British Journal of Educational Psychology最新文献

Background: Social support is assumed to play a key role in motivation at university, particularly for disadvantaged students, such as first-generation and community college transfer students. However, longitudinal research investigating reciprocal associations between social support and motivation is lacking.

Aims: We examined such associations between confidence in getting support from faculty and peers and students' expectancies and subjective task values in their most difficult and most important course.

Sample: Data stemmed from two cohorts of undergraduate students (n = 320/417 in Fall 2019/2020) at a diverse Southern Californian university.

Methods: Students reported on their confidence in getting support and their expectancies and subjective task values at the beginning, in the middle and (only for motivation) at the end of the academic term.

Results: Results indicated no differences in confidence in getting support based on university generation or transfer student status. Cross-lagged panel models provided some evidence for reciprocal associations between students' confidence in getting support and their expectancies and subjective task values. Findings were similar across the Fall 2019 and Fall 2020 cohorts, providing support for the generalizability across in-person vs. remote learning settings. Longitudinal associations tended to be stronger for first-generation and transfer students.

Conclusions: Future research should, therefore, examine whether university programmes targeting social support are especially effective for disadvantaged students.

Background: The achievement composition effect (ACE) posits that students' academic performance is influenced by the collective achievement level of their classmates. While ACE has been demonstrated across various learning domains, its role in second language (L2) learning and motivational moderators of this effect remain underexplored.

Aims: This longitudinal study examines ACE in the context of L2 learning, with a particular focus on the moderating roles of students' intrinsic motivation and engagement.

Methods: A sample of 766 secondary school L2 learners from 30 classrooms was analysed using linear mixed-effects models to investigate the relationship between students' relative achievement at Time 1 and their subsequent achievement at Time 2, as well as the moderating effects of intrinsic motivation (to know, to accomplish and to experience stimulation) and engagement (behavioural and emotional).

Results: Results indicate that students' relative achievement significantly predicts subsequent achievement, supporting the presence of ACE in L2 classrooms. Moreover, intrinsic motivation to experience stimulation, behavioural engagement and emotional engagement significantly moderated this relationship in that ACE was stronger among students with higher levels of these motivational and engagement factors.

Conclusion: The findings highlight the interplay between peer achievement and individual motivational factors in shaping learning outcomes. The discussion situates these results within the broader literature on peer influence, motivation and engagement, exploring their theoretical and practical implications for L2 learning. The study underscores the importance of considering social, motivational, affective and behavioural factors in understanding and fostering optimal L2 learning environments.

Background: Social context and peers significantly impact students' motivation, especially in collaborative learning settings. However, there is limited evidence on how students strategically influence each other's motivation through socially shared regulation of learning (SSRL).

Aims: This study examined secondary school students' SSRL during collaborative learning, focusing on how groups regulate motivation and how these regulation processes influence individual situational motivation through peer interactions.

Sample: The participants were 95 secondary school students (13-16 years) performing a collaborative science task in 31 groups.

Methods: Collaborative learning was videotaped to capture motivation regulation from social interactions. Four times during the task, individual perceptions of peer influence on motivation and motivation regulation were collected with situational self-reports, and individual stimulated-recall interviews were conducted after the task.

Results: The results showed that motivation regulation is embedded within broader SSRL processes. When motivation regulation coincided more likely with cognitive regulation, students perceived significantly higher peer influence on motivation. In interviews, students highlighted cognitive and social aspects of SSRL as crucial for their situational motivation but did not hardly recognize any direct motivation regulation strategies.

Conclusions: This study contributes to the methodological advancements for studying motivation as situation- and context-specific, emphasizing the use of different data channels to capture the dynamic interplay between the individual- and group-level aspects throughout the learning process. For educational practice, this study supports the claim that peer interactions, particularly in collaborative learning, play a crucial role in individual students' motivation.

Background: Differences in competence gains between academic and non-academic track schools are often attributed to selection effects based on students' primary school performance and socioeconomic status (SES). However, how the competencies of comparable students (in terms of school performance and social background) at different tracks develop is often neglected.

Aims: We investigated whether comparable students diverge in their math competencies due to attending different types of secondary schools, contributing to the ongoing debate on whether inaccurate stratification may lead to disadvantages.

Methods: Using data from the National Education Panel Study (Kindergarten Cohort SC2, N = 4180), we examined students' competence development from the fourth to seventh grade. We employed a quasi-experimental design (propensity score weighting, PSW) comparing similarly capable students at academic and non-academic school tracks to make causal inferences. The outcome variable was students' math competence in seventh grade. PSW used fourth-grade competency measures in math and reading and other variables such as sex, migration background, SES, class composition, special educational needs, school grades and school location.

Results: Results revealed a significant average treatment effect on the treated, indicating that comparable students attending non-academic track schools show lower math performance than those at academic track schools.

Conclusion: Non-academic tracks seem to hinder the full development of students' competencies. We conclude that the effects of preconditions like the students' SES, ability and aspirations on competence development are lower than assumed and that school learning environments should be given greater importance. We discuss practical solutions and provide suggestions for future research.

Theoretical background: In the area of teacher motivation, the teaching practicum stands out as a pivotal element. The pronounced complexity of teaching during this specific phase may pose an emotional challenge, making the exploration of student teachers' emotions a worthwhile endeavour.

Aims: Based on a theoretical model and rooted in a process-oriented perspective, this diary study examines student teachers' discrete emotions, focusing on proximal (cognitive appraisals) and distal antecedents (classroom conditions) during the teaching practicum while accounting for contextual variables.

Sample: Data were collected from 178 student teachers in Switzerland and Germany and their 3736 school students. Student teachers conducted a six-lesson-teaching-unit within three-weeks of their obligatory teaching practicum (57% had prior teaching experience) and received different levels of support (coaching by peers or cooperating teachers, subject-didactic materials, usual support).

Methods: After three lessons (N = 511), student teachers reported their enjoyment, anger, anxiety and cognitive appraisals (control, value). School students reported on individual perceptions of class discipline and situational interest.

Results: Enjoyment was strongly experienced in 80%, anger in 8% and anxiety in 14% of lessons. School students' situational interest and discipline were weakly related to enjoyment and anger, but not to anxiety. Control appraisals were strongly associated with all emotions. The frequent experience of anxiety and its lack of relation to classroom conditions deviate from findings observed in in-service teachers.

Relevance: Besides strong positive emotional experiences during the teaching practicum, the observed patterns highlight the necessity for targeted support in navigating emotional complexities during the teaching practicum.

Background: In recent years, the endeavour to stimulate positive emotions, regulate negative emotions, and facilitate the learning of elementary school students through emotional design has attracted a lot of attention.

Aims: The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of warm colours and anthropomorphism as emotional design elements on multimedia learning, and whether combining a positive pedagogical agent with positive learning materials would be better.

Samples: Experiment 1 recruited 203 elementary school students. Experiment 2 recruited 140 elementary school students.

Methods: Experiment 1 employed a 2 (Colours: warm vs. grayscale) × 2 (Anthropomorphism: with vs. without) between-subjects design. Experiment 2 employed a 2 (Learning materials: positive vs. neutral) × 2 (Pedagogical agent: positive vs. neutral) between-subjects design.

Results: Results of Experiment 1 showed that warm colours reduced boredom and anxiety; anthropomorphism increased enjoyment, intrinsic motivation, and mental effort, and reduced boredom; their combination facilitated retention and transfer performance. Results of Experiment 2 revealed that combining a positive pedagogical agent with positive learning materials ameliorated learners' overall emotional experiences, but did not significantly affect retention and transfer performance.

Conclusions: Incorporating both warm colours and anthropomorphism as emotional design elements yielded the most favourable impact in designing positive learning materials. Integrating emotional design approaches to both learning materials and pedagogical agents could be conducive to happy and effective learning, showing the importance of holistic approaches to emotional design in educational settings.

Background: Various findings regarding the relationship between math anxiety and engagement have been identified in the literature, with many focusing on general math anxiety and overall math engagement.

Objectives: Based on the control-value theory, this study examined the relationships between trait- and state-math anxiety and behavioural and cognitive engagement in math under daily practice and exam preparation conditions across math tasks of varying difficulty levels.

Methods: A survey study with 449 high school students and an experimental study with 33 freshmen were conducted. Students' trait- and state-math anxiety, as well as behavioural and cognitive engagement in math, were measured under daily practice and exam preparation conditions across easy and difficult math tasks.

Results: A two-level latent variable model was built in the survey study, and two-way ANOVAs and regressions were used in the experimental study. Students exhibited greater state anxiety under exam preparation conditions in the survey study and showed differences in state-math anxiety and engagement across learning contexts and math tasks in the experimental study. Students with higher trait-math anxiety displayed less engagement in both studies, while those with higher state-math anxiety when facing difficult tasks tended to engage more cognitively in the experiment.

Conclusions: These findings demonstrated discrepancies in the relationships between trait- and state-math anxiety and math engagement, while accounting for learning context and task difficulty.

Background: Teachers' emotions while teaching are associated to how they teach. Prior research has evidenced such associations mostly based on teacher or student ratings of different teaching behaviours.

Aims: This study examined the extent to which teachers' self-rated lesson-specific positive and negative emotions are associated with the observed quality of teacher-student interactions in terms of emotional support, classroom organization and instructional support as well as students' behavioural engagement in the same lesson.

Sample: The participants comprised 84 subject teachers (76.2% female) and 907 students (15-16 years old; 50.1% female) from 26 Finnish lower secondary schools.

Methods: The data consisted of video-recordings from a total of 282 lessons (M = 3.36 lessons/teacher). The quality of teacher-student interactions and students' behavioural engagement was assessed using the Classroom Assessment Scoring System-Secondary (CLASS-S) observational instrument. Data regarding teachers' positive and negative emotions were collected at the end of each video-recorded lesson using the In Situations Teacher (InSitu-T) Instrument. The collected data were analysed using cross-classified two-level modelling.

Results and conclusions: The findings revealed that teachers' positive and negative emotions were positively and negatively associated, respectively, with the observed quality of teacher-student interactions in terms of emotional support and classroom organization but not instructional support. The results provide evidence of the associations between teachers' emotions and students' observed behavioural engagement. The findings complement the literature by highlighting the importance of observational data, along with teacher and student ratings.

Aim: Using the job demands-resources model, this study theorizes the negative longitudinal relationship between empowering leadership and teacher ostracism, both directly and through work engagement.

Method: For this purpose, data collected in three waves at four-month intervals from 473 teachers (51.6% women; mean age = 42.26) working in schools at different levels in the centre of Elazığ province, eastern Turkey, during the 2022-2023 academic year were used. The relationships between the variables were analysed using a cross-lagged panel model with latent variables.

Results: The findings showed that empowering leadership positively related to work engagement and negatively related to teacher ostracism. Work engagement, in turn, is negatively related to teacher ostracism. Additionally, empowering leadership was found to be negatively related to teacher ostracism through work engagement.

Conclusion: These results suggest that empowering leadership may be a crucial factor in preventing teacher ostracism, both directly and by enhancing employee engagement. The article concludes by discussing the theoretical contributions of the findings and presenting practical implications to help mitigate the risk of teacher ostracism.