The authors investigated the impact of explicit instruction and peer-assisted writing on students' writing motivation and self-efficacy for writing. Eleven teachers and their 206 fifth- and sixth-grade students participated in a 2 (explicit instruction vs. writing opportunities without explicit instruction) × 2 (peer-assisted writing vs. writing…

To address waning enrollments in intermediate 202 language courses, faculty have developed a multiphasic project. In phase one, alongside instructional designers, they created an open, connected platform where 202 students curate -- search, select, and share -- authentic materials online. In phase two, upper-level students help triage and scaffold…

Doctoral students can face unique obstacles in terms of balancing the demands of a graduate program with personal obligations.

This fascinating dialogue raised many questions. In this commentary I will focus on just three questions that particularly stimulated me to further reflection: "why classification?"; "what is ontology?" and "where does agency come from?" [This article provides a commentary on Eugene Matusov and Kiyotaka Miyazaki's…

Background: Prior to college, many students have no experience with engineering, but some ultimately choose an engineering career. Women choose engineering at lower rates than men. This article uses critical engineering agency (CEA) to understand first-year students' attitudes and self-beliefs to predict the choice of an engineering career.…

Vocabulary instruction is a key component of reading comprehension but is often not addressed sufficiently in classrooms. The authors worked with a team of fifth-grade teachers in professional development targeted to learning instructional strategies for developing students' vocabularies. In this article, the authors share two strategies that the…

To identify pathways to lower environmental impacts, this research examined the motivation and antecedents of motivation (autonomy, relatedness, competence), of environmentally active people. Previous research suggests that people with more self-determined motivation for pro-environmental behavior (PEB) should carry out more PEBs, and have lower…

This study researches how first-year engineering students perceived the influence of curricular activities on their own learning autonomy, measured with an adaptation of the Personal Responsibility Orientation to Self-direction in Learning Scale (PRO-SDLS). Participants were questioned to assess the influence of the teacher's role. The results…

The purpose of this study is to examine relationships between attachment styles and relational self-construal. The study was carried out with 376 students (223 male, 153 female) enrolled in different faculties of Bayburt University. The data was collected using the Relationship Scales Questionnaire and Relational-Interdependent Self-Construal…

People frequently engage in the process of "heutagogy" (i.e., self-determined learning). Unlike pedagogy and andragogy, heutagogy occurs without a structure or leader setting the context and directing the learning toward a specific goal. The lack of structure and the possible self-determination of topic, value, source, and trust in…

This paper presents the findings of an exploratory case study into the relationship between student autonomy and motivation in project based learning, using Self-Determination Theory (SDT) to frame the investigation. The case study explores how different forms of motivation affect the students' response to challenges and their intention to…

Project-based learning (PjBL) is argued to foster a more democratic approach to education, particularly through increasing students' autonomy over their learning. This article presents the findings of research into students' views relating to autonomy over topic choice and group constitution during a series of trial interdisciplinary PjBL…

While ethical standards exist in higher education, they are often vague and do not identify the dilemmas new professionals are likely to encounter on the job. This article highlights results of a qualitative study identifying ethical dilemmas experienced by administrators in the field and compares results to the ethical framework developed by…

Over the last several years distance education (DE) class offerings at U.S. universities and colleges have been increasing at a rate of approximately 10% or more per year (Allen & Seaman, 2014). While the effectiveness of DE classes vis-à-vis that of face-to-face (F2F) classes has been sufficiently documented, there are few studies that…

Research in the series of second language learning certify that both cognitive and affective factors within a language learner affect the level of success that will be achieved in learning a second language. This study was an attempt to investigate the relationship among three factors of anxiety, motivation, and autonomy. To this purpose, 207…