The Departments of Mathematics and Statistics at Grand Valley State University are engaged in a project to address the mathematical preparation of all its majors, including prospective elementary and secondary mathematics teachers. In this article, we describe how the mathematics and mathematics education faculty in our mathematics department…

Little is known about how successful students in Web-based courses self-regulate their learning. This descriptive case study used a social cognitive model of self-regulated learning (SRL) to investigate how six graduate students used and adapted traditional SRL strategies to complete tasks and cope with challenges in a Web-based technology course;…

Linear models of two of the most salient motivations for undergraduates to attend college--learning (intrinsic) and enhanced post-graduation earnings (extrinsic)--are estimated from a sample of 2,199 respondents to the 2000 Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP) survey of first-year students, supplemented by institutional records. Model…

The EZ-Yale Personality Motivation Questionnaire (EZPQ) was used to measure motivation as a facet of school readiness in a sample of 133 children during the spring of their final year of Head Start. Three motivational constructs assessed by the EZPQ, academic mastery motivation, negative reaction tendency, and outerdirectedness, were associated…

This study examined the relative benefits of mastery learning, overlearning, and fluency-building instructions for academic performance and long-term retention. College students enrolled in introductory quantitative methods classes (n = 168) were asked to practice every week with a computerized flash-card program until they attained various…

The educational "pipeline" that provides tomorrow's scientists and engineers leaks far more females than males, particularly in the junior high age range. The reasons for this are complex and still being studied. However, by college age, the gender differences seen at earlier ages seem to narrow or disappear when one considers only those students…

Introduction: Information literacy education is central for students as a building block for functioning citizenship in an information rich world. To support students' development of information skills we need an awareness of underlying factors behind information seeking habits. This article will discuss whether differences in middle and high…

In the last decades of the 20th century lifelong learning became a key concept for solving social and economic problems in highly industrialized countries. Lifelong learning was the societal response to conditions in a rapidly changing economic world. Humans have always learned in the normal course of their lives, but this learning was informal.…

The purpose of this study was to investigate what influences employees' acceptance and resistance to a corporate e-learning initiative provided by a large retail chain. The research used a survey design to gather interview and survey data to examine the factors affecting learner interest in, and resistance to, training and e-learning. The results…

Online learning is here to stay. Many studies have examined factors that facilitate online learning in many disciplines, but few exist on counselor training. This research surveyed online counseling graduate students for factors that they found facilitative. Instructor characteristics such as frequency of participation in discussion forums,…

The results of a college collaborative learning curriculum in Taiwan indicated satisfaction with the collaborative project resulting from familiarity with group members. Students asked more questions and they expressed more in class. The behaviors of feeling respected by group members, learning about self-expression and diverse opinions, as well…

Collaborating closely with a 10th-grade science teacher, we designed a Web-based learning environment (Web-LE) to improve student motivation to learn science. Factors believed to enhance intrinsic motivation (challenge, control, curiosity, and fantasy) were integrated into the instructional design of the Web-based learning tool. The Web-LE was…

In college-level courses, the vast majority of students read expository textbooks with a primary purpose in mind: to memorize and, hopefully, understand enough information to receive a particular grade on a course exam. Intuitively, this kind of reading is different than the kind of reading that these same students do when reading a novel while…

This report examines how immigrant students performed, mainly in mathematics and reading, but also in science and problem-solving skills in the PISA 2003 assessment, both in comparison with native students in their adopted country and relative to other students across all countries covered in the report (the "case countries"). In…

This book contains resources, including lesson plans and other materials that could be used by teachers of children of migrant works and other ESL children, as well as by teachers whose students are not learners of English. Seven chapters include: (1) Migrant Farmworkers and Their Families; (2) How Language Works; (3) How to Create Culturally…