A practicum intervention was designed to increase the motivation of seventh graders in a small, non-urban school system in the southeastern United States. Many of these students exerted little effort to succeed in school by completing homework, studying lessons, and participating in classroom activities. A series of staff development workshops…

Collaborative learning strategies can improve the learning of subject matter in content area classrooms, but they are only one aspect among many that influence how much learning will take place in a class period. The Directed Reading-Thinking Activity (DR-TA) is an effective teaching/learning strategy to use with content area material. Much of the…

This report examines whether cooperative learning can be used to promote individual achievement, and identifies conditions under which a benefit can be expected. Two experiments were conducted at the Quartermaster School, Fort Lee, Virginia. The first experiment compared test performance of 280 trainees after they had completed practical exercises…

Results of an evaluation of a college honors program are presented. Honors students at the State University of New York at Oswego were compared to four other student samples attending the same college: (1) nonhonors students matched on sex, major, and grade point average; (2) students who had dropped out of the honors program; (3) students invited…

The value of accelerated learning techniques developed by the national organization for Suggestive Accelerated Learning Techniques (SALT) was tested in a study using Administrative Policy students taking the capstone course in the Eastern Washington University School of Business. Educators have linked the brain and how it functions to various…

This manual describes the theory behind the Learning Process Questionnaire (LPQ) used in Australia and defines what the subscale and scale scores mean. The LPQ is a 36-item self-report questionnaire that yields scores on three basic motives for learning and three learning strategies, and on the approaches to learning that are formed by these…

Questionnaires were completed by parents and fifth- and sixth-grade children (1,180 healthy, 151 chronically ill, 54 hyperactive, and 54 with severe vision or hearing impairments). The instruments were designed to measure three types of value: utility value (how important success at a task is for achieving future goals); attainment value (the…

A research project studied the relationship between learning English as a second language, perceived ethnolinguistic vitality, and attitudinal and motivational factors. The study is an attempt to verify empirically for Hong Kong students results of previous research on the relationship between second language learning and sociocultural and…

Perspectives on how college teachers learn to teach and ways to re-invigorate learning and teaching are offered by the president of Pomona College. The importance of stimulating college students and sharing the faculty member's intellectual interests is addressed. It is suggested that learning thrives in an atmosphere of "intellectual…

Rural gifted students are often characterized in the literature as sharing many of the needs and problems of other culturally diverse groups. They are viewed as having problems related to self-esteem, level of aspiration, and frustration with an instructional program which often fails to provide for learning relevant to the students' interests and…

Although many researchers have identified meaningful learning as the proper aim of education, the realization of that aim and the theoretical understanding of the prerequisites for meaningful learning in the school setting are far from complete. By integrating ideas from theories of meaningful learning with ideas from theories of purposeful,…

It was found in this study that agency-paid adult students were more likely to rate educational goals higher in importance than self-paid students, contrary to the popularly held belief of adult secondary-school staff that these students are unmotivated to study and learn. (Author/AJ)

Failure in FL teaching is caused primarily by the theoretical view of language on which methodology has been based. A new theoretical base is required which is to be found in psycholinguistic research. The purpose of this paper is to inform the FL teacher of recent results of such research. (Author/KM)

An investigation was undertaken of end-of-course reactions of students who experienced varying numbers of test-taking failures during an introductory psychology course presented under two different formats: a mastery structure (multiple study/test options and absolute grading standards) and a conventional structure (one try on each midterm with…

Current research on the adult learner and on instruction through media has grave flaws, and reviews of research in five areas are needed to assist instructional developers and adopters in making wise decisions. These include a critical analysis of existing telecourse packages, as well as reviews of research on the motivation of various subgroups…