The problem of motivation is one of the most important in determining the driving mechanisms that force a person to learn, work, master something new. Motivation to work is one of the key elements of challenging yourself on the way to self-development. Motivation has deep psychological and moral roots and is a complex multifaceted phenomenon that…

Distance learning can provide greater access to educational opportunities. However, the quality of teaching and learning in distance learning continues as a challenge due, at least in part, to the demands for more substantive and systemic instructional design to account for the limits imposed by human distance. Interaction has been identified…

To examine learning disabled children's intrinsic-extrinsic motivational orientation to their schoolwork, 90 LD students in grades 3-7 were administered the Scale of Instrinsic vs. Extrinsic Orientation in the Classroom and the Perceived Competence Scale for Children. Items were read to the students and a short interview based on the students'…

Personal characteristics of adult undergraduates who are 36 years old and older were studied. A sample of 24 adult students from a state-supported, urban university were interviewed/taped, and audio recordings were reviewed for descriptions of sociodemographic and psychosocial characteristics. The dominant student profile was of a 44-year-old…

A research design was created to investigate if adults participating in noncredit courses have different preferences for control of inclass learning activities. Only the variables of "reason for participation" and "type of content" were researched as to whether they affected preference for control. The study provides evidence that different adults…

Self-regulation refers to the degree that individuals become metacognitively, motivationally, and behaviorally active in their own learning processes. One potentially helpful means of examining students' self-regulation is to analyze their internal representations, or scripts, for recurring academic tasks. For this study, researchers analyzed the…

Results of an evaluation of a college honors program are presented. Honors students at the State University of New York at Oswego were compared to four other student samples attending the same college: (1) nonhonors students matched on sex, major, and grade point average; (2) students who had dropped out of the honors program; (3) students invited…

The purpose of this study was to determine whether terms used in the Annehurst Curriculum Classification System (ACCS) are appropriate and useful to describe learner characteristics. From the twelve characteristics postulated in the ACCS to describe learners, six were selected for study: experience, intelligence, motivation, emotion-personality,…

A study investigating the factors most important in creating and maintaining English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) programs for Hispanic women in prison is reported. The study was undertaken by an ESL teacher who was also an inmate in a maximum security women's correctional institution. Introductory sections describe the prison, inmate population,…

This article discusses the role of perceived self-efficacy during classroom learning of cognitive skills. Self-efficacy refers to personal judgments of performance capabilities in a given domain of activity. Students enter classroom activities with various aptitudes and prior experiences, which affect their initial sense of self-efficacy for…

To probe a psychological theory of educational productivity, background measures along with mathematics test scores and motivational measures of over 7,000 students (9-, 13- and 17-year olds from National Assessment of Educational Progress samples) were statistically related to each other and to indicators of constructs that prior research shows…

This research summary focuses on learning preferences of early adolescents and their relationships with academic achievement and gender. The classroom structures under study were cooperative (working with peers in accomplishing academic material), competitive (competing with peers in academic endeavors), and individualistic (having no involvement…

This study investigated student use of commercial note-taking services as a predictor of class attendance and examined the effects of their use on academic performance in science courses. The study draws upon results of a survey distributed to 1,874 undergraduate students (response rate 58.2 percent) enrolled in two large-lecture chemistry courses…

Motivation is widely believed to be a critical component of the learning process in the elementary classroom, but educational research has failed to substantiate this belief. To investigate interrelationships among selected motivational variables, demographic, motivational and achievement characteristics of 400 elementary school students in Grades…

This paper reports on research to examine the types of motivation related to school achievement. A total of 1428 students from an inner city high school in the Montreal (Quebec) area participated in the study, 714 males and 714 females. The students ranged in age from 12 to 18, and approximately 40 percent were minorities (Hispanic, Asian, Black).…