For more than two decades, the concept of student engagement has grown from simple attention in class to a construct comprised of cognitive, emotional, and behavioral components that embody and further develop motivation for learning. Similarly, the goals of student engagement have evolved from dropout prevention to improved outcomes for lifelong learning. This robust expansion has led to numerous lines of research across disciplines and are brought together clearly and comprehensively in the Handbook of Research on Student Engagement. The Handbook guides readers through the field’s rich history, sorts out its component constructs, and identifies knowledge gaps to be filled by future research. Grounding data in real-world learning situations, contributors analyze indicators and facilitators of student engagement, link engagement to motivation, and gauge the impact of family, peers, and teachers on engagement in elementary and secondary grades. Findings on the effectiveness of classroom interventions are discussed in detail. And because assessing engagement is still a relatively new endeavor, chapters on measurement methods and issues round out this important resource. Topical areas addressed in the Handbook include: Engagement across developmental stages. Self-efficacy in the engaged learner. Parental and social influences on engagement and achievement motivation. The engaging nature of teaching for competency development. The relationship between engagement and high-risk behavior in adolescents. Comparing methods for measuring student engagement. An essential guide to the expanding knowledge base, the Handbook of Research on Student Engagement serves as a valuable resource for researchers, scientist-practitioners, and graduate students in such varied fields as clinical child and school psychology, educational psychology, public health, teaching and teacher education, social work, and educational policy.

Drawing on the professional literature of many fields, this book provides an interpretation of the available research on motivation and describes instructional approaches in classroom contexts. The book aims to help teacher educators, researchers, and graduate students understand the research literature in motivation and use in their efforts to enhance children's literacy development. After an introduction, "Reading Engagement: A Rationale for Theory and Teaching" (John T. Guthrie and Allan Wigfield), chapters in the book are: (1) "Children's Motivations for Reading and Reading Engagement" (Allan Wigfield); (2) Developing Self-Efficacious Readers and Writers: The Role of Social and Self-Regulatory Processes" (Dale H. Schunk and Barry J. Zimmerman); (3) "Motivation, Volition, and Collaborative Innovation in Classroom Literacy" (Lyn Corno and Judi Randi); (4) "The Pull of the Text and the Process of Involvement in Reading" (Diane Lemonnier Schallert and JoyLynn Hailey Reed); (5) "Teacher Perceptions of Student Motivation and Their Relation to Literacy Learning" (Anne P. Sweet); (6) "The Role of Responsive Teaching in Focusing Reader Intention and Developing Reader Motivation" (Robert B. Ruddell and Norman J. Unrau); (7) "Characteristics of Classrooms That Promote Motivations and Strategies for Learning" (John T. Guthrie and Ann Dacey McCann); (8) "Integrating Science and Literacy Experiences to Motivate Student Learning" (Roger Bruning and Barbara M. Schweiger); (9) "Ownership, Literacy Achievement, and Students of Diverse Cultural Backgrounds" (Kathryn H. Au); (10) "Starting Right: Strategies for Engaging Young Literacy Learners" (Julianne C. Turner); (11) "Incentives and Intrinsic Motivation to Read" (Linda B. Gambrell and Barbara Ann Marinak); and (12) "School Change and Literacy Engagement: Preparing Teaching and Learning Environments" (Carol Minnick Santa). (RS)

Decades of research indicate the important connections among academic motivation and achievement, social relationships, and school culture. However, much of this research has been conducted in homogenous American schools serving middle class, average achieving, Anglo-student populations. This edited volume will argue that school culture is a reflection of the society in which the school is embedded and comprises various aspects, including individualism, competition, cultural stereotypes, and extrinsically guided values and rewards. They address three specific conceptual questions: How do differences in academic motivation for diverse groups of students change over time? How do students' social cognitions influence their motivational processes and outcomes in school? And what has been done to enhance academic motivation? To answer this last question, the contributors describe empirically validated intervention programs for improving academic motivation in students from elementary school through college.

There are many reasons to be curious about the way people learn, and the past several decades have seen an explosion of research that has important implications for individual learning, schooling, workforce training, and policy. In 2000, How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School: Expanded Edition was published and its influence has been wide and deep. The report summarized insights on the nature of learning in school-aged children; described principles for the design of effective learning environments; and provided examples of how that could be implemented in the classroom. Since then, researchers have continued to investigate the nature of learning and have generated new findings related to the neurological processes involved in learning, individual and cultural variability related to learning, and educational technologies. In addition to expanding scientific understanding of the mechanisms of learning and how the brain adapts throughout the lifespan, there have been important discoveries about influences on learning, particularly sociocultural factors and the structure of learning environments. How People Learn II: Learners, Contexts, and Cultures provides a much-needed update incorporating insights gained from this research over the past decade. The book expands on the foundation laid out in the 2000 report and takes an in-depth look at the constellation of influences that affect individual learning. How People Learn II will become an indispensable resource to understand learning throughout the lifespan for educators of students and adults.

The second edition of the handbook reflects the expanding growth and sophistication in research on student engagement. Editorial scope and coverage are significantly expanded in the new edition, including numerous new chapters that address such topics as child and adolescent well-being, resilience, and social-emotional learning as well as extending student engagement into the realm of college attendance and persistence. In addition to its enhanced focus on student engagement as a means for promoting positive youth development, all original chapters have been extensively revised and updated, including those focusing on such foundational topics related to student engagement as motivation, measurement, high school dropout, school reform, and families. Key areas of coverage include: Demography and structural barriers to student engagement. Developmental and social contexts of student engagement. Student engagement and resilience. Engaging students through effective academic instruction and classroom management. Social-emotional learning and student mental health and physical well-being. Student engagement across the globe, languages, and cultures. The second edition of the Handbook of Research on Student Engagement is the definitive resource for researchers, scientist-practitioners and clinicians as well as graduate students in such varied fields as clinical child and school psychology, social work, public health, educational psychology, teaching and teacher education, educational policy, and all interrelated disciplines.

Students who enter elementary school with low academic achievement are provided supplemental services to help address skill deficits. However, the effect of supplemental services has not been shown to be robust according to previous research using state-wide standardized tests to measure students' academic achievement. The probable explanations for these results are ineffectiveness of supplemental services, and interferences of potentially confounding variables demographic variables associated with the receipt of supplemental services. As such, the current research employed propensity score matching to statistically "control" for multiple demographic variables by across "control" (no supplemental services) and "treatment" (received serviced) groups. After matching first grade students' gender, race/ethnicity, primary language, home language and learning disability (reading and mathematics), I used repeated measure ANOVA to compare student's math and reading scores, motivation and engagement across groups (i.e., students receiving supplemental services and students not receiving services) at the three time points during the school year. The analysis showed that supplemental service did not significantly improve or reduce students' academic achievement, motivation and engagement compared to the "control" group. Future research regarding the evaluation of supplemental services would benefit from using the propensity score matching method, including more potential confounding variables that were unavailable in the current data set (e.g., SES), and including a larger sample size of students and schools.

This book focuses on the effect of psychological, social and demographic variables on student achievement and summarizes the current research findings in the field. It addresses the need for inclusive and interpretive studies in the field in order to interpret student achievement literature and suggests new pathways for further studies. Appropriately, a meta-analysis approach is used by the contributors to show the big picture to the researchers by analyzing and combining the findings from different independent studies. In particular, the authors compile various studies examining the relationship between student achievement and 21 psychological, social and demographic variables separately. The philosophy behind this book is to direct future research and practices rather than addressing the limits of current studies.

The second edition of this distinctively Australian text continues to retain the hallmark features, resulting in it being the 2004 Category Winner for the 'Awards of Excellence in Educational Publishing'. This popular textbook continues to adopt a developmental focus for complex issues in teaching. As a valuable resource Educational Psychology addresses contemporary ideas in context of lifelong learning, vocational education and the dynamic use of information and communication technologies. By analysing educational psychology and the theories of development and learning this text will help you to: understand your own development and factors that have contributed to it; provide strategies to enhance the quality of your learning and motivation; guide your understanding of how learners learn and how educators can be more effective in their teaching practice; contribute to your personal philosophy of learning and teaching. If you are aspiring to become a teacher or educational psychologist this is a must have text, written by experienced and renowned practitioners with backgrounds in teaching, educational psychology and child development.