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...     

Moderation of the Big-Fish-Little-Pond Effect: Juxtaposition of Evolutionary (Darwinian-Economic) and Achievement Motivation Theory Predictions Based on a Delphi Approach

Educational Psychology Review - The big-fish-little-pond effect (BFLPE), the negative effect of school-/class-average achievement on academic self-concept, is one of educational psychology’s...     

A Nomadic Information System for Adaptive Exhibition Guidance

The paper describes the electronic guide HIPS that can be used duringthe process of a visit in a museum, i.e., for preparation, execution andevaluation. Users can access the system via the Web to prepare a visitby receiving information about the content and organization of anexhibition and practical issues like location and opening hours. Thevisitor can also prepare a tour for the actual visit or define hotspotswith important exhibits. The system should remind the user when on site.Once the user is in the museum he or she has two specific options to usethe system: the visitor can walk around in the museum and remainstanding where he or she finds an item of interest. The current locationin the room identified by infrared emitters at all exhibits triggers anindicator for the information presentation. Or, the visitor can select atour prepared by a curator, prepared by the user in advance (at home) orgenerated by the user ad hoc. In the museum, the information access isprovided via wireless technologies. This allows the user to accessinformation by moving in the physical space and navigating in theinformation space concurrently. The Web-based server approach allows foradaptive information selection and presentation based on a user modelevaluating the history of the usage of the system. The user canaccelerate the adaptation by specifying interests and preferences in theuser model. Before the visit the user can define tours and hotspots andenter annotations that will be presented or activated by the system inthe appropriate physical environment. After a visit in the museum theuser can evaluate the experience at home for further own inquiries orfor communication with other interested people. Thebefore-during-after-the-visit-support of visitors via nomadicinformation system has been designed based on evidence from ourquestionnaire pre-study, which showed that visitors actually useinformation available in or about museums before and also after avisit.     

Accurately detecting students’ lies regarding relational aggression by correctional instructions

This study investigates the effect of correctional instructions when detecting lies about relational aggression. Based on models from the field of social psychology, we predict that correctional instruction will lead to a less pronounced lie bias and to more accurate lie detection. Seventy-five teachers received videotapes of students’ true denial messages (e.g., students were innocent) and untrue denial messages (students were involved in relational aggression). A random half of the teachers were either given no further instructions or were told not to use stereotypical non-verbal cues when forming judgements (correctional instruction condition). As predicted, teachers in the correctional instruction condition were slightly better at detecting true than invented stories.     

Social change through an urban sport for development initiative? Investigating critical pedagogy through the voices of young people

This article explores the pedagogy of an urban Sport for Development (SfD) initiative in Belgium through the voices of young people. We draw on the critical pedagogy of Paulo Freire, and use qualitative research methods (i.e. observations, informal conversations, in-depth interviews and sharing circles) over a three-year period, to analyse the initiative’s actual pedagogical practice with key Freirean concepts (i.e. ‘banking education’, ‘dialogue’ and ‘dialogical action’) and virtues (e.g. respect for people’s knowledge, rejection of discrimination, caring for people). The findings reveal the presence of several Freirean virtues, emerging dialogue and, for some, action thought. Still, the SfD initiative remains at considerable distance from fully-fledged critical pedagogy. The young people in the SfD initiative nonetheless experience it as a space where they can be themselves, feel at home, gain respect, can learn to reflect and form opinions, and are temporarily freed from daily struggles such as discrimination. We discuss several pathways that could foster the capacity to organise and deliver a programme beyond emerging dialogue and action.     

Stratifikationen im Bereich der Hochschulbildung in Deutschland

Until recently there have been no universities or study programs in Germany that were connected to claims for top level positions in the field of higher education. However, by now efforts to vertically differentiate higher education are increasing and emphasize differences in quality. Such efforts have so far been observed with respect to research. In contrast, this article focusses on stratificatory efforts that are primarily connected to education at universities. It is based on cases studies in the field of graduate schools funded by the German excellence initiative and in the field of private higher education institutions that belong to law, business, and the social sciences and try to positions themselves as top level institutions. The first part addresses specific forms in which stratification is institutionalized in the field of higher education at present. The second part then exemplifies the various ways in which vertical differentiation is mobilized along a common attribute in both fields—internationality. We show that stratification is not a monolithic process but involves highly complex differentiations along various attributes and in multiple ways.     

How Personality Shapes Study Location Choices

Research in Higher Education - In this paper I investigate undergraduate students’ discrete location choices in presence of a plethora of potential destinations and psychic costs. I...     

The KIDS Experiment in Schleswig‐Holstein

Abstract

The article looks at the background to the KIDS (a German acronym for ‘Communication and Information in the Remote Data Transmission Network for Schools') experiment, in Schleswig‐Holstein, and the use of remote data transmission (RDT).     

How students build their performance expectancies: The importance of need for cognition

Individual differences in need for cognition (NFC) have been found to correspond with differences in information processing. Individuals with lower NFC process information using a peripheral route compared to individuals higher in NFC. These differences may effect the formation of performance expectancies. Based on previous work demonstrating that the formation of performance expectancies can be understood as an information-processing event and that inferring expectancies from the specific self-concept requires cognitive motivation, we tested whether students with higher NFC had performance expectancies in a specific subject that more strongly depended on their specific self-concept. Three hundred seventy-five students from grade 8 and 9 reported their NFC, their performance expectancies for the final report card in Mathematics and German, the general self-concept, and specific self-concepts in Mathematics and German. Multiple linear regressions supported the interaction hypothesis concerning performance expectancies in Mathematics and German. The higher the students’ NFC, the stronger performance expectancies were related to the corresponding specific self-concept. Individual differences in NFC influence motivational processes and should be included in models describing the relation between self-concepts and students’ beliefs like expectancies.     

How need for cognition affects the processing of achievement-related information

The present article analyzed, how need for cognition (NFC) influences the formation of performance expectancies. When processing information, individuals with lower NFC often rely on salient information and shortcuts compared to individuals higher in NFC. We assume that these preferences of processing will also make individuals low in NFC more responsive to salient achievement-related cues because the processing of salient cues is cognitively less demanding than the processing of non-salient cues. Therefore, individuals lower in NFC should tend to draw wider ranging inferences from salient achievement-related information. In a sample of N = 197 secondary school students, achievement-related feedback (grade on an English examination) affected changes in expectancies in non-corresponding academic subjects (e.g., expectation of final grade in mathematics or history) when NFC was lower, whereas for students with higher NFC, changes in expectancies in non-corresponding academic subjects were not affected.