Contemporary Educational Psychology最新文献

The first year of the COVID-19 pandemic was a tumultuous time for adolescents across North America. Social and family lives were upended, schooling was often in flux, activities and milestones were canceled, and the political and medical uncertainties dominated societal discourses. A growing research base demonstrates how the pandemic impacted young people across 2020 and 2021, but there is less work on how they made meaning and incorporated these interpretations into emerging identities. This study integrates surveys in the spring and fall 2020 with interviews in winter 2021 to explore how 18 United States and Canadian adolescents made meaning across time, with a specific focus on the impacts on their family, peer, and school lives. Four main themes were demarcated in the analyses: personal growth and maturation from experiences of the pandemic; concrete skill development, new learning strategies, and new activities tied to remote schooling; redefined or reimagined social identity and connections; and stressors of the pandemic as opportunities for deeper appreciation of family relationships and values, even amid increased tension and conflict. These findings highlight potential ways that adolescents’ demonstrated resilience through their meaning making, which could contribute to strengths-based understandings to complement the current attention to negative outcomes.

Fidget tools – such as fidget spinners and bouncy bands – are advertised by manufacturers to improve academic performance in children. Therefore, these tools are often used in the classroom setting, either as a universal tool for all children or specifically for children with elevated ADHD-symptomatology. However, there is a paucity of ecologically valid research on the effectiveness of these tools in elementary school children. This study examined the effect of fidget spinners and bouncy bands on mathematics and listening performance of 233 children (53% boys, M_age = 9.10) in their regular classroom setting. ADHD-symptomatology was assessed by parent report and children’s movement was objectively measured by accelerometers. Linear mixed-effect models revealed that fidget spinners had an overall detrimental effect on academic performance, regardless of ADHD-symptomatology. Likewise, for the bouncy band an overall negative effect on children’s performance was found. However, further exploratory analyses suggested that for children with more symptoms of inattention the use of a bouncy band may reduce the negative effect of these symptoms on mathematics performance. Based on these findings, we advise against the use of fidget spinners or bouncy bands as universal therapeutic classroom tools to improve academic performance in elementary school children. More research is warranted on the potential beneficial effect of bouncy bands for children with elevated inattention symptoms.

The current study provides a comprehensive meta-analysis of the relations between students’ perceived teacher and parent autonomy support and positive learning outcomes by synthesizing 378 effect sizes from 179 independent samples in 153 studies (N = 213,612). We identified six categories that broadly capture positive learning outcomes: autonomous motivation, student behavioral engagement, mastery goal, self-regulated learning, self-beliefs, and academic performance. The findings demonstrate the importance of autonomy support in education contexts. Using correlation coefficients as our effect size index, we found the estimated average effect size of 0.32, with wide between- and within-cluster heterogeneity. The effects of several moderators were examined. The type of learning outcomes and the agent of autonomy support were significant moderators. Gender distribution had a significant moderating effect for teacher autonomy support, when all other moderators were held constant. The higher the percentage of females in the sample, the lower the correlation between teacher autonomy support and learning outcomes. Autonomous motivation, student behavioral engagement, and self-beliefs yielded largest effect sizes in being predicted by autonomy support. Of all learning outcomes, academic performance had the weakest overall relationship with autonomy support. Meta-analytic path analyses suggested that this relationship was partially mediated by other learning outcomes such as autonomous motivation and student engagement. Taken together, these findings provide compelling evidence for the importance of teacher and parent autonomy support for promoting positive learning outcomes in diverse educational settings from elementary school through university.

Research on fraction comparison shows that students often follow biased comparison strategies, in particular such strategies that build on their knowledge of natural numbers. On the other hand they also apply successful comparison strategies such as benchmarking or fraction magnitude processing. Which strategies are applied or even combined depends on the students’ knowledge and on the task type. To investigate these complex relationships, we developed a balanced 2 × 2-dimensional itemset (congruent vs. incongruent items; benchmarking vs. non-benchmarking items) and a Bayesian classification of individual students’ performance (solution patters, response time, and individual distance effect), which we applied to an assessment of N = 350 sixth graders. We could show that the classification of the students with respect to possible solution strategies matched our hypotheses: We could replicate existing patterns and found additional composite strategies such as ‘benchmarking or bias‘ with a bias only in solution rates of non-benchmark items. In further analyses we found ‘benchmarking or suppressed bias-strategies (i.e., a bias in problem solving time of non-benchmarking items). Our study extends previous knowledge on individual strategies in fraction comparison and proposes a new person-centered approach to classify individual student profiles even with small profile sizes.

The relevance of writing motivation to the development of good writing skills throughout schooling is well-documented. However, the relationships between different motivational beliefs and the directionality of their links to writing performance have not been the focus of empirical research. Here, we conducted a longitudinal study examining the reciprocal associations between writing attitudes, writing self-efficacy in three domains (viz., conventions, ideation, and self-regulation), five writing motives (viz., curiosity, emotional regulation, boredom relief, grades, and competition), and writing quality. For that, we asked 532 fourth graders to complete three motivation-related questionnaires and to write two opinion essays. This procedure was repeated one year later. A cross-lagged panel analysis showed three main findings: (a) most motivational beliefs were associated with each other within and between Grades 4 and 5; (b) contrary to what happened in Grade 4, most beliefs in Grade 5 were concurrently associated with writing quality; (c) self-efficacy for writing conventions in Grade 4 longitudinally predicted text quality in Grade 5. These results not only reinforce the relevance of promoting students’ writing motivation, but also inform teachers about where to start in order to achieve this goal.

Video games are increasingly portraying many topics that we face in our everyday lives. Yet we have only limited evidence about the way narrative games affect how we think about the topics they depict; in other words, about the link between these games and attitude change. Therefore, we conducted a meta-analysis of video games’ effect on attitudinal change. The findings suggest that narrative video games affect players’ attitudes towards the topics depicted in games. This effect was present in studies focused on changes in both implicit (g = 0.36, k = 18) and explicit attitudes (g = 0.24, k = 101). Longer intervention duration and game mechanics such as stereotyping and meaningful feedback resulted in larger implicit attitude change. Regarding the robustness of the underlying evidence, half of the included studies were judged to be at high risk of bias. On the other hand, the impact of publication bias in this literature was found to be negligible. Altogether, this meta-analysis provides evidence that video games shape how we think about topics they represent.

Students entering higher education experience significant declines in both performance and motivation. Compulsory foundational gateway courses are an obvious source of difficulty. Low cost at-scale support is much needed during this critical period, but when and how remain open questions. Grade goals and self-efficacy provide short-term motivation, and are among the greatest correlates to achievement in higher education. Furthermore, students’ ongoing development in domain knowledge and interest can also offer insight on the student experience beyond the gateway course. The current study investigated the interplay between performance, short-term, and long-term motivations in a first-year online mathematics course at a research-intensive university in Pacific-Asia. Participants (n = 175) completed a pretest, four formative quizzes, and surveys measuring self-efficacy (beginning, middle, and end) and interest (beginning and end). Participants were randomly assigned to one of control (no explicit instructions), course-grade-goal, or quiz-grade-goal conditions (i.e., explicit instructions to make goal(s) for the overall course or each subsequent quiz respectively, with feedback on each quiz in relation to goals). Analyses included MANOVAs for difference testing, and testing a longitudinal fully-forward (all past variables simultaneously predicting future variables) latent SEM model. In the face of an uncertain context, self-efficacy remained a salient reciprocal predictor of performance, while students’ interest experienced initial dissonance with performance, realigning by the end of the semester. SEM results indicated that participants who set course-level goals had greater middle-of-term self-efficacy, but also lower interest at the end of the course. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Developing critical processing of online information is one important mission of schooling in the 21st century. However, science teachers often lack an instructional tool they can integrate into existing curricula to support students’ information processing. This study aims to examine the efficacy of the Critical Reading of Informational Texts (CRIT) scaffold on students’ critical integrative argumentation - the dialogic process of weighing, evaluating, and integrating scientific claims. The present study documented the design of the CRIT scaffold to support both critical evaluation and integration of online scientific information. Initial efficacy evidence from a cluster-randomized control group study demonstrated that students who used the scaffold produced written task products that had higher overall argumentative quality and were more likely to support evidence-based conclusions about Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs), weigh claims using source and evidence quality, and engage in refutation by countering specific claims based on why they are flawed.

To help students improve their self-monitoring and self-regulation skills, teachers should have an accurate idea of how well students can monitor and regulate their learning. We investigated how accurately primary school teachers can judge their students’ monitoring and regulation accuracy and whether and how student characteristics are related to (the accuracy of) teacher judgments of student monitoring and regulation. Thirty-three teachers, teaching 9––10-year-old students, participated with their classes (N = 495 students). Students completed a multiplication and division task and made monitoring and regulation judgments before and after self-scoring their work. We measured (the accuracy of) teachers’ judgments of their students’ monitoring skills before self-scoring, and of their students’ regulation skills before and after self-scoring. Additionally, we measured teachers’ perceptions of student characteristics (e.g., conscientiousness, general mathematics ability, amount of teacher- student contact). Results showed that the teachers correctly estimated that, in general, their students made quite accurate monitoring and regulation judgments. However, they had difficulties with identifying those students who made substantially inaccurate monitoring and regulation judgments (for whom it is particularly important that the teachers can intervene). When taken together, teachers’ perceptions of student characteristics explained substantial variance in (the accuracy of) teacher judgments of students’ monitoring and regulation skills. Moreover, teacher judgments of students’ monitoring accuracy were more accurate when students were perceived to have learning problems or to be relatively more skilled in mathematics. These findings and measures can ultimately contribute to the design of interventions to help teachers judge and develop their students’ self-regulated learning skills.

School transitions are labeled as challenging events in students’ academic paths likely to affect students’ development and engagement in school negatively. Grounded on extant research advocating the need to act preventively, school-based mentoring programs emerge as responses suited to provide students with developmental and instructional support during school transitions. Using a multivariate mixed-effects model for repeated measures quasi-experimental design, the present study assessed the effectiveness of a 12-session group mentoring program designed to promote fifth-grade students’ self-regulation, school engagement, and goal setting during their first school transition. Participants were 330 fifth graders in four schools randomly assigned to treatment or control conditions. Students’ self-reported measures were collected in four moments. Data were analyzed using a multivariate mixed-effects model for repeated measures analyses with two covariates (age and gender) and considering the students’ level of prior mathematics knowledge. Results indicated that participating in the group mentoring program led to improvements in all dependent variables. The effect size found was large considering all dependent variables simultaneously. However, when considered individually, the effect sizes were medium, small, or null, depending on the dependent variable. Lastly, and contrary to expectations, the effectiveness of our program was not influenced by students’ level of prior mathematics knowledge. The relevance of group mentoring programs in addressing students’ engagement and self-regulation needs is discussed. Future research and educational implications for designing mentoring programs are provided.