Achievement goal orientations and self-regulated learning have become central constructs in education research, with both contributing significantly towards students' academic success. However, very little research has focused on students' social achievement goals, that is their social reasons for wanting to do well in school. The aim of the…

As a consequence of accelerating globalisation there has been an emphasis on developing international students' proficiency to communicate in a foreign language. However, willingness to communicate in a foreign language other than English is an issue less discussed. This case study is an attempt to clarify expats' experience of living in Denmark…

A proverb goes that education is the backbone of a nation. No nation can step up without educating the nation. Quality education is achieved by the better academic performance of the students. Indeed, the university is the tertiary education where the undergraduate students are enrolled to appropriate academic excellence that can be transformed to…

The effect of high-stakes language tests on teaching and learning a language is usually known as washback. The true nature of test washback can be understood only by taking account of the educational, cultural, political and social contexts in which the test operates. Nevertheless, little research has explored the factors that affect the nature of…

Classroom anxiety is a recurrent phenomenon for language learners. There are various factors that cause language anxiety, the most common of which include learners' excessive self-consciousness and self-awareness concerning their oral reproduction and performance and their peculiar, and quite often misplaced and mistaken, views and beliefs…

Popularity and likability--two measures of adolescent peer status--have been examined frequently within Western cultures but relatively rarely within Eastern cultures. This study offered a cross-cultural comparison of adolescent peer status to examine whether these constructs and their correlates vary between the United States and China. The study…

1,127 U.S. high school senior and college undergraduate perceptions of teaching's prestige, status, and esteem were explored in this study. The population consisted of 302 high school seniors and 825 college undergraduates from the Midwestern region of the United States. The study included 51 statements where participants rated their perceptions…

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the reliability and construct validity of the Ethnic Identity, National Identity, and Perception of Social Mobility Scale in China. The data for this study were collected in 2014 and 2016, from one middle school in China. The school deployed a Chinese ethnic minority education policy, aimed at cultivating…

The authors examine how the Mandarin-Cantonese relationship has been ideologically and discursively perceived and constructed in China's language policy and planning, and Chinese people's reaction over the years by drawing on theories in critical discourse analysis, systemic functional linguistics, and language ideology. Data collection includes…

I examined which students view campus gun carrying as socially beneficial, how these views vary based on social standing among peers, and to what extent students believe their own gun carrying behavior influences others. Data were drawn from a nationwide web survey of 520 US college students. Results indicate that males and those attending school…

This study explores 16 non-native English teachers' beliefs and practices about pronunciation teaching in Hong Kong. Drawing on data from the teachers' written reflections and follow-up interviews, the findings suggest that these non-native English teachers understood the importance and goal of pronunciation teaching but appeared unconfident and…

Perceptions of prestige, status, and esteem of the teaching career were explored in this study. The population consisted of 1,127 high school seniors and college undergraduates. The study included 51 statements where participants rated their perceptions of teaching's prestige, status, and esteem on an 8 point Likert scale. The data was factor…

In this paper, we critically examine the potential of assessment components in physical education teacher education (PETE) to either reinforce or challenge PETE students' conceptions of what a physical education (PE) teacher needs to know to teach this school subject. To understand the mechanisms that may contribute to the difficulty of…

For the purpose of achieving a successful communication, issues such as the appropriateness of speech acts and face saving become essential. Therefore, it is very important to achieve a high level of pragmatic competence in speech acts. Bearing this in mind, this study was conducted to investigate the preferred refusal strategies Kurdish and…

The sphere of early childhood education care (ECEC) in the Czech Republic has diversified enormously in the last decade. The article describes this diversification process and, drawing on focus group data, analyses parents' choices within this diversified realm. Based on the parents' selection criteria (significantly influenced by constraints and…