Do students tend to set similar types of goals throughout the school year, or do their goal orientations shift over time? If students become more oriented toward mastery or performance over the course of the year, do they improve in their academic achievement, have a more positive affect toward class, and develop the cognitive propensities that…

Online versions of statistics courses have been taught for some time, but more information is needed on the effectiveness of using different approaches to teaching statistics online. The present paper describes a mastery-based approach to teaching an online introductory statistics course and presents data suggesting that the course is effective.…

A comprehensive review of the literature on the evaluation of learning objects revealed a number of problem areas, including emphasizing technology ahead of learning, an absence of reliability and validity estimates, over-reliance on informal descriptive data, a tendency to embrace general impressions of learning objects rather than focusing on…

This paper tests the central tenet of social psychology and the life-course perspective that broader contexts of opportunity and constraint moderate the ability of individuals to act on their plans and ambitions. We use the 1972 National Longitudinal Study to assess the impact of mastery on achieving one's occupational expectations and to…

An essential component of applied behavior analysis programs for teaching children with autism is discrete trials teaching. Experiment 1 investigated the effectiveness of a self-instructional manual for teaching university students to correctly apply discrete-trials teaching to teach three tasks to confederates role-playing children with autism.…

Sometimes assessments that work in theory fall apart in reality. This article discusses the unique learning-measurement system in Nebraska. Instead of relying on statewide standardized tests to comply with the accountability requirements of the federal No Child Left Behind Act--as is the case in the other 49 states--districts in Nebraska use their…

A description is given of the development, implementation, and evaluation of the Curriculum Management System (CMS), a computer managed system that utilizes input from research findings on effective schools. The goals and objectives of instruction are clearly delineated and effectively communicated to students and their parents. Each student,…

This paper explores what has been reported by several researchers in an attempt to make recommendations on the most effective method of introducing basketball to elementary school age children. Based on this review the following observations are brought forward for consideration. Factors which significantly affected student success include: height…

Effective teaching is a multifaceted endeavor comprised of process, product, artistic, and scientific aspects. The scientific dimension pertains to that multidisciplinary accumulation of systematic knowledge which makes possible the prediction and control of human behavior as it relates to the events comprising instruction and learning. This paper…

Grouping students to facilitate instruction alone, instructional delivery systems which maintain student dependency on teachers, the practice of teaching to disseminate information without mastery, class norm-referenced grading practices, and study habits which focus on getting grades, help produce the educational dilemma faced today. In mastery…

The Chicago Mastery Learning Reading (CMLR) program provides a model of instruction and a set of instructional materials for teachers and students, from kindergarten through eighth grade, in Chicago Public Schools. An analysis of CMLR progress records for more than 240,000 students in June 1983, found that compared to 1982 and earlier years, (1)…

A general framework is presented to help understand the relationship between motivation and self-regulated learning. According to the framework, self-regulated learning can be facilitated by the adoption of mastery and relative ability goals and hindered by the adoption of extrinsic goals. In addition, positive self-efficacy and task value beliefs…

This investigation was structured to determine if the acquisition of higher order intellectual processes is tenable for teaching candidates when the independent variables are unit pacing and different remediation strategies for mastery learning. Teaching candidates enrolled in a generic teaching methods course constituted the sample. Nearly half…

The work reported culminates research by the Project on the Assessment and Analysis of Word Identification Skills in Reading. The Word Identification Test battery was designed for elementary school children, with attention to the major issues pertaining to skills mastery and assessment that are raised in the review of mastery learning. Five…

This plan is designed to review and revise the educational program of the Hicksville School District (New York) by means of a systematic approach to curriculum revision, instruction geared to learning, and the monitoring of student progress. Baseline information obtained from a curriculum inventory is a starting point for an analysis of the…