A driving force in standards-based educational reform was the 1983 release of "A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform" (National Commission of Excellence in Education [NCEE], 1983). The report called for "an end to the minimum competency testing movement and the beginning of a high-stakes testing movement that would raise the…

The Wilderness Education Association (WEA) helps people enjoy and protect our nation's most precious resource: Our wilderness areas. The WEA has been training and certifying outdoor leaders around the world for nearly 30 years, teaching students safely and effectively to lead groups in the outdoors without harming the environment. In addition,…

The 21st Annual Conference on Undergraduate Teaching of Psychology was held on March 28-30, 2007 at Hudson Valley Resort and Day Spa in Kerhonkson, New York. The conference was sponsored by the Psychology Department of Farmingdale State College. The conference included twenty five presentations and ten of these are included in these proceedings.…

This action research paper dealt with how to increase motivation towards English language learning through cooperative work in a public school in Medellín, Colombia. It was necessary to explore the concepts of teachers' beliefs, social teaching, collaborative and cooperative learning, to understand the conditions and activities that favored…

Although researchers report that motivational variables, such as interest and self-efficacy, positively relate to forms of achievement (e.g., standardized test scores, grades, number of problems solved correctly), other studies indicate that motivation's contribution to achievement is not consistent. Fewer studies, however, have examined these…

Case study learning was integrated into a course designed to improve students' potential for academic success and increase student retention. Case studies related to self-regulation of behavior, motivation, and cognition for academic tasks were used to prompt students' critical thinking and facilitate deep learning of self-regulation topics,…

At some point in their education, pre-engineering students will take physics and/or calculus. For many freshmen who aren't certain about their career paths, taking these courses is a litmus test to determine whether they have the aptitude or desire to pursue an engineering degree. Therein lies the challenge for many students in the U.S. Science,…

This paper examines the reading experiences, strategies, and curriculum preferences of university-level heritage language students. One hundred and twenty eight students enrolled in four different heritage language programs at UCLA--Korean, Russian, Thai, and Vietnamese--completed a survey about their exposure to print, early and current reading…

Aim: To examine the associations between connectedness to family and friends, and school engagement, and selected health compromising and health promoting behaviours in a sample of New Zealand adolescents. Methods: A web-based survey was designed and administered to a random sample of 652 Year 11 students aged 16 years from all Dunedin (NZ) high…

One hundred thirty-seven students in 12th grade physics classes participated in a quasi-experimental study comparing the jigsaw classroom method of cooperative instruction with traditional direct instruction. While no differences were found between the two conditions for physics achievement gains, the results revealed differences in students'…

As a part of the teacher licensure program at the graduate level at The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (UTC), the M.Ed. Licensure candidate is required to complete an action research project during a 3-semester-hour course that coincides with the 9-semester-hour student teaching experience. This course, Education 590 Culminating…

A study explored whether mature age students' conspicuous academic success could be partially explained by motivation. It compared motives of a sample of mature "graduate mothers" to those of a sample of mature age "student mothers" who had interrupted a program of study. The 117 graduate participants were randomly chosen from…

The discussion of bilingualism and bilingual education focuses on three common concerns: (1) whether children will suffer if they become bilingual; (2) whether they will suffer from education using two languages; and (3) whether bilingualism and bilingual education are more successful when chosen or when imposed on a population. The three…

This paper examines the phenomenon of underachievement of students. Underachievement is characterized by a significant discrepancy between the student's performance and potential. After considering some of the common causes for underachievement and the typical problems of underachievers, the rest of the paper discusses six methods of intervention…

Despite the critical failure of many urban schools to educate poor children and children of color, there are examples of schools and teachers who help students meet challenging academic standards in a supportive, culturally responsive, and empowering context. This paper represents one such success story of a teacher's efforts to nurture his…