This study examined the role that everyday academic successes and failures--and the interactions with family members and peers that follow these events--play in predicting day-to-day changes in children's emotional responses to school. Middle school students (N = 101; mean age = 11.62 years) completed daily assessments of their academic…

The authors tested whether multiple components of a performance goal were differentiated by a group of Korean middle school students ("N" = 239). Confirmatory factor analyses showed that the normative and outcome components as well as the approach and avoidance components correlated too highly to be considered independent. A 2-factor…

Previous research indicates that academic emotions are largely organized along domain-specific lines. In the present study (N = 1,687; Grades 8/11), the authors explored the domain specificity of academic emotions in terms of the moderating influence of having the same versus a different course instructor across domains. The authors evaluated…

The present investigation addresses the question of whether certain factors can protect high-achieving students at risk for being labeled a nerd against devaluation. In 2 studies, 125 and 317 students from Grade 8 evaluated vignettes describing average students and students who were called "nerds." Results indicate that being modest about good…

The authors investigated the comparative effect of the learning cycle and expository instruction on 8th-grade students' achievement in genetics. They adopted the nonequivalent control group design as a type of quasiexperimental design. The experimental group (N = 104) received learning cycle instruction, and the control group (N = 109) received…

In this article, the authors investigated the teacher practices that middle school students attend to when appraising their classroom's mastery goal structure. After students rated each item on the mastery goal structure scale, they wrote what their teacher did or said that led them to make that choice. Students' responses to the open-ended…

Federal standards established in 1997 allow respondents to select multiple-race categories. These new standards changed the single-race subgroup definitions that the government has required since 1977. Meta-analysis, research on long-term assessment trends, and other research involving historical comparisons must account for the definitional…

Recent interest in epistemic beliefs has given way to a proliferation of new measures. Yet, little is known about the psychometric properties of various measures when used with diverse populations. In this study, the authors explored the psychometric properties of a measure of existing epistemic beliefs, the Domain-Specific Belief Questionnaire…

The authors investigated what and how instructional practices are related to students' motivation and performance in writing. The participants were 6 teacher interns and their (N = 209) secondary-school students in Hong Kong. In a 3-session instruction unit, the teacher interns taught their students how to write an expository essay. The students…

The authors investigated the relationship between self-perceptions of ability and achievement in math, science, and English from Grades 8 to 11 (N = 342). A state-trait model that included an association between stable (i.e., trait-like) components of self-perceptions and achievement as well as time-specific (i.e., state-like) effects during the…

The author explored the potential to promote students' understanding of difficult science concepts through an examination of the inter-relationships among the teachers' instructional approach, students' learning preference styles, and their levels of learning process. The concept "air pressure," which requires an understanding of invisible,…