Researchers examined associations of parental expectations and parental school relationships with school outcomes among U.S. middle and high school students. Nationally representative data involving families from the National Household Education Surveys were analyzed with structural equation modeling. Measures included interview responses about…

Contending that justice experiences in school serve as a hidden curriculum that conveys messages about the wider society and impact student attitudes and behavior, we investigate the effects of students' sense of distributive and (school) procedural justice on democratic-related attitudes: liberal democratic orientation (civil rights), social…

This project examined the relationships among the motivation and cognitive profiles of adolescent friendship cliques and peripheral (outside the clique group) students in lower and upper track algebra classes. Two hundred and thirty students from two high schools completed a motivation and cognitive engagement instrument as well as a peer group…

Recent research shows that teacher support is predictive of student outcomes, such as engagement and effort. In this study, we explored the relation between students' perceptions of teacher instrumental support in mathematics lessons and their effort in mathematics. We also tested whether this relation was mediated through students'…

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the links between grades, psychological disengagement mechanisms (discounting evaluative feedback and devaluing school), and motivation among female students in traditional and non-traditional career paths. We predicted that the association between grades and discounting is affected by the importance of…

As people normally care about what others think of them, any failures associated with them can be experienced as socially embarrassing. Consequently, they might become motivated to blame someone else for the failure in order to defend against possible criticism from others. In line with this reasoning, a study (N = 129) investigating how people…

Research on impression management has shown that students can manage their social images by providing attributional self-presentation strategies (ASPSs). Based on the distinction between social desirability judgments and social utility judgments, two studies were conducted to examine the students' understanding of the impact of ASPSs both on…

As previous research indicates self-efficacy and self-concept have similar effects on achievement outcomes, the current study investigated the differential effects of both constructs on academic performance and career path certainty in college freshmen. Results indicated high school GPA was best predicted by general self-efficacy, whereas current…

This study examined the relationship between student perceptions of school efforts to facilitate student involvement, school commitment, self-determination skills, and on track indicators for graduation in 10th grade and actual graduation outcomes two years later. The participants were 154 primarily minority students in a large, urban school…

The goal of the current study was to examine the predictive relationships among a set of cognitive-motivational variables that have been found in previous studies to support academic achievement. Student perception of a classroom's achievement goal structure (classroom mastery, classroom performance-approach, classroom performance-avoidance) was…

The main purpose of the present research was to investigate school intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, and amotivation as a function of age in a sample of 1,600 elementary and high school students aged 9-17 years. First, results revealed a systematic decrease in intrinsic motivation and self-determined extrinsic motivation from age 9 to 12 years,…

In an effort to understand teacher-student relationships much research has investigated how teacher expectations of student performance in the classroom affect achievement growth. However, little research has focused on how teacher expectations of students' educational attainment are formed. In this paper, we examine how students' high school…

The present study examined the mediational role of academic motivation in the association between school self-concept and school achievement among 355 Indian immigrant adolescents in Canada and 363 Indian adolescents in India. Surveys were administered among Grades 9-12 students in Canada and India to assess their academic self-concepts, academic…

The present work investigates the validation of a newly developed instrument, the attributional bias instrument, based on achievement attribution theories that distinguish between effort and ability explanations of behavior. The instrument further incorporates the distinction between explanations for success versus failure in academic performance.…

This research examines the impact of same-sex versus opposite-sex social comparisons on the perception of one's own abilities at school and subsequent reported marks and academic choices. During their final year, male and female high school students were asked to describe themselves either in comparison with boys in their class, in comparison with…