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School physical education (PE) aims to develop students’ knowledge and skills for lifelong participation in physical activity (PA). Unfortunately, many PE teachers report that motivating students is a significant challenge. The purpose of this study was to explore PE teacher perceptions about the effectiveness and acceptability of three self-determination theory-based motivational strategies on students’ PA, motivation, and learning during PE lessons. Thirteen PE teachers from five schools in Western Sydney, Australia, participated in this study. We carried out semi-structured post-lesson interviews with PE teachers to gather information about the perceived effectiveness and acceptability of the three intervention strategies and whether these were sustainable teaching methods: (1) explaining relevance; (2) providing choice; and (3) complete free choice. Analysis of interview data revealed that teachers believed each strategy successfully enhanced student PA, enjoyment, motivation, and student learning. The findings also showed that our motivational teaching strategies were acceptable when embedded within certain PE contexts. Overall, the results have implications for future pre-service and in-service PE teaching practice. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The growth in opportunities to enter higher education in the past two decades has led to a remarkable increase in the proportion of the British population who are now educated to graduate level. This transformation of the landscape of higher education has also been associated with an increase in student dropout, increasing dependence on lecturers, and ultimately failure. In short, although the agenda of widening participation has many worthy aspirations, it has also engendered some issues relating to students’ outcomes. As a new recruit to academia from teaching in the sixth form college sector, the author was interested to see how students made the transition from college to university study. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the approaches taken by two groups of undergraduate students to study during their first term at a business school. The research involved a cohort of 50 students and a 25-item structured questionnaire together with feedback from focus groups. This research sought to bridge the conventional methodological and theoretical divide between those who focus on self-regulated learning (SRL) and those, particularly in British context, who choose to investigate students’ approaches to learning (SAL). In doing so, this research serves both as a primer for further exploration and debate for a possible synthesis between these two approaches. In particular, the findings highlight the importance of self-efficacy, intrinsic motivation, and self-image, and how these concepts may be linked to strategic, deep and surface forms of learning. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study explores strategies students use to construct their academic engagement in the social environment of school. The study is based on group interview data collected from 161 sixth (78) and eighth (83) grade students. Students reflected both engaging and disengaging episodes. Data were content analysed. The results show that students reported using only confirming strategies in teacher–student interaction. More diverse strategies were described in relation to peer interaction. The results indicated that simultaneously maintaining functional peer relations and engaging effectively in academic activities is a highly challenging task which requires strategic flexibility and self-regulative skills. In terms of the development of more engaging learning environments for students, our results suggest that more attention should be paid to creating positive opportunities to participate, in terms of both academic activities and peer interaction. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Inasmuch as design is a central activity in K-12 engineering education, understanding the students' motivation during engaging in engineering design activities will help educators to develop and evaluate strategies for engineering design challenges, and improve curriculum. The objective of this study is to better understand the relationship between students' interest and expectancy for success while engaged in two design activities in grades 9-12. The primary difference between the two activities was the strategy used to solve the design problems from a predictive analysis and a creative approach. Constructs of motivation for students' interest include task value (TV) and intrinsic goal orientation (IGO) and extrinsic goal orientation (EGO). Expectancy for success includes control of learning beliefs and self-efficacy for learning and performance. In this study, students ( n = 31) from three high schools that implement the Project Lead the Way curriculum in three states in the US participated in the study. Immediately after completing their design projects, each student was asked to complete a modified version of the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire survey instrument which evaluates their interest and expectancy for success. The results show that students were more intrinsically motivated to engage in a design activity that involves a predictive analysis than a creative approach. No significant correlation was found between students' expectancy for success and EGO in design tasks that utilized either predictive analysis or creative approach. The study also found that TV and IGO were good predictors for students' expectancy for success. Demographic information associated with students' motivation in the design activities is also presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the addition of an anthropomorphic interface agent to a learning system generally has little direct impact on learning, it potentially has a huge impact on learner motivation. As such agents become increasingly ubiquitous on the Internet, in virtual worlds, and as interfaces for learning and gaming systems, it is important to design them to optimally impact motivation. The focus of this paper is on the design of agents and avatars (one's self-representation as a visual agent) for enhancing motivational and affective outcomes, such as improving self-efficacy, engagement and satisfaction, moderating frustration, and/or improving stereotypes. Together with motivational messages and dialogue (which are not discussed here), the agent's appearance is the most important design feature as it dictates the learner's perception of the agent as a virtual social model, in the Bandurian sense. The message delivery, through a human-like voice with appropriate and relevant emotional expressions, is also a key motivational design feature. More research is needed to determine the specifics with respect to the ideal agent voice and the role of other nonverbal communication (e.g., deictic gestures) that may contribute to the agent's role as an embodied motivator, particularly in the long-term. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines how concepts, such as resilience to digital distractions, ICT self-efficacy, and motivation, relate to student teachers' approaches to studying and time spent on individual studies during pre-service education. The sample comprised 219 first-year student teachers enrolled in Norwegian initial teacher education programs. Student teachers' motivation, resilience to digital distractions, and gender (female) were positively correlated with students' approach to studying and time devoted to individual study. Initial teacher education institutions can emphasise the importance of resilience to digital distraction and encourage student teachers to develop their own approaches to studying and setting aside time for individual studies. • Identified variation in student teachers' individual studies. • Motivation associated with individual studies and approaches to study. • Digital resilience associated with individual studies and approaches to study. • Females spent more time on individual studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]