The effects of choice versus preference on writing and the mediating role of perceived competence.
Journal of Educational Psychology, Vol 114(8), Nov 2022, 1844-1865; doi:10.1037/edu0000765Many educators assume that choice in writing leads to better writing outcomes; however, there are few studies to support this belief. In the present study, we examined the effects of choice and preference on writing quality with college students. The students wrote two argumentative essays on controversial topics in special education. For the topic at time 1, half of the students were randomly assigned to choose a position to defend, and the remaining students were assigned their position. For the topic at time 2, student roles revers...
Source: Journal of Educational Psychology - September 15, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
The effects of choice versus preference on writing and the mediating role of perceived competence.
Many educators assume that choice in writing leads to better writing outcomes; however, there are few studies to support this belief. In the present study, we examined the effects of choice and preference on writing quality with college students. The students wrote two argumentative essays on controversial topics in special education. For the topic at time 1, half of the students were randomly assigned to choose a position to defend, and the remaining students were assigned their position. For the topic at time 2, student roles reversed. Prior to writing on either topic, students completed a knowledge measure on each topic...
Source: Journal of Educational Psychology - September 15, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Social perspective taking: A professional development induction to improve teacher–student relationships and student learning.
Journal of Educational Psychology, Vol 115(2), Feb 2023, 330-348; doi:10.1037/edu0000762When teachers struggle to understand students’ thoughts, feelings, and motivations, the teacher–student relationship typically suffers. Better social perspective taking—understanding the thoughts, feelings, and motivations of others—should facilitate these relationships. In this preregistered field experiment, teachers (N = 105) from a kindergarten-to-ninth-grade charter school network participated in a new social perspective-taking induction aimed at helping them better understand their most perplexing students. Regression anal...
Source: Journal of Educational Psychology - September 8, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Assessor writing performance on peer feedback: Exploring the relation between assessor writing performance, problem identification accuracy, and helpfulness of peer feedback.
Journal of Educational Psychology, Vol 115(1), Jan 2023, 118-142; doi:10.1037/edu0000768Although peer review has been widely used for formative assessment in writing instruction, there remain concerns about whether assessors are at a sufficient writing performance level that would allow them to identify major problems in the reviewed work and provide helpful feedback to improve draft quality. Little empirical research has examined how assessor writing performance specifically influences problem identification accuracy and helpfulness of feedback, nor has it acknowledged different grain sizes of assessor performance. Assess...
Source: Journal of Educational Psychology - September 8, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Improving oral and written narration and reading comprehension of children at-risk for language and literacy difficulties: Results of a randomized clinical trial.
Journal of Educational Psychology, Vol 115(1), Jan 2023, 99-117; doi:10.1037/edu0000766Narration has been shown to be a foundational skill for literacy development in school-age children. Elementary teachers routinely conduct classroom lessons that focus on reading decoding and comprehension, but they rarely provide instruction in oral narration (Hall et al., 2021). This multisite randomized controlled trial was designed to rigorously evaluate the efficacy of the Supporting Knowledge of Language and Literacy (SKILL) intervention program for improving oral narrative comprehension and production. Three hundred fifty-seven st...
Source: Journal of Educational Psychology - September 8, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Bringing Assessment-to-Instruction (A2i) technology to scale: Exploring the process from development to implementation.
This study represents both an exploration of what it takes to bring an educational intervention to scale (Phase 1) and a quasi-experiment on the literacy outcomes of learners whose teachers used the technology (Phase 2). We integrated assessments of vocabulary, word decoding, and reading comprehension; revised the A2i algorithms to account for the constellation of skills English learners (ELs) bring to the classroom; updated the user interfaces and added new graphic features; and improved bandwidth and stability of the technology. Findings were mixed, including several nonsignificant results, a marginally significant inten...
Source: Journal of Educational Psychology - September 8, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
How students perform synthesis tasks: An empirical study into dynamic process configurations.
In this study we examine process configurations in synthesis tasks. We study whether these configurations are students traits or vary within students per task. In a national survey with a representative sample of 658 Dutch upper-secondary school students, we collected writing tasks, registered students’ writing behaviors (via keylogging) and their task perceptions and assessed the quality of their texts. Each participant completed two informative and two argumentative synthesis tasks. Writing process configurations were based on a preselected set of writing behaviors that proved to be related to text quality: time spent ...
Source: Journal of Educational Psychology - July 14, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
How students perform synthesis tasks: An empirical study into dynamic process configurations.
In this study we examine process configurations in synthesis tasks. We study whether these configurations are students traits or vary within students per task. In a national survey with a representative sample of 658 Dutch upper-secondary school students, we collected writing tasks, registered students’ writing behaviors (via keylogging) and their task perceptions and assessed the quality of their texts. Each participant completed two informative and two argumentative synthesis tasks. Writing process configurations were based on a preselected set of writing behaviors that proved to be related to text quality: time spent ...
Source: Journal of Educational Psychology - July 14, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Data-based decision-making in schools: Examining the process and effects of teacher support.
In this study, we first investigate this theoretically assumed DBDM process, and second, we evaluate the effectiveness of teacher support on the different steps of this process. Using longitudinal data of N = 120 teachers and their N = 2458 students, we analyzed the relations between teachers’ log-file-based data analysis activities, teachers’ self-reported frequency of instructional decision-making, and students’ learning progress in reading by means of latent mediation analyses. Moreover, we analyzed whether additional teacher support in the form of instructional recommendations, teacher training, and prepared teac...
Source: Journal of Educational Psychology - July 11, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Stimulating preschoolers’ repeating patterning ability by means of dialogic picture book reading.
This study evaluates the effectiveness of a dialogic reading picture book intervention on preschoolers’ repeating patterning ability. Ninety-four children age 4 years 1 month to 6 years 8 months (Mage = 5 years 0 months) were randomly assigned to intervention (n = 46) or active control (n = 48) conditions. Well-trained university and college students read two researcher-designed picture books five times each over 3 weeks (i.e., 10 reading sessions) to small groups of three to five children. In the intervention condition, repeating patterns were present in the text and the illustrations, and the dialogic reading questions...
Source: Journal of Educational Psychology - June 27, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
The mediating role of attention in the association between math anxiety and math performance: An eye-tracking study.
Journal of Educational Psychology, Vol 115(2), Feb 2023, 229-240; doi:10.1037/edu0000759Math anxiety (MA) and math performance are generally negatively correlated (Barroso et al., 2021; Namkung et al., 2019). However, the mechanisms underlying this negative association remain unclear. According to the attentional control theory (ACT; Eysenck et al., 2007), anxious individuals experience impaired attentional control during problem solving, which compromises their performance on cognitive tasks. In a sample of 168 elementary and middle school students, the current study used an eye-tracking approach to investigate whether ma...
Source: Journal of Educational Psychology - June 27, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
The interconnected development of depressive symptoms and school functioning from mid-adolescence to early adulthood: A piecewise growth mixture analysis.
This study seeks to identify profiles of depressive symptoms trajectories among a sample of 2,696 Finnish students (56.8% female), followed from 13–14 to 18–19 years old. Piecewise growth mixture analyses identified 5 trajectories: Low Stabilizing (6.20%), Mild Increasing (47.90%), Moderate Stabilizing (36.82%), Low Increasing (3.62%), and High Stable (5.46%). Relative to boys, girls experienced more problematic depressive symptoms trajectories. The study also assesses whether achievement goals growth predicts depression trajectories, and whether school burnout and engagement growth trajectories can be positioned as ou...
Source: Journal of Educational Psychology - June 23, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Sex differences in developmental pathways to mathematical competence.
Journal of Educational Psychology, Vol 115(2), Feb 2023, 212-228; doi:10.1037/edu0000763The study tested the hypothesis that there are sex differences in the pathways to mathematical development. Three-hundred and 42 adolescents (169 boys) were assessed in various mathematics areas from arithmetic fluency to algebra across 6th to 9th grade, inclusive, and completed a battery of working memory, spatial, and intelligence measures in middle school. Their middle school and ninth grade teachers reported on their in-class attentive behavior. There were no sex differences in overall mathematics performance, but boys had advantage...
Source: Journal of Educational Psychology - June 23, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
