Learning and Individual Differences最新文献

According to the emerging dimensional framework, most neurodevelopmental disorders may be conceptualised as extreme ends of developmental continua that span through the entire population (e.g., Astle et al., 2022; Peters & Ansari, 2019). This framework describes not only learning difficulties, but potentially most neurodiversity as the result of individuals being distributed along a manifold of variously correlated and continuous dimensions, that span from neurotypicality to neurodivergence in a largely seamless way. In this, a heterogeneous range of conditions may easily be reframed as part of the general variability in the population, rather than as segmented subpopulations with qualitatively different features. In the present editorial, we discuss this framework with reference to the field of learning disorders and difficulties. We will repeatedly refer to the suggestions made by Astle et al. (2022) in their review on the “transdiagnostic revolution” of neurodevelopmental disorders. The research program that they advocate has two methodological tenets: investigating underlying continuous dimensions (dimensional framework), and exploring clustering (with an eye to potentially developing new data-driven taxonomies). Here, we mainly endorse adopting a dimensional framework, at least in the field of learning disorders, while we raise some cautionary notes on the risks of clustering. We also discuss open issues related to recruiting participants, improving psychometrics tools, and discovering cognitive and non-cognitive correlates of conditions when it comes to studying learning difficulties and learning disorders.

Distance learning during the COVID-19 pandemic has been associated with different levels of achievement emotions than the usual contact learning. On the other hand, students' overall performance is also connected to their achievement emotions. However, it has not been known how the association between learning environment and emotions varies according to students' level of mathematical performance. This study examined whether students' achievement emotions (enjoyment, pride, anxiety, boredom, anger, and shame) differed between contact and distance learning across students with different performance levels in mathematics. The sample comprised 1310 Finnish upper secondary school students. Using linear mixed effects modelling, we observed that higher-performing students reported more negative emotions and lower-performing students reported less anxiety in distance learning compared to contact learning. Changes in the learning environment seem to affect students of different performance levels differently, which should be considered when planning distance learning.

With this study, we aimed to expand the understanding of gender differences in students' self-concepts in math and German. To this end, we investigated the roles of students' self-attributions and their perceptions of parents' and teachers' attributions for success and failure in math and German in predicting students' self-concepts. Also, we controlled for students' achievement and included social and dimensional comparison effects (I/E model and DCT). In a cross-sectional design, a sample of N = 723 eighth graders (age M = 14.23, SD = 0.68) self-reported their self-concepts and grades in math and German. Moreover, students indicated their beliefs on how much they, their parents, and their teachers think that their abilities are responsible for their successes and failures in math and German. We found gender differences in students' self-concepts and ability attributions in favor of boys in math and girls in German. Furthermore, we found that, beyond grades, concurrent predictions of students' self-concepts from students' self- and perceived attributions depended on gender. Whereas ability attributions for success in math predicted only boys' self-concepts, ability attributions for failure in math predicted only girls' self-concepts. Moreover, dimensional comparison effects of achievement on self-concepts emerged only for math, but not for German (for both genders). Perceptions of parents' and teachers' attributions predicted students' self-concepts mainly via students' own attributions. Our findings demonstrate the potential importance of attributions for students' self-concepts. Implications for future educational and psychological research and practice are discussed.

This study examined the relationship between affect and creative behavior in a national sample of U.S. workers across industries (N = 12,743). Affect was assessed using open-ended questions and emotion rating scales. Those who spontaneously described only negative affect at work showed less creative behavior than those who used only positive terms (moderate effect size). Differences between those who described mixed and positive only affect were small. Examining ratings of affect frequency, we identified four profiles of positive and negative activated affect (high positive/low negative, low positive/high negative, high positive/high negative, low positive/low negative activated affect). Creative behavior was highest in the high positive/low negative activated affect profile, followed by high positive/high negative activated affect (small difference). Creativity support and creativity demand moderated the relationship between affect profiles and creative behavior. We discuss implications for understanding creators and contexts in relation to creative behavior.

Educational relevance and implications statement

This study has implications for how we teach about affect and creativity. Results show that when creativity is required and when there is support for creativity, those who experience high positive activated/low negative activated affect and those who experience high positive activated/high negative activated affect show similarly high creativity. Teaching about emotions and creativity should stress that both positive and negative activated moods can be related to creative behavior.

We measured expectancy, value, and cost 10 times over a 10-week introductory statistics course (N = 219) to examine their overall trajectory as well as individual (between-student) differences and situational (within-student) variability. First, our findings revealed an initial decline in expectancy and value and an initial increase in cost. Second, expectancy, utility value, and cost demonstrated individual and situational variability of comparable size, while intrinsic value had higher individual variability. Third, individual and situational variability in expectancy and value predicted variability in performance. Lastly, the relation of situational variability in expectancy and utility value with performance was stronger for Black, Latinx, and other racially marginalized students than for White/Asian students. Our findings provide empirical evidence for the situational nature of motivational beliefs and have implications for practitioners, course curriculum designers, and policymakers who aim to create more supportive and motivation-enhancing environments, particularly for statistics courses and students from racially marginalized and underserved backgrounds.

Educational relevance and implications statement

The aim of this research was to better understand the dynamic and situational nature of motivational beliefs (expectancy, value, and cost) in a college statistics course by measuring them 10 times over a 10-week term in an introductory statistics course. We found an initial decline in expectancy for success and values for statistics and an initial increase in perceived cost. We also found these beliefs fluctuated depending on the learning situation, which in turn, predicted their performance in that situation. Lastly, for students from racially marginalized and underserved groups (e.g., Black, Latinx, and Native-American students), we found that the learning situation played a key role in influencing their motivational beliefs and performance, highlighting the importance of taking the learning context into account when designing motivation-enhancing environments for students in statistics courses. These findings have implications for practice in that they (a) allow curriculum developers to redesign certain chapters based on motivational declines, and (b) help us identify the student groups whose motivational beliefs varies the most with contextual factors, and as such, any context-relevant interventions for creating more equitable learning contexts that support students of all backgrounds, particularly those who are historically marginalized by our education systems.

The regulation of motivation is considered a key aspect of self-regulated learning (SRL) as it is presumed that maintaining an adequate level of motivation is essential for engagement, effort and persistence in academic tasks. In this review, we aimed to improve our understanding of motivational regulation strategies, their supposed antecedents and the educational implications. A search was conducted in Web of Science, Scopus, PsycInfo, and ERIC databases. Of 4027 records identified, 64 (75 studies) were deemed eligible after inclusion and exclusion criteria were applied and studies with low methodological quality were discarded. Data on 18 different motivational regulation strategies were available. Extrinsic/controlling types of strategies were reported to be used more frequently than intrinsic/autonomous strategies. Motivational regulation strategies were significantly associated with metamotivational beliefs, academic skills and adjustment. Available evidence supports assumptions of theoretical models on antecedents and academic implications of motivational self-regulation.

Educational impact and implications statement

The present study provides a compendium of the different motivational self-regulation strategies studied to date, describes the nature of these and unifies the different denominations used. The available evidence on the frequency of use of the different strategies that has been collected may be useful for educators, enabling them to anticipate and adapt to the status of the different motivational facets in students. Drawing on theoretical models of motivational self-regulation, the interconnections between the use of the strategies and their supposed antecedents and the expected educational implications were explored. This will provide researchers and educators with an interpretive framework to draw upon when adapting to interindividual diversity in strategy use and when assessing the compatibility between educational practices and the efficient use and training of motivational strategies.

Despite the increasing importance of mathematical creativity, it is still largely unclear which variables contribute to performance in mathematical creativity tasks. While there is some evidence that mathematical achievement is positively related to creativity, our understanding of the relevance of personality traits and creative self-beliefs is limited. Therefore, this study examined the relationship between mathematical creativity, mathematical abilities, personality traits, and creative self-beliefs among 167 university students. The findings revealed that mathematical creativity was positively associated with arithmetic fluency, creative self-efficacy, and self-rated mathematical creativity skills. The assessed variables could explain 27 % of the variance. Personality traits did not exhibit significant associations, contrary to expectations based on domain-general creativity research. Notably, the correlation between creative self-beliefs and creativity measures was higher when self-beliefs were assessed after the creativity measure. This study contributes to our understanding of mathematical creativity but underscores that further research in this area is necessary.

Educational relevance and implications statement

Creativity has been recognized as a key competence and one of the most important skills for success in the 21st century, especially creativity in the domain of mathematics. This study examined which factors can explain individual differences in mathematical creativity. Evaluating the relevance of mathematical abilities, personality traits, and creative self-beliefs, we found that some aspects of mathematical abilities (i.e., arithmetic fluency) and creative self-beliefs (i.e., self-rated creativity) were positively associated with mathematical creativity while several personality traits were not important. Understanding mathematical creativity and its relations is the first step toward fostering mathematical creativity in education.

In two interventions, 139 and 52 preschool children, age 4–6, from low-SES communities in Sweden, used a play-&-learn game in early mathematics for 10 weeks, about 20 min at a time. 50 % of the participating children were Swedish second language speakers with low language proficiency and about 20 % had learning vulnerabilities in the form of developmental language disorders and neurocognitive diagnoses. In contrast to teachers' predictions ahead of the interventions, game log data and teacher observations regarding children's sustained attention and perseverance – core elements of ‘learning-related behaviors’ – suggest that a majority of children, including children with reported learning difficulties, did well with respect to sustained attention and perseverance. It is proposed that the interventions allowed children with learning difficulties to demonstrate – and practice – these skills to a larger degree than expected. A relative difference in outcome between the two interventions is interpreted as an effect of differences in structured guidance and scaffolding by teachers and peers.

Educational relevance statement

The two intervention studies reported in the paper engaged preschool children, age 4–6, in using a play-&-learn educational game in early mathematics for 10 weeks, about 20 min at a time. The children were from environments with low SES indexes. A substantial part of the participants were Swedish second language speakers with low language proficiency and some children had different neurocognitive diagnoses. Ahead of the intervention studies teachers raised doubts regarding the intervention setup, predicting that many children would not be able to stay sufficiently focused on the learning activities. Teachers also predicted that many children would have difficulties to engage in the learning activities as long as 20 min and to hold out all through the intervention period. In contrast to the predictions the data suggests that a majority of the children – including children with learning difficulties – managed well. Specifically, most of the children who encountered substantial challenges in gameplay, again including children with learning difficulties, showed high degrees of perseverance as well as sustained attention. In practical terms the results, together with similar and related results, suggest that high-quality early math activities can have a dual benefit and promote not only growth of math skills, but also growth of central basic skills such as perseverance and sustained attention. With the pressure many preschool teachers experience regarding pedagogical requirements, it may ease their burden to know that growth of more than one important skill can be targeted by one and the same intervention.

The home literacy environment (HLE) is critical to children's language and literacy development. Most prior research has not investigated different facets of HLE or considered both maternal and paternal influences on children's language and literacy skills. This study examined the relationships between multiple aspects of HLE and children's language and literacy growth trajectories. Two-hundred-and-twenty-six Chinese preschool children and their fathers and mothers participated. Results showed that the frequency of mother-child literacy teaching activities was associated with the initial level, linear growth, and quadratic growth of children's word reading skills. Paternal expectations were associated with the initial level of word reading skills. Paternal attitudes were associated with the linear growth of children's word reading skills. However, none of the studied HLE factors was associated with the initial level or growth rates of children's receptive vocabulary. These findings underscore the unique contributions of different HLEs offered by fathers and mothers to children's literacy development.

Educational relevance statement

Understanding the unique contributions of different aspects of home literacy environments offered by fathers and mothers to preschool children's language and literacy development can inform the design of effective language- and literacy-related interventions for these children. Our findings suggest that mother-child literacy teaching activities contribute uniquely to the initial performance and growth of, but slower acceleration in growth rates in, children's word reading performance. These findings suggest that literacy teaching resources can be offered to facilitate parent-child literacy teaching activities, especially those between mothers and children so as to enhance children's reading skills. However, caution should be raised about the long-term effectiveness of formal home literacy activities. Our results reveal that paternal expectations for their children's literacy development and paternal attitudes towards reading are predictive of children's word reading performance. Educators and researchers can devote efforts to enhancing parental literacy-related expectations and attitudes, particularly among fathers, while being aware of the excessive expectations which may increase pressure on children.

Approaches to fostering deeper learning in secondary education are increasing in popularity, yet little is known about the long-term effects of deeper learning attendance for underrepresented learners. This study examined the long-term associations among attendance at a deeper learning secondary school, self-regulated learning beliefs, content knowledge, and four-year postsecondary persistence and degree attainment. Based on a sample of students (N = 534) matched on demographic and academic characteristics, we also tested whether these associations varied for first-generation students. Results provided evidence of positive pathways to persistence and degree attainment primarily through self-efficacy and content knowledge for the matched sample, and revealed specific, facilitative effects for first-generation students. Deeper learning was positively linked to both persistence and degree attainment through reading content knowledge for first-generation students. Findings indicate specific mechanisms by which deeper learning strategies may promote positive secondary and postsecondary outcomes for first-generation students and highlight areas for further study.

Educational relevance and implications statement

Researchers and practitioners have increasingly turned to pedagogical approaches that foster learners' academic mindsets and self-regulated learning beliefs. Active instructional approaches may be beneficial for students who are commonly underrepresented in postsecondary settings. This study examined the effects of attending a deeper learning school on students' self-regulated learning beliefs, measures of academic achievement, and their persistence at and graduation from a four-year college. We specifically examined whether attending a deeper learning school that implemented explicit strategies for promoting cognitive and intrapersonal skills was beneficial for first-generation students. We found that attending a deeper learning school had positive effects on students' self-efficacy beliefs, which in turn promoted content knowledge in reading, mathematics, and science. First-generation students attending a deeper learning school performed better on a measure of reading knowledge, and this effect was associated with higher persistence and degree attainment compared with first-generation students who did not attend a deeper learning school. Our findings suggest that deeper learning strategies may be an effective instructional approach to promoting students' self-regulated learning beliefs, and that first-generation students may benefit specifically from these strategies in the area of reading.