While a great deal of research has examined students' critical thinking skills, less is known about students' tendencies to use these skills. Specifically, little is known about what factors contribute to students developing a disposition to think critically or what impact this disposition has on college students' academic achievement. Perceived…

Researchers have recently claimed that there are substantial differences in the psychosocial dispositions and academic achievement of male and female college students. To test this proposition, a sample of 854 undergraduate students were selected from a major Canadian Research-1 university. Multiple regression analyses assessed the effects of…

Although optimism is generally regarded as a positive dispositional characteristic, unmitigated optimism can be problematic. The adaptiveness of overly optimistic expectations in novel or unfamiliar settings is questionable because individuals have little relevant experience on which to base such expectations. In this four-phase longitudinal…

Although self-initiative is recognized as instrumental to success in college, some students do not take responsibility for their academic development and fail to make the transition from high school to college. This problem is exacerbated when bright, highly skilled students drop courses or quit college entirely. Research into this paradox of…

Postsecondary institutions seek to create a pedagogical environment that increases students' knowledge, expands their powers of reasoning, and shapes their psychosocial dispositions. In this study, we examined a conceptual model of academic attainment including two aspects of the pedagogical environment experienced by students, namely the…

Examined the relationships between student differences, prior experience with the subject material, past performances, teaching behaviors, and perceived learning and achievement. Found that achievement is affected by test anxiety and high school GPA, and that content-unfamiliar students, unlike content-familiar students, are more positively…

This study with 203 college students used structural equation analysis and found that the relationship between students' academic stress and course grades was influenced by problem-focused coping and motivation, but not by emotion-focused coping. Greater academic stress covaried with lower course grades. (DB)

A three-year longitudinal study surveyed newly hired faculty (n=259) at five higher education institutions concerning adjustment factors and research productivity. Results suggest that perceived control, the milieu of research-oriented institutions, and age (but not gender) are important predictors of faculty research productivity. (DB)

Three surveys, administered a year apart, to 259 newly hired, tenure track faculty at five colleges found their perception of personal control was a critical factor in emotional well-being, stress level, job satisfaction, by itself or in combination with institution type and time. Faculty at liberal arts and comprehensive colleges had most…

A study that examined how four types of feedback affected perceived control and student achievement in different instruction settings is described. College students wrote an aptitude test that provided either contingent, low noncontingent failure, high noncontingent failure, or no-performance feedback. (Author/MLW)

A study investigated college students' (n=226) academic help-seeking behavior under task-involved and ego-involved classroom conditions, students' attributions for failure, and two types of help source (instrumental, in which the student finds his own solution, and executive, in which a solution is disclosed). Implications for classroom teaching…

Attributional retraining, the restructuring of an individual's explanations for events in his environment, is proposed as one method of enhancing college student motivation and achievement, particularly for high-risk students. Drawing on previous research and theory, the most promising strategies for using attributional retraining with this…

A study with 288 college psychology students investigated the relationship between students' perceptions of the reasons for their academic success or failure (explanatory schemas) and the quality of instruction. Results are discussed in terms of the role of explanatory schemas as buffers or compensations for ineffective instruction. (Author/MSE)