Over the past half century, much has been learned about the ways in which students develop and learn. Unfortunately, this knowledge often does not find its way into the classroom. Teachers can begin to use this knowledge by focusing on a few key ideas. They need to go beyond the presentation of content to helping students acquire strategies for…

The present study examines the sources of job stress in a national sample of 373 Greek special education teachers, using a self-report questionnaire assessing job stress, its perceived sources, and its demographic and professional characteristics. Although the participants in general considered their job moderately stressful, they felt stressed by…

This article presents a study of academic procrastination and associated motivation variables in 508 adolescents from a general secondary school in central Turkey. Girls reported higher levels of self-efficacy for self-regulation and predicted higher Turkish grades than boys, but there was no difference in levels of procrastination. Academic…

We describe the implementation of evolving concept maps in two different graduate-level educational psychology courses: "The Adolescent Learner" and "Theories of Learning and Cognition." We provide an explicit description of how we used evolving concept maps as instructional and assessment tools in our respective classes, changes in the…

The aim of this study was to examine the beliefs that experienced and novice teachers hold about school achievement. It is important to investigate these beliefs and attributions because of the significant role that teachers play in the lives of most children. A group of Greek Cypriot elementary school teachers (n = 154) and a comparable group of…

This article describes an investigation into the outcomes of a school-based initiative to improve the word reading skills of a group of secondary school students (n = 77). The project involved the delivery of an enhanced precision teaching (PT) programme across two cohorts of students by teaching assistants (TAs) in each school who themselves…

In this study, the authors examined the relationship between teacher and student enjoyment. Based on social-cognitive approaches to emotions, they hypothesized (a) that teacher enjoyment and student enjoyment within classrooms are positively linked and (b) that teacher enthusiasm mediates the relationship between teacher and student enjoyment.…

There is relatively little research on the role of teacher expectations in the early school years or the importance of teacher expectations as a predictor of future academic achievement. The current study investigated these issues in the reading and mathematic domains for young children. Data from nearly 1,000 children and families at 1st, 3rd,…

To obtain a more complete understanding of personal epistemology this study examines two epistemic paradigms - ways of knowing (specifically connected knowing and separate knowing) and epistemological beliefs (specifically beliefs about knowledge structure, knowledge stability, learning speed, and learning ability). Participants were 107 college…

Prior research on collaborative learning identifies student behaviors that significantly predict student achievement, such as giving explanations of one's thinking. Less often studied is the role of teachers' instructional practices in collaboration among students. This article investigates the extent to which teachers engage in practices that…

Teachers' personal self-efficacy about their ability to motivate students and encourage learning has been shown to affect the classroom they create and student achievement. Therefore, research has been conducted on ways to increase teacher efficacy for in-service and pre-service teachers. One area of research that has been explored is the impact…

Background: Self-determination theory defines two important dimensions of teaching style: autonomy support and structure. Aims: The purpose of the present study was to investigate the synergistic relationship of perceived teacher autonomy support and the provision of structure in the prediction of self-regulated learning. Sample and method:…

Despite a substantial body of research suggesting genetic influence on educationally relevant behavioural traits, it is not clear how the nature-nurture question is perceived by teachers. In order to answer this question, we surveyed 667 UK primary school teachers, and for comparison also surveyed 1,340 parents about their perceptions of genetic…

Compared with standard arithmetic word problems demanding only the direct use of number operations and computations, realistic problems are harder to solve because children need to incorporate "real-world" knowledge into their solutions. Using the realistic word problem testing materials developed by Verschaffel, De Corte, and Lasure ["Learning…

This study applied expectancy theory to integrate the numerous and disparate explanations that researchers and educators have proposed to account for teacher resistance to implementing cooperative learning as an educational innovation. The cooperative learning implementation questionnaire (CLIQ) contained 48 items grouped under three broad…