British Journal of Educational Psychology最新文献

Background: Teachers' and parents' judgements of pupils' cognitive abilities influence pupils' daily learning opportunities and experiences, as these judgements affect the difficulty level of materials and instruction that teachers and parents provide. Over time, these judgements thus significantly shape educational success. However, pupils' characteristics, such as special educational needs (SEN), giftedness and socioeconomic status (SES) can influence and bias judgement accuracy.

Aims: The present study aimed to investigate the relation between pupils' cognitive abilities and their teachers' and parents' judgements of these abilities, and potential bias in these judgements related to SEN, giftedness, and SES.

Sample: The sample consisted of 1073 primary school pupils from grades 4-6 from 77 classes in 16 schools, and their teachers and parents.

Methods: Teachers and parents rated their pupils' cognitive abilities. Pupils completed the COVAT-3, a cognitive ability test.

Results: Multilevel analyses revealed that parent judgements were significantly higher than teacher judgements, but both informants' judgements were equally strong related to the cognitive ability scores. When controlling for pupils' assessed cognitive abilities, the results revealed small judgement biases: negative for SEN, positive for giftedness, and finally positive for high SES, but only in teachers.

Conclusions: Overall, the results indicated that teachers and parents can judge their pupils abilities to a moderate degree, but they also hold judgement biases related to SEN, giftedness and SES. As these biases can affect pupils' opportunities, it is important to increase teachers' and parents' awareness.

Background: School bullying is a group phenomenon in which being defended by peer bystanders may buffer against the development of psychological problems in victims.

Aims: This registered report examines whether being defended diminished victims' daily mood problems and self-blame, both from a within- and between-person perspective.

Materials and methods: Daily diary data were collected from n = 1669 Finnish 7th-9th grade students (M age = 14.45; 55.5% girl) across 3 weeks. In n = 1329 out of 12,366 assessments (10.7%), students indicated that schoolmates victimized them on the day of bullying.

Results: Multi-level regression analyses indicated that students reported lower depressed mood, greater positive mood and lower self-blame on days that they were victimized and defended as compared to days when they were victimized but non-defended. Effect sizes were medium for depressed mood and small for positive mood and self-blame. Repeated victims (n = 144) were less likely to blame themselves for victimization on days they were defended, which, in turn, diminished feelings of humiliation (mediation).

Discussion: Our findings indicate that being defended benefits victims of bullying by mitigating mood problems, both directly and indirectly via diminished self-blame.

Conclusion: Anti-bullying programmes that encourage peer defending have the potential to improve victims' psychological adjustment, even on a daily basis.

Background and aims: Although errors and failures are indispensable parts of the learning process, the current theoretical models and empirical research remain inadequate to provide a comprehensive perspective for learning from errors, considering the roles of different agents, settings, and support mechanisms. Addressing these gaps in the literature, this special issue collects 11 research papers related to learning from errors and failure in educational contexts. In this commentary, we synthesize the findings of these papers with previous work, address conceptual and methodological challenges based on these papers and their implications, and provide suggestions to enhance educational practices.

Results: The special issue papers varying in regard to research design, subject domain, participants, and learning setting presented findings about four main themes: (1) contextual factors (e.g. organization and error climate) as an enabler and barrier, (2) individual factors (e.g. motivational beliefs and emotions) in learners' processing of errors, (3) error- or failure-related learning processes, and (4) instructional strategies (e.g. feedback and prompts) to support learning from errors. Critical evaluation of these papers also revealed conceptual (e.g. error vs. failure) and methodological (e.g. generic vs. error-specific measures and instruments) challenges, which also paved the way for directions for future research.

Conclusion: Overall, 11 papers in this special issue provide significant empirical evidence about learning from errors and failure in educational contexts. Synthesizing the findings of both these papers and prior research, we also present suggestions to construct an educational environment conducive to learning from errors.

Background: Given that students from socio-economically disadvantaged family backgrounds are more likely to suffer from low academic performance, there is an interest in identifying features of academic resilience, which may mitigate the relationship between disadvantaged socio-economic status and academic performance.

Aims: This study sought to combine machine learning and explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) technique to identify key features of academic resilience in mathematics learning during COVID-19.

Materials and methods: Based on PISA 2022 data in 79 countries/economies, the random forest model coupled with Shapley additive explanations (SHAP) value technique not only uncovered the key features of academic resilience but also examined the contributions of each key feature.

Results: Findings indicated that 35 features were identified in the classification of academically resilient and non-academically resilient students, which largely validated the previous academic resilient framework. Notably, gender differences were shown in the distribution of some key features. Research findings also indicated that resilient students tended to have a stable emotional state, high levels of self-efficacy, low levels of truancy and positive future aspirations.

Discussion: This study has established a research paradigm essentially methodological in nature to bridge the gap between psychological theories and big data in the field of educational psychology.

Conclusion: To sum up, our study shed light on the issues of education equity and quality from a global perspective in the times of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Background: While previous research has emphasized the importance of personal beliefs (expectancy-value theories) for achievement-motivated behaviour, it lacks the integration of temporal factors that are also discussed as important drivers of achievement-motivated behaviour. Temporal Motivation Theory (TMT) combines both approaches in a formalized manner.

Aims: Although TMT is supported by empirical studies with self-reported academic procrastination, it has not been tested on actual achievement-motivated behaviour.

Materials & methods: We evaluated the predictive power of the TMT on N = 2351 learning days of 127 psychology students' self-regulated examination preparation for statistics over the course of one semester using logfile data of an e-learning system.

Results: The proposed TMT score, incorporating expectancy and value beliefs, sensivitiy to delay, and actual time till examination predicted students' achievement-motivated behaviour significantly.

Discussion: Further analyses revealed that not the trait compositions of the TMT, but the temporal proximity of the statistics examination was the main driver of this association.

Conclusion: The results have important implications for understanding the factors that shape students' motivation to learn and subsequent academic success in actual learning situations. Thus, research should continue to take situational aspects, especially the temporal proximity of goals more into account.

Background: According to the risk and resilience perspective, protective factors can attenuate the effect of risks and challenges on children's adjustment. For immigrant and refugee children, supportive relationships in the new context can be particularly beneficial. We expected that supportive school relationships play a protective role for the school adjustment of first-generation immigrant and refugee and non-immigrant children, by moderating the effect of one acculturative challenge (i.e., school language proficiency).

Aims: We investigated the moderating roles of teacher-child and peer relationship quality on the association between German language proficiency and school adjustment (i.e., school achievement and belongingness) among first-generation immigrant and refugee and non-immigrant children.

Sample: We recruited n = 278 fourth grade children (M_age = 10.47, SD_age = .55, 53.24% female; 37% first-generation immigrant and refugee children).

Methods: Questionnaires assessed children's reported teacher-child and peer relationship quality and school belongingness. One vocabulary test measured children's German proficiency. School achievement was assessed by their grade point average (GPA) and by a reading comprehension test. To investigate our hypotheses, we performed path analyses.

Results: Teacher-child relationship mitigated the effect of German proficiency on children's reading comprehension among all children and on GPA among immigrant and refugee children only. Peer relationship buffered the negative effect of German proficiency on school belongingness.

Conclusions: Teacher-child and peer relationship quality can be beneficial for the school adjustment of both first-generation immigrant and refugee children and non-immigrant children.

Background and aims: This study examined the effects of working memory training (WMT) on WM and fluid intelligence. A novel four-pronged model of mediated learning, cognitive functions, task characteristics and metacognition is presented as a conceptual basis for the Modifiability of a Working Memory Program (MWMP). Our basic assumption is that increasing WM depends on a synchronized combination of the four components.

Sample: A group of typically developed preschool children (n = 62) participated in the experimental group, receiving the MWMP. They were compared with a control group (n = 56) of preschool children who engaged in a substitute program. This comparison allowed us to discern the specific effects of the MWMP.

Methods: All participants received tests of WM, self-regulation and analogical reasoning before and after the intervention. The MWMP was administered to children in the experimental group for 10 weekly sessions, each lasting 40 minutes, in small groups of two children. The children in the control group engaged in didactic activities that were part of a school curriculum routine for kindergartners for the same length of time.

Results: We used ANCOVA analysis to compare the Treatment x Time with age and socioeconomic status as covariates. The findings revealed a higher improvement in some WM and self-regulation tests among children in the experimental group compared to those in the control group. However, no significant transfer effects were observed in analogical thinking.

Conclusion: The findings confirm the effectiveness of a non-computerized WMT among kindergartners and support our four-pronged theoretical model. We also discuss earlier findings on far-transfer effects and educational implications. We suggest that future WM studies adopt the following: (1) the development of training methods that are theoretically anchored; (2) training procedures should not rely heavily on computerized exercises but can be adapted to group characteristics, educational settings and cost-effectiveness aspects; (3) varying the task characteristics and training strategies to stimulate task-intrinsic motivation; (4) identifying training strategies to produce cognitive improvements underlying WM; (5) intervention should target individuals in early development as much as possible; (6) development of training procedures that facilitate motivation; and (7) providing empirical evidence of far-transfer effects for WM training. The empirical evidence should link gains in WM capacity and achievements in academic and other life domains.

Background: An earlier study in a school in England found that a series of brief values affirmation writing exercises, performed over the course of a school year by students aged 11-14, increased the mathematics attainment of students of low socioeconomic status (SES).

Aims: This pre-registered follow-up of the original study aims to investigate the long-term effects of values affirmation on low-SES students' attainment.

Sample: The sample consisted of all students in the analytical sample of the original study who remained at the school and for whom the necessary data were available, N = 409 (95 low-SES).

Methods: The students' results in high-stakes national standardized assessments at age 16, taken two to four years after the affirmation, were analysed.

Results: The evidence did not support the pre-registered hypotheses that values affirmation would raise the attainment of low-SES students in mathematics and English. However, exploratory analyses suggested that for low-SES students in two of the three-year groups, the intervention increased Attainment 8, a broad policy-relevant measure of academic attainment, and increased the attainment of boys in English (in particular English Literature) but reduced the corresponding attainment of girls.

Conclusions: The results suggest that the benefits of values affirmation can differ by student cohort and by school subject and that they might be time-limited in some circumstances. This suggests a set of hypotheses that future research could test in order to advance understanding of when values affirmation is, and is not, successful for school students over a sustained period.

Background and aims: Peer relationships during adolescence play an important role in shaping academic outcomes. The present study examined friend influences on emotions towards math, as well as the role of temperament in these influences.

Sample: The sample consisted of 350 Finnish students (mean age 13.29 years; 64% girls) who were involved in stable friendship dyads from fall to spring of Grade 7.

Methods: In this two-wave study, information on adolescents' temperament (i.e., negative emotionality, extraversion, effortful control) and on seven emotions towards math (i.e., enjoyment, hope, pride, anger, anxiety, shame, hopelessness, and boredom) was collected during grade 7. The data were analysed using longitudinal actor-partner interdependence models.

Results: The results showed that friends resembled each other in all the investigated math-related emotions. Furthermore, over and above these initial similarities, friends mutually influenced each other's math-related enjoyment and anger towards math. Students characterized by higher negative emotionality also influenced their friends with lower levels of negative emotionality towards an increase in math-related anger and a lack of effortful control made adolescents more susceptible to friend influence over math-related shame and anxiety.

Conclusion: Our findings demonstrate that friends influence each other over time in math-related enjoyment and frustration. Furthermore, high negative emotionality may make adolescents more influential over their friends' math-related anger and a lack of effortful control may make adolescents more susceptible to friend influence over math-related shame and anxiety. Thus, the current findings have implications for how peer relations may impact individual outcomes in mathematics, for better or worse.