Student achievement motivation has become a complex construct in physical education because of the competitive nature of sports and physiological discomfort associated with exercising. With updated national standards, physical education has been undergoing a long-deserved curriculum reform that is expected to enhance student motivation by…

The authors review the use and interpretations of path analyses in articles published in The Journal of Educational Research from 1992 to 2002 and discuss related issues. This article provides (a) a brief introduction to path analysis, (b) suggested guidelines and recommendations for reporting results, (c) a sample of a model path analysis, (d)…

The author reviewed the use and interpretation of factor analysis in articles published in The Journal of Educational Research articles from 1992 to 2002. He found all major forms of factor analysis among the 25 articles that he reviewed. Exploratory factor analysis was the most common application that he found. He noted only 3 applications of…

The authors provide (a) an introduction to multilevel modeling, a framework from which one may interpret and evaluate multilevel models and (b) a brief review of multilevel modeling studies published in The Journal of Educational Research over the last decade. To accomplish the 1st purpose, we offer an illustrated multilevel analysis of…

The author provides researchers, editors, and readers with recommendations and guidelines for meta-analytic research. These recommendations are for procedures and for reporting meta-analytic findings. An applied example illustrates a meta-analysis with a data set and considers 2 research questions. Four main sections include: (a) a description of…

The authors review and comment on 24 qualitative research articles published in the JER from 1992 to 2001, which represent a wide range of qualitative approaches. The key finding was that patterns shifted from an average of 1 article per year for the 1st 7 years to an average of 1 article per issue for the final 3 years. The authors discussed the…

Substantial gaps in achievement of groups of individuals of varying social status are well documented, but there are no conclusive explanations for them. The author integrated psychological and educational perspectives to scrutinize the effects of 4 protective factors believed to promote academic resilience of students at risk because of low…

The authors examined the conditions that promote or discourage engagement in the classroom among kindergarten students. Engagement included learning behaviors (on-task behavior) and pro- and antisocial behavior. The authors examined 3 policy-manipulable features of kindergarten classrooms: (a) whether the class met for a half day or full day, (b)…

Recent research from randomized experiments on class size points to positive effects of small classes that persist for several years, but the evidence about the social distribution of effects is less clear. Some scholars have contended that the immediate effects of small classes are larger for minorities and for disadvantaged persons (e.g., J. D.…

School transition research indicates that negative outcomes (e.g., decreases in self-esteem and academic motivation) occur for a number of students in transition. Although data are not consistent, gender and race tend to play a role in school transition outcomes. The authors investigated gender and race as variables in 6th- and 9th-grade students'…

The conditions that prevent highly competent children from fully developing their learning potential rarely have been addressed. The authors investigated the relationship between neighborhood socioeconomic characteristics, class composition, and changes in the proportion of highly competent children in kindergarten and in Grades 4 and 7. The…

The authors assessed the effects of out-of-school hours academic coaching on students' (at academic performance on end-of-year examinations in English, mathematics, and science; (b) attainment of academic scholarships; and (c) acceptance to Gifted and Talented (GT) classes and selective high schools. Participants were 1,724 elementary and…

The teaching and learning of statistics has impacted the curriculum in elementary, secondary, and post-secondary education. Because of this growing movement to expand and include statistics into all levels of education, there is also a considerable interest in how to teach statistics. For statistics concepts that tend to be very difficult or…

The researcher in this study theorized that preservice elementary teachers who had taken a semester-long mathematics course emphasizing a constructivist approach to instruction would realize a decreased level of math anxiety and gains in perceived teaching efficacy and autonomy over those who had taken a teacher-centered course based on a more…

In a survey on attitudes toward skipping class given to 75 undergraduates at a prominent state university in the Midwest, 84% of 38 respondents answered that they have been or may be inclined to skip a class because of reasons associated with "health": they are tired or just not feeling well. All women (n=20) chose this option, while only 67% of…