Judith L. Meece is currently the Eugene and Saralyn Oberdorfer Associate Professor of Education at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, where she teaches in the School of Education. Her book draws on over 15 years experience in teaching courses on child and adolescent development to preservice teachers and graduate students. Before coming to Chapel Hill, she taught at Purdue University and completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the Learning Research and Development Center of the University of Pittsburgh. She received her Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from the University of Michigan in 1981, where she was a fellow in the former Bush Program in Child Development and Social Policy. Professor Meece’s research focuses on academic motivation, gender differences in mathematics and science achievement, and teachers’ beliefs about children’s development. She is co-author of Students’ Perceptions in the Classroom (1992). She is currently serving as chairperson of the American Educational Research Association’s Special Interest Group on Motivation and education. She is also currently working on an oral history of Appalachian teachers, which will examine the role of education and teaching in southern women’s lives.