This article elaborates a presentation made upon reception of the E. L. Thorndike Career Achievement Award in Educational Psychology from Division 15 of the American Psychological Association. It considers how value aspects of motivation apply to efforts to develop students' appreciation for school learning. Currently, we have only limited…

In this article, we argue for a change in how researchers study motivation to learn. We believe that research can provide better explanations of the origins and outcomes of behavior, and thus be more useful, if we focus on how motivation develops and why it changes. We suggest reframing motivation research in education by extending the current…

We propose an integration of aspects of several developmental and systems of beliefs models of personal epistemology. Qualitatively different positions, including realism, dogmatism, skepticism, and rationalism, are characterized according to individuals' beliefs across three dimensions in a model of epistemic and ontological cognition. This model…

New theory on adaptive teaching reflects the social dynamics of classrooms to explain what practicing teachers do to address student differences related to learning. In teaching adaptively, teachers respond to learners as they work. Teachers read student signals to diagnose needs on the fly and tap previous experience with similar learners to…

This article focuses on the early research domains investigated by Michael Pressley, along with the integrations and initiatives that were inspired by them. These research domains include verbal and imagery elaboration memory strategies, and developmental aspects of them; interrogative elaboration; pictorial strategies for language and literacy…

The purpose of this article is to document the legacy and continuing influence of Michael Pressley's work in the field of reading research and instruction. Descriptions are provided to demonstrate how he translated his data from the cognitive sciences into highly effective pedagogy. A second component of this article discusses how Michael…

The history of strategies research during the past quarter century has been a story of significant conceptualizations and reconceptualizations regarding the nature, development, and teaching of cognitive and metacognitive strategies. Theoretical models, empirical research, and discussions contributed by Michael Pressley have been central to…

Much of Michael Pressley's work during the past decade focused on the nature of highly effective, engaging literacy instruction. Michael Pressley believed that studying effective teachers and schools had the potential to influence more engaging and effective teaching, especially in underresourced schools. First, we describe the grounded…

The purpose of this article is to present an integrated theoretical model between epistemic beliefs and self-regulated learning. Based on a review of various theoretical frameworks, models, and empirical studies that have examined relations between the two constructs, this article discusses the role of epistemic beliefs in self-regulated learning.…

We propose a bridge between cognitive and sociocultural approaches that is anchored on the sociocultural side by distributed cognition and participation, and on the cognitive side by information structures. We interpret information structures as the contents of distributed knowing and interaction in activity systems. Conceptual understanding is…

Kirschner, Sweller, and Clark (2006) make a general case for the effectiveness of a teaching method--direct instruction--without reference to any context of what it is that is being taught by whom and to whom. In so doing, they bypass what is arguably the most pressing concern facing educators--not how to teach students but what to teach them. An…

Kirschner, Sweller, and Clark (2006) suggest that unguided or minimally guided instructional approaches are less effective and efficient for novices than guided instructional approaches because they ignore the structures that constitute human cognitive architecture. While we concur with the authors on this point, we do not agree to their equation…

Research in the development of teacher cognition and teaching performance in K-12 classrooms has identified consistent challenges and patterns of behavior that are congruent with the predictions of dual-process models of cognition. However, cognitive models of information processing are not often used to synthesize these results. This article…

Research within a constructivist approach often relies on interview data, which are used to reveal beliefs held by the interviewee or to expose conceptions or conceptual structures that are supposed to reside within the interviewee. From a sociocultural perspective, severe criticism has been leveled against the neglect of the problems of inferring…

This article responds to the need to synthesize theory and research in educational psychology by introducing the Thriving with Social Purpose (TSP) conceptual framework. TSP results when the four components of human motivation--goals, capability beliefs, context beliefs, and emotions--are amplified in dynamic, mutually reinforcing patterns. The…