This book, comprised of seven chapters, focuses on the problem of planning a curriculum that recognizes and promotes growth of each pupil in the areas of mental health and learning. Chapter one, "Mutuality of Effective Functioning and School Experiences," emphasizes acceptance of pupils' thoughts and feelings and the pupils' challenging…

Project Success Environment is an experimental program sponsored by the Atlanta Public Schools and funded by the State Department of Education under Title III of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965. The focus of this program, subtitled "An approach to Community Educational Improvement," is the development of a success…

Research regarding the establishment of learned reinforcement with mildly retarded children is reviewed. Noted are findings which indicate that educable retarded students, possibly due to cultural differences, are less responsive to social rewards than either nonretarded or more severely retarded children. Characteristics of primary and secondary…

Briefly reviews the research literature concerning the overjustification effect. The effect describes the situation where positive reinforcement reduces one's intrinsic motivation for a behavior, thereby decreasing the probability that the behavior will be repeated. Notes the limitations of this explanation and recommends a broader representation…

Laboratory research that compared the effects of various types and combinations of feedback on children's conceptual learning was reviewed and evaluated in terms of theories involving reinforcement, motivation, and information-processing interpretations. It was concluded that some important laboratory research findings and implications have been…

This paper presents a conceptual framework to understand the Nurtured Heart Approach (NHA) through the perspective of Self-Determination Theory (SDT). The Nurtured Heart Approach and the Self-Determination Theory are discussed and the parallels are drawn between the two, to provide a theoretical foundation to NHA and support for its effectiveness,…

Participation is at the core of democratic society. However, studies have shown that participation is biased toward those who are better educated, more affluent, and in greater possession of civic skills. Scholars have pointed to the Internet as a possible remedy for the disparity in participation for its potential to lower barriers and increase…

Self-regulation of cognition and behavior is an important aspect of student learning and academic performance in the 21st-century classroom. The purpose of the chapter is to present how an integrated framework of cyclical phases and developmental levels of self-regulated learning play a significant role in modeling and self-regulatory learning as…

We hypothesized that novel stimuli represent salient learning signals that can motivate "exploration" in search for potential rewards. In computational theories of reinforcement learning, this is referred to as the novelty "exploration bonus" for rewards. If true, stimulus novelty should enhance the reward anticipation signals in brain areas that…

The purpose of this descriptive phenomenological study was to explore the Igbo Nigerian immigrant parents' lived experience with parental involvement in education of their children in the Delaware Valley. Theoretical frameworks for this study are Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory and Ogbu's cultural systems theory. The guiding research…

The purpose of this study was to determine the relative effectiveness of three different types of reinforcement strategies on spelling achievement among a sample of disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged fourth grade public school pupils. The three reinforcement strategies employed involved a concrete reward (candy), a token or symbolic reward…

This study investigated how gender and beliefs about ability moderate the effects of attributional praise feedback on college students' task motivation and performance in an online environment. We conducted a 3 (praise type: ability vs. effort vs. none) × 2 (gender: male vs. female) × 2 (belief about ability: entity vs. incremental)…

Many factors can influence a teacher's self-efficacy beliefs, including the support of his or her administrators--the principal and assistant principal. This interpretive phenomenological study sought to describe the influence that administrator support had on teacher self-efficacy. The conceptual framework of this study was Bandura's (1986)…

Praising is considered to have a positive effect on learners' motivations. Yet, what to praise and how to praise is an issue of controversy. The present study looks at the effect of praising ESL learners' writing efforts in English as opposed to evaluating their writing abilities in order to test Dweck (2007) theory of praising intelligence or…

Six theoretical positions on human learning are identified as relevant to the development of self-direction: modeling; reinforcement; curiosity motivation; competency motivation; attribution theory and personal causation; and humanism. Four approaches to educational practice associated with self-direction are identified: experimental learning;…