British Journal of Educational Psychology

BACKGROUND: Laboratory-based studies have shown that children's ability to remember intentions (i.e., prospective memory; PM) can be improved by asking them to imagine performing the PM task beforehand (i.e., episodic future thinking; EFT) or to predict their PM performance. Moreover, combining the two strategies resulted in an additional improvement in children's PM performance. However, the effectiveness of these encoding strategies on real-life PM tasks is still unknown. AIMS: The aim of the present study was to evaluate the effect of EFT instructions, performance predictions, and of their combination on children's PM in a natural setting, namely in the classroom...

AIM: This study adopted a three-wave random intercept cross-lagged panel model to explore the longitudinal reciprocal relationships between (a) the teacher-student relationship (TSR) quality and (b) the parent-child relationship (PCR) quality and positive affect among Chinese primary school students. SAMPLES: Two primary school student samples, including 3505 and 2505 students, were tracked with their perceived relationship quality with math teachers and parents and their positive affect levels in mathematics learning over three academic years...

BACKGROUND: In the past decades, there has been a growing concern to understand why boys struggle in school. One of the turning points in students' educational trajectories likely to exacerbate boys' academic difficulties is students' enrolment in private or enriched school programmes, as boys are underrepresented in such programmes. METHOD: To better understand this gender imbalance, our research draws on a longitudinal design to examine whether grade 6 students' externalizing behaviours, school engagement and school grades in mathematics and language arts relate to secondary school programme attendance, among a sample size of 577 students (277 boys)...

BACKGROUND: Despite emerging evidence for the effectiveness of school-based suicide prevention programmes worldwide, there are few being implemented in the United Kingdom, and their social validity (i.e., the feasibility, acceptability, and utility) is not yet known. AIMS: We aimed to conduct a scoping study to determine: (1) the social validity and potential benefits of school-based suicide prevention interventions, (2) the perceived need for such interventions, and (3) barriers and facilitators to implementation...

BACKGROUND: Peers constitute an important developmental context for adolescent academic behaviour providing support and resources to either promote or discourage attitudes and behaviours that contribute to school success. When looking for academic help, students may prefer specific partners based on their social goals regarding academic performance. AIMS: Based on the social goals for wanting to achieve academically (e.g., studying to be with friends, increasing/maintaining their own social status), we examine the extent to which adolescents' selection of preferred academic partners (with whom they would like to study) is driven by peers' academic performance, prosocial behaviour and friendships...

BACKGROUND: Students make many errors in visual programming. In order to learn from these, it is important that students regulate their emotions and view errors as learning opportunities. AIMS: This study aimed to explore to what extent momentary emotions, specifically enjoyment, anxiety and boredom, as well as the error learning orientation of students, interacted during a 1-day course on visual programming in an out-of-school learning environment. SAMPLES: The sample consisted of 269 lower secondary school students (grades 7-9)...

BACKGROUND: Although it is well established that students' adaptive reactions towards errors promote learning outcomes, little is still known about the role of error feedback in promoting these reactions. AIM: Through a targeted intervention based on an online teaching unit, this study aimed at testing whether supportive error feedback promotes more adaptive students' reactions towards errors and higher learning outcomes. SAMPLE: A total of 250 (Mage   = 12...

BACKGROUND: Parents' high academic expectations are positively associated with young children's mathematical abilities. However, minimal attention has been devoted to whether, and how, different ways of conveying the performance targets would result in different outcomes. AIMS: The current study investigated whether and how parents' perfectionistic strivings and concerns were associated with young children's mathematical abilities through home mathematical activities, children's approach motivation to learn mathematics, and children's avoidance motivation to learn mathematics...

BACKGROUND: Adolescent mental health issues are a major public health concern, highlighted by the US Surgeon General as a crisis. Traditional school-based interventions show inconsistent success, creating a demand for effective solutions. AIMS: This study evaluates the impact of technology-supported cooperative learning (CL) on adolescent mental health, focusing on positive peer relations and peer victimization. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Participants included 813 adolescents (50...

BACKGROUND: Although adding embodied instructors on the screen is considered an effective way to improve online multimedia learning, its effectiveness is still controversial. The level of realism of embodied on-screen instructors may be an influencing factor, but it is unclear how it affects multimedia learning. AIMS: We explored whether and how embodied on-screen instructors rendered with different levels of realism in multimedia lessons affect learning process and learning outcomes...

BACKGROUND: According to Dweck's mindset theory, implicit beliefs (a.k.a. mindset) have an organizing function, bringing together mindset, achievement goals and effort beliefs in a broader meaning system. Two commonly described meaning systems are a growth-mindset meaning system with mastery goals and positive effort beliefs, and a fixed-mindset meaning system with performance goals and negative effort beliefs. AIMS: Because of assumed heterogeneity within these two meaning systems, we aim to (1) examine multiple-mindset profiles based on mindset, achievement goals and effort beliefs, by using a data-driven person-oriented approach, and (2) relate these different profiles to several outcome measures (academic achievement, motivation and school burnout symptoms)...

BACKGROUND: Socio-emotional skills are critical to life outcomes such as achievement, well-being and job success. However, existing research has mostly focused on the consequences of socio-emotional skills, with less attention devoted to the role of school climate in the deployment of these skills. AIMS: This study investigated the role of school climate in socio-emotional skills. More specifically, we investigated whether cooperative or competitive school climates are associated with students' socio-emotional skills...

BACKGROUND: Recent research showed that cross-notation magnitude knowledge of fractions and decimals was related to better performance in fraction arithmetic, but it remains unclear whether it made an independent contribution to fraction arithmetic longitudinally when other cognitive variables are considered. AIMS: To examine the extent to which children's earlier knowledge of cross-notation magnitude predicted subsequent performance in fraction addition and subtraction as well as fraction multiplication and division longitudinally...

BACKGROUND: Students' music self-concept and music emotions are becoming prominent topics within the area of music education. AIMS, SAMPLES AND METHODS: The majority of previous research on self-concept and music emotions has examined the two constructs independently and focused on gender differences in externalizing behaviours in music learning, but has neglected the internal interactions between individual music self-concept and music emotions. Network analysis is a promising method for visually examining music self-concept and music emotions as part of a network of interactions to identify core features and interrelationships among nodes in the network...

BACKGROUND: The school is one of the most salient developmental contexts for children. However, little is known about the associations linking the school environment to child adjustment in a non-Western context, not to mention the potential processes that may mediate these associations. AIMS: This study examined the associations of school- and classroom-level characteristics with child adjustment and tested whether these associations were mediated by teacher-child relationship qualities...

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...

INTRODUCTION: Paving the way towards inclusive education, it is essential to aim for positive social outcomes for all students, including cultivating a positive self-concept and fostering acceptance and friendships with peers. Although self-concept, acceptance and friendships are interrelated, research focussing on the relationship between these constructs remains limited. METHOD: This study examined the self-concept, acceptance and friendships of two groups of typically developing students in secondary education (n = 401) and two groups of students in special secondary education with either an intellectual disability (ID) (n = 58) or social, emotional and behavioural difficulties (SEBD) (n = 68)...

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...

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...

BACKGROUND: Math anxiety (MA) is a worldwide appearing academic anxiety that can affect student mental health and deter students from math and science-related career choices. METHOD: Using the Arabic version of the Modified-Abbreviated Math Anxiety Scale (m-AMAS), the prevalence of MA was investigated in a very large sample of students (N = 10093) from grades 7 to 12 in Qatar. RESULTS: The results showed a better fit to the original two-factor model of the m-AMAS (learning MA and Evaluation MA) than to a single-factor solution...