Despite decades of research on achievement goals, there is still relatively little known about differences among individuals in their conceptualizations of performance goals and reasons for pursuing them in academic settings. The purpose of the present investigation was to use participants' own words, rather than survey measures or experimental…

The ability (fluid and crystallized intelligence) and nonability (personality, interests, self-concept, etc.) determinants of domain knowledge before and after an independent learning opportunity were evaluated in the context of a study of 141 adults between the ages of 18 and 69. The domain knowledge under consideration included an array of…

This research focuses on the ability of book-based animated stories, when well designed and produced, to have positive effects on young viewers' narrative comprehension and language skills. Sixty 5-year-olds, learning Dutch as a 2nd language, were randomly assigned to 4 experimental and 2 control conditions. The children profited to some extent…

This article reports the findings from a longitudinal study investigating the influence of phonological processing and inattentive behavior on reading acquisition. Data from individually administered measures of phonological processing and reading, as well as teacher ratings of children's behavior, were collected from a cohort of 132 children at…

According to the domain-specific, multilevel homework model proposed in the present study, students' homework effort is influenced by expectancy and value beliefs, homework characteristics, parental homework behavior, and conscientiousness. The authors used structural equation modeling and hierarchical linear modeling analyses to test the model in…

In Study 1 (N = 147), duration of music lessons was correlated positively with IQ and with academic ability among 6-to 11-year-olds, even when potential confounding variables (i.e., family income, parents' education, involvement in nonmusical activities) were held constant. In Study 2 (N = 150), similar but weaker associations between playing…

The purpose of this study was to investigate predictors of early writing for low-income, urban students. Drawing on research and theory characterizing literacy development as a complex, integrative process, the author analyzed growth in the descriptive writing of students in Grades 1-3. The participants were 309 low-income children enrolled in 16…

This study estimated reading achievement gaps in different ethnic, gender, and socioeconomic groups of 1st graders in the U.S. compared with specific reference groups and identified statistically significant correlates and moderators of early reading achievement. A subset of 2,296 students nested in 184 schools from the Early Childhood…

A random sample of primary-grade teachers from across the United States was surveyed about within-class ability grouping in reading. Sixty-three percent of participants reported using within-class ability groups. Groups are smaller and more flexible than those formed in the past, with teachers emphasizing teaching comprehension, reading…

This study is an investigation of the contribution of morphological awareness in Chinese-English biliteracy acquisition. Comparable tasks in Chinese and English were administered to test children's skills in morphological awareness, phonological awareness, oral vocabulary, word reading, and reading comprehension. The results showed that after the…

There is at present no clear consensus as to the nature of the relations between oral vocabulary and specific literacy skills. The present study distinguished between vocabulary breadth and depth of vocabulary knowledge to better explain the role of oral vocabulary in various reading skills. A sample of 60 typically developing Grade 4 students…

The present series of studies sought to develop and conceptually validate a taxonomy of reasons that give rise to academic amotivation and to investigate its social antecedents and academic consequences. In Study 1 (N = 351), an exploratory factor analysis offered preliminary support for an academic amotivation taxonomy comprising four dimensions:…

A theoretical model linking achievement goals to discrete achievement emotions is proposed. The model posits relations between the goals of the trichotomous achievement goal framework and 8 commonly experienced achievement emotions organized in a 2 (activity/outcome focus) x 2 (positive/negative valence) taxonomy. Two prospective studies tested…

The authors report on a large-scale study examining the effects of self-reported psychosocial factors on 1st-year college outcomes. Using a sample of 14,464 students from 48 institutions, the authors constructed hierarchical regression models to measure the predictive validity of the Student Readiness Inventory, a measure of psychosocial factors.…

The compensatory-encoding theory (C-ET) of reading specifies how the efficiency of performance subcomponents affects comprehension under diverse task conditions. It maintains that readers can overcome weak skills through compensatory processes. To test whether C-ET captures more general principles underlying scholastic performance, the authors…