Educational Psychology Review最新文献

The nurturing of learners’ ways of knowing is vital for supporting their intellectual growth and their participation in democratic knowledge societies. This paper traces the development of two interrelated theoretical frameworks that describe the nature of learners’ epistemic thinking and performance and how education can support epistemic growth: the AIR and Apt-AIR frameworks. After briefly reviewing these frameworks, we discuss seven reflections on educational theory development that stem from our experiences working on the frameworks. First, we describe how our frameworks were motivated by the goal of addressing meaningful educational challenges. Subsequently, we explain why and how we infused philosophical insights into our frameworks, and we also discuss the steps we took to increase the coherence of the frameworks with ideas from other educational psychology theories. Next, we reflect on the important role of the design of instruction and learning environments in testing and elaborating the frameworks. Equally important, we describe how our frameworks have been supported by empirical evidence and have provided an organizing structure for understanding epistemic performance exhibited in studies across diverse contexts. Finally, we discuss how the development of the frameworks has been spurred by dialogue within the research community and by the need to address emerging and pressing real-world challenges. To conclude, we highlight several important directions for future research. A common thread running through our work is the commitment to creating robust and dynamic theoretical frameworks that support the growth of learners’ epistemic performance in diverse educational contexts.

Spatial skills can predict mathematics performance, with many researchers investigating how and why these skills are related. However, a literature review on spatial ability revealed a multiplicity of spatial taxonomies and analytical frameworks that lack convergence, presenting a confusing terrain for researchers to navigate. We expose two central challenges: (1) many of the ways spatial ability is defined and subdivided are often not based in well-evidenced theoretical and analytical frameworks, and (2) the sheer variety of spatial assessments. These challenges impede progress in designing spatial skills interventions for improving mathematics thinking based on causal principles, selecting appropriate metrics for documenting change, and analyzing and interpreting student outcome data. We offer solutions by providing a practical guide for navigating and selecting among the various major spatial taxonomies and instruments used in mathematics education research. We also identify current limitations of spatial ability research and suggest future research directions.

The complexity of modern societies necessitates that children learn highly abstract material, such as mathematics, which often conflicts with behavioral goals that are innately motivating. For instance, children’s educational success is generally evaluated based on their individual achievements, while humans are motivated to learn by engaging in socially relevant behaviors. Additionally, science-related content typically requires higher-level abstract thinking to comprehend related concepts and perform the underlying cognitive processes, whereas humans evolved primarily to monitor and manipulate the physical environment by moving within it to execute foraging and hunting behaviors. Moreover, school systems inherently prescribe top-down strategies in which teachers transfer knowledge by providing instructions to guide students' knowledge acquisition. By contrast, humans evolved to learn through bottom-up processes motivated by the learner's internal drive to explore their physical and social environment. As a consequence, skeletal cognitive competencies that evolved throughout human history create a mismatch between why children are motivated to learn and how they are expected to learn. This review adopts an evolutionary perspective to examine how the interplay between students’ internal physiological and psychological adaptations and external instructional methods of modern educational systems impacts motivation and learning. Ultimately, the review offers suggestions on how to motivate the learning process by integrating self-determination theory principles into a dynamical systems framework.

None of the existing reviews or meta-analyses have focused on personalized learning that accommodates learners’ interests. To address this issue, we conducted this meta-analysis to examine the effects of personalized learning by interest on self-reports of interest and cognitive load, retention, and transfer, as well as potential moderators of these effects. Based on 26 interest effect sizes (n = 5,335), 8 cognitive load effect sizes (n = 1,228), 46 retention effect sizes (n = 5,991), and 6 transfer effect sizes (n = 375) from 34 publications, our analysis revealed that a) personalized learning by interest had a medium-to-large effect on interest (g = 0.55), a medium-to-large effect on cognitive load (g = 0.54), a medium effect on retention (g = 0.48), and a medium effect on transfer (g = 0.36); b) the effect on interest was moderated by the diagnostic approach, grain size, and the domain, c) the effect on retention varied across learners from different continents, and d) the effect on retention was larger for quasi-experimental studies than experimental studies. Results are discussed in terms of their implications, limitations, and potential to inform future research.

This is a systematic review of empirical studies on graduate students’ research motivation, a key factor for improving their research performance. A total of 57 articles and conference papers between 1993 and 2023 were identified through the thorough search process and quality assessment, and their research categories and themes, theories, and methodologies were synthesized. Based on this review, a Graduate Students’ Research Motivation Model (GSRMM) was constructed, highlighting three main categories: antecedents, consequences, and mediating roles of graduate students’ research motivation. The results of the study showed that manipulable antecedents have been extensively explored, but immutable antecedents, consequences, and the mediating roles of research motivation remain underexplored. Self-efficacy theory emerged as the dominant framework in the existing studies. Quantitative research design by means of self-report questionnaires dominated the current studies, which warrants a move towards alternative research measurements. This comprehensive review provides a deeper understanding of graduate students’ research motivation and also suggests new avenues for further exploration in this field.

Research suggests that providing children with activities that involve using their bodies to form the shapes of letters can help them acquire pre-reading skills. Little is known, however, as to the extent to which such embodied learning interventions are superior to more traditional pencil-and-paper activities, which of specific arm or body movements are most effective, and whether this approach compensates or exacerbates the learning gap between high- and low-skilled pre-readers. Using a preregistered randomized-controlled experiment (N = 160 kindergarten students, M = 5.18 years, 54% girls), the present study assessed the educational effects of 6-week-long training sessions with increasing degrees of bodily movement integration (pencil-and-paper training vs. arm training vs. arm-body training) on five measures of letter knowledge and script. Aligning with theories of embodied cognition and cognitive load in instructional designs, results showed that integrating arm movement exercises into handwriting training bore the greatest acquisitions in pre-reading skills overall and were most beneficial to students with initially low pre-reading skills (compensatory effect against learning inequalities). Implications are drawn on the need to consolidate and replicate present findings, while highlighting their potential for supporting educational effectiveness and equity in kindergarten.

Academic adjustment is an important task for students, traditionally encompassing three major constructs: academic motivation (e.g., academic self-efficacy), engagement (e.g., persistence with schoolwork), and achievement (e.g., grade point average). Although theoretical links between parent–child attachment and academic adjustment have been proposed, comprehensive meta-analyses investigating this relationship are lacking. To achieve a more thorough understanding, we incorporated data from children and adolescents, considering both categorical and continuous attachment measures. Through a series of multilevel meta-analyses, we examined the magnitude of the relationship between parent–child attachment and academic achievement, motivation, and engagement. We retrieved 178 effect sizes from 45 studies assessing 47 independent samples (53,619 students) through a systematic literature search. The key findings are as follows: attachment security was positively related to academic achievement (r = .132), while attachment insecurity, whether avoidant (r = − .154) or anxious (r = − .081) attachment, was negatively associated with academic achievement. Moreover, attachment security was positively related to motivation (r = .161) and engagement (r = .229). Notably, the type of attachment measures moderated the association between attachment security and academic achievement. In addition, gender was found to moderate the association between attachment security and academic motivation. Our findings are crucial for understanding the association between parent–child attachment and academic adjustment.

The concept of growth mindset—an individual’s beliefs that basic characteristics such as intelligence are malleable—has gained immense popularity in research, the media, and educational practice. Even though it is assumed that teachers need a growth mindset and that both teachers and their students benefit when teachers adopt a growth mindset, systematic syntheses of the potential advantages of a growth mindset in teachers are lacking. Therefore, in this article, we present the first meta-analysis on teachers’ growth mindset and its relationships with multiple outcomes (50 studies, 81 effect sizes; N = 19,555). Multilevel analyses showed a small effect across outcomes. Statistically significant small-to-typical positive associations between teachers’ growth mindset and their motivation in terms of self-efficacy and mastery goals were observed in subgroup analyses. No statistically significant relationships were found with teachers’ performance-approach goals, teachers’ performance-avoidance goals, teachers’ performance on achievement tests, or student achievement. Teachers’ growth mindset was related to instructional practices in terms of mastery goal structures but unrelated to performance goal structures. Moderator analyses indicated that the dimensionality of the mindset measure (recoded from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset measure vs. assessed as a growth mindset), item referent and content of the mindset measure, publication status (published vs. unpublished), world region, educational level, and study quality influenced the strengths of some of the relationships. Overall, our findings extend knowledge about teachers’ mindset and add to the evidence base on teacher characteristics and their links to relevant outcomes.

In its original version, control-value theory describes and explains achievement emotions. More recently, the theory has been expanded to also explain epistemic, social, and existential emotions. In this article, I outline the development of the theory, from preliminary work in the 1980s to early versions of the theory and the recent generalized control-value theory. I provide summaries of the theory’s evidence-based propositions on antecedents, outcomes, and regulation of emotions, including the fundamentally important role of control and value appraisals across different types of human emotions that are relevant to education (and beyond). The theory includes descriptive taxonomies of emotions as well as propositions explaining (a) the influence of individual factors, social environments, and socio-cultural contexts on emotions; (b) the effects of emotions on learning, performance, and health; (c) reciprocal causation linking emotions, outcomes, and antecedents; (d) ways to regulate emotions; and (e) strategies for intervention. Subsequently, I outline the relevance of the theory for educational practice, including individual and large-scale assessments of emotions; students’, teachers’, and parents’ understanding of emotions; and change of educational practices. In conclusion, I discuss strengths of the theory, open questions, and future directions.

Dimensional comparison theory (DCT; Möller & Marsh 2013:Psychological Review, 120(3), 544–560), first formulated 10 years ago, describes individuals’ internal comparison processes applied between different areas of their lives. Dimensional comparisons explain the seemingly counterintuitive phenomenon that students’ verbal and mathematical self-concepts are almost uncorrelated, even though mathematical and verbal performances correlate highly positively: When students compare their performance in verbal and mathematical domains, dimensional comparisons lead to a contrast effect: students overestimate their ability in the intra-individually better domain and underestimate their ability in their intra-individually weaker domain, leading to near-zero correlations between the respective self-concepts.

This paper describes diverse extensions of the classic DCT into a variety of predictors (especially various school subjects, beyond math and native language) and criteria (especially task value components, in addition to subject-specific self-concepts) and extensions of the applicability of the DCT as an educational psychological theory to contexts such as clinical and health psychology. Recent findings on the psychological processes that trigger, accompany, and follow dimensional comparisons are summarized, before an overview of different methods to capture dimensional comparisons is given, and further research directions are discussed.