British Journal of Educational Psychology最新文献

Background: Mid-adolescence is an important phase of self-development in various domains including academics as well as for changes in the neural mechanisms underlying the self-concept. Students' academic self-concept (ASC) is affected by educational achievements and social others (such as teachers and peers). To what extent these external influences relate to neural dynamics during adolescents' self- and other-evaluations (i.e. of friends and teachers) which affect ASC over time is currently unclear.

Aims: The current study aimed to address the question of to what extent the developing ASC is influenced by developmental changes in self- and other-evaluations (friends, teachers) and their underlying neural mechanisms as well as academic achievement.

Methods: In this interdisciplinary longitudinal fMRI study, forty-seven 13-year-olds (at T1) were instructed to indicate whether positive and negative trait adjectives described themselves (self-evaluations), their teachers, or peers (other-evaluations) at two time points. We investigated how adolescents' academic self-concept is influenced by changes in their academic achievement and self- and other-evaluations (teachers and peers) 1.5-years later.

Results: Behaviourally, both, academic achievement and positive teacher evaluations were important to prevent the observed decline in ASC during mid-adolescence. Our fMRI results showed that cortical midline structures were linked to self-evaluation, whereas the precuneus and occipital regions were related to friends- and teacher-evaluation. Here, ASC was predicted by activity changes in the precuneus during friends-evaluations for students with better academic achievement.

Conclusion: Our findings indicate that academic achievement and positive teacher-evaluations could prevent the decline in ASC observed in mid-adolescents and that the neural correlates of evaluating close others within the precuneus present an important link to ASC. The current study highlights the importance of educational neuroscience studies to understand the changing ASC during adolescence.

Background: According to gender-differentiated attributions of failure in the STEM field, errors tend to be attributed to internal factors more to girls than to boys.

Aims: This experimental study explored factors influencing gender-differentiated teachers' internal attributions of girls' and boys' errors and the consequent likelihood of teachers' hesitancy to offer educational robotics (ER) courses to them. The predictions were as follows: (1) the likelihood of teachers' hesitancy would be related to gender-differentiated internal attributions of errors based on expectations of a low natural aptitude for girls; and (2) teachers with high levels of gender stereotypes would be more hesitant about offering ER to girls than to boys via the mediation of internal attributions of errors as being due to girls' low levels of natural aptitude for ER.

Sample and methods: In this experimental study, 155 Italian teachers (M = 38.59 years, SD = 8.20) responded to a questionnaire at the end of a course on ER in 2022. Teachers randomly read one of two vignettes describing a girl's or a boy's error during an ER course.

Results: Results of multiple regression and moderated mediation analyses confirmed both predictions.

Conclusions: In order to reduce the gender STEM gap, the tendency to attribute girls' errors to internal and natural causes should be better inspected.

Background: Moments of failure during learning present a wide range of opportunities for growth. However, experimental research and meta reviews focused on failure and learning tend to target singular valued learning processes, such as efficient fixes or transfer of conceptual understanding. These analytical decisions conflict with research documenting that teachers and students pursue heterogeneous learning processes following impasses, including preparing to curb recurring problems and preparing for novel impasses.

Sample: This work focuses on weekend and summer computer science education workshops for middle school students (roughly ages 10-14) in a large city in the United States.

Method: Drawing on discursive psychology, interaction analysis and portraiture, we examine the selection and prioritization of five valued learning processes in naturalistic discourse around impasses, especially when students and teachers disagree with one another. In three case studies, our approach blends detailed analyses of conversations with longitudinal portraits of students across a year invested in learning coding.

Results: We document how moments of failure not only create openings for numerous learning opportunities, but also occasion argumentation between students and instructors about which valued learning process they view as worthy of prioritizing and pursuing in the moment, including their rationale for foregrounding a particular process.

Conclusion: We argue that this work throws light on an under-examined, yet central tension around which goals and supports - and whose perspective on those goals and supports - to foreground in research and teaching that pursue productive learning from moments of failure.