Test Anxiety and Physiological Arousal: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Educational Psychology Review - Test anxiety is a widespread and mostly detrimental emotion in learning and achievement settings. Thus, it is a construct of high interest for researchers and its...     

Judging students' achievement goal orientations: Are teacher ratings accurate?

Using the theoretical framework of achievement goal theory, this study investigated the accuracy of teachers' judgments of their students' motivation. Self-report data were gathered on the mastery, performance-approach, and performance-avoidance goals of 1140 German secondary school students (mean age = 14.24) in five academic subjects (English, Mathematics, German, second foreign language, and Biology). Their teachers in each of the five subjects (N = 176) were asked to judge students' achievement goals. Multilevel regression analyses revealed that teacher ratings of students' motivation statistically significantly predicted student ratings in all five subjects for mastery and performance-approach motivation, but not for performance-avoidance motivation. Assessment of differences in teachers' judgment accuracy across classrooms revealed some variability in teachers' ability to judge their students' mastery and performance-approach goals. Exploratory analyses showed that teaching experience, teacher gender, student age, and student gender did not systematically explain variation in judgment accuracy. Future research should examine other characteristics potentially influencing teachers' judgment accuracy and investigate the effect of teachers' judgment accuracy on students' motivation.     

Gross efficiency predicts a 6-min double-poling ergometer performance in recreational cross-country skiers

The purpose of the study was to investigate which physiological parameters would most accurately predict a 6-min, all-out, double-poling (DP) performance in recreational cross-country skiers. Twelve male recreational cross-country skiers performed tests consisting of three series lasting 10 s, one lasting 60 s, plus a 6-min, all-out, DP performance test to estimate mean and peak power output. On a separate day, gross mechanical efficiency (GE) was estimated from a 10-min, submaximal, DP test and maximal oxygen consumption (VO₂ max) was estimated from an incremental treadmill running test. Power was measured after each stroke from the acceleration and deceleration of the flywheel that induced the friction on the ergometer. The power was shown to the skier on a small computer placed on the ergometer. A multivariable correlation analysis showed that GE most strongly predicted 6-min DP performance (r = 0.79) and interestingly, neither DP VO₂ max, nor treadmill-running VO₂ max, correlated with 6-min DP performance. In conclusion, GE correlated most strongly with 6-min DP performance and GE at the ski ergometer was estimated to be 6.4 ± 1.1%. It is suggested that recreational cross-country skiers focus on skiing technique to improve gross mechanical efficiency during intense DP.     

Norwegian perspectives on aesthetic education and the contemporary conception of cultural literacy as Bildung (‘danning’)

This article aims at describing a Norwegian contemporary context as basis for developing a perspective on aesthetic education. The Norwegian concept for Bildung is ‘dannelse’ or ‘danning’. The notion of cultural literacy will be considered as one contemporary conception of Bildung in a Norwegian context. The article consists of three parts. In the first part recent developments of the understanding of what ‘danning’ implies in Norwegian educational context are presented, with special focus on the dynamics between the general and the individual. As the second part of the article a study of arts and culture in Norway is presented briefly. In the third part Gunther Kress’ (Literacy in the new media age, 2003; The conference reading images: multimodality, representation and new media, 2004; Contemporary issues in educational studies and research. An exploration in the frame of a social semiotic multimodal theory of meaning-making, 2012) theory of multimodality, and the concept ‘literacy’, including cultural literacy is introduced. Cultural literacy is suggested to be a concept describing ‘danning’ from the perspective of late modernity. The fourth part of the article comprises the presentation of a few research and development projects focusing on arts, culture and aesthetic education in Norway—with a side glance to Sweden and Finland. The examples illustrate more concretely what an aesthetic education might be. The competence of the teacher is underlined as a prerequisite for qualified teaching of arts subjects, as well as for teaching with an aesthetic perspective as a leading thread in all teaching. Through the focus on meaning making, the aesthetic approach may contribute to the qualification of a conception of ‘danning’ as cultural literacy.     

Uncomfortable encounters between elite and “shadow education” in India—Indian Institutes of Technology and the Joint Entrance Examination coaching industry

India’s elite sector of engineering universities, Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), are seen as safe gateways to a life in the politically hyped “new India” of the global knowledge economy. The Indian entrance exam coaching industry each year enrolls hundreds of thousands of students in classes strictly directed at “cracking” the institutes’ famous Joint Entrance Examination (JEE). Vast majorities of students at IITs are by now former coaching students, and coaching is increasingly supplanting performance in secondary education as the perceived prerequisite for IIT admission. This poses serious questions about the ability of the institutions to autonomously steer student selection and recruit the select exceptional students whom until now have kept “IITians” in the center of imaginaries of India’s future. This article explores the case of residential pre-entrance exam coaching to assess the coaching sector’s role in shaping India’s future technological leaders. It assesses the educational structure of the sector, its effect on student lives, the life aspirations it relies on, and how it is shaping IIT education itself. The case of entrance exam coaching in India, it is argued, prompt a reassessment of the concept of “shadow education” in order to begin a more thorough research agenda focused on the educational production and policy consequences of this “shadow” industry as an integrated (even if unwanted) and co-constitutive part of the higher education sector.