Mathematically gifted students and high achievement: the role of motivation and classroom structure

One of the most intriguing questions for those who study intellectually gifted students is why some of them reach peak performances at school and others don’t. Moderator theories of giftedness assume that domain-specific gifts are transformed into achievement in a process influenced by non-cognitive and environmental variables. Thus, the current study investigates differences in the non-cognitive construct motivation (achievement goals, interest, self-concept, self-efficacy, implicit theories) and perception of classroom environment (classroom structure, class climate) between mathematically gifted high achievers (n = 66) and mathematically gifted students with non-high achievement (n = 144) using a latent variable approach. Gifted high achievers expressed higher levels of motivation than non-high achievers. Furthermore, they perceived a classroom structure that provides more tasks with a focus on learning and more autonomy.     

Predicting high school students' cognitive engagement and achievement: Contributions of classroom perceptions and motivation

Path analysis was used to test predictions of a model explaining the impact of students' perceptions of classroom structures (tasks, autonomy support and mastery and evaluation) on their self-efficacy, perceptions of the instrumentality of class work, and their achievement goals in a particular classroom setting. Additionally, the impact of self-efficacy, instrumentality, and goals on students' cognitive engagement and achievement was tested. There were 220 high school students who completed a series of questionnaires over a three-month period in their English classes. Data strongly supported the model demonstrating that student perceptions of classroom structures are important for their motivation. Also supported was the importance of perceiving the current class work as being instrumental for future success. Implications were discussed.     

Competencies and career choice motives: characteristics of high school students interested in teacher education programmes

In contrast to other career choices, the teaching profession seems familiar to those interested in teaching because they have had the chance to observe teachers for years. This phenomenon is known as the apprenticeship of observation and manifests in naïve ideas and expectations of teaching among teacher students. Therefore, characteristics of students interested in becoming teachers are important for early teacher education and counselling. These characteristics include competencies and motives, but nothing is known about their relationship to each other. Following international teaching standards and the expectancy-value framework, this paper analyses associations between both. Three competencies (i.e. planning, communication and cooperation) and seven career choice motives were examined using a paper–pencil survey of 907 high school students. Altogether, 463 students were able to imagine becoming a teacher and were included in the analyses. SEM analyses showed that (1) of all the competencies, communication had the most associations with motives, (2) the motive ‘low difficulty of study’ is positively related to planning, (3) the findings regarding extrinsic motives are ambiguous, and (4) gender differences are marginal. Practical implications for early teacher education and counselling are discussed.     

Achievement goals and approaches to studying: evidence from adult learners in distance education

Achievement goals predict learning in children and young adults, but it is unclear whether they apply to older adults and how they are related to approaches to studying. An online survey examined achievement goals, approaches to studying and academic attainment in distance learners. The Achievement Goals Questionnaire-Revised and the Approaches to Learning and Studying Inventory were given to 2000 students, yielding 1211 responses. The findings confirmed the 2?×?2 model of mastery-approach, mastery-avoidance, performance-approach and performance-avoidance goals in adult distance learners. Mastery goals were positively associated with deep and strategic approaches to studying but negatively associated with a surface approach. Performance goals showed only weak associations with approaches to studying. Performance-approach goals were positively related to attainment, performance-avoidance goals were negatively related to attainment, but mastery goals were unrelated to attainment. The relationship between achievement goals and attainment was partly but not wholly mediated by approaches to studying.     

Learning strategies and their relationships to academic performance of high school students in Hong Kong

The present study examines the dynamic relationship between academic performance of high school students and their respective learning and study strategies. Two hundred thirty-six high school students were recruited to participate in this study by completing a Chinese version of the Learning and Study Strategies Inventory - LASSI, to probe into the relationship. Results found that (1) there were clear differences to the learning and study strategies used by high school students with high academic performance, and those with low academic performance; (2) all the three components (Will; Self-regulation and Skill) were equally important to differentiate high academic achieving high school students from low academic achieving high school students within the strategic model of learning; and (3) a numbers of learning and study strategies were effectively predicting the academic performance of the high school students. All of these result patterns confirm that learning and study strategies used by high academic achievers and low academic achievers as well as the components used to predict students’ academic performance in the high school setting are quite different from the patterns revealed in the tertiary education sector.     

IQ,grit, and academic achievement: Evidence from rural China

Promoting an educated labor force is critical for emerging economies. Educational achievement, in turn, depends heavily on general cognitive abilities as well as non-cognitive skills, such as grit. Current research, however, has not examined how cognition and grit may explain the academic performance of students in an economically disadvantaged context. Thus, this study examines how IQ and grit contribute to academic achievement gains for students in poor areas of rural China. Drawing on data from 2931 students in rural China, we measure general cognitive ability, using the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children, Fourth Edition (WISC-IV) and Raven’s Standard Progressive Matrices (Raven IQ); non-cognitive ability, using the Short Grit Scale; and academic achievement, using a curricular-based mathematics exam. We find that IQ and grit each predict achievement gains for the average student. Grit is not positively associated with achievement gains among low-IQ students, however, suggesting that grit does not translate into academic achievement gains for students with delays in general cognitive ability.     

Gender and high school chemistry: student perceptions on achievement in a selective setting

This paper reports on research undertaken in a middle-class Australian school. The focus of the research was on the relationship between gender and students’ engagement with high school chemistry. Achievement data from many OECD countries suggest that middle-class girls are achieving equally as well as, if not better than, boys in many subjects. This has led to claims that the ‘girls and science’ agenda is no longer necessary, and indeed may have been detrimental to boys’ achievements in science subjects. The data collected from students at this site indicate that at this school this agenda is far from a completed one. These data indicate that whilst girls’ achievement levels are comparable with those of the boys, for many students chemistry is still perceived as a masculine subject. Hence, the girls in the chemistry classrooms at this school construct themselves, and are constructed, as outsiders in the subject.     

Young people and high school in Mexico: subjectivisation,others and reflexivity

This article is based on the finding that for many students, high school is a place for young people's life and living together, a place for subjectivisation. The process of subjectivisation is approached through a discussion that questions conceptions of students as strategists of their school trajectory, as well as conceptions of youth life as the excitement of vibrating together. The claim is made that young people's life at school is a process of finding meaningful Others: other styles, other friends, and the other gender. Faced with options and risks, students also develop reflexivity. These topics are examined in three different scenarios: a general high school that is part of the university system in Mexico City, a technical high school in the metropolitan area, and community intercultural high schools in an indigenous rural zone.     

农村中小学教师困境与问题述评

教师工资拖欠、医疗保障畸形发展、工作压力过大、优秀教师外流是我国农村中小学校师资队伍建设面临的主要问题。切实解决好这些问题,需要我们付出更多的努力。     

Amidst exclusion,promise, and violence: rural normal school students in Mexico and the disappearance of 43

ABSTRACT

On 26 and 27 September 2014, 43 students from the “Profesor Isidro Burgos” Rural Normal School in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero, Mexico, disappeared, and six people died. In this article, I analyse the event as the result of long-term historical processes, from the perspective of the social mobilisation that caused the students’ disappearance on the one hand, and from the history of rural normal schools on the other. The starting point is to relocate political history within the history of education in order to understand the agency of political actors in the definition of educational processes, and the questioning of the reciprocal relations of school and state. The study is based on widely diverse sources: official documents from schools, statistics, news items from newspapers and social networks, and observations of the mobilisations of 2014. The disappearance of the 43 rural normal students is the result of a long process of abandonment in the countryside, of discrimination against young people of rural origin and Indians, all in the framework of a process of state dismantling which places teachers and normal students in positions of severe vulnerability.     

Making a good career choice: A decision-analytical intervention to enhance proactive decision-making and career choice self-efficacy in high school students

At the end of high school, teenagers must deal with the first life-changing decision of determining what to do after graduation. For these decisions, adolescents need to be able to make good choices. However, most schools have not yet implemented decision trainings into their curricula. A new intervention called “KLUGentscheiden!” was developed to train complex decision-making in high school students to close this gap. The intervention targets three key components of good decision-making: envisioning one's objectives, identifying relevant alternatives, and comparing the identified alternatives by a weighted evaluation. We assumed that successfully training those decision-analytical steps should enhance self-perceived proactive decision-making skills. In addition, the training should also enhance self-assessed career choice self-efficacy. The intervention was evaluated in a pseudorandomized control study including 193 high school students. Compared to a control group, the intervention group significantly increased proactive decision-making skills and career choice self-efficacy. Although different long-term evaluations are still pending, the KLUGentscheiden! intervention provides an important tool to train complex decision-making in high-school students. It also has the potential to apply to other career choices of young individuals, such as choosing majors, a final thesis, a job, or a field of work.     

Understanding STEM-focused high school students’ perceptions of task importance: The role of “standing out” and “fitting in” in mathematics class

One theoretical extension of Optimal Distinctiveness Theory (ODT;  and ) is that individuals will work toward the satisfaction of their own social identity needs for differentiation (standing out) and assimilation (fitting in). Because these needs serve as driving forces behind the attitudes people adopt, and the behaviors they enact, the motivational properties of these needs are likely to be manifest in achievement contexts. Bridging ODT and Expectancy-Value Theory, this article examines the prediction that academic tasks are seen by students as more important when they contribute to students’ ability to stand out (task differentiation) from and fit in (task assimilation) with their classmates. This prediction was supported among an ethnically diverse sample of STEM-focused high school students who rated the importance of 18 mathematics-related academic tasks. Additional analyses demonstrated that the association between task assimilation and task importance was stronger for students who perceived their academic learning environment to be performance-focused (performance goal structure). There also was a significant interaction between task differentiation and task assimilation, such that the association between task assimilation and task importance attenuated at higher levels of task differentiation. The present study is one of the few investigations to assess how students’ valuing within a single academic domain might fluctuate from one academic task to the next (e.g., taking notes versus working out problems on the board). The Discussion addresses the theoretical and practical significance of acknowledging differentiation and assimilation as vehicles for motivating students in the classroom.