Enhancing achievement motivation and performance in college students: An attributional retraining perspective

Academic performance in higher education ultimately involves a complex interplay of student attributes and the educational environment. Although instruction is regarded as the major environmental factor affecting scholastic success, other factors can become more important when teaching does not produce the desired results. Attributional retraining is one alternative that shows considerable promise for enhancing students' motivation and achievement striving by changing how students think about their successes and failures. This paper reviews attributional retraining studies published since 1985 having a higher education focus. Their conceptual and methodological strengths and weaknesses are discussed in relation to Weiner's attribution theory. Within this context, attributional retraining is presented as a potentially viable and important intervention for improving college students' academic development, especially those students deemed to be at risk. In particular, attributional retraining is considered as an adjunct to, and possible aspect of, effective teaching.Support for this research was provided to Raymond P. Perry by Franz E. Weinert, Max Planck Institute, Munich, and by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (#410-91-1296). The junior authors contributed equally to the article and are listed alphabetically.     

Information technology: Threats and opportunities for small and medium-sized enterprises

The strategic use of information technology can both threaten and benefit small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). In this paper, the strategic importance of information technology is analysed in light of the specificity of these organizations. Planning approaches are then outlined, focusing on how SMEs can attain a mastery of information technology for competitive advantage.     

Measurement of single leukemia cell's density and mass using optically induced electric field in a microfluidics chip

We present a method capable of rapidly (∼20 s) determining the density and mass of a single leukemic cell using an optically induced electrokinetics (OEK) platform. Our team had reported recently on a technique that combines sedimentation theory, computer vision, and micro particle manipulation techniques on an OEK microfluidic platform to determine the mass and density of micron-scale entities in a fluidic medium; the mass and density of yeast cells were accurately determined in that prior work. In the work reported in this paper, we further refined the technique by performing significantly more experiments to determine a universal correction factor to Stokes'' equation in expressing the drag force on a microparticle as it falls towards an infinite plane. Specifically, a theoretical model for micron-sized spheres settling towards an infinite plane in a microfluidic environment is presented, and which was validated experimentally using five different sizes of micro polystyrene beads. The same sedimentation process was applied to two kinds of leukemic cancer cells with similar sizes in an OEK platform, and their density and mass were determined accordingly. Our tests on mouse lymphocytic leukemia cells (L1210) and human leukemic cells (HL-60) have verified the practical viability of this method. Potentially, this new method provides a new way of measuring the volume, density, and mass of a single cell in an accurate, selective, and repeatable manner.     

Expert and preservice secondary teachers’ competencies for noticing student thinking about modelling

Educational Studies in Mathematics - This study examined how expert and novice (preservice) teachers solved mathematical modelling tasks as well as how they noticed written artifacts of student...     

Talent development,work habits,and career exploration of Chinese middle‐school adolescents: development of the Career and Talent Development Self‐Efficacy Scale

This article describes the development of an instrument – the Career and Talent Development Self‐Efficacy Scale (CTD‐SES) – for assessing students’ self‐efficacy in applying life skills essential for personal talent development, acquisition of positive work habits, and career exploration. In Study 1, data were obtained from a large sample of Chinese middle‐school students (N=15,113) in Grades 7–9 in Hong Kong. The CTD‐SES is an 18‐item questionnaire with subscales containing items that address students’ orientations toward developing their own talents, acquiring and applying positive work habits, and exploring their career possibilities. Evidence is provided for internal consistency, temporal stability, and factor structure of the CTD‐SES. Goodness of fit statistics provided support for a three‐primary‐factor‐plus‐higher‐factor model, and this solution was used in the statistical analyses. The data also indicated that students with plans for university study reported significantly higher scores than those without on all three domains of career and talent development. In Study 2 (N=308) Grade 10 high‐ability students’ scores in CTD‐SES were correlated with scores in career decision self‐efficacy and academic performance. The development and validation of CTD‐SES is the first step toward investigating career exploration, work habits, and talent development among Asian middle‐school adolescents.