Prior research has shown personal best (PB) goals to be significantly related to students' motivation, engagement and achievement. However, research thus far has investigated PB goals only among Western samples and it is unclear to what extent PB goals hold academic merit in the Asian context. It is also unclear whether PB goals explain…

Background: Previous research has indicated that although academic buoyancy and student's achievement are associated, the relationship is relatively modest. Aims: We sought to determine whether another construct might link academic buoyancy and student's achievement. Based on prior theoretical and empirical work, we examined a sense of…

This article reviews research on the effects of conversational style on learning. Studies of conversational style have variously investigated "personalization" through changing instances of first-person address to second or third person, including sentences that directly address the learner; including more polite forms of address; and…

Background: Academic buoyancy is students' capacity to successfully overcome setback and challenge that is typical of the ordinary course of everyday academic life. It may represent an important factor on the psycho-educational landscape assisting students who experience difficulties in school and schoolwork. Aims: This study investigated the…

In the context of competitive classroom settings and relativistic assessment schedules, some groups of students may particularly benefit from an emphasis on personal progress and personal growth approaches to their academic development. Building on recent promising results from general samples of high school students (undifferentiated by…

The present study investigates problem-solving skill alongside more widely recognized settlement and sociodemographic factors in first-generation (1G) and second-generation (2G) immigrant students' science and mathematics achievement. A total of 113,767 students (ages 15-16 years) from 17 countries were drawn from the 2003 Programme for…

Prompted by international concerns about school and postschool participation in mathematics, the authors of the present study sought to investigate factors predicting "switching on" and "switching off" in mathematics, operationalized through measures of future intent and disengagement, respectively. They drew from Bronfenbrenner's ecological model…

Recently graduated university students from all Australian Universities rate their overall departmental and university experiences (DUEs), and their responses (N = 44,932, 41 institutions) are used by the government to benchmark departments and universities. We evaluate this DUE strategy of rating overall departments and universities rather than…

Longitudinal structural equation modeling (SEM) can be a basis for making prescriptive statements on educational practice and offers yields over "traditional" statistical techniques under the general linear model. The extent to which prescriptive statements can be made will rely on the appropriate accommodation of key elements of research design,…

Increasingly, school leavers are taking time out from study or formal work after completing high school--often referred to as a "gap year" (involving structured activities such as "volunteer tourism" and unstructured activities such as leisure). Although much opinion exists about the merits--or otherwise--of taking time out after completing…

Background: The literature has documented theoretical/conceptual models delineating the facilitating role of peer relationships in academic and non-academic outcomes. However, the mechanisms through which peer relationships link to those outcomes is an area requiring further research. Aims: The study examined the role of adolescents' perceptions…

The present study examined the relative salience of age within cohort, grade retention, and delayed school entry (3 dimensions of age appropriateness) in 3,684 high school students' academic motivation, engagement, and performance. Structural equation modeling revealed that after the effects of demographic characteristics and grade retention were…

Background: Academic buoyancy is students' ability to successfully deal with setbacks and challenges that are typical of academic life. The present study extends previous preliminary cross-sectional work that tentatively identified five motivational predictors of academic buoyancy--referred to as the "5Cs" of academic buoyancy: confidence…

The present study sought to investigate the effects of a multidimensional educational intervention on high school students' motivation and engagement. The intervention incorporated: (a) multidimensional targets of motivation and engagement, (b) empirically derived intervention methodology, (c) research-based risk and protective factors, (d)…

Are boys better motivated by male than female teachers in high school math, science, and English classes, and can these differences be explained by classroom climate? Using a cross-classified multilevel model with 5 levels (school, teacher, class, student, subject), the authors found little or no support for this contention. In general (except in…