A social inequality of motivation? The relationship between beliefs about academic success and young people's educational attainment

Meritocratic ideals, which emphasise individual responsibility and self‐motivation, have featured prominently in discourses about Australia's international competitiveness in academic achievement. Young people are often encouraged to attribute academic success and failure to individual factors such as hard work and talent, and to downplay extrinsic factors such as luck, task difficulty, or broader structural advantages and disadvantages. Using longitudinal data on a large, single‐age cohort (n=2,145) of young Australians participating in the Social Futures and Life Pathways (‘Our Lives’) project, we analyse the relationship between attributions for academic success across their final years of secondary schooling and how they related to educational attainment at the end of school. The belief that hard work would lead to academic success was widespread within the sample and positively associated with subsequent educational performance. Most students also emphasised the importance of having a supportive family, despite this being negatively associated with performance. Consistent with claims about a ‘social inequality of motivation’, the findings suggest that emphasising meritocracy may compound the disadvantages of young people from less educated or vocational backgrounds, and those living in rural and regional Australia, whilst impacting unevenly on males' and females' academic performance.     

Knowing Who You Are for Not Feeling Lonely? A Longitudinal Study on Identity and Loneliness

In adolescence, both identity concerns and feelings of loneliness are of utmost importance to the experiences of young people. Yet, a theoretically grounded hypothesis that identity and loneliness are developmentally related has never been tested. Thus, the aim of this study was to disentangle the longitudinal associations between identity processes in educational and interpersonal domains and loneliness in adolescence. The sample consisted of 632 Lithuanian adolescents (53.2% girls; M_age = 14.32; SD_age = 1.09) participating in a four-wave study with 6-month intervals between assessments. Cross-lagged analyses revealed reciprocal associations between identity processes and loneliness in the educational domain and unidirectional effects of adolescents' reconsideration of commitment on loneliness in the interpersonal domain.     

Students in Higher Education Governance in Europe: Contrasts,commonalities and controversies

Tertiary Education and Management - This article provides a synthesizing overview of the roles of students in higher education governance in Europe. We first review the existing literature on...     

Discoverers in scientific citation data

Identifying the future influential papers among the newly published ones is an important yet challenging issue in bibliometrics. As newly published papers have no or limited citation history, linear extrapolation of their citation counts—which is motivated by the well-known preferential attachment mechanism—is not applicable. We translate the recently introduced notion of discoverers to the citation network setting, and show that there are authors who frequently cite recent papers that become highly-cited in the future; these authors are referred to as discoverers. We develop a method for early identification of highly-cited papers based on the early citations from discoverers. The results show that the identified discoverers have a consistent citing pattern over time, and the early citations from them can be used as a valuable indicator to predict the future citation counts of a paper. The discoverers themselves are potential future outstanding researchers as they receive more citations than average.     

GATS and the steering capacity of a nation state in higher education: case studies of the Czech Republic and the Netherlands

This paper looks at the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) as an important part of the international trade law system and explores if and how it affects the steering capacity of a nation state regarding higher education. It offers a new conceptual framework to look on the impact of GATS on higher education within its increasingly complex environment by distinguishing between the ‘static’ dimension (GATS’ rules and disciplines) and the ‘dynamic’ dimension (stakeholders’ standpoints, views and actions). Furthermore, by comparing two case studies conducted in the Czech Republic and the Netherlands, it connects the theoretical framework on GATS and the steering capacity of a nation state with specific national conditions and complements case studies that have been so far carried out in other countries. We concluded that neither through the static dimension nor through the dynamic, was the steering capacity in the two cases affected directly: nation states remain the prime actors regarding higher education. Nevertheless, exercising their power over higher education has become more complex and nation states must take more consequences of their internal policy choices into account, which may be difficult to predict.     

Effects of instructional conditions and experience on student reflection: a video annotation study

This article reports on the findings of a study that investigated the effects of instructional conditions and prior experience on students’ self-reflection. The study was conducted with the use of a video annotation tool that was used by undergraduate performing arts students to reflect on their video-recorded performances. The study shows a consistent positive effect of previous experience with the video annotation tool for engagement with reflection. Graded instructional conditions with feedback had a positive effect on increasing higher order reflections particularly for students with prior experience with the video annotation tool for reflective purposes. The finding suggests that when including reflection in the curriculum, it is important to consider introducing it at a program or degree level rather than individual courses in order to provide an opportunity for students to gain experience with reflection and any particular tool that is used (e.g., a video annotation tool). Furthermore, reflective tasks should be scaffolded into the curriculum with ample opportunity for formative feedback and summative assessment in order to encourage higher order thinking and foster students’ metacognitive awareness and monitoring for increased goal-setting and acknowledgement of the motive or effect of their observed behavior.     

Reconciling rigour and impact by collaborative research design: study of teacher agency

This paper illustrates a new way of working collaboratively on the development of a methodology for studying teacher agency for social justice. Increasing emphasis of impact on change as a purpose of social research raises questions about appropriate research designs. Large-scale quantitative research framed within externally set parameters has often been criticised for its limited potential for capturing the contexts and impacting change, while smaller, locally embedded, mostly qualitative inquiries have been questioned on the grounds of their limited generalizability and sometimes compromising research rigour. New ways of working collaboratively are increasingly explored as a way of reconciling research rigour and impact. The paper presents the procedures for designing a study that is both methodologically rigorous and potentially impactful. Twelve researchers, practitioners and policy-makers in Scotland were extensively involved in designing a mixed-method study of teacher agency for social justice. The Critical Communicative Methodology was employed to establish egalitarian dialogue between researchers and practitioners. The procedures and the resulting research tools can be used in future studies, including large-scale quantitative analysis. The paper discusses the challenges of ownership, choice of methods, and knowledge transfer, that need to be addressed in these ways of working.     

Families of children on the autism spectrum: experience of daily life and impact of parent education

Information and support for families of children on the autism spectrum is limited in south-east Europe. A three-year project, Equity and Social Inclusion Through Positive Parenting (ESIPP), was established to develop and provide parent education (PE) in autism for families in Croatia, Cyprus and North Macedonia. This paper presents findings from Croatia regarding family life and the impact of PE. Data were collected via pre- and post-PE questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. Participants discussed the impact of autism on family life, the difficulty of obtaining a diagnosis, the importance of family support (and varying experience of formal support), common experiences of stigma and social exclusion and concerns for the future. The value and benefit of PE is identified, and recognition of its impact within Croatia has ensured its ongoing provision.     

The influence of core affect on cyclo-ergometer endurance performance: Effects on performance outcomes and perceived exertion

BackgroundCore affect is defined as the most general affective construct consciously accessible that is experienced constantly. It can be experienced as free-floating (mood) or related to prototypical emotional episodes. The aim of this study was to examine the influence of pleasant and unpleasant core affect on cyclo-ergometer endurance performance. Specifically, we considered the influence of pleasant and unpleasant core affect on performance outcomes (i.e., time to task completion) and rate of perceived exertion (RPE; Borg Scale, category ratio-10) collected during the task.MethodsThirty-one participants aged 20–28 years were recruited. Core affect was randomly elicited by 2 sets of pleasant and unpleasant pictures chosen from the international affective picture system. Pictures were displayed to participants during a cyclo-ergometer performance in 2 days in a counterbalanced order. RPE was collected every minute to detect volunteers’ exhaustion.ResultsThe study sample was split into 2 groups. Group 1 comprised participants who performed better with pleasant core affect, whereas Group 2 included participants who performed better with unpleasant core affect. Mixed between-within subjects analysis of variance revealed a significant 2 (group) × 2 (condition) × 5 (isotime) interaction (p = 0.002, η_p² = 0.158). Post hoc comparisons showed that participants who obtained better performance with pleasant core affect (pleasant pictures; Group 1) reported lower RPE values at 75% of time to exhaustion in a pleasant core affect condition compared to an unpleasant core affect condition. On the other hand, participants who obtained better performance with unpleasant core affect (unpleasant pictures; Group 2) reported lower RPE values at 75% and 100% of time to exhaustion in an unpleasant core affect condition.ConclusionFindings suggest differential effects of pleasant and unpleasant core affect on performance. Moreover, core affect was found to influence perceived exertion and performance according to participants’ preferences for pleasant or unpleasant core affect.     

The effect of potential fall distance on hormonal response in rock climbing

The aim of this study was to examine the effect of alterations in potential lead fall distance on the hormonal responses of rock climbers. Nine advanced female climbers completed two routes while clipping all (PRO-all) or half (PRO-½) of the fixed points of protection. Venous blood samples were analysed for total catecholamines, noradrenaline (norepinephrine), adrenaline (epinephrine), dopamine, lactate, cortisol and serotonin. Differences between the two conditions pre, immediately post and 15 min post climbing were assessed using a 2 × 3 repeated measures ANOVA. All hormones and blood lactate concentrations increased significantly (P < 0.05) immediately post climb, except for cortisol. Peak cortisol concentrations did not occur until 15 min post ascent. Further, significant interactions between climbing and clipping conditions were found for total catecholamines (890% of basal concentration in PRO-½ vs. 568% in PRO-all), noradrenaline (794% vs. 532%) and dopamine (500% vs. 210%). There were no significant interactions for adrenaline (1920% vs. 1045%), serotonin (150% vs. 127%) or lactate (329% vs. 279%). The study showed a greater catecholamine response with an increase in potential lead fall distance. The most pronounced increases seen in catecholamine concentration were reported for dopamine and noradrenaline.