A survey of middle and high school family and consumer sciences teachers (99 of 300 responded) about financial topics identified by the National Jump$tart Coalition indicated that most high schools provided more instruction time than middle schools. Problem solving and decision making were most frequent processes. Only 46 schools offered separate…

Forty-eight individuals sorted picture cards according to basic (easy) or superordinate (difficult) categories, while being measured on response time to auditory probes (as an index of attention to the primary task). Subjects without mental retardation allocated more attention to difficult tasks. Those with mental retardation gave similar…

Data from the State Trait Anxiety Inventory completed by 74 older adult participants in a memory improvement program revealed state anxiety to be a significant predictor of recall. State anxiety and age were negatively associated with recall; study time and vocabulary were positively associated. (SK)

Describes a study that examined the instructional effect varying the positions of advance organizers, practice exercises, and feedback in an instructional environment. The effect of varied advance organizer strategies and students' locus of control orientation on instructional and testing time were also investigated. (Author/LRW)

Discussion of performance improvement focuses on the effect of emotions on performance. Topics include the emotional intelligence of the performers; how people deal with emotional demands and the stress of their performance; and emotional states that affect attention, focus, perception, and time on task. (LRW)

This column discusses the art of engaging text while reading. To read closely, students must get beyond impressionist reading. They must come to see that simply deciphering words on a page and getting some vague sense of what is there does not translate into substantive learning. Instead, they must learn that to read well is to engage in a…

The effects on child engagement of adult use of systematic, naturalistic instructional strategies within an embedded instruction context were examined. Following baseline observations of two children with disabilities and same-age classmates without disabilities, three different instructional strategies were implemented with each child with a…

Children with developmental disabilities are slower to develop skills at intentional and symbolic communication than typically developing children, and may rely on atypical patterns of preintentional behaviors to support more complex communication development. The present study compared complex gaze engagement behaviors elicited by 25…

This study investigated learning activities and associated quality of experience of students with different levels of perceived academic self-efficacy. Two groups were formed out of 130 Italian adolescents (age 15-19), one with high and one with low academic self-efficacy beliefs (31 and 32 participants, respectively). Students provided valuation…

Given that 74% of undergraduates work an average of 25.5 hours per week while going to school, we know surprisingly little about how off-campus employment affects undergraduates and to what extent its impact varies by the number of hours worked. Our survey of undergraduates at a small liberal arts college found that the academic performance of…

Although academic and student affairs partnership programs have been cited as potential means to create seamless learning environments for undergraduate students, little research exists on the outcomes of such programs for students. The Boyer Partnership Assessment Project examined the outcomes for students participating in academic and student…

Peer-Assisted Tutorials (PATs), a form of Peer-Assisted Learning (PAL), were introduced to a conventional 4-year honours degree programme in Chemical Engineering. PATs were designed to support students in becoming more self-directed in their learning, to develop student confidence in tackling Chemical Engineering problems and to promote effective…

The use of computers to deliver course-related materials is rapidly expanding in most universities. Yet the effects of computer vs. printed delivery modes on students' performance and motivation are not yet fully known. We compared the impacts of Web vs. paper to deliver practice quizzes that require information search in lecture notes. Hundred…

This study examined the effects of task difficulty on on-task behavior for four students exhibiting low levels of math performance and on-task behavior. Curriculum-based assessments were conducted with each student to define the difficulty level of math tasks for each student based on the individual's rate of accurate performance on computational…

Achievement, engagement, and students' quality of experience were compared by racial and ethnic group in a sample of students (N = 586) drawn from 13 high schools with diverse ethnic and socioeconomic student populations. Using the Experience Sampling Method (ESM), 3,529 samples of classroom experiences were analyzed along with self-reported…