This article explores the legacy of Paul Pintrich in regard to theory and research in conceptual change. Specifically, this article reviews his vision for a view of conceptual change--a vision that integrated motivation and affect within a broader view of cognition in the classroom (Pintrich, 1999; Pintrich & Sinatra, 2003). This article describes…

The goal of this article is to discuss one of Paul Pintrich's more enduring legacies: the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ), an 81-item, self-report instrument consisting of 6 motivation subscales and 9 learning strategies scales. The MSLQ has proven to be a reliable and useful tool that can be adapted for a number of…

This article provides an integrative perspective on the articles presented in this special issue. It is also a very personal perspective. In such small space it is impossible to do justice fully to Paul's work or to the reflections on that work. What this final article attempts is a statement that emphasizes the scope and depth of this work as…

Learning and instruction have always been important topics in the sociocultural school of thought founded by Vygotsky and further developed by his followers. Taking sociocultural ideas as a starting point, Piotr Galperin developed an original conceptual system and a new method of investigation that made teaching and learning a central part of…

Several school-based racial prejudice-reduction interventions have demonstrated some benefit. Ecological theory serves as a framework within which to understand the limits and to enhance the efficacy of prejudice-reduction interventions. Using ecological theory, this article examines three prejudice-reduction approaches, including social cognitive…

The large body of goal theory research that has induced performance goals or included them on forced-choice questionnaires has produced coherent results. However, the few studies available on the matter suggest that students rarely generate performance goals spontaneously, if performance goals are defined in normative terms (i.e., outperforming…

This article explores 2 important aspects of metacognition: (a) how students monitor their ongoing performance to detect and correct errors and (b) how students reflect on those errors to learn from them. Although many instructional theories have advocated providing students with immediate feedback on errors, some researchers have argued that…

In this article, we compare conventional uses of metacognition with the kinds of metacognition required by the teaching profession. We discover that many of problems and tasks used in successful metacognitive interventions tend to be reasonably well-defined problems of limited duration, with known solutions. Teaching has unique qualities that…

Research shows that learners of all ages have difficulties deploying key cognitive and metacognitive self-regulatory skills during learning about complex and challenging topics when using open-ended learning environments such as hypermedia. This article provides an overview of the research my students and I have conducted on how the use of…

It is well-documented that most students do not have adequate proficiencies in inquiry and metacognition, particularly at deeper levels of comprehension that require explanatory reasoning. The proficiencies are not routinely provided by teachers and normal tutors so it is worthwhile to turn to computer-based learning environments. This article…

This article provides an overview of our work on the nature of metacognitive knowledge, its relationship to learning through inquiry, and technologies that can be used to foster and assess its development in classrooms as students engage in collaborative inquiry. To illustrate our theoretical ideas, we present examples from our Inquiry Island…

In this commentary, we utilize a social cognitive view of self-regulation to analyze the computer-based learning environments (CBLEs) that are described in the various articles in this volume. Although these CBLEs are creative ways of engaging students' metacognitive processes, their impact on students' motivational beliefs and self-reactions has…

Major educational policy groups call on learners to engage in inquiry-based activities. With a growing amount of information now available online, there is an increased focus on online inquiry where learners ask research questions; search digital libraries and other information sources; and read, assess, and synthesize that information.…

Physics learning studies demonstrate that students' pre-instructional world knowledge is often logically antagonistic to the principles of Newtonian mechanics taught in introductory physics courses. Under these conditions psychological theory predicts that learning will be inhibited, a prediction consistent with both the experiences of physics…

Investigated the rationale for teaching psychology from the jr. high school level through college and compared the three principal contemporary approaches favored by psychologists. The author concluded that, of the three, only cognitive psychology provides a frame of reference in which knowledge can be seen as valuable in its own right. Available…