British Journal of Educational Psychology最新文献

Background: On computation items, young girls tend to use algorithmic approaches more than boys do. However, it is unclear whether these patterns persist as students progress into adulthood.

Aims: In two independent studies using different measures, we examine gender differences in computation strategy use in adolescents (Study 1) and adults (Study 2). We explore factors that might explain differences, and whether they relate to gender differences in math performance.

Samples: Study 1 uses data from students at a U.S. public high school (n = 213; 54.5% female). Study 2 uses data from U.S. adults (n = 810; 58.6% women).

Methods: Participants completed computation items, math performance measures and measures commonly found to relate to both gender and math. The unique relations between algorithm use, gender and math performance were examined while accounting for key covariates.

Results: Girls and women used an algorithm more often than their male counterparts, as did people with lower mental rotation skills and higher teacher-pleasing tendencies (Study 1) and higher test anxiety (Study 2). After including covariates, the gender difference in algorithm use decreased in Study 1 but not in Study 2. Across both studies, girls and women, and those who use algorithms more, had lower performance on problem-solving measures, as did those with higher teacher-pleasing tendencies and lower confidence (Study 1) and lower math anxiety (Study 2).

Conclusions: Gendered patterns in algorithm use within older samples and the negative relation of algorithm use with math performance point to the need for renewed focus on developing children's computational approaches.

Background and aims: This study examined preschool-aged children's attention to text in video, and whether it may be related to their developing orthographic knowledge. SAMPLE 1: Study 1 showed 66 children videos that included text. Method Children's attention to the video was measured using eye-tracking, and their recognition of orthographic patterns within the video was tested after viewing. Results During viewing, children attended to the text 6% of the time it was available. However, children who both had pre-existing letter knowledge and attended to the text in the video were able to identify the written words. SAMPLE 2: A second study extended these findings to a younger age group (n = 59).

Method: In Study 2, we also showed children an unrelated storybook that incorporated the target words from the videos and measured attention to that storybook.

Results: Results again showed little attention to text, but some recognition of written words for those who did attend. Study 2 also showed that children who recognized the written words from the video attended more to those words in a different context.

Conclusion: Overall results suggest a relationship between letter knowledge, attention and developing orthographic knowledge.

Background: Despite a growing body of research demonstrating that control and value appraisals predict students' experiences of boredom, less attention has been paid to appraisals arising from specific learning situations and their consequences for students' emotional responses.

Aims: In the present study, we disentangled students' individual differences from their momentary learning experiences to examine appraisal-boredom relations, including their reciprocal effects.

Methods: We analysed experience-sampling data from N = 95 secondary school students who provided repeated ratings of their comprehension, interest, and boredom during eight lessons over two consecutive curricular weeks. The data were examined using multilevel structural equation modelling with cross-lagged relations for students' momentary experiences.

Results and conclusions: We found that higher interest was consistently associated with lower boredom. In contrast, comprehension showed a more complex pattern. Boredom due to overchallenge appeared to stem from stable individual differences, whereas boredom resulting from underchallenge emerged from students' momentary comprehension. Finally, analyses of reciprocal relations revealed that boredom experienced toward the end of a lesson predicted decreases in students' subsequent comprehension and interest, highlighting the potential for downwards spirals of disengagement within the classroom context.

Background: Creative thinking has been widely recognized as a potential contributor to improved academic performance. However, this association has not been systematically confirmed across culturally diverse societies.

Objective: This study aimed to investigate the relationship between creative thinking and adolescents' academic performance, and to examine the moderating role of two cultural dimensions from the Minkov-Hofstede model: individualism-collectivism and flexibility-monumentalism.

Methods: Using data from the 2022 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA 2022), multilevel analyses were conducted based on responses from 376,130 adolescents across 48 countries/regions.

Results: The analyses revealed a significant positive relationship between creative thinking and academic performance on a global scale. Furthermore, this relationship was moderated by cultural values: in more individualistic societies, the academic benefits of creative thinking were stronger in reading, math and science; in more flexible societies, creative thinking was more strongly associated with math performance only.

Conclusions: These findings highlight the importance of considering both individual factors and broader sociocultural contexts when examining adolescents' academic performance.

Background: Social-emotional (SEL) skills play a crucial role in promoting children's academic performance and mental health. However, the use of self-reported questionnaires may reveal discrepancies between students' self-assessments and adults.

Aims: This study investigated potential differences in the perceptions of SEL skills in Arabic and their relation to academic achievements.

Sample and method: Arabic-speaking students, their parents and teachers across third, fifth, seventh and ninth grades using a 33-item questionnaire.

Results: Analysis of variance (ANOVA) revealed significant discrepancies between groups (parents>students>teachers), regardless of grade level. Moreover, correlations between self-reports and students' academic scores were stronger for teachers compared to the others. Interestingly, these correlations decreased across groups until the ninth grade, at which point only teachers maintained significant correlations. Structural equation modelling (SEM) analysis further demonstrated that only teachers' self-reports significantly predicted students' academic scores regardless of grade level.

Conclusion: The results are discussed in relation to theoretical and pedagogical implications, as well as previous findings, emphasizing the need for a standardized multi-informant questionnaire.

Background: Previous research has shown that testing differs significantly from other classroom activities and is associated with heightened negative emotions and lower levels of positive emotions. However, relatively little is known about students' emotions surrounding testing, particularly in higher-stakes assessment settings.

Aims: This study aims to examine how students' levels of four emotions (i.e., happiness, relaxation, anxiety and boredom) develop from pre to-post-test, and it investigates how individual factors (i.e., gender, grade level, perceived mathematical competence and test performance), impact students' emotional states and moderate their emotional trajectories.

Sample: The sample (N = 2179) consists of 692 third-grade, 605 sixth-grade, 413 eighth-grade and 469 ninth-grade students from various schools across Finland, who participated in a digital, semi-high-stakes, end-of-year mathematics assessment.

Methods: An in-situ approach was used to assess students' emotions immediately before and after testing. Analyses were conducted using linear mixed-effects modelling to account for the repeated-measurements structure.

Results and conclusions: Students generally reported lower positive emotions after the assessment. The measured individual factors significantly predict both students' emotional states and their development during the assessment. Boys reported higher levels of positive emotions and lower anxiety, while younger students remained more positive during the assessment. Students who perceived themselves as competent experienced higher levels of positive and lower levels of negative emotions, whereas students who performed poorly showed a decline in positive emotions during the assessment. Future research could focus on whether support for emotional regulation affects student performance in test situations.

Background: Despite increasing research attention to teachers' emotional states, there remains a significant gap in understanding how educational leaders can effectively mitigate these issues.

Purpose: This study examined a multilevel, moderated mediation model that explored the relationship between responsible school leadership and emotional exhaustion, with the moderating role of teachers' proactive personality and the mediating effect of work meaningfulness.

Sample: The study utilized data from 739 teachers working in 72 schools across Türkiye. Participants represented a range of school contexts and demographic backgrounds, allowing for examination of both individual and school-level effects.

Method: A multilevel analytical approach was employed to test the hypothesized moderated mediation model, examining both direct and indirect effects of responsible leadership on emotional exhaustion.

Results: The findings indicate that responsible leadership is directly associated with reduced emotional exhaustion and indirectly linked to lower exhaustion through increased work meaningfulness. Moreover, among teachers with higher levels of proactive personality, responsible leadership was associated with a stronger reduction in emotional exhaustion compared to those with lower levels of proactive personality.

Conclusion: The findings contribute to the current literature by providing empirical evidence that the impact of leadership on teachers' emotional state is likely to vary across teachers with different personality traits.

Background: Successful inclusion in education depends heavily on the attitudes of teachers, and stereotypes play a significant role in shaping these attitudes. However, social desirability bias may limit direct measures of stereotypes. Combining direct and indirect measures offers better insights. But studies on SEN-specific stereotypes combining these measures are rare.

Aims: This study aims to investigate and compare pre-service teachers' explicit and implicit stereotypes towards autistic pupils, pupils with Down syndrome, and pupils with dyslexia using direct and indirect measures.

Sample: Our sample consisted of N = 76 German pre-service teachers with an average age of 22.75 years (SD = 3.32), of which 61% identified as female.

Methods: We assessed explicit stereotypes via a questionnaire and implicit stereotypes using lexical decision tasks. To compare explicit and implicit stereotypes, we computed Kendall's tau correlation coefficients.

Results: Participants rated stereotypical adjectives significantly above the neutral midpoint for all three groups. They responded significantly faster to stereotypical than to non-stereotypical words in the lexical decision tasks, with large effect sizes for explicit ratings and medium effect sizes for implicit measures. Explicit and implicit stereotypes did not correlate significantly with one another.

Conclusion: The study found that pre-service teachers clearly endorsed explicit stereotypes and showed implicit associations in line with these stereotypes, especially towards autistic pupils and those with Down syndrome, while patterns for dyslexia were less pronounced. These results underline how common such stereotypes are in educational contexts and suggest that interventions should address both explicit and implicit bias.

Background: Interest and effort are key motivational constructs in educational psychology, yet their interplay in learning remains underexplored. Building on Dewey's (Interest and effort in education, 1913) view that effort complements interest in fostering academic achievement, this research examines their relationship across different learning phases in accordance with a process model developed by Thoman et al. (The science of interest, 2017).

Aims: The aim of both studies is to empirically examine the interplay between interest and effort as predictors of learning outcomes.

Sample: The sample of Study 1 included 152 university students, and the sample of Study 2 included 120 university students.

Methods: Study 1 comprised two different learning tasks to investigate the relationship between interest and effort. Study 2 made use of a computer-supported learning environment where additional influences of prior knowledge could be controlled. Interest and effort were assessed before, during, and after the learning tasks.

Results: The results of both studies indicate that interest and effort serve as positive predictors of learning success and actively complement each other throughout the learning process.

Conclusion: Findings suggest that although interest stimulates initial engagement, effort is essential for sustained learning, supporting Dewey's view of their interdependence. Educators should foster both interest and effort to enhance learning outcomes.

Background: Bullying research has traditionally relied on self-reported measures such as questionnaires and interviews. Previous studies have shown developmental differences in attention mechanisms, with adults relying more on top-down processing and younger individuals on bottom-up attention. However, it remains unclear whether these differences extend to bullying scene observation and how they influence the perception of different bullying roles.

Aims: This study examined differences in visual attention (total fixation duration, visit count, fixation count) and verbal recognition of bullying roles between preadolescents and adults.

Sample: The study included 80 participants: 37 preadolescents (M_age = 10.11, SD = 1.10) and 43 adults (M_age = 30.72, SD = 4.89).

Methods: Participants viewed 12 vignette-based bullying scenes while their eye movements were recorded using an eye tracker. They then provided verbal descriptions of each observed vignette.

Results: Both groups primarily fixated on bullies and victims, reinforcing the centrality of the bully-victim dyad. However, adults allocated significantly more attention to the other roles and described them with greater accuracy than preadolescents. In particular, in adults, defenders and pro-bullies attracted more fixations, visits, and total fixation time, while bystanders received more total fixation time.

Conclusions: The findings suggest that adults process bullying situations in a more structured and holistic manner, likely due to top-down attentional mechanisms shaped by social experience. These developmental differences highlight the crucial role of adults in fostering awareness of all bullying roles among preadolescents, emphasizing the need for interventions that encourage broader role recognition beyond the bully-victim dynamic.