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Learning processes that involve cognitive incongruity are closely tied to emotional experiences such as curiosity or confusion. The present study examined how discovering that a confidently held misconception is incorrect influences emotions and in turn the motivation to seek additional information. We asked 275 preservice teachers to judge if common statements about education were true or false and provided feedback about whether these statements were supported by scientific evidence. Following feedback, we assessed study participants' real-time (i.e., state level) epistemic emotions (surprise, curiosity, enjoyment, confusion, frustration, anxiety) and achievement emotions (anger, pride) produced by high-confidence errors (i.e., incorrect answers a person was confident in). We further examined whether providing additional information helped participants to resolve their discrepancy and to what extent emotions promoted participants' subsequent knowledge exploration. Our findings showed that participants were more surprised, curious, confused, and angry in situations where they found out a confidently held misconception was incorrect (i.e., after a high-confidence error) compared to misconceptions held with low confidence. Furthermore, participants reported more enjoyment in situations where they could resolve the discrepancy, and they were frustrated when the resolution of a discrepancy seemed impossible. In contrast to achievement-related anger and pride, participants' surprise, curiosity, confusion, and anxiety were associated with the exploration of knowledge. Finally, we tested whether the intraindividual effects would differ across individuals, but we found no evidence for such interindividual differences. Directions for future research and practical implications are discussed.

This article proposes a study design developed to disentangle the objective characteristics of a learning situation from individuals' subjective perceptions of that situation. The term objective characteristics refers to the agreement across students, whereas subjective perceptions refers to inter-individual heterogeneity. We describe a novel strategy for assessing and disentangling objective situation characteristics and subjective perceptions thereof, propose methods for analysing the resulting data, and illustrate the procedure with an example of a first study using this design to examine situational interest in 155 university students. Situational interest was assessed nine times per weekly lecture with three measurement time points per person and a rotated multi-group schedule. Assessments took place over the course of an entire semester of ten weeks. One of the advantages of the proposed design is that objective group agreements can be disentangled from subjective deviations from the group's average at each of the nine measurement time points per weekly lecture. Furthermore, the proposed design makes it possible to study the development of both subjective and objective parameters across the time span of one weekly lecture and an entire semester, while the burden for each person is kept relatively low with three beeps per lecture.

In-service teacher development programs are perceived as a common way to foster school improvement. Nevertheless, program evaluation to date ends with the assessment of acquired knowledge, skills, and motivation, frequently disregarding the actual learning transfer and its conditions. This study aimed to investigate how individual and situational factors interact and contribute to learning transfer in an in-service teacher development program. We tested a transfer model derived from human resources development research. One hundred and twenty-nine teachers aged 25-62 years (87% female), participating in an in-service development program, were surveyed three times during the program. Results of path analyses suggest that not only especially individual factors are critical for learning transfer in the context of school improvement, but also that program and environmental factors have important effects. They moderated the effects of the individual factors.

Underpinned by stage-environment fit and job demands-resources theories, this study examined how adolescents' anxiety, depressive symptoms, and positive functioning developed as they transferred from comprehensive school to further education, employment or training, or became NEET (not in education, employment, or training), at age 16 years, in the longitudinal English national cohort study Next Steps (N = 13,342). Controlling for childhood achievement, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, and gender, we found that NEET adolescents had the largest losses in mental health. This pattern was similar to adolescents staying on at school who had increased anxiety and depression, and decreased positive functioning, after transition. In comparison, adolescents transferring to full-time work, apprenticeships, or vocational college experienced gains in mental health.

In the present study, we examined the extent to which the responses of teachers and mothers toward a particular child are similar in respect to their instructional support and affect, and whether child characteristics predict these responses. The data of 373 Finnish child-teacher-mother triads (178 girls, 195 boys) were analysed. Teachers and mothers reported their instructional support and affective responses toward a child in the school/homework context in Grades 1, 2, 3, and 4. At the beginning of Grade 1, the children's performance in reading and math was tested, and teachers evaluated the children's externalizing and internalizing problem behaviour. The results demonstrated that mothers and teachers showed similar instructional support and affective responses toward a particular child at the end of Grade 1. Moreover, children's poor performance in reading and math at the beginning of Grade 1 was associated with high amounts of both teachers' and mothers' instructional support at the end of Grade 1, while children's externalizing problem behaviour was strongly related particularly to teachers' but also to mothers' negative affective responses at the end of Grade 1. The results provide evidence for the evocative impact of child characteristics on the child's interpersonal environment at the start of child's school career.

This study investigated adolescents' and parents' co-regulation of career-related goals during the post-school transition. Finnish adolescents (N = 807, 49% female) were assessed twice in high school and once after graduation. It was examined how their career goal motivation (autonomous vs. controlled) and appraisals (goal attainability, effort, progress, and stress) interact with their perceptions of parents' career-related involvement (support and lack of engagement) during the transition. Moreover, the role of perceived parental warmth for the co-regulation of career-related goals was assessed. The results showed that both perceived career-specific parental involvement and warmth were associated, albeit weakly, with goal-related stress three years later. This link was mediated by controlled career goal motivation. (Contains 1 figure and 2 tables.)

The transition from general education (e.g., high school) to vocational and tertiary education (e.g., college, vocational school) or to the labor market presents a number of developmental challenges. These challenges include making career choices and, more broadly, managing the transition. Coping with these challenges depends on the individual, their social network, and wider societal, cultural, and institutional conditions. This article discusses the informative value of developmental regulation, career development, and identity theories, for conceptualizing phase-adequate engagement at the post-school transition. Although previous psychological research has focused on individuals' career and transition-related engagement and its outcomes, we suggest this picture is limited because little is known about how young people's engagement is complemented and affected by the behavior of significant others and shaped by structural constraints and opportunities. Implications for future developmental research are discussed. (Contains 1 table, 1 figure and 1 footnote.)

People's personal goals interact with their life situations in many ways. This study examined the appraisals of personal goals during a transition from education to work and their interplay with stress in different domains of life. Finnish young adults (N = 265, 60% female) reported on their goals in the work domain, and related appraisals of importance, attainability, and progress, and the amount of stress they experienced with regard to economic situation, time, and work. The results showed that those individuals who appraised their work goals as important, attainable and progressing well, benefited from their goal striving as evidenced in less stress in all three domains. Moreover, individuals who initially experienced elevated stress levels due to their economic and work situation adapted their work-related goals, such that they later set goals which were more attainable and showed better progress. For these individuals, pursuing work goals remained highly important, whereas for others work goal importance declined. (Contains 2 figures and 2 tables.)

Individual initiative is required to successfully master career transitions in adolescence, and also parents play an important role in this process. Past research largely omitted co-agency in transition-related activities between adolescents and their parents, which could be described in terms of self- and other-regulation. The present pilot study examined adolescents' and mothers' career-specific regulatory behaviors as perceived from both agents' perspectives. 38 German adolescents rated importance and engagement in one transition-related personal goal and reported on intensity of career exploration activities. Furthermore, they reported on their perceptions of mothers' career-related behaviors and confidence in their offspring's transition management. All measures were also assessed from the mothers' point of view. Results revealed associations within and across family members' ratings that showed similarities as well as differences in perceptions of how behaviors associate. Partial correlation analyses showed that specific maternal behavior not contingent upon her general warmth associated with child behavior. (Contains 2 tables.)

This study examined 39 adolescents during their transition to university. In standardized weekly diaries over several weeks (M=8.13) adolescents reported on engagement in career exploration (in-breadth and in-depth self and environmental exploration), their parents' transition-related involvement (frequency of conversations, support, and interference), and their satisfaction with how the transition progressed. The results showed that exploration largely fluctuated across weeks, whereas parent involvement was more stable. Family members' engagement varied according to the phase of the application process the adolescent was involved in. The more adolescents explored during a given week, the more they talked to their parents, and the more supportive parents were. Associations between interference and exploration differed by type of exploration. Both exploration and support contributed to higher satisfaction. (Contains 3 tables.)

The study examines school and parental influences on adolescents' occupational exploration. Analyses of data from 859 6th, 8th, and 10th graders attending high- and lower-track high schools in the German federal state of Thuringia suggested more extensive exploration among students closer to the school-to-work transition. Besides cross-sectional effects of parenting and achievement orientation at school, acceptance and openness students experienced in class predicted increases of their exploratory behaviors. Multilevel analyses showed, however, that school effects operated on the level of subjective perceptions (individual level), but not on the level of intersubjective reality (classroom level). Implications for attempts to foster and facilitate exploration are discussed. (Contains 3 tables.)

Parents are major partners in helping adolescents prepare for a career choice. Although several studies have examined links between general aspects of the parent-adolescent relationship and adolescents' career development, little research has addressed the mechanisms involved. This study aimed to validate a three-dimensional instrument for the assessment of parental career-related behaviors and to examine their associations with career exploration and decision-making difficulties. After testing the dimensional structure of the instrument, we examined the relationship between parents' behaviors and adolescents' career development by using data from 359 German adolescents who reported the amount of perceived parental career-related behaviors and their career exploration and decision-making difficulties. The results of structural equation modeling confirmed the hypothesized dimensional structure (support, interference, lack of engagement). While parental support associated positively with career exploration, interference and lack of engagement associated with decision-making difficulties. Furthermore, interference and lack of engagement moderated the relationship between support and exploration. Support moderated the association between interference and decision-making difficulties. (Contains 3 tables and 2 figures.)

Describes how a freshman English course can be taught with a technical writing emphasis to make the course more relevant to the needs and interests of students planning technical careers. (TJ)

Presents a method for helping students learn to evaluate data, draw conclusions, and state a most probable hypothesis in writing essays. (TJ)