The family-school relation and the child's school performance

Using a nationally representative sample of American households, we examine the relation between parental involvement in schooling and the child's school performance. With a sample of 179 children, parents, and teachers, we investigate 3 hypotheses: (1) the higher the educational status of the mother the greater the degree of parental involvement in school activities; (2) the younger the age of the child the greater the degree of parental involvement; and (3) children of parents who are more involved in school activities do better in school than children with parents who are less involved. In an analysis of cross-sectional data, we discover support for the 3 hypotheses. The educational status of the mother is related to the degree of parental involvement in schooling, so that parents with more education are more involved. Parental involvement is related to the child's school performance. Also, parents are more involved in school activities if the child is younger. The mother's educational level and the age of the child are stronger predictors of parental involvement in schooling for boys than for girls. We do not, however, find a direct effect of maternal educational status on school performance independent of parental involvement in school activities. We discuss these findings in light of the relation between families and schools.     

The relation of parenting style to adolescent school performance

This article develops and tests a reformation of Baumrind's typology of authoritarian, permissive, and authoritative parenting styles in the context of adolescent school performance. Using a large and diverse sample of San Francisco Bay Area high school students (N = 7,836), we found that both authoritarian and permissive parenting styles were negatively associated with grades, and authoritative parenting was positively associated with grades. Parenting styles generally showed the expected relation to grades across gender, age, parental education, ethnic, and family structure categories. Authoritarian parenting tended to have a stronger association with grades than did the other 2 parenting styles, except among Hispanic males. The full typology best predicted grades among white students. Pure authoritative families (high on authoritative but not high on the other 2 indices) had the highest mean grades, while inconsistent families that combine authoritarian parenting with other parenting styles had the lowest grades.     

Identity capital: an application from a longitudinal ethnographic study of self-construction during the years of school

This article contributes to ongoing discussion of the Bourdieusian concept of cultural capital and current attempts to elaborate this concept and its derivatives. The paper identifies ‘identity capital’, the capacity to create a narrative of social and self-awareness by constructing a flexible sense of self. This concept explains findings from a longitudinal ethnography with nine children and young people over a 13-year period from pre-school to the age of 17. Analysis of the data shows that this particular capacity is developed through certain kinds of privileged discourses and the opportunities provided within socially advantaged schools and families. Two case studies are selected to reveal how identity capital interacts with other identifiable forms of capital that compound and entrench each other. The paper concludes by arguing that deficiencies in identity capital could be addressed within schooling in order to support the creation of this important resource.     

Emotional intelligence throughout Portuguese secondary school: a longitudinal study comparing performance and self-report measures

This study examines the developmental trajectories of ability and trait emotional intelligence (EI) in the Portuguese secondary school. Within a three-wave longitudinal design, 395 students (M _age ?=?15.4; SD?=?.74) completed both the Emotional Skills and Competence Questionnaire (ESCQ) and the Vocabulary of Emotions Test (VET). Results revealed that EI exhibited different developmental trajectories during late adolescence according to the type of measure used, while students’ VET levels evidenced an increase during secondary school, their ESCQ levels remained stable during this period. Moreover, students’ gender, verbal indicator, and type of school (public vs. private) have no significant effect on their rate of EI change, whereas students from lower sociocultural and lower professional status backgrounds demonstrated significantly greater increases on the ESCQ and VET compared to higher status adolescents. The results are examined in the context of adolescent emotional development.     

警校学生英语学习态度与学习成绩关系的纵向研究

文章以南京森林警察学院268名非英语专业的学生为研究对象,通过问卷调查与分析考试成绩的方法对学生英语学习态度的变化及其与学习成绩的相关性进行了纵向研究。研究结果表明,在校学习英语的两年期间,学生学习的工具型动机逐渐变强,功利性目的越来越明显;而英语语言和文化本身对他们学习的激励作用逐渐下降,即融合性动机逐渐走弱。但是,调查发现学生的努力程度并没有发生大的变化,处于比较稳定的状态。学习态度与两次的期末成绩呈现显著正相关,书面考试成绩和口语成绩具有统计意义上的相关性。     

Emergent literacy and reading acquisition: a longitudinal study from kindergarten to primary school

European Journal of Psychology of Education - This study explores the predictivity of an emergent literacy model on the acquisition of reading in primary school in a language with a transparent...     

The transition to junior high school: a longitudinal study of self-esteem, psychological symptomatology, school life, and social support

This research examined the psychological well-being of 159 white and black students during the transition to junior high school. Adjustment patterns were found to be complex and highly differentiated. Self-esteem was unchanged from the end of sixth through the middle of seventh grades, rising by the end of seventh grade. Girls reported an increase in depressive and other symptoms over time relative to boys. Perceived quality of school life plunged. Peer social support increased only for blacks of high academic competence. Although there were no race differences on overall self-esteem, multivariate analyses of symptom data revealed that blacks reported greater distrust of the environment than they reported negative internal states, whereas whites reported the opposite pattern. The discussion emphasizes the developmental and ecological context of the transition.     

Humor and anxiety: Effects on class test performance

Measures of trait anxiety, state anxiety, and achievement were obtained on a sample of undergraduate students, half of whom received additionaal humorous items in the achievement test. In a regression analysis, the trait anxiety × test version interaction was a significant predictor of achievement. Subsequent analyses revealed a disordinal interaction in which highly anxious students had lower achievement on the humorous test than on the nonhumorous test, and students with low anxiety had higher achievement on the humorous test than did students with high anxiety. The results do not support the popular assumption that humor is a positive factor in reducing high anxiety associated with academic evaluations.     

The relation between morphological awareness and reading and spelling in Greek: a longitudinal study

The aim of this longitudinal study is to examine the contribution of morphological awareness to the prediction of reading and spelling in Greek. The target group (N = 404) consisted of children, aged 6–9 years at the start of the project, who learn literacy in Cyprus. Because there are no standardized measures of morphological awareness for Greek Cypriot children, morphological awareness measures were developed and validated. A concurrent analysis of the first wave of data collection showed that morphological awareness made a unique contribution to the prediction of reading and spelling in Greek. The longitudinal analyses showed that morphological awareness predicted performance in reading eight months later, even after partialling out grade level, verbal intelligence, phonological awareness and initial scores in reading and spelling. This study makes theoretical, empirical and practical educational contributions. It shows the long term and specific relation of morphological awareness with reading in Greek and establishes the plausibility of a causal link between morphological awareness and reading, which must be tested in further research using intervention methods. In practice, this study contributes valid measures for assessing morphological awareness in Greek as well as a new measure of spelling skill.     

A longitudinal study on the stability over time of school and teacher effects on student outcomes

This paper reviews educational effectiveness theory, concentrating on the time stability of the teacher and school effect. The contribution of longitudinal studies investigating the long‐term effect of schools and teachers to modelling educational effectiveness is discussed. Findings of a longitudinal study on the progress of students (N=1681) in mathematics during their first four years at the primary school are presented. Results of this study reveal that traditional approaches of measuring educational effectiveness tend to overestimate the short‐term effects of teachers and student background factors and underestimate the long‐term effects of teachers and schools. Implications of findings for the theory of educational effectiveness and especially for the concepts of teacher and school effects and their stability are drawn. Finally, suggestions for establishing evaluation mechanisms to improve practice are provided.     

The effect of test expectations on study strategies and test performance: a metacognitive perspective

The aim of the present study was to investigate whether university students can adjust their study strategies to meet the cognitive demands of testing; a metacognitive self‐regulatory skill. One hundred and fifty undergraduates attended three lectures as part of a course on the psychology of individual differences. These participants were then assigned randomly to each of two groups. In the first group, the participants were instructed to study for a test that required deep‐level cognitive processing. In the second group, the participants were instructed to study for a test that required surface‐level cognitive processing. Results of the study showed that university students do adjust their study strategies so that they are in line with the cognitive processing demands of testing. It was also found that study strategies mediated the relationship between the type of test items expected and the test performance.     

Reflection on exam grades to improve calibration of secondary school students: a longitudinal study

Metacognition and Learning - Grades provide students with information about their level of performance. However, grades may also make students more aware of how well they have estimated their...