Contemporary Educational Psychology最新文献

There has been growing interest in the relation among students’ perceived teacher support, mathematics learning engagement, and mathematics anxiety in the last decade. Longitudinal models are needed to provide new insights into the role of engagement in mathematics learning. Based on the control-value theory and developmental dynamic bio-psycho-social model of mathematics anxiety, the present study followed 1796 students from Grades 3 to 6 to investigate the longitudinal associations among perceived teacher support and two conceptually distinct dimensions of mathematics anxiety (i.e., mathematics evaluation anxiety and learning mathematics anxiety). We further explored the potential mediator effects of mathematics learning engagement between perceived teacher support and mathematics anxiety. We found bidirectional longitudinal associations between teacher support and learning mathematics anxiety from grade 3 to grade 6, as well as unidirectional longitudinal associations between teacher support and mathematics evaluation anxiety (from mathematics evaluation anxiety to teacher support). Furthermore, mathematics learning engagement mediated the relation between perceived teacher support and mathematics anxiety (including learning mathematics anxiety and mathematics evaluation anxiety). These findings highlight the importance of understanding the dynamic interplay among perceived teacher support, mathematics learning engagement, and mathematics anxiety from a developmental perspective.

Teachers’ mental health has been recognized as relevant to teacher effectiveness, with past work identifying impacts of teachers’ mental health on teacher, classroom, and student outcomes. However, much still needs to be understood about the extent to which teachers’ mental health is associated with students’ learning experiences, including in which learning contexts and among which student groups effects might surface most pointedly. We investigated associations among fourth grade teachers’ (N = 65) self-reported depressive and anxious symptomatology and their students’ (N = 805) self-reported behavioral engagement in mathematics, science, and English language arts and whether these associations varied for students based on their enrollment status in a Free and Reduced Meal (FARM) program, a broad indicator of economic disadvantage. Multilevel modeling revealed interaction effects such that, among disadvantaged students, teachers’ depressive symptoms were associated with decreased mathematics and science engagement. Results highlight the importance of providing mental health support for teachers, as well highlight teachers’ well-being as relevant to issues of equity in elementary STEM education.

In today’s fast-paced digital world, keyboard-based writing has become a key component of daily communication, with students engaging in keyboarding early in their school trajectories. Nonetheless, there’s a lack of systematic studies investigating individual-level factors impacting keyboard-based writing and relationships with the writing instruction typically provided in primary school settings. Using multilevel modelling the current study examined student-level predictors of keyboard-based writing quality and fluency in Year 2 Australian children (N = 544), including keyboarding automaticity, spelling, reading skills, executive functioning, writing attitudes, gender; and classroom-level (N = 47) variables predicting keyboard-based writing, such as teachers’ preparation and instructional practices for writing. Results revealed that keyboarding automaticity, spelling, word reading, general attitudes toward writing, and gender were uniquely related to compositional quality. Keyboarding automaticity, word reading, and gender were also uniquely related to compositional fluency. Results also showed that female students outperformed their male peers in keyboarding automaticity, compositional quality and fluency, but also on attitudes toward writing and reading comprehension. For classroom-level factors, findings showed time teaching keyboarding positively related to compositional fluency and time teaching handwriting negatively related to compositional quality and fluency. Interactions were also found between gender and time teaching keyboarding, teaching revision and planning strategies, and specific student-level factors. The novel findings from this study suggest that, to support Year 2 students’ keyboard-based writing, attention must be placed on multiple components predicting students’ writing performance.

Within the framework of a generalized internal/external frame of reference model, influences of social and dimensional comparisons of academic achievement on the formation of subject-specific values (or related constructs) are empirically well documented for secondary school students. Furthermore, a wide range of theories also hypothesize an effect of subject-specific self-concepts on values. Accordingly, prior studies suggested a mediating effect of self-concepts on the achievement–value relationship. However, these studies have been limited to two school subjects or exclusively math and science subjects. Based on data from N = 1,339 ninth- through twelfth-grade students, we extended prior research by relating students’ grades in mathematics, physics, social studies, German, English, and the second foreign language to value scores in these subjects; subject-specific self-concepts were included as mediators. Our results support the hypothesis of a full mediation of the relationship between grades and values through self-concepts. Additional analyses showed a comparable fit between a mediation model with direct paths from grades to values and a mediation model without these direct paths. We discuss which subject-specific self-concepts are the most important mediators for the achievement–value relationship and the importance of self-concepts for forming values above grades.

In the present study, we examined the rate of change among college students’ (N = 429) competence beliefs, interest value, importance value, and four facets of cost measured weekly across a semester of two introductory calculus courses. We also examined how baseline levels of expectancy-value motivational beliefs predicted initial levels and rates of change in weekly expectancy-value beliefs. Results suggested that competence-related beliefs, interest value, and importance value decreased weekly throughout the semester, whereas outside effort and loss of valued alternatives cost increased. Additionally, baseline levels of each task-value-related construct predicted initial weekly levels of their respective constructs, but did not generally predict changes in task values over time. Conversely, baseline competence-related beliefs predicted slower declines in weekly competence-related beliefs, as well as slower declines in importance value and slower increases in outside effort cost, loss of valued alternatives cost, and emotional cost. Finally, baseline importance value predicted larger increases in weekly cost beliefs for all four dimensions of cost that were examined. Together, findings point to the importance of providing early course supports to buffer students against motivational challenges that threaten course participation and performance. Findings also suggest that students’ initial levels of competence-related beliefs are an important buffer against introductory course motivation declining across a semester, whereas initial importance value may have both positive and negative motivational consequences.

Unproctored exams have been increasingly adopted by universities globally to assess students’ learning and prevent cheating. Different forms of honor code reminders have been implemented with such exams, but no empirical research has directly compared their effectiveness in promoting academic honesty. To bridge this significant gap and inform educational practices for promoting optimal learning, we examined cheating among university students taking an unproctored exam in two field studies. Both studies used a double-blind randomized controlled design. Prior to the exam, students were provided with no reminders of academic integrity policies (most common in unproctored exams) or reminders of policies, actual cases of cheating, or negative consequences of cheating. Reminding students about academic integrity policies, actual cases of academic cheating, and the negative consequences of cheating led to significantly less cheating than providing students with no reminders. The present findings suggest that although university students may have been informed about academic integrity policies upon entry and have experienced unproctored exams, they need a brief reminder to ensure honesty just before taking them. Our findings also illustrate the importance of conducting well-controlled behavioral research that evaluates, in the field, the effectiveness of commonly implemented educational practices to ascertain that they indeed serve their designed pedagogical purposes to promote learning optimally.

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.

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.

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.

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.