n = 398) social behavior and academic functioning. Results of regression analyses indicated that direct associations between emotional support and expectations differ as a function of source and domain;…