Learning and Individual Differences最新文献

This study examined whether performance goal orientations and mindset beliefs explicate the negative relation of ethnic stereotype threat with achievement and whether these processes vary depending on students' membership in a historically minoritized group. Multigroup analyses of undergraduate chemistry students (N = 1376) indicated that perceived ethnic stereotype threat was associated with lower achievement regardless of whether students were from underrepresented minority groups (URM). For URM students, compared to White students, ethnic stereotype threat more strongly predicted performance-avoidance goals. Further, fixed mindset beliefs moderated the relation of ethnic stereotype threat with performance goals for White students only. The relations of stereotype threat with performance goals were stronger for White students with a greater fixed mindset. Findings imply that while ethnic stereotype threat has the potential to detrimentally impact both URM and White students, motivational beliefs may exert somewhat distinct influences within each group, shaping the outcomes of stereotype threat.

Educational relevance

In our society, there are pervasive stereotypes about who can achieve success in competitive fields. Science learning contexts are no exception. In these contexts, and particularly among racially-marginalized students, anxieties about performing poorly and confirming stereotypes are prevalent, resulting in lower achievement for this student group (i.e., stereotype threat). In this study, we examined the consequences of ethnic stereotype threat for racially-marginalized and White students separately. Results revealed that ethnic stereotype threat led to lower science grades for both racially-marginalized and White students. For racially-marginalized students, ethnic stereotype threat also steered them toward goals focused less on growth and learning and more on avoiding looking incompetent to others (i.e., performance-avoidance goals). Further, for White students, a stronger belief that intelligence is fixed and cannot be improved (i.e., fixed mindset belief) exacerbated the negative effects of stereotype threat on their goal orientations, leading them to prioritize appearing intelligent and avoiding seeming incompetent to others. This research highlights the impact of ethnic stereotype threat on marginalized and non-marginalized students' motivational beliefs and achievement.

This longitudinal study investigated to what extent five key social-emotional skills persistence, academic buoyancy, curiosity, social engagement, and lack of loneliness were associated with adolescents' school engagement and burnout at two timepoints. Furthermore, the role of gender and socioeconomic status were examined. The data were collected from 1021 adolescents (ages 12–14) in the fall of 2021 and 2022. The results were analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM) and revealed that, in general, social-emotional skills were associated with higher school engagement and lower burnout among adolescents. Curiosity showed a strong relationship with school engagement. Moreover, persistence was associated with an increase in school engagement among adolescents with low-average socioeconomic status. High academic buoyancy and lack of loneliness were associated with decrease in burnout over the school years. The study implies that recognizing the variety of adolescent's social-emotional skills may help to better support adolescents' school engagement and protect them from burnout.

Educational relevance and implications statement

According to the study findings, social-emotional skills, such as persistence and curiosity, were associated with higher school motivation and lower burnout of adolescents. These results suggest that interventions aiming to develop adolescents' social-emotional skills may promote adolescents' motivation. Supporting adolescents' social relationships in school may also protect adolescents from burning out. To better support adolescent students' motivation and well-being at school it is important to recognize the diversity of individual adolescents' needs and strengths in social-emotional skills. Therefore, sufficient education and training would be needed for teachers concerning the variety of social-emotional skills.

In this study, we explored the relationships among children's creative imagery abilities, their theory of mind (ToM) and loneliness. A large sample (N = 743) of primary school-age children (M age = 9.3 years, SD = 0.45 years) solved two performance tasks (creative imagery and ToM) and provided self-reported frequencies of feelings of loneliness. We tested the fit of a structural equation model with aspects of creative abilities (creative imagery and fluency) as predictors of ToM and examined the links between ToM and the quality of relationships with peers and the frequency of feelings of loneliness. The obtained relationships indicate a positive association between creative imagery and ToM and a negative link between ToM and feelings of loneliness. Consequently, the indirect effect of “creative imagery – ToM – loneliness” was negative, which suggests that creative imagery might serve as a factor that reduces the feeling of loneliness among children due to their ToM. We discuss the potential consequences of these findings and propose future avenues that could be explored to untangle the mechanisms behind the identified links.

Educational relevance and implications statement

In the study, we analysed the relationships among creative abilities, ToM and feelings of loneliness among children of primary school age. Our results show that richer creative imagery is positively associated with abilities to understand others. Moreover, children with advanced ToM feel less lonely at school among peers than those without such levels of ToM. Consequently, we posit that creative imagery might bring some overlooked benefits for children's social functioning, thanks to the role it plays for ToM.

Students routinely compare their achievement across different subjects (dimensional comparison) and against that of their peers (social comparison). Yet, it is unclear how these comparison processes influence their task values (intrinsic, attainment, utility, cost) and the observed gender differences in these values. Utilizing structural equation models, we tested the associations between Grade 7 achievement (in Finnish and math) and Grade 8 task values among 1325 Finnish students (Mage at Grade 7 = 12.8 years, 52 % girls). We observed positive social comparison (within-domain) effects on all value facets, and partial negative dimensional comparison (cross-domain) effects: higher Finnish achievement was associated with lower intrinsic value and higher cost in math. Despite outperforming boys in Finnish and math, girls reported lower intrinsic value and higher cost in math – effects not explained by achievement comparisons. These results imply that task values development may rely on comparisons of other factors beyond individual achievement.

Social engagement skills as capacities for active interpersonal engagement are thought to conceptually differ from behavioral and motivational tendencies and to predict learning and life outcomes. We tested these assumptions on the distinct nature and relevance of social engagement skills. Quota-representative self-reports from 6987 adults in six countries showed strong relations of social engagement skills with personality facets and weaker with vocational interests. Partially supporting their distinctiveness, social engagement skills were not fully reducible to those correlates. Skills predicted self-reported learning, quality-of-life, and job outcomes, but offered little incremental validity beyond personality and interests. Results largely generalized across countries. Yet, the complex interplay between social engagement skills, individual differences, and outcomes demonstrated cross-country variations, suggesting sensitivity to sociocontextual factors. We conclude that while social engagement skills conceptually differ from personality and interests and in themselves predict life success, they add limited empirical value beyond these constructs, at least for self-reports.

Educational relevance statement

Social engagement skills are the capacities to actively engage with others. It is thought that these capacities differ from other person characteristics (e.g., behavioral or motivational tendencies), and that this distinction matters for explaining life success. Our study showed that while self-reported social engagement skills shared similarities with other person characteristics, they still had unique aspects. Moreover, social engagement skills mattered, such that more skilled adults reported higher quality-of-life, but not necessarily better learning. However, social engagement skills did not provide much extra insight into life success beyond what was already known from other person characteristics. Other than the remaining results, these complex relations between social engagement skills, person characteristics, and life success largely varied across countries. The results highlight the importance of assessing social skills in a situation-specific manner, which will be imperative for targeted educational practices in the future. Moreover, our study focused on adults, limiting applicability to youth, but results suggest that intervention efforts targeting social engagement skills may probably yield more interpersonal than academic benefits. Finally, when designing or adapting complex educational programs, practitioners should consider sociocontextual factors.

This study aimed to 1) identify groups of students with different expectancy, intrinsic and utility value, and cost profiles in biology and physics, and 2) to examine group differences in sources of beliefs (gender, students' perceptions of their biology and physics teachers' need-supportive and need-thwarting behavior) and students' learning behavior (reported persistence and use of learning strategies). In total, 1502 eighth and ninth grade students from Estonia filled in questionnaires. With latent profile analysis, four general (Indifferent, Maladaptive, Moderate, and Adaptive) and two subject-specific (Biology-Adaptive and Physics-Adaptive) motivational profiles were identified. These groups differed in gender composition, students' perceptions of their teachers' need-supportive and need-thwarting behavior, task-persistent learning behavior, and reported use of deep learning strategies. The findings suggest that motivation may develop differently within each subject. Examining motivation across two or more subjects adds valuable information about individual differences and has practical implications for supporting motivation in various subjects.

Career development theory identifies two crucial tasks for study choices: self- and environmental exploration and finding a bachelor's program that fits students' characteristics. This study aimed to unravel the intricate relationships between students' study choice process, fit with their bachelor's program, and subsequent academic success. 1965 prospective university students completed questionnaires prior to the start of their bachelor's program. Latent profile analysis identified three study choice profiles: achievement/foreclosure, troubled diffusion, and undifferentiated. Our findings partially supported our hypotheses, indicating that these profiles were connected to satisfaction, which was mediated by students' perceived fit. The model demonstrated moderate relationships between objective fit and both academic achievement and persistence, controlling for high school GPA. The models remained impartial regarding first-generation status, but revealed differences in gender. This study underscores the importance of exploration and commitment-making to ensure better perceived fit and highlights the role of objective fit in ensuring academic success.

Educational relevance & implications

Selecting the right higher education program can be a complicated task, often resulting in dropout rates due to students making incorrect choices. This study emphasises the importance of thorough exploration and commitment making in the decision-making process, as it correlates with a better program fit and higher satisfaction. A strong match between students' interests and the program was associated with higher achievement and persistence. These associations varied between male and female students, but did not differ between first- and continuing-generation students. This research highlights the need to provide tailored support to students during their study choice process, potentially benefiting both secondary and higher education by enhancing study orientation and career education.

This study aimed to better understand the extent of subject specificity in students' engagement across three engagement subdimensions (emotional, behavioral, and cognitive) and over time. We assessed students' engagement in two school subjects (math and German as the language of instruction) at the beginning and end of the first year of upper secondary school (N = 1324). The results of our longitudinal bifactorial modeling showed that the subdimensions had both subject-specific and subject-independent aspects. Emotional engagement was the most subject-specific, and behavioral engagement was the most subject-independent. Subject specificity was higher for math than German and increased over the school year. Furthermore, students' self-concept, self-efficacy beliefs, interest, and grades were more related to subject-specific than subject-independent aspects, especially in math. Our results suggest that it is essential to consider the increasing subject specificity and the variability in subject specificity across dimensions when developing strategies to strengthen students' engagement.

Educational Relevance

Subject-specific engagement is one of the critical factors influencing students' learning and achievement. However, little is known about how subject-specific and how general students' engagement is when they engage in a particular subject. Our study showed that subject specificity is quite high and increases over time. Our results thus encourage teachers to foster students' subject-specific engagement over and above their general tendency to engage at school – and to increase such efforts as students grow older. Given the varying subject specificity of different engagement dimensions, teachers should know that emotional engagement may tip the scales in subject-specific interventions. Separating subject-specific and subject-independent aspects of engagement might support schools in designing more targeted interventions to tackle students' disengagement. It can help to develop strategies that will lead students to become more engaged in individual subjects.

In evaluating competency-based education, effective test instruments must address real-life complexities. The impact of subject-specific, linguistic, and contextual task features, alongside central personal characteristics, on the empirical challenge of such tasks is unclear. We developed mathematics tasks from 30 real-world contexts, each with three questions of varying complexity, administered through a systematically rotated experimental design to 535 German grades 9 and 10 students. Various student variables were collected. Generalized linear mixed models revealed that contextual and mathematical task features significantly contributed to task difficulty variance. Language features had no intermediate-level influence, while students' mathematical self-efficacy moderated low task context familiarity's impact. These findings guide the construction of reality-based mathematics tasks to tailor empirical difficulty.

Educational relevance

In the context of worldwide competence-orientated education, it is crucial to reform in-class and national tests. Traditional task formats are limited in representing authentic problems. In most school subjects, a lack of understanding exists in designing reality-based competence-oriented tasks that ensure fair test conditions and meet the subjects' normative demands. This study addresses this gap by empirically investigating the interplay of subject-related, linguistic, and contextual aspects of reality-based tasks in mathematics. Teachers and researchers can use these insights to improve competence-oriented performance situations, sparking further questions. These findings encourage similar studies across subjects for broader applicability.

Significant resources have been allocated to the development of training programmes designed to enhance executive functions. Recently, digital games have emerged as a promising tool for this purpose. However, the impact of adaptive games, which adjust game difficulty based on the player's performance, on trained and untrained executive functions (i.e., near and far transfer) remains to be investigated. In the present study, 59 young adults participated in an executive function game designed to improve shifting abilities for a total duration of 120 min, distributed over four consecutive days. The differential effects of both an adaptive and a non-adaptive game version on shifting (i.e., near transfer), and updating and inhibition (i.e., far transfer) were examined. The findings indicated that while near and far transfer effects were identified, there were no discernible variations in training outcomes between the two game versions. The present study thus contributes to the expansion of the evidence base in the field of executive function games.