European Journal of Psychology of Education最新文献

The current study analysed the relationships between socio-economic status, migration background, and non-cognitive factors and PISA reading and mathematics achievement. The results from multi-level analyses on Sweden’s PISA survey from 2018 indicate that both mathematics achievement and reading achievement are affected by SES, migration background, reading abilities, growth mindset, and the ability to master the content. Between-school level differences are explained by reading motivation and the mother’s educational level. Our findings stress the importance of both socio-demographic, socio-economic, and non-cognitive factors such as reading self-concept and growth mindset for both mathematics achievement and reading achievement.

Understanding math and the ability to use math in various situations can greatly contribute to a successful life. Different math skills are of importance for understanding and supporting math ability. In addition, math interest may influence math ability. We investigated the relationship between math conceptual and procedural skills, their development over time, and the relation to math interest in Grades three and five. Participants in the study were Estonian students (N = 855), who were in Grade three (2019/2020) during the first testing and in Grade five (2021/2022) during the second testing. Students completed math competence testing which consisted of procedural and conceptual skill tasks and a questionnaire about math interest. Both person- and variable-oriented approaches were used in the analyses. Students’ math conceptual and procedural skills in Grades three and five were moderately related to each other. Furthermore, based on latent profile analysis, three profiles of skills were identified in both grades, distinguishing between students with low, average, and high levels of skills in both skills, with the exception of an approximately average-skill group in Grade five that had low conceptual skills but average procedural skills. Students were likely to remain in similar-skill groups for both Grades three and five. Lastly, there was a significant difference in math interest in Grade three among the groups with stable low, stable average, and stable high skills from Grades three to five. Fostering interest in math may be beneficial for achieving a high level of math proficiency. Future research should prioritize the integration of person-oriented methods into studies aimed at enhancing understanding of math skill development.

This research investigates the role of reinforcement sensitivity theory (RST) in statistics education among two distinct samples of undergraduate psychology students. In Study 1, 318 students in a third-year statistics course completed self-report measures of RST, anxiety, attitudes, and self-efficacy concerning the study of statistics. In Study 2, 577 students from first-, second-, and third-year statistics courses participated. Controlling for age and gender, both studies found students who were high in goal-drive persistence reported lower statistics anxiety, higher statistics self-efficacy and more favourable attitudes toward learning statistics, while students who were high in the tendency to avoid threat reported higher statistics anxiety. Those with a more sensitive behavioural inhibition system reported greater statistics anxiety and less favourable attitudes, in Study 2 but not Study 1. Results indicate that RST dimensions account for as much as 23% of additional variance in statistics anxiety, 18% in statistics self-efficacy, and 11% in attitudes, after controlling for age and gender. These studies highlight the utility of RST dimensions, notably goal-drive persistence, threat sensitivity, and behavioural inhibition, in providing critical information as to personality differences among students that need to be considered when developing programs targeting statistics anxiety, attitudes, and self-efficacy.

This study aimed to ascertain the contribution of children’s effortful control (EC) to math achievement by testing the mediational involvement of math anxiety. Participants were 704 children (367 girls) aged between 7 and 12 years (M = 9.43, SD = 1.23). Children’s EC was measured by parent’s report, math anxiety was assessed through self-report, whereas math achievement was evaluated by performance on standard math tests. The models tested involved EC higher-order factor or specific EC components (activation control, attentional focusing, and inhibitory control). The results showed that activation control, attentional focusing, and EC higher-order factor contributed to math performance directly and through the mediation of math anxiety. Inhibitory control did not yield a significant effect on math performance. The findings suggest that children with higher dispositional effortful self-regulation tend to experience lower levels of math anxiety, with positive effects on math performance.

Media literacy has been gaining traction as a part of higher education curricula to support learning as educational institutions are recognizing the importance of developing students’ media literacy skills. However, students’ emotional reactions towards media literacy can be vastly different and, in turn, may impact their perception of truth and credibility of mixed media messages. In this study, we explored 68 non-health professions university students’ unique emotional profiles towards media literacy. We further examined whether students with different emotional profiles would differ in their credibility ratings (truthfulness, trustworthiness, and believability) of media messages that were drawn from mainstream and fake news sources. We also investigated the relationship between emotion profiles and emotional reactions towards mainstream versus fake news messages. We employed a probabilistic, latent clustering approach, latent profiling analysis (LPA), to generate latent categories of emotion profiles. LPA revealed four distinct emotion profiles that students endorsed: (1) low emotions, (2) moderate emotions, (3) high negative emotions, and (4) high positive emotions towards learning media literacy. Additional findings revealed that students with a low emotional profile tended to rate all media messages as more truthful, trustworthy, and believable than other emotion groups. Moreover, we identified that students in the moderate emotions and high negative emotions group rated fake messages with more positive emotions. This study offers insight towards the significance of understanding how emotions towards media literacy can impact the outcomes of media perception. This is an important step that will encourage educators to develop more engaging media literacy instruction and interventions.

The present study investigated multilevel models posited to predict student approaches to homework. Participants were 1,072 middle school students in China. Results revealed that deep and surface approaches were positively associated with performance-approach. Furthermore, deep approach to homework was associated negatively with homework cost, yet positively with mastery-approach, homework expectancy, and prior knowledge. Surface approach to homework was associated positively with homework cost and parent education, yet negatively with homework expectancy and mastery-approach. Females were less likely to use surface approach to homework than males. At the class level, surface approach to homework was negatively associated with parent education. Implications for homework practice and future investigation are discussed in terms of these results.

Research has shown that some students who underperform in mathematics overestimate their performance, while others who excel in mathematics underestimate it. Looking at this mismatch of performance and confidence judgement—the Dunning–Kruger effect (DKE)—the current study investigates how well students’ confidence judgement and item-specific mathematics competence relate with each other and whether such a relationship differs across six European countries (i.e., Norway, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Serbia and Portugal). We also examine whether perceived competence, mathematics identity, gender, socioeconomic status and immigration background predict this mismatch and whether these demographic factors function differently between the examined countries. The results show that the DKE could be found across grades three and four in all six countries. However, there are country-specific patterns regarding the relationship between performance, mathematics identity and perceived competence; the DKE; and how different demographic variables predict its occurrences in particular subpopulations.

Aim

The aim of this study is to determine how students believe their learning-related experiences (i.e., attention, affect, and time perception) have changed over the course of the pandemic.

Subject and methods

This study documented students’ (N_analyzed = 191) relative judgments of change between their current experiences (measured April 2022) and their remembered experiences from three different timepoints: (1) before the pandemic-related restrictions (before March 2020; pre-restriction), (2) immediately after the restrictions were implemented (spring 2020; early restriction), and (3) immediately after they were lifted (~ winter/spring 2022; post-restriction). This study also captured how students predicted their experiences would change in the future.

Results and conclusion

Roughly 2 years after pandemic-related restrictions were introduced, students reported perceiving reductions in their attention, affect, and time-perception compared to their remembered pre- and early restriction learning-related experiences. They also reported perceived reductions in their attention and affect even as pandemic-related restrictions were beginning to lift, though these declines were slightly attenuated. Regarding the future, students were optimistic that their learning-related experiences would improve in the coming months. These findings can support the creation of future approaches targeting the improvement of attention, affect, and productivity in learning and performance-based environments.

Personal values are broad motivational goals that have been found to have systematic relations with subjective wellbeing in adults. Values that promote higher subjective wellbeing are considered healthy while those that hamper it are considered unhealthy (Schwartz & Sortheix, 2018). However, little is known about these relations in children. This pre-registered study examined (1) whether the values of children (6 to 12 years of age) relate to their subjective wellbeing and (2) whether these relations are moderated or mediated by perceived social support from parents, teachers, classmates, and close friends. These research questions were examined with a sample of 738 primary school students (50% female). Our results show that healthy growth values were positively related to subjective wellbeing overall, and for the subgroups of girls and children 9 to 12 years but not boys and children 6 to 8 years; however, unhealthy anxiety values were only negatively associated with subjective wellbeing for girls. While perceived social support partially mediated relations between growth values and subjective wellbeing, the direct values-wellbeing relations accounted for over half the variance. Interestingly, this study also found that growth values positively, and anxiety values negatively, influenced perceived social support from all referents. While perceived social support did not moderate values-wellbeing relations in the overall sample, differences were found in the way perceived social support moderated these relations in some age and gender subgroups. Taken together, these findings suggest that healthy growth values positively influence subjective wellbeing in middle childhood, even after accounting for perceived social support.

Research examining the joint relationships between test anxiety, metacognition, and mathematics achievement revealing the mediational role of metacognition in the relationship between test anxiety and mathematics achievement is sparse. A mediation study was designed to redress this imbalance. The Children’s Test Anxiety Scale (CTAS), Junior Metacognitive Awareness Inventory (Jr. MAI), and Mathematics Achievement Test (MAT) were distributed to 943 (442 males and 501 females) Grade 7 (n = 477) and Grade 8 (n = 466) students aged between 11–12 (M_age = 11.5, SD = .88) and 11–13 (M_age = 12, SD = .91) years, respectively. In this study, multiple mediation models were tested to explore the role of metacognition as a mediator of the effect of test anxiety on mathematics achievement. Results indicate that although both test anxiety and metacognition were significantly related to mathematics achievement, metacognition was not a statistically significant mediator in the relationship between test anxiety and mathematics achievement. Specifically, the knowledge of cognition component of metacognition was the only significant mediator, mediating the relationship between off-task behaviors and mathematics achievement. Findings support the beneficial role of metacognition with the rewarding side of a key implication that without developing metacognitive knowledge, efforts at alleviating test anxiety to maximize achievement in mathematics may well be fruitless. Educational and practical implications are discussed.