Children's mindsets about intelligence (as a quality they can grow vs. a trait they cannot change) robustly influence their motivation and achievement. How do adults foster "growth mindsets" in children? One might assume that adults act in ways that communicate their own mindsets to children. However, new research shows that many parents…

Helping young people develop good hearts and good minds is key to developing emotionally healthy kids. Carol Ann Tomlinson lays out some principles for educators to both teach and practice as they guide students to becoming more human in their minds and hearts. Developing healthy minds involves more than simply building academic knowledge. It also…

The academic world initially regarded Wikipedia with misgivings for a number of reasons, including the uncertainty concerning the reliability of its content, its anonymous authorship and the fact that students often use it as an easy way to cut and paste material for their coursework. In recent years, however, university instructors' perception of…

Lecturer-researchers, because of the duality of their profession, can introduce students directly to their research. Stimulating student interest through practical research topics enables students to see the relevance of the teaching/learning process and thereby enhance their motivation. As a major societal issue, research on renewable energies is…

Drawing on their research in creating the Vibrant School Scale, Megan Tschannen-Moran and Davis Clement describe the three characteristics of vibrant schools: enlivened minds, emboldened voices, and playful learning. The authors also detail a four-step, strengths-based process called appreciative inquiry that can help school members have…

This book clarifies the fundamental difference between North America-based instrumental motivation and Korea (and East Asia)-specific competitive motivation by which the EFL learners' excessive competition to be admitted to famous universities and to be hired at a large-scale conglomerate is the main source of L2 motivation. It enables readers to…

Students' higher level of motivation is not based solely on intrapersonal factors as innate characteristics, but also on contexts in which students are supposed to develop their competencies. Thus, the cultural context is expected to shape motivation. Values and beliefs shared by a cultural group will affect students' motivation to learn and…

Many approaches, models and frameworks exist when designing quality online learning environments. These approaches assist and guide instructional designers through the process of analysis, design, development, implementation and evaluation of instructional processes. Some of these frameworks are concerned with student participation, some with…

This articles suggests the advantages of incorporating brief, informal, yet content-rich classroom history skits as a way to motivate students, generate interest, and ease students into the more "academic" content found in textbooks and primary source documents.

This article describes the implementation of a collaborative--competative pedagogy in a Year 10 class and the productive motivational outcomes that followed.

This commentary revisits compelling arguments put forth by the contributors to this special issue on the role of race and ethnicity in academic motivation research. First, an overview of how race and motivation have been positioned in prominent theories of motivation is provided and juxtaposed with those offered in culturally responsive…

Production-oriented approach may provide us with a brand new perspective to our current college English reading instruction. Under this approach, teaching reforms need to be initiated in respects of teaching objectives, teaching materials, teaching methods and assessment. Instructors are required to design appropriate output tasks to stimulate…

This paper presents an argument for how second language acquisition (SLA) research should be carried out if a researcher is genuinely interested in learner grammar (i.e., knowledge of language), its acquisition and use. SLA research has expanded greatly over many years and currently spans many subfields, but researchers share one main goal: to…

Laboratory-based learning can be weakened by a lack of connection with underlying theory and limited contextualization to enhance motivation. To address these shortcomings, a framework for the development of web-based multimedia prelaboratory modules is proposed. The framework incorporates supportive information (content), utility value (context),…

Dual language learners (DLLs) represent one of the fastest growing populations in classrooms, and yet many teachers are monolingual and not trained in English as a Second Language. Many teachers strive to create an anti-bias classroom that puts goals of diversity and equity at the center of all that they do, but are unsure of effective strategies…