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Maintaining learning engagement throughout adolescence is critical for long‐term academic success. This research sought to understand the role of metacognition and motivation in predicting adolescents' engagement in math learning over time. In two longitudinal studies with 2,325 and 207 adolescents (ages 11–15), metacognitive skills, interest, and self‐control each uniquely predicted math engagement. Additionally, metacognitive skills worked with interest and self‐control interactively to shape engagement. In Study 1, metacognitive skills and interest were found to compensate for one another. This compensatory pattern further interacted with time in Study 2, indicating that the decline in engagement was forestalled among adolescents who had either high metacognitive skills or high interest. Both studies also uncovered an interaction between metacognitive skills and self‐control, though with slightly different interaction patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this work we start from the hypothesis that there is a lack of connection between what students find interesting and the content set by the curriculum because the curriculum was set by taking into consideration professional and/or political interests. In this article the level of interest of students in year four of compulsory secondary education in the content of music as a subject are described, as interest is a factor that influences learning. This is a descriptive study based on survey methods and qualitative research, and it examines which types of content are most interesting for students and which ones inspire little or no interest in them. After analysing the results, we make some proposals that might help to increase student's interest in the content of music as a subject. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this study was to examine how individual interest and knowledge acquisition are causally related. Three hypotheses were tested using a cross-lagged panel analysis ( N = 186) and two quasi-experimental studies ( N = 68 and N = 108) involving students from schools in Singapore. The first hypothesis is the broadly shared standard assumption on the relation between individual interest and knowledge: the more an individual is interested in a topic, the more (s)he is willing to engage in learning. An alternative hypothesis assumes that individual interest is not the cause but the consequence of the process of learning: individual interest as an affective by-product of learning. Finally, a third possibility is that interest and knowledge influence each other reciprocally. The results supported the affective-by-product hypothesis. Our findings seem at variance with commonly held conceptions that being interested guides knowledge attainment. The implications of these findings for interest research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Second- through fourth-grade students were read a storybook that described a typical boy who interacted with an obese boy for one of four reasons (sympathy, curiosity, teacher instructed, or no reason) to explore the manner in which a typical storybook character's reason for associating with an obese storybook character influences children's responses to both characters. Results revealed that the children responded more favorably to the obese storybook character after than before learning about the typical storybook character's association with him, especially when the typical storybook character's reason for association was presented as internally motivated (sympathy or curiosity). In contrast to “stigma by association” findings reported in prior research, the children also responded more favorably to the typical storybook character after than before his association with the obese storybook character. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper discusses a cross-cultural and collaborative project, in preschools in England and South Korea. The aim of the project is to investigate the pedagogy of outdoor play and learning in two different cultural contexts, from the perspectives of the practitioners. Although there has been a growing academic interest in the use of outdoor spaces for play by children, there is limited scientific evidence of how children may benefit from their outdoor experiences. In particular, pedagogy in relation to outdoor play has not been fully articulated or critiqued in research literature. The project reported in this paper represents a systematic and detailed programme designed to begin to address the current gap in research on outdoor pedagogy. The project adapts the polyvocal methods used by Tobin, Wu, and Davidson [(1989).Preschool in three cultures: Japan, China and United States. London: Yale University Press] and Tobin, Hsueh, and Karasawa [(2009).Preschool in three cultures revisited: China, Japan and the United States. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press] in order to elicit practitioners’ perspectives on pedagogy in outdoor environments by sharing and reflecting on a range of visual data, including video and photographic images recorded by practitioners and researchers. The paper will discuss and critique cross-cultural perceptions of outdoor pedagogy in early childhood in relation to interaction, management and safety. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study examines the pedagogic value of incorporating sophisticated interactivity features into lessons on hand-held devices. Engineering students (Experiment 1) and non-engineering college students (Experiment 2) spent 5 min studying an animation showing a six-step maintenance procedure for a mechanical device called a Power Take-Off presented on an iPad. In both experiments, students who received high interactivity (i.e., rotation through dragging movements and zoom through pinching movements) reported higher interest but did not show better learning as compared to the low interactivity group (i.e., pause and continue buttons on the touch screen) or no interactivity group. Across two experiments, the interactivity hypothesis was supported in terms of increased interest but not supported in terms of improved learning. Thus, there was not support for the idea that increasing situational interest through high levels of interactivity primes deeper learning processes that produce better learning outcomes. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study uses four waves of panel data to analyze inadvertent learning—that is, learning in the absence of interest or motivation—from watching public service television channels. Previous research suggests that motivation-based gaps in political knowledge are at least partly a function of the political information opportunities provided by the major television channels in a country, which influence the likelihood of being inadvertently exposed to news and current affairs programs. The present study puts the inadvertent learning hypothesis to a thorough empirical test by analyzing individual-level growth in knowledge over time, based on panel data collected during five months leading up to the Swedish 2010 national election. Using multilevel growth curve modeling and an extensive battery of surveillance knowledge questions, the results show not only (a) that public service channel viewing was related to learning, but also (b) that knowledge growth occurred among public service viewers independently of their political motivation and news attention, and (c) that such learning was even more pronounced among viewers lacking an interest in politics. The findings are discussed in light of ongoing media environmental transformations as well as cross-national comparative media systems research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theories of motivation propose that moderate difficulty can be beneficial for student engagement and learning. However, research on the effect of difficulty has been inconsistent. The primary goal of the present study was to investigate the possibility that interest-based text preference moderates the effect of difficulty on engagement and learning. To test this hypothesis, participants studied four instructional texts on research methods topics in a 2 × 2 interest-based text preference (preferred vs. non-preferred texts) × text difficulty (easy vs. difficult) within-subjects experiment. The manipulation of interest-based text preference asked participants to rank four text titles based on their perceived interest in reading the text corresponding to each title. Engagement was assessed via self-reported affect (valence and arousal), attention (mind wandering), and reading time during the learning session. Learning and knowledge transfer were measured with knowledge tests after reading all four texts. Consistent with our predictions, interest-based text preference and text difficulty interacted to predict reading time, mind wandering, and knowledge transfer. The nature of the relationship indicated that increased text difficulty can support engagement and transfer, but only when individuals are provided with an opportunity to express their text preferences prior to reading. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The majority of current developmental models prioritise a pedagogical approach to knowledge acquisition in infancy, in which infants play a relatively passive role as recipients of information. In view of recent evidence, demonstrating that infants use pointing to express interest and solicit information from adults, we set out to test whether giving the child the leading role in deciding what information to receive leads to better learning. Sixteen-month-olds were introduced to pairs of novel objects and, once they had pointed to an object, were shown a function for either the object they had chosen, or the object they had ignored. Ten minutes later, infants replicated the functions of chosen objects significantly more than those of un-chosen objects, despite having been equally visually attentive during demonstrations on both types of objects. These results show that offering information in response to infants’ communicative gestures leads to superior learning (Experiment 1) and that this difference in performance is due to learning being facilitated when infants’ pointing was responded to, not hindered when their pointing was ignored (Experiment 2), highlighting the importance of infants’ own active engagement in acquiring information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of the three studies presented here was to investigate how situational interest is related to knowledge acquisition. Situational interest is construed as a motivational response to a perceived knowledge deficit. It is triggered in situations where this knowledge deficit becomes manifest, such as in the confrontation with a problem. In Study 1 we manipulated prior knowledge of 32 secondary-school students about a particular problem (i.e., reasons for the conquest of Singapore by the Japanese during the Second World War). Only students who lacked the appropriate knowledge showed an increase in situational interest after the problem was presented. In Study 2 (N = 60), students who showed awareness that they lacked knowledge to understand a problem (i.e., causes of erosion of an island) showed increased situational interest in that problem. In Study 3 (N = 86), situational interest and knowledge acquisition were monitored over the course of a 3-h lesson in a natural classroom. We were able to demonstrate that situational interest decreased with increasing knowledge of the problem-at-hand. We argue that the findings support a knowledge-deprivation account of situational interest. Our findings are at variance with the broadly held conviction that situational interest and knowledge necessarily influence each other positively. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Background:Interest is assumed to be relevant for students’ learning processes. Many studies have investigated students’ interest in science; most of them however have not offered differentiated insights into the structure and elements of this interest. Purpose:The aim of this study is to obtain a precise image of secondary school students’ interest for school and out-of-school learning opportunities, both formal and informal. The study is part of a larger project on measuring the students’ Individual Concept about the Natural Sciences (ICoN), including self-efficacy, beliefs and achievements next to interest variables. Sample:Next to regular school students, a specific cohort will be analyzed as well: participants of science competitions who are regarded as having high interest, and perhaps different interest profiles than regular students. In the study described here, participants of the International Junior Science Olympiad (N = 133) and regular students from secondary schools (N = 305), age cohorts 10 to 17 years, participated. Design and methods:We adapted Holland’s well-established RIASEC-framework to analyze if and how it can also be used to assess students’ interest within science and in-school and out-of-school (leisure-time and enrichment) activities. The resulting questionnaire was piloted according to quality criteria and applied to analyze profiles of different groups (boys – girls, contest participants – non-participants). Results:The RIASEC-adaption to investigate profiles within science works apparently well for school and leisure-time activities. Concerning the interest in fostering measures, different emphases seem to appear. More research in this field needs to be done to adjust measures better to students’ interests and other pre-conditions in the future. Contrasting different groups like gender and participation in a junior science contest uncovered specific interest profiles. Conclusions:The instrument seems to offer a promising approach to identify different interest profiles for different environments and groups of students. Based on the results, further studies will be carried out to form a solid foundation for the design of enrichment measures. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article offers the author's insights on teaching physics, the importance of interest and motivation of students, and physics education research. Topics discussed include a study on learning approaches of students by physicist John Biggs, statistical mechanics and electromagnetism, and thermal physics.