BACKGROUND:Students' mindsets, reactions to feedback and learning-related behaviour are important for academic success, yet little is known about how these factors and their interconnections develop during primary school. AIMS:To explore longitudinal associations between students' mindsets, physiological responses to performance feedback, and task preference in maths across two primary school years. SAMPLE:Eighty-nine students were followed from grade 3 to grade 4. METHODS:During the autumn term of both grades, students' mindsets were assessed using a questionnaire. After a challenging maths task, students chose their next task-either another challenging one to learn more or an easy task to succeed. Skin conductance was recorded during an arithmetic task with performance feedback. Mixed-effects models were used to analyse associations and their development. RESULTS:We found that growth-minded students preferred the challenging task in both grades, yet mindset did not relate to feedback-related physiological responses. Task preference demonstrated only partly marginal associations with these responses and only in the beginning of the task. Specifically, students preferring the challenging task showed a smaller and faster-habituating physiological reaction to feedback at task onset. CONCLUSIONS:Physiological responses and mindset had unique relations with task preference, suggesting the potential importance of both in learning. Associations with only initial physiological responses and their habituation, not overall feedback-related responses, suggest subtle temporal changes in physiological reactions during educational activities. The present findings, although requiring replication, suggest that supporting students in regulating performance-related arousal at task onset may be particularly important.
BACKGROUND:Students' emotional and social experiences at school are interrelated dimensions shaping their everyday functioning and development. Although recent research has examined reciprocal associations between emotional and social experiences as well as academic achievement, longitudinal evidence across lower secondary education remains scarce. AIMS:This study aims to examine the development and reciprocal relations of key emotional (worries, anxiety, positive attitudes) and social (teacher-student relationship, peer relationships) dimensions of students' socio-emotional school experiences across the full range of lower secondary education (grade levels 5-11) over one school year, while taking into account students' achievement. SAMPLE:The sample includes 407 students from grade levels 5-11 attending a secondary school in central Germany. METHODS:Participants completed self-report questionnaires at three time points spanning one school year. Standardized scales were used to measure socio-emotional experiences and self-reported grades in German language and mathematics for achievement. To target directional within-person effects while accounting for stable individual differences, we used a random-intercept cross-lagged panel model (RI-CLPM) comprising random-intercept (between-person) components, contemporaneous within-wave links and cross-lagged paths, with gender and grades in German language and mathematics and grade level entered as control variables. RESULTS:Overall, the results suggest stronger between-person than within-person differences. Students' socio-emotional experiences differed according to grade level, gender and achievement in German language. At the within-person level, higher anxiety at t1 predicted more serious social problems with peers at t2. CONCLUSION:The findings underscore the significance of between-level differences in students, while they also indicate only small within-person fluctuations regarding socio-emotional school experiences.
BACKGROUND:Evidence suggests leisure reading may be especially important for children with reading difficulties. However, little is known about how their leisure reading evolves over time or how school-based practices, including targeted literacy support, impact this. AIMS:We aimed to examine how literacy difficulties are associated with leisure reading concurrently and over time for upper primary children with literacy difficulties, and whether receiving literacy support moderated this relationship. SAMPLE:Our sample included 7291 participants, using longitudinal data from the Millennium Cohort Study (MCS), a UK nationally representative longitudinal birth cohort study. METHODS:Chi-squared tests were conducted to explore associations among main variables (literacy difficulties, literacy support and leisure reading at 11, 14 and 17). Latent growth curve models were used to analyse associations between literacy difficulties and the trajectory of leisure reading, including the moderating effect of receiving literacy support. RESULTS:Literacy difficulties were significantly associated with less frequent leisure reading at all ages, but not with the trajectory of leisure reading over time. Receiving literacy support was not associated with leisure reading at any time point and did not moderate the association between literacy difficulties and leisure reading. CONCLUSIONS:The findings presented here suggest that children with literacy difficulties show lower leisure reading than those without literacy difficulties throughout upper primary and secondary years, and that their leisure reading declines whether or not they have received targeted literacy support. This indicates a shift is needed to effectively support these children.
BACKGROUND:Touchscreen-based learning environments are increasingly common in early childhood, yet evidence regarding the benefits of interactivity for word learning has been mixed. One possible reason is that not all forms of interaction support learning equally. Understanding how children's touchscreen gestures relate to linguistic content may help clarify when and why interactive learning is effective. AIMS:The present study examined whether gesture-meaning congruency-the alignment between a child's touchscreen gestures and a word's semantic content-facilitates word learning in preschool-aged children. SAMPLE(S):Participants were 205 children aged 5-6 years. METHODS:Across two experiments, children were taught novel verbs presented on a touchscreen. Experiment 1 compared three conditions-congruent gestures (dragging), incongruent gestures (tapping), and watching (no interaction)-when learning continuous verbs. Experiment 2 employed a 2 × 2 design crossing gesture type (dragging vs. tapping) with verb type (continuous vs. discrete). Children's word learning was assessed using recognition and recall tasks. RESULTS:In Experiment 1, both gesture conditions improved recognition relative to the watching condition. Recall performance was low and hence should be interpreted cautiously. In Experiment 2, recognition showed a gesture type × verb type interaction: children performed better when dragging was paired with continuous verbs and tapping was paired with discrete verbs than when the gesture and verb type were mismatched. CONCLUSIONS:These findings suggest that touchscreen interactivity may support children's word learning most effectively when the child's gesture is aligned with the semantic structure of the target word. Gesture-meaning congruency may therefore be an important boundary condition for designing gesture-based vocabulary learning activities.
BACKGROUND:Against the backdrop of examination-oriented education and intense academic competition, Chinese adolescents commonly experience high levels of academic stress. The impact of academic stress on their development has received increasing attention, making it important to investigate academic stress and its consequences. AIMS:The present study examined the bidirectional relationships between subjective and objective academic stress and academic beliefs. Based on expectancy-value theory, academic beliefs were understood from two aspects: academic confidence and academic intrinsic motivation. The study also explored differences in the effects of subjective versus objective academic stress. SAMPLE(S):Using a longitudinal design, 12,699 adolescents at T1 from 68 schools across five Chinese sites participated in the survey, among whom 10,748 completed all four waves (T1 Mage = 12.814, SDage = .532). METHODS:Random Intercept Cross-Lagged Panel Models were employed for analysis. RESULTS:The results showed that subjective academic stress significantly negatively predicted subsequent academic confidence and academic intrinsic motivation across time at the within-person level, whereas academic confidence and academic intrinsic motivation significantly negatively predicted subjective academic stress only from T3 to T4. Moreover, the bidirectional relationships involving objective academic stress were relatively unstable. Further difference tests revealed that the associations between subjective academic stress and academic beliefs were relatively stronger than those involving objective academic stress. CONCLUSIONS:These findings deepen the understanding of academic stress and expectancy-value theory in the Chinese context, offering practical insights for promoting adolescent development.
BACKGROUND:Reducing mind-wandering during extended video lectures is an important but challenging goal. Prior research suggests that preset playback speeds influence attention and learning performance, but it remains unclear whether learner-regulated playback is associated with lower mind-wandering under constrained lecture viewing conditions, and whether this association differs across individuals. AIMS:This research investigated the association between learner-regulated playback and mind-wandering, and whether this relation was moderated by learners' cognitive and non-cognitive characteristics. SAMPLES:Study 1 included 100 university students (Mage = 19.73, SD = 1.77), and Study 2 included 96 university students (Mage = 18.99, SD = 1.17). METHODS:Across two studies, participants were randomly assigned to either a self-paced group, in which they could adjust playback speed with the current speed visible on-screen, or a control group with fixed-speed playback. Mind-wandering during video lectures was measured using thought probes, followed by assessments of learning performance and related learner characteristics. RESULTS:Participants in the self-paced group exhibited significantly lower mind-wandering rates than those in the control group, while showing comparable learning performance. Within the self-paced group, intentional mind-wandering negatively predicted performance, whereas working memory, situational interest, prior knowledge and motivation did not. However, learning performance in the control group was predicted by working memory and motivation. CONCLUSIONS:These results suggest that allowing learners to regulate playback speed helps sustain attention, while the relative contributions of attentional processes and individual characteristics in predicting learning performance may differ across learning conditions. The findings contribute to understanding sustained attention during lecture viewing.
BACKGROUND:School personnel bear the emotional burden of students' trauma. Secondary traumatic stress (STS), resulting from indirect trauma exposure, impacts well-being and job performance through PTSD-like symptoms, making addressing STS in schools a critical priority. AIMS:This scoping review mapped and synthesized risk and resilience factors associated with STS in school staff and tabulated the instruments used to assess STS in this population. SAMPLE:A search across five databases yielded 1238 records; 48 studies met the inclusion criteria following dual independent reviews. METHODS:This review was guided by the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) methodology and followed PRISMA-ScR guidelines for reporting. RESULTS:Key resilience factors included cognitive and emotional resources (e.g., metacognition) and leadership support within trauma-informed organizational climates. Conversely, student trauma exposure, personal trauma history, and specific professional demographics consistently increased STS risk. The Professional Quality of Life (ProQOL) scale and Secondary Traumatic Stress Scale (STSS) were the most utilized measures. CONCLUSIONS:STS is an organizational issue as much as an individual one. Fostering personal cognitive-emotional resources and cultivating trauma-informed leadership are critical levers for mitigating STS. However, a considerable reliance on social work- and healthcare-derived STS measures was evident. These findings identify potential targets for interventions and policies aimed at improving well-being and can inform future meta-analyses.
BACKGROUND & AIMS:Mathematics anxiety impairs student learning, particularly affecting girls. Grounded in interpersonal theory, this study investigated how interpersonal teacher behaviours in student-teacher dyads relate to boys' and girls' mathematics anxiety. We defined these behaviours using an interpersonal circumplex, which blends agency (guidance, control) and communion (warmth, sensitivity). Additionally, we examined whether these relationships are indirectly linked through students' mathematics self-concept and their perception of teacher expectations. SAMPLE:We surveyed 42 mathematics teachers (32 female) and 743 of their primary school students (362 female). METHODS:Teachers described their interpersonal teacher behaviour toward each individual student in their class. Using circumplex modelling, we derived teacher agency and communion as underlying dimensions of teachers' interpersonal profiles. We then applied structural equation modelling to analyse which profiles most strongly relate to girls' and boys' mathematics anxiety and to test for indirect associations. RESULTS:Teacher behaviour combining high agency with low communion was associated with higher mathematics anxiety in the student-teacher dyad. Low teacher communion was significantly related to mathematics anxiety in girls only. Indirect associations between teacher behaviour and student mathematics anxiety via self-concept and student-perceived teacher-expectation emerged for agency in both genders, but for communion only in girls. CONCLUSIONS:Lower teacher agency in dyadic interactions may be linked to a less anxious approach to mathematics. High teacher communion may be particularly vital for girls as they are more likely to form strong bonds with their teacher than boys and often confront negative performance-related stereotypes in mathematics.
BACKGROUND:Eye-movement pattern during text reading has been recognized as a functional predictor of reading comprehension proficiency. However, it remains unclear whether and how the coupling between eye-movement pattern and reading comprehension is influenced by text genre and level of analysis. AIMS:This study addresses this question by investigating genre-specific eye-movement patterns during narrative and expository reading, as well as evaluating their predictive power for comprehension proficiency at both the keyword and whole-text levels. SAMPLE:A total of 76 participants (Mage = 21.02, SD = 2.04; 72.3% female) were recruited for this study. METHODS:Eye-movement features were extracted at both the whole-text and keyword levels while participants read narrative and expository texts. Support Vector Machine Recursive Feature Elimination was then utilized to build predictive models for reading comprehension and to select optimal feature subsets. RESULTS:Narrative reading and expository reading were associated with two distinctive eye-movement profiles at both levels. While eye-movement pattern during narrative reading exhibited a 'Dual-Stage Balanced Mode' that might reflect synchronized early lexical access and late-stage integration, eye-movement pattern during expository text reading exhibited a 'Late-Stage Compensatory Mode' that reflected backward integration. Moreover, the keyword level analysis outperformed the whole-text level analysis in terms of comprehension proficiency prediction, suggesting that core semantic nodes were more informative of readers' comprehension proficiency. CONCLUSIONS:Our findings offer a transformative perspective on how eye-movement patterns can be leveraged to assess reading comprehension and provide important heuristics for developing reading assessment and instructional tools.
BACKGROUND:Teachers' characteristics have been linked to their students' reading development. However, previous research has primarily focused on the early phase of reading development in Western societies. AIMS:We examined the associations between teachers' knowledge of dyslexia, perceived ability to teach reading and warmth during teaching and Chinese students' reading development across primary grades. SAMPLE:Fifty-four Chinese language arts teachers and their 1517 students in Grades 1 to 5 (mean age = 8.63 years, SD = 1.39, 51.2% female) participated in the study. METHOD:The teachers completed a questionnaire assessing their knowledge of dyslexia, perceived ability to teach reading and warmth during teaching. The students were assessed on their reading skills (sentence reading efficiency and passage reading comprehension) in the middle and at the end of the school year. RESULTS:Multilevel modelling showed that teachers' perceived ability to teach reading was associated with their students' reading gains over time after controlling for other teacher variables and students' age, gender and earlier reading skills. In contrast, their knowledge of dyslexia was not significantly associated with students' reading skills, either for the whole class or for lower-performing students. CONCLUSION:These findings suggest that teachers' self-efficacy (operationalized as perceived teaching ability) may play a role in Chinese students' reading development.
BACKGROUNDS:Cooperation is a core social skill essential for learning and citizenship, yet spontaneous cooperation in group settings cannot be taken for granted. AIMS:This study investigates whether a structured, technology-supported Cooperative Learning (CL) intervention can foster greater levels of observable cooperative behaviour in primary and middle school students. SAMPLE:A total of 36 classes (containing 577 students ages 8-12) were randomly assigned to either an experimental or a control group. METHODS:The intervention integrated key evidence-based CL principles - positive interdependence, individual accountability, social skills training and group processing - into regular classroom instruction via a digital platform that supported teachers with automated group structures, role assignments and reflection prompts. Cooperation was measured behaviourally using a digital adaptation of the Marble Pull game, designed to assess real-time, mutual cooperation in dyads. RESULTS:Results from linear mixed-effects models revealed a significant interaction between time and group: students in the experimental condition showed greater improvements in cooperative behaviour than those in the control group. Other interaction effects, and the main effect for age, were non-significant. CONCLUSIONS:These findings provide behavioural support for the idea that cooperation can be explicitly taught and developed through intentional, structured pedagogy. They also highlight the importance of fidelity of implementation and teacher support. Overall, this study enhances our understanding of how digital tools and instructional design can promote prosocial development, providing practical implications for evidence-informed educational practices.
BACKGROUND:Student well-being is a core educational goal and a foundation for successful learning, yet it tends to decline during secondary school. Many school-based interventions show promising but inconsistent effects on student well-being. Also, the role of individual and classroom factors in shaping effects remains unclear. AIMS:We examined (1) changes in student well-being across a 10-week intervention programme comparing three sets of well-being strategies with a placebo control and (2) whether baseline student-student relationships and intrinsic motivation to participate moderated student well-being trajectories. SAMPLE:A total of 685 Grade 8 students (51% male; t1: Mage = 14 years, SD = 0.6) from 44 classes across 17 schools in Switzerland participated in our study. METHODS:Classes were randomly assigned to three experimental conditions or a placebo control. Student-reported well-being (three positive, three negative dimensions), student-student relationships and intrinsic motivation were assessed at baseline, mid-intervention, post-intervention and an additional 8-month follow-up. We estimated repeated-measures linear mixed-effects models. Given a non-significant main condition effect, moderator analyses contrasted high versus low baseline relationships and motivation. RESULTS:Across student well-being dimensions, significant time effects were observed, but few condition or interaction effects were found. Student well-being declined over time, irrespective of condition. Students with stronger baseline student-student relationships and/or higher baseline intrinsic motivation reported higher scores on positive well-being dimensions. CONCLUSIONS:Individual resources-student-student relationships and intrinsic motivation-were more strongly related to student well-being than participation in a specific condition. Interventions may need to deliberately strengthen such resources and tailor their components to student and classroom contexts.
BACKGROUND:Emotions and cognitions are important factors of learning engagement. While extensive research focuses on in-class activity, there is a gap in understanding engagement in out-of-class study contexts, particularly the interplay between motivation and situational engagement. AIMS:This study aimed to examine the relationship between students' motivation, situational engagement (emotions and learning strategies) and the context of out-of-class learning activities. SAMPLES:The study involved 394 undergraduate students, with a mean age of 21.26 (SD = 4.34). Students came from diverse ethnic backgrounds and various academic disciplines. METHODS:We used the Experience Sampling Method (ESM) to capture in-situ data. During scheduled study sessions, participants filled out brief surveys on their smartphones regarding their cognitive engagement, emotional states and learning activities. RESULTS:Motivation influenced emotional and cognitive engagement across various learning activities. The positive association between self-efficacy, enjoyment and hope was weakened during collaborative activities, and its protective role against anxiety was reduced during assessments. Students with higher utility value reported greater enjoyment during reading and multimedia learning but less enjoyment during preparation and planning. For cognitive engagement, high self-efficacy was associated with greater use of deep learning strategies during constructive and application-oriented activities. A reciprocal relationship emerged between emotions and cognition: positive emotions enhanced deep strategy use, which in turn promoted positive emotions and reduced negative ones. CONCLUSIONS:The findings highlight the importance of fostering positive emotional experiences and motivation in out-of-class learning contexts. Educational interventions that target these factors can enhance students' engagement, leading to better academic outcomes.
BACKGROUND:Previous research has associated peer deviant behaviours with lower academic performance in adolescents. However, the mediation and moderation mechanisms underlying this relationship, particularly the moderating role of educational expectations, require further exploration. AIMS:This study aims to examine the longitudinal effect of peer deviant behaviours on academic performance among Chinese adolescents, as well as the mediating role of adolescents' own deviant behaviours and the moderating role of educational expectations. SAMPLE:The study utilized a nationally representative two-wave dataset from the China Education Panel Survey (CEPS, 2013-2015), including 8212 valid participants. METHODS:A moderated mediation model was constructed to test the effect of peer deviant behaviours on academic performance and the underlying mechanisms. RESULTS:Peer deviant behaviours negatively affected adolescents' academic performance over time. This relationship was mediated by adolescents' own deviant behaviours. Specifically, peer deviant behaviours increased adolescents' own deviant behaviours, which subsequently undermined academic performance. Educational expectations mitigated the impact of peer deviant behaviours on adolescents' own deviant behaviours, weakening the overall mediation effect. However, educational expectations could not mitigate the negative impact of adolescents' own deviant behaviours on their academic performance (the second stage of the mediation process). CONCLUSIONS:This study highlights the negative longitudinal effect of peer deviant behaviours on academic performance and pinpoints the stage at which educational expectations can mitigate this effect. These findings inform intervention strategies to address peer influence and foster academic success among adolescents.
BACKGROUND:Self-explaining is an engagement activity that supports learners' active use of instructional scaffolds such as worked examples. Self-explanation quality is assumed to mediate the worked example effect on learning outcomes. However, prior investigations have relied on analytical approaches limited in scope and quality or have yielded inconclusive results AIMS: We replicate a previous investigation that examines whether self-explanation quality mediates the worked example effect in a worked examples - problem-solving paradigm, while simultaneously considering key cognitive aptitudes (prior knowledge, working memory capacity (WMC), fluid intelligence, shifting ability) as moderating variables METHOD: We analysed self-explanations from 115 university students solving six ill-defined statistics problems with or without worked examples. Self-explanation quality was defined as using specific case information from problem descriptions to justify statistical claims and coded by trained raters RESULTS: Results showed a moderated mediation of the worked example effect via self-explanation quality for prior knowledge and WMC, with stronger indirect effects at lower aptitude levels. The indirect effect was not moderated by fluid intelligence. No self-explanation mediation emerged for shifting ability; shifting ability was confirmed as a moderator of the worked example effect, with stronger scaffold benefits at lower ability levels CONCLUSIONS: Whereas the original study found no evidence for self-explanation quality as a mediator, the replication, drawing on stronger methodology, provides evidence for such mediation. However, this mechanism is not universal. Rather, worked examples exert their benefits either directly or via self-explanation, contingent on learners' cognitive resources.
BACKGROUND:Benign and malicious envy arise from social comparisons regarding a quality, achievement or possession. As school is inherently evaluative and social, the classroom offers a relevant and understudied context to investigate envy and the impact of friendship on envy. Prior research has shown a positive association between relationship closeness and benign envy. AIMS:Broadening research on the interconnectedness of emotional and social processes in school, using an experimental vignette design, this study examines whether typical school situations elicit envy and whether relationship closeness influences envy. SAMPLE:N = 794 7th-10th graders (Mage = 14.10, SD = 1.33, 53.27% female) from 98 classrooms. METHODS:In an experimental study, participants were assigned to two vignettes describing typical envy-eliciting school situations, systematically manipulating relationship closeness (friend vs. classmate) and envy form (benign vs. malicious). We measured state envy using an adapted version of scales measuring pain, benign envy and malicious envy based on the Pain-driven Dual Envy Theory. We assessed control and deservingness with two items and tested the effects of relationship closeness, envy form and their interaction and the mediational effects of deservingness and control. MAIN RESULTS:Benign versus malicious envy scenarios elicited more benign envy, control and deservingness and less malicious envy. Malicious envy was lower, and deservingness was higher in the friendship than in the classmate condition. Deservingness mediated the association between relationship closeness and envy. CONCLUSION:This study offers a novel contribution to envy theory, raises awareness about envy in school and highlights the influence of classroom relationships on malicious envy.
BACKGROUND:Though self-explanation and instructional explanation are common learning methods, there is a lack of research directly comparing their effects within the same experimental framework or their influence in the specific context of music education. Cognitive load theory (CLT) has been widely validated in core academic subject learning, yet its application to music education remains scarce, and the moderating role of its core construct-element interactivity-in explanation-based music learning is unexamined. AIMS:This study takes CLT as the theoretical framework to examine the roles of self-explanation and instructional explanation in musical knowledge learning and to explore how element interactivity (the core indicator of intrinsic cognitive load) moderates the effectiveness of the two methods in musical knowledge learning. SAMPLES:Two respective experiments are conducted for groups of 183 and 169 fourth-grade primary school students ('Experiment 1' and 'Experiment 2'). METHODS:Two experiments were conducted on element interactivity, which was manipulated by two core types of musical knowledge: intervals (low-element interactivity) and chords (high-element interactivity). In each experiment, participants were randomly divided into self-explanation, instructional explanation, worked sample only or problem-solving groups to explore their musical knowledge learning processes. RESULTS:In Experiment 1, self-explanation and instructional explanation groups performed significantly better for interval knowledge with low-element interactivity relative to worked sample only and problem-solving groups. Participants in the self-explanation group consistently outperformed their peers. Similarly, participants in self-explanation and instructional explanation groups outperformed others in Experiment 2; when learning chordal knowledge with high-element interactivity, participants in the instructional explanation group performed better than those in the self-explanation group. CONCLUSION:These findings suggest that self-explanation and instructional explanation methods facilitate musical knowledge learning, and that their effects differ based on the element interactivity of the material being taught. Self-explanation is more suitable for learning knowledge with low-element interactivity, while instructional explanation is more suitable for high-element interactivity learning.
BACKGROUND:Previous research has shown that the number sense can predict arithmetic ability. There has been a visual form perception hypothesis, which was supported by a series of correlational evidence, but there was no evidence from the effect of direct manipulation. AIMS:The current study provided direct evidence to show the effect of the processing form of numerosity on arithmetic by manipulating the form information. SAMPLE(S):A total of 884 participants with two age groups (younger, older) were recruited, including 221 males and 198 females in the younger group who were younger than 6 years old, and 260 males and 205 females in the older group who were older than 6 years old. METHODS:A total of 4 computerized tests were used to measure non-symbolic numerosity, visual form perception and arithmetic ability. Analyses were conducted using two-way repeated-measures analysis of variance to account for the effects of controlling condition and dot ratio on the dot comparison task score. RESULTS:Results showed that dot comparison under controlling for total perimeter is the most difficult by comparing with dot comparison under controlling for mean perimeter, total area, mean area and dot comparison without any controlling, with increasing score from 4.1-5.7 to 2.0. Moreover, the condition had the weakest association with both visual form perception ability and arithmetic performance. CONCLUSIONS:The results suggest that the number sense in nature is a type of visual form perception, and the association between number sense and arithmetic is rooted in the processing of form information.
BACKGROUND:Conceptual and procedural knowledge are two distinct types of mathematical knowledge. Measuring them with sufficient discriminant validity is challenging because they are typically highly correlated. Prior studies have demonstrated discriminant validity of paper-and-pencil measures separately for fractions and algebra. However, whether such measures can distinguish between the two knowledge types within a single sample of students instructed in both domains, and how the four constructs interrelate, remains unclear. AIMS:This study tested the discriminant validity of conceptual and procedural knowledge measures of fractions and algebra in a single sample of students instructed in both domains and examined the full pattern of intercorrelations to clarify which knowledge types underlie the well-established fraction-algebra link. SAMPLE:Participants were 571 German middle-school students (M = 14.91 years). METHODS:Conceptual and procedural knowledge in both domains was assessed using adapted paper-and-pencil tests. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to evaluate the discriminant validity of the measures and to examine the intercorrelations among the four constructs. RESULTS:A four-factor model showed the best fit, indicating empirical separability of the four constructs. Conceptual and procedural knowledge were highly correlated within each domain (fractions and algebra). Descriptively, cross-domain correlations were stronger for corresponding knowledge types (e.g., conceptual-conceptual) than for non-corresponding types (e.g., conceptual-procedural), and stronger for the conceptual-conceptual than the procedural-procedural link. CONCLUSION:The findings contribute to discussions about the discriminant validity and measurability of conceptual and procedural knowledge and offer a more differentiated view of how specific types of knowledge link fractions and algebra.
BACKGROUND:Shame is an unpleasant, activating emotion that has been shown to undermine learners' motivation and achievement and identity development in mathematics education. Recent studies have implemented positive psychology interventions (PPIs) to reduce preservice teachers' shame in mathematics, with promising quantitative outcomes. However, little is known about how such interventions operate within learners' emotional and social contexts. AIMS:This study aimed to replicate a PPI with preservice primary teachers, explicitly examining the social dynamics and individual experiences involved in reducing shame. SAMPLE:Ninety-nine students participated and were randomly assigned to an experimental group (nEG = 51) or a control group (nCG = 48). METHODS:Using a mixed-methods design (including an RCT in the quantitative part), we assessed changes in mathematics-related shame and qualitatively explored preservice teachers' emotional and relational experiences throughout the intervention. RESULTS:Findings show a significant reduction in shame in the experimental group compared to the control group, with a medium effect size (Cohen's d = .54). Self-efficacy or social integration did not moderate this effect. Qualitative analyses reveal that changes in shame were closely tied to students' experiences of pleasant emotions, social relations and shifts in self-perception as mathematics learners. CONCLUSIONS:Our findings underscore the importance of social-emotional processes in understanding the impact of interventions. We argue that targeting shame in teacher education requires emotional and social support as well as cognitive support to foster sustainable competence and self-development in mathematics.
