Long-term effects of primary schools on non-cognitive outcomes of students at age 17

Educational effectiveness research has always displayed an interest in long-term effects of schools. However, over the past decades only few studies examined such effects. Moreover, investigating non-cognitive outcomes as an effectiveness indicator has been ignored for a long time in the research field. This study addresses both gaps in the research literature by investigating long-term effects of primary schools on non-cognitive outcomes of students at age 17. Moreover, it is investigated which primary school characteristics play a role in this process. The study uses data of the SiBO project, in which a cohort of 6000 Flemish pupils were intensively followed from kindergarten until Grade 7. In 2014, at the age of 17, 65% of the cohort participated in a follow-up study. Cross-classified multilevel models showed significant, but small long-term effects of primary schools on some of the non-cognitive outcomes. Also, some small long-term effects of primary school characteristics were found.     

The role of personality and motivation in predicting early college academic success in non-traditional students at a Hispanic-serving institution

Non-cognitive factors represent a chance to learn more about how to help students succeed in early college experiences. This study examined personality and motivation as predictors of first-quarter GPA in a sample of 315 non-traditional undergraduates at a Hispanic-serving institution. Our results provide support for the importance of high levels of conscientiousness, intrinsic motivation, and low levels of extrinsic motivation in first-quarter school success. Implications and possible interventions are discussed.     

Conceptions of learning and approaches to learning in Portuguese students

The article describes a study that attempted to characterise Portuguese students’ conceptions of learning and approaches to learning. A sample of university students answered open questions on the meaning, process and context of learning. Results, derived from content analysis, replicate most conceptions of learning described by phenomenographical research (i.e. distinction between learning as memorisation and learning as comprehension). Moreover, new variants of known conceptions of learning emerged (e.g. learning occurs through: exploratory practice; learning to learn; motivation) and an apparently new conception (i.e. learning as understanding and application). The same sample answered a questionnaire which attempted to measure motivation and learning strategies. Through factorial analysis of results it was possible to confirm the presence of three well-known approaches to learning: surface, deep and achieving.     

The influence of family on academic performance of Mozambican university students

Past research indicates that the family plays an important role in academic outcomes. This is an important topic for unequal family contexts such as those in Mozambique. The objective of this study is to explore the influence of family on academic performance and to determine whether self-efficacy and perceived progression mediate this relationship among university students in Mozambique. Testing these influences was proposed to be done through path analysis. The study involved 202 Mozambican university students aged 18 and 58 years (M = 28.36, SD = 8.16, Mdn = 26). Participants were measured on socio-demographic family characteristics, family values and beliefs, family expectations and family support, self-efficacy, goal progress, and academic performance. Overall, the results show that the family did indeed influence academic performance through academic self-efficacy and perception of progress toward academic goals. However, self-efficacy was less influenced by the information provided but more associated with support from material resources. Implications for practice involve interventions aimed to improving family support, which can act as a filter against negative contextual influences. Future research would benefit from exploring other contextual influences, such as those of colleagues and teachers, and their effect on self-efficacy.     

The influence of academic self-efficacy on academic performance: A systematic review

This review integrates 12 years of research on the relationship between academic self-efficacy and university student's academic performance, and known cognitive and motivational variables that explain this relationship. Previous reviews report moderate correlations between these variables, but few discuss mediating and moderating factors that impact this relationship. Systematic searches were conducted in April 2015 of psychological, educational, and relevant online databases for studies investigating academic self-efficacy and performance in university populations published between September 2003 and April 2015. Fifty-nine papers were eligible. Academic self-efficacy moderately correlated with academic performance. Several mediating and moderating factors were identified, including effort regulation, deep processing strategies and goal orientations. Given the paucity of longitudinal studies identified in this review, further research into how these variables relate over time is necessary in order to establish causality and uncover the complex interaction between academic self-efficacy, performance, and motivational and cognitive variables that impact it.     

Secondary school science predictors of academic performance in university bioscience subjects

In 2009 the Faculty of Health Sciences at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia is introducing a common first year for 11 different undergraduate courses in the faculty. Current prerequisite science entry requirements vary with course and range from none to at least two science or mathematics subjects and from ～50 to 99 in Equivalent National Tertiary Entrance Rank (ENTER) scores. Under the previous structure, students in different courses completed a variety of different subjects at first year. Concern about the ability of such disparate groups to complete a common first year led to the current investigation of the relationships between year 12 (final year of secondary school) science subjects and performance in first year university bioscience subjects. Year 12 results for all science‐related units and ENTER scores were obtained for all Victorian students enrolling in a first year course in the Faculty of Health Sciences in 2005 and 2006. Regression and other analyses were conducted for five first year bioscience subjects. The ENTER score was the best predictor of academic performance in all units except regional anatomy. Performance in many secondary school science subjects was highly predictive of performance in physiology, combined systematic physiology and anatomy and biomechanics units, but again not for regional anatomy units. It appears that year 12 performance in science subjects and ENTER scores may be important predictors of success in physiology, but not regional anatomy subjects at university. It is possible that regional anatomy is an entirely new subject area that requires new types of learning unrelated to year 12 science subjects. Anat Sci Ed 2:113‐118, 2009. © 2009 American Association of Anatomists.     

The interplay between academic emotions,psychological flexibility and self-regulation as predictors of academic achievement

Research concerning students’ emotions as well as their way of coping with their emotions in different situations has been scarce. The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between self-regulated learning, academic emotions, psychological flexibility, study success and study pace during university-level studies. A total of 274 arts students participated in this study. Academic emotions were first explored with factor analyses, parallel analysis and confirmatory factor analyses. The relationship between self-regulated learning, psychological flexibility, academic emotions and study success and study pace was analysed using Pearson’s correlations and path analysis using Amos. The results revealed that there is a strong connection between self-regulated learning and academic emotions and that students’ self-regulations appear to affect students’ emotions with regard to their academic study. Furthermore, psychological flexibility appeared to be an important mediator between academic emotions and study pace. The study suggests that students’ emotions and their way of coping with these emotions should be taken into account when considering learning and teaching.     

Surviving the performance management of academic work: evidence from young Chinese academics

ABSTRACT

Despite predominant macro-level changes of performance management at Chinese universities, little attention has been paid to how the disciplinary technologies have been interpreted and enacted at the level of individual academics. Using qualitative data with 26 participants at a Chinese research university, this study provides evidence of collective compliance with the performative imperatives. The study indicates that tacit compliance has been reinforced through the coercive powers of reward, punishment, and bureaucratization and consolidated through the normative influences of the Chinese Confucian culture and subjectification via creating new notions of ‘academic success’. Moreover, the process of perverse learning, during which opportunistic behaviors are taken to ‘play the game’, has contributed to the emergence of performance paradox. In addition, the findings do not indicate any vocal resistance in public but conscientious efforts have been taken in private by some of the participants to navigating through the performance paradox in order to alleviate the dysfunctional consequences caused by the perverse learning.     

Personality traits and general intelligence as predictors of academic performance: A structural equation modelling approach

The aim of the present study was to investigate the extent to which personality traits, after controlling for general intelligence, predict academic performance in different school subjects. Upper secondary school students in Sweden (N = 315) completed the Wonderlic IQ test (Wonderlic, 1992) and the IPIP-NEO-PI test (Goldberg, 1999). A series of hierarchical structural equation models showed that general intelligence, Conscientiousness, Extraversion and Neuroticism were significantly linked to overall academic performance. There were also different findings for a lower level of personality traits, e.g. different personality traits were associated with different subjects. The findings are discussed with regard to previous results on personality traits as determinants of academic performance in different school subjects and the fact that lower level traits may facilitate achievement in particular subjects.     

The interplay between self-determined motivation,self-regulated cognitive strategies,and prior achievement in predicting academic performance

The present study examined the interplay between self-determined motivation and the use of cognitive strategies in predicting university students’ academic performance while taking into account the effect of prior achievement. A theory based model was tested using structural equation modeling on a sample of 764 Italian university students. Results showed that prior achievement influenced students’ academic performance and their motivation and use of cognitive strategies. Critical thinking was the only cognitive strategy which proved to have a significant impact on students’ academic performance. Autonomous motivation had an indirect positive impact on academic performance through its influence on the critical thinking strategy. Controlled motivation had a direct negative impact on academic performance. On the whole, our findings suggest that autonomously motivated students tend to achieve better academic performance by using critical thinking, while students who are driven by controlled motivation have lower academic performance.     

Boys left behind: The effects of summer camp and follow-up strategies on academic,personal, and social competencies

I use Danish administrative data to investigate the consequences of summer camp participation combined with a one-year follow-up program for disadvantaged boys on academic, personal, and social competencies. My identification strategy relies on individual-level panel data that enable me to observe outcomes before and after summer camp participation. Using a difference-in-differences strategy, I find overall positive effects on academic and personal competencies that reduce the gap to a matched group of boys with similar background characteristics by 40 to 80 percent. Further, I exploit a structural change in the follow-up program to evaluate how different mentoring strategies affect outcomes. In 2017, the follow-up program was changed from individual mentoring to group mentoring. Using a triple differences strategy, I find that group mentoring in the follow-up program improves personal and social competencies, suggesting that the format of the follow-up program is crucial for effects on personal and social competencies.     

Exploring coping and optimism as predictors of academic burnout and performance among university students

This study examined the relationship between coping strategies, dispositional optimism, academic burnout and academic performance using structural equation modelling. Data were collected from a sample of 532 Spanish undergraduate students. Participants completed a battery of questionnaires including the LOT-R to assess optimism, CSI for the measurement of coping (adaptive and maladaptive coping strategies), and MBI-SS to evaluate academic burnout (exhaustion, cynicism, and efficacy). Academic performance was evaluated by the grade point average (GPA). The results showed that academic burnout was directly and positively associated with maladaptive coping but directly and negatively explained by adaptive coping. In addition, emotional exhaustion was significantly and negatively predicted by optimism. Finally, academic performance was significantly predicted by academic burnout. In conclusion, the findings suggest that both adaptive coping and optimism help to prevent academic burnout and, therefore, positively affect academic performance. Implications for intervention and future research are discussed.     

The utility of a standard composite for forecasting academic performance in several liberal arts colleges

In this study, one linear discriminant function of four admissions scores was found to exhaust more than 90% of their predictive power for separating 16 college/level-of-achievement groups — i.e., high- and low-performing freshman women at each of eight liberal arts colleges. Moreover, the corresponding discriminant score yielded validity coefficients vs freshman- and senior-level continuous grade-average criteria within each college comparable to coefficients yielded by group-specific, regression-weighted composites of the four scores in cross-validation samples. Results of the study suggest that multiple-discriminant analysis provides a rigorous and practical basis for adding an important and largely unexplored between-group dimension to studies in the prediction of within-group performance.     

Multivariate prediction of academic performance by Hong Kong University students

Verbal intelligence, English-language skills, personality, and attitude scales were used as predictors of academic performance in 230 male and female arts students at the University of Hong Kong. A series of bivariate, multiple, and canonical correlation analyses were performed. The results showed that verbal intelligence and attitudes, excepting study orientation, were not predictive of performance. English-language skills had the most predictive value, accounting for about 10% of the variance of performance measures. Personality variables failed to predict performance when composite criterion measures (GPAs) were used; however, they proved to be of predictive value when results of individual academic subjects were used as criterion measures. The study points to the importance of using noncomposite criterion measures in prediction and of considering the cultural context of achievement.     

Effects of self-assessment and peer-assessment interventions on academic performance: A meta-analysis

This meta-analysis examined the effects of self-assessment (SA) and/or peer-assessment (PA) interventions on academic performance. The synthesis included 626 effect sizes from 175 independent studies, either using an experimental/quasi-experimental design or a repeated measures design, and involved 19,383 participants in total. Results indicated that SA (g = 0.585), PA (g = 0.606), and SA + PA (mixed) intervention (g = 0.448) had meaningful effects on academic performance. The difference between the effects of SA and PA interventions, conducted on different groups within the same study, was not statistically significant. The use of online technology increased the effect of PA interventions but not for SA. Participants with a higher mean age had more performance gains from the SA + PA (mixed) intervention. For both SA and PA, the studies that used a repeated measures design generated larger effect sizes than those with an experimental/quasi-experimental design. Overall, the findings from this meta-analysis demonstrated the benefits of SA and PA interventions on academic performance in different contexts. Implications for practice and directions for future research are discussed.     

Perceptions of academic quality and approaches to studying among technology students in distance education

Primary objective. To examine perceptions of academic quality and approaches to studying in students taking six technology courses by distance education.

Research design. Students taking four courses received an end-of-course questionnaire. The following year, students taking all six courses received a mid-course questionnaire.

Method. The Course Experience Questionnaire and the Revised Approaches to Studying Inventory were administered in a postal survey to 3539 students of the UK Open University.

Outcomes and results. Across successive levels of study, students were progressively less likely to adopt a deep approach, were more likely to adopt a surface approach and rated their courses less favourably, especially with regard to the workload and materials. Between the middle and end of a course, students were more likely to adopt a deep approach and gave more positive ratings with regard to the materials and amount of choice.

Conclusions. The survey instruments can be recommended as useful tools for monitoring the experiences of engineering and technology students.     

Approaches to studying and academic performance in short-essay exams

Previous research has generallyfailed to find a relation between the waystudents approach the task of studying andtheir exam grades. The present studyinvestigated why it is that a deep approach tostudying, which has been shown to result in ahigher quality of learning, does notconsistently result in higher exam grades. Theparticipants in the study were 49 third-yearpsychology students. They completedquestionnaires that assessed approaches tostudying, motivation, and intelligence. Theirfinal exam marks, along with indicators of thequality of their final exam responses and thequantity of information reproduced in the finalexam were used as indicators of academicperformance. The results showed that the deepstudy approach was linearly related to thequality of exam responses, but quadraticallyrelated to the quantity of informationreproduced. The use of the deep approach was nomore effective in facilitating high exam marksfor questions that emphasised understanding ofthe study material than for questions thatemphasised reproduction of it. Taken together,these findings suggest that students who usehigh levels of the deep approach fail toconsistently achieve higher exam grades becauseof deficiencies in the quantity of theirresponses, rather than because of theinsensitivity of exams to students'understanding of the study material.     

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.     

学差生与学优生时间管理自我监控的差异研究

为探讨学差生和学优生时间管理自我监控的差异,采用时间管理自我监控量表,对186名中学生进行调查。结果表明:学差生与学优生在时间管理自我监控及其各维度(时间规划除外)上存在显著差异,时间管理自我监控与学业成绩具有显著正相关,目标设置和主动性对学业成绩具有显著预测作用。因此,学差生的时间管理自我监控显著低于学优生,时间管理自我监控是影响学业成绩的重要因素。     

Transfer paths and academic performance: The primary school merger program in china

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, China's Ministry of Education embarked on an ambitious program of primary school mergers by shutting down small village schools and opening up larger centralized schools in towns and county seats. The goal of the program was to improve the teacher and building resources in an attempt to raise the human capital of students in poor rural areas, although it was recognized that students would lose the opportunity to learn in the settings of their own familiar villages. Because of the increased distances to the new centralized schools, the merger program also entailed building boarding facilities and encouraging or mandating that students live at school during the week away from their family. Given the magnitude of the program and the obvious mix of benefits and costs that such a program entails there has been surprisingly little effort to evaluate the impact of creating a new system that transfers students from school to school during their primary school period of education and, in some cases, making student live in boarding facilities at school. In this paper, our overall goal is to examine the impact of the Rural Primary School Merger Program on academic performance of students using a dataset from a survey that we designed to reflect transfer paths and boarding statuses of students. We use OLS and Propensity Score Matching approaches and demonstrate that there is a large “resource effect” (that is, an effect that appears to be associated with the better facilities and higher quality of teachers in the town and county schools) that appears to be associated with the transfers of students from less centralized schools (such as village schools) to more centralized schools. Boarding, however, is shown to have negative impacts on academic performance. However, students who transfer to county school benefit from the transfer no matter where they start and whether they board or not.