A metacognitive retrieval practice intervention to improve undergraduates’ monitoring and control processes and use of performance feedback for classroom learning.
The present study examined the effects of a classroom intervention on students’ metacognitive monitoring of retrieval practice performance feedback and metacognitive control of future study decisions. A true experimental design was used to randomly assign 103 undergraduate students from an education course to trained (n = 49) and control (n = 54) conditions. The primary goals of this work were to examine whether training metacognitive monitoring and control skills for retrieval practice increases students’ academic performance, their independent use of practice-testing, and the accuracy of the metacognitive monitoring ...
Source: Journal of Educational Psychology - August 27, 2020 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
The impact of mathematics anxiety on stress appraisals, neuroendocrine responses, and academic performance in a community college sample.
Mathematics anxiety is a major impediment to achievement in mathematics and science academic domains. Although important steps have been made in understanding the psychological processes of mathematics anxiety, as well as developing promising interventions, less is known about the relationship among mathematics anxiety, affective and biological responses, and achievement in stressful performance contexts. Toward this end, the research presented here recruited community college students (N = 478) from 30 mathematics classrooms, and examined associations among mathematics anxiety, stress appraisals, neuroendocrine reactivity...
Source: Journal of Educational Psychology - August 27, 2020 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Load reduction instruction in science and students’ science engagement and science achievement.
Among a sample of 2,071 Australian high school students nested within 188 science classrooms, the present study explored the role of science teachers’ “load reduction instruction” (LRI; instruction that seeks to reduce cognitive load by appropriately balancing explicit instruction with guided autonomy) in student- and classroom-level science engagement and the role of engagement in student- and classroom-level science achievement. Using doubly latent multilevel structural equation modeling, results showed that, at the student- and classroom-level, student reports of their teacher’s LRI was significantly and positiv...
Source: Journal of Educational Psychology - August 27, 2020 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Benefits of interactive graphic organizers in online learning: Evidence for generative learning theory.
This study examined the impacts of 2 different graphic organizers (filled-in graphic organizers and interactive graphic organizers) on middle school students’ learning processes, outcomes, experiences, and preferences. In Experiment 1, 60 students were assigned to read a short expository passage in 1 of 3 conditions: text-only, filled-in graphic organizers, or interactive graphic organizers. Learning processes were examined with an eye-tracker that recorded students’ eye movements during learning. Learning outcomes were measured with retention and comprehension tests. Learning experiences were measured by survey instru...
Source: Journal of Educational Psychology - August 27, 2020 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Using spatial contiguity and signaling to optimize visual feedback on students’ written explanations.
Writing cohesive texts is a crucial but challenging skill to master. Recently, cognitive tools that provide students with a graphical representation of their texts in the form of concept-maps have been shown to support students’ writing. Despite its beneficial effects, the addition of a graphical representation may have the disadvantage that students have to process multiple isolated representations (i.e., text, graphic), which may increase cognitive load. By applying principles of multimedia learning, in two experiments, we investigated whether interrepresentational signaling and spatial contiguity would have differenti...
Source: Journal of Educational Psychology - August 27, 2020 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
The effects of knowledge activation training on rural middle-school students’ expository text comprehension: A mixed-methods study.
The purpose of the current mixed-methods study was to investigate the effectiveness of a traditional and novel knowledge activation technique for supporting fifth and sixth graders’ comprehension of exposition covering unfamiliar content. For the quantitative portion, 149 rural middle-school students were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 conditions: knowledge mobilization (traditional), relational reasoning (novel), or text annotation (control). Readings used during training and for posttraining assessment were chapters from a textbook on ancient Greece and Rome. The posttraining comprehension assessment included multiple-cho...
Source: Journal of Educational Psychology - August 27, 2020 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Unraveling the links between rapid automatized naming (RAN), phonological awareness, and reading.
It is well established that phonological awareness (PA) and rapid automatized naming (RAN) tasks reliably predict children’s developing word reading abilities across a wide range of languages. However, existing research has not yet demonstrated unequivocally whether RAN and PA are independently and causally linked to reading, nor has it fully explored the underlying cognitive mechanisms. Most existing research has assessed PA and RAN in children who may already have some reading skill, making direction of influence hard to ascertain. To address this, the current longitudinal research initially assessed RAN and PA in a ve...
Source: Journal of Educational Psychology - August 27, 2020 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Coolness and admiration diverge in early adolescence among African American students in low-income urban schools.
Peer nominations were used to explore age-related differences in the correlates of being admired and being perceived as cool among 542 youths in 5 low-income urban schools (Grades 3–6; 86% African American). Children nominated peers whom they admired and whom they perceived as cool, prosocial, and good at academics. Classroom group-level and dyadic-level analyses yielded complementary findings in support of 3 developmental hypotheses. Consistent with the distinctiveness of coolness and admiration hypothesis, the coolness-admiration partial correlation (net of acceptance) was null in Grades 4–6 (but not in Grade 3), ind...
Source: Journal of Educational Psychology - August 27, 2020 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Math anxiety interferes with learning novel mathematics contents in early elementary school.
Whereas some evidence exists that math anxiety may interfere with math performance from the very beginning of primary school, no study to date has attempted to investigate whether math anxiety may also interfere with early math learning (i.e., the encoding of new math knowledge) and not only with recalling already mastered contents in test situations. Across 2 experiments carried out in 2 different countries (Study 1: N = 115, conducted in Italy; Study 2: N = 120, conducted in the United Kingdom), we addressed this question by presenting 6-year-old children with 2 math contents that had not been covered by their school cur...
Source: Journal of Educational Psychology - August 27, 2020 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Relational reasoning’s contributions to mathematical thinking and performance in Chinese elementary and middle-school students.
The overarching goal of this 2-phase study was to investigate the contributions of relational reasoning to mathematical thinking and performance for 790 primary and middle-school Chinese students. Phase I of the study was undertaken to establish the reliability and validity of the Test of Relational Reasoning-Junior (TORRjr), a 32-item measure developed to assess children’s and young adolescents’ ability to reason analogically, anomalously, antinomously, and antithetically. The range of analyses from item difficulties to the overall structural model showed the TORRjr to be a psychometrically sound measure for study par...
Source: Journal of Educational Psychology - August 27, 2020 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Who are the nonresponders to intervention among Chinese children learning English as a second language?
The purpose of this study was to examine the profiles of nonresponders among native Chinese-speaking students struggling in English reading before and after an intensive intervention in phonological awareness as well as letter knowledge. Struggling English learners (n = 72) were screened from 668 Grade 4 students based on their English word recognition, school English examinations, and nominations by teachers. About 43% of struggling readers were remediated in decoding skills after the intervention. Nonresponders were profiled on both phonological and orthographic processing skills in their first and second languages. More...
Source: Journal of Educational Psychology - August 27, 2020 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Grit: The long and short of it.
We examined, using state of the art multidimensional item response models and structural equation models, the factor structure of both the Grit-S and a newly developed scale (LT-Grit scale) that specifies what is meant by long term. Participants included 1,250 U.S. high school students, 600 U.S. college students, and 500 Korean college students. We found varying factor structures for the Grit-S and a stable one-factor structure for LT-Grit, across age and culture. Perseverance of effort as measured by the Grit-S was the strongest predictor of grades in the three samples. LT-Grit predicted grades only in the U.S. high schoo...
Source: Journal of Educational Psychology - August 24, 2020 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Effectiveness of forgiveness education with adolescents in reducing anger and ethnic prejudice in Iran.
This research investigated the effectiveness of a forgiveness education program on reducing anger and ethnic prejudice and improving forgiveness in Iranian adolescents. There were 224 (Persian, Azeri, and Kurdish) male and female students in 8th grade who were selected from 3 provinces: Tehran, Eastern Azerbaijan, and Kurdestan. Schools were randomly assigned to 2 groups of experimental (N = 123) and control (N = 101) students. Measures included the Enright Forgiveness Inventory, Spielberger’s State-Trait Anger Expression Inventory, and the Ethnic Prejudice Scale, administered at pretest, posttest, and follow-up. The exp...
Source: Journal of Educational Psychology - August 24, 2020 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Argumentation skills mediate the effect of peer argumentation on content knowledge in middle-school students.
There is compelling evidence that arguing with peers in educational contexts fosters students’ content knowledge and argumentation skills. Indeed, curricula have already been developed that, through tailored support for peer argumentation, promote both content knowledge and argumentation skills simultaneously. However, we do not yet know how to optimize the occurrence of peer argumentation, although there are suggestions in the literature that computers may have a role to play. Likewise, there are uncertainties about the mechanisms through which the benefits of peer argumentation are achieved, especially whether (and how...
Source: Journal of Educational Psychology - August 24, 2020 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Nonlinear relations between achievement and academic self-concepts in elementary and secondary school: An integrative data analysis across 13 countries.
It is well-documented that academic achievement is associated with students’ self-perceptions of their academic abilities, that is, their academic self-concepts. However, low-achieving students may apply self-protective strategies to maintain a favorable academic self-concept when evaluating their academic abilities. Consequently, the relation between achievement and academic self-concept might not be linear across the entire achievement continuum. Capitalizing on representative data from three large-scale assessments (i.e., TIMSS, PIRLS, PISA; N = 470,804), we conducted an integrative data analysis to address nonlinear ...
Source: Journal of Educational Psychology - August 24, 2020 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
