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Turkey is an interesting context to study the applicability of the Expectancy-Value-Theory (EVT), since it is a less well-studied research context with a highly selective, centralised, and competitive education system and a more collectivistic-orientated population. In such a context, well-established factors known to drive students' achievement, as proposed by EVT, might operate differently. Therefore, we investigated how family SES, parents' education-related beliefs and schools' performance level relate to students' motivational beliefs and maths achievement in 15-year-old Turkish students. We used PISA 2012 data to compare the motivational beliefs of Turkish students to the OECD average and to test a path model predicting students' maths achievement. Results indicated that despite lower-than-average performance levels, Turkish students hold comparable or higher motivational beliefs in maths than their peers from OECD countries. The path model results revealed the strongest associations between family SES and maths achievement via schools' performance level and students' competence beliefs.

Trait personality has been associated with achievement and many of its related outcomes in settings such as education, health, physical activity and sport. Scant trait personality research has been performed among school-age students in physical education, so this study investigates relations between the six-dimension (HEXACO) model of trait personality and anxiety, self-efficacy and intentions to exercise as a function of gender in 316 high school physical education students. Students completed validated measures of these constructs. Results revealed that trait personality (particularly the social self-esteem aspect of extraversion) predicted lower anxiety and higher self-efficacy and intentions to exercise in both females and males. Openness to experience was predictive of both anxiety and lowered self-efficacy in females. It appears that physical educators should consider the role of the HEXACO personality traits and sub-traits in their students and potentially differentiate instruction to better accommodate students who are more vulnerable. From this study, it appears that students who are less extraverted and females who are more open to experience may be at be more at risk for anxiety and lower self-efficacy in physical education which may compromise their intentions to exercise.

In this prospective study, we recruited a sample of Belgian adolescents (N = 886) to investigate to what extent perceived teachers' motivating style relates to quality of motivation in the beginning of the school year and, in turn, changes in study effort and procrastination by the end of the school year. After controlling for initial levels of study effort and procrastination and for a shared variance due to classroom membership, we found, through path analysis, perceived autonomy support and structure to relate positively to autonomous motivation, which in turn predicted increased study effort and decreased procrastination at the end of the school year. The findings are discussed from a theoretical and practical standpoint.

Data-based decision-making has the potential to increase student achievement results. Data-based decision-making can be defined as teachers' systematic analysis of data sources in order to study and adapt their educational practices for the purpose of maximizing learning results. Teachers must apply the findings from their data use to their personal teaching activities. Therefore, data-based decision-making may be influenced by individual teachers' psychological characteristics. The present study aimed to explore which psychological factors contribute to teachers' data use in a Dutch primary school context. A questionnaire-based quantitative methodology was employed. We included the following psychological constructs: affective and instrumental attitudes, perceived control, social norms, self-efficacy, collective efficacy, and intentions regarding data use. Results of the path analysis showed that perceived control, instrumental attitude, and intention regarding data use all significantly influenced data use. Additionally, intention was found to be a mediator of the relation between affective attitude and data use. Interventions aimed at data-based decision-making should take these psychological factors into account to increase teachers' implementation of data-based decision-making for instruction and, consequently, educational quality.

The present longitudinal study examined the cross-lagged relations between parental causal attributions of children's math success to children's ability, parental help, children's math performance and task persistence. A total of 735 children, their mothers, fathers and teachers were assessed twice--at the end of the second and the third grades. Children were tested in math and parents filled out questionnaires measuring causal attributions. Children's task persistence was reported both by parents and by class teachers. The results of path analyses indicated mutual negative effects between mothers' and fathers' help attributions and children's math performance, and a positive effect of mothers' ability attributions on children's math performance. Cross-lagged relations were also found for children's math performance and task persistence. However, relations between parental attributions and children's task persistence were evident only for fathers' ability attributions. The findings emphasise the importance of examining both mothers and fathers, home and school context.

The present study investigated the relative importance of executive functioning, parent-child verbal interactions, phonological awareness and visual skills on reading and mathematics for Chinese children from low-versus middle-socio economic status (SES) backgrounds. A total of 199 kindergarten children were assessed on executive functioning, verbal interactions, phonological awareness, visual skills, mathematics and word reading in Chinese and English. Results revealed that low-SES children exhibited lower levels of cognitive-linguistic skills, verbal interactions, reading and mathematics achievement than their middle-SES counterparts. Path analyses also indicated that executive functioning and verbal interactions made significant and direct contributions to mathematics, and indirect contributions to reading through phonological awareness. These results suggest that executive functioning and verbal interactions provide the foundation for phonological awareness and visual skills, which in turn affect reading and mathematics achievement. Overall, findings underscore the potential importance of SES inequalities, cognitive-linguistic skills and parental verbal input to their children for early reading and mathematics achievement.

We investigated academic buoyancy (a response to challenge) and adaptability (a response to change) among a sample of 12-16-year-olds in China (N = 3617) compared with same-aged youth from North America (N = 989) and the United Kingdom (UK; N = 1182). We found that Chinese students reported higher mean levels of buoyancy and adaptability. We also found that correlations between buoyancy and adaptability, and between these two factors and motivation and engagement outcomes, were significantly higher for Chinese students than for North American and UK samples. In path analyses, buoyancy and adaptability positively and significantly predicted motivation and engagement (typically at p < 0.001) in all three regions; however, buoyancy effects were significantly stronger for the Chinese students.

The current study aimed to explore the concept of transition self-efficacy, which is defined as individuals' subjective evaluation of their ability to execute the actions required for a successful transition from elementary to middle school. The study followed a sample of 128 sixth-grade students for 2 consecutive years (before and after the school transition). A path analysis based on structural equation modelling revealed that the students' perceptions of the teachers' emphasis on mastery goal orientations predicted academic and social aspects of self-efficacy. The social aspect of self-efficacy in turn predicted changes in the students' emotional and behavioural engagement after the transition. The results were robust when we controlled for self-reported GPA and gender. An interaction between gender and aspects of self-efficacy was also observed. The findings emphasise the importance of transition self-efficacy for adaptive school transitions and provide evidence that teachers' goal emphases play a significant role in promoting self-efficacy.

This study examined adolescent personality and problem behaviours as predictors of two types of social status: social preference and popularity. Academic track (college preparatory and vocational) and gender were expected to moderate these associations. The sample included 693 students (49.0% female; M = 15.46 years) attending classrooms in two academic tracks (vocational and college preparatory). Participants completed self-report measures of personality and problem behaviours and peer-reports of preference and popularity. Results of structural path analyses indicated that academic track and gender moderated several associations. Specifically, externalising problems were associated with more popularity for males and less preference for females in college preparatory classrooms. Internalising problems were associated with popularity and preference for adolescents in vocational classrooms. The findings illustrate the complexities associated with predicting the social status of male and female adolescents attending different academic tracks. The salience of status norms and implications for intervention programmes are discussed.

This study sought to examine the development of paragraph writing skills of 116 English as a second language university students over the course of 12 weeks and the relationship between the linguistic features of students' written texts as measured by Coh-Metrix--a computational system for estimating textual features such as cohesion and coherence--and the scores assigned by human raters. The raters' reliability was investigated using many-facet Rasch measurement (MFRM); the growth of students' paragraph writing skills was explored using a factor-of-curves latent growth model (LGM); and the relationships between changes in linguistic features and writing scores across time were examined by path modelling. MFRM analysis indicates that despite several misfits, students' and raters' performances and scale's functionality conformed to the expectations of MFRM, thus providing evidence of psychometric validity for the assessments. LGM shows that students' paragraph writing skills develop steadily during the course. The Coh-Metrix indices have more predictive power before and after the course than during it, suggesting that Coh-Metrix may struggle to discriminate between some ability levels. Whether a Coh-Metrix index gains or loses predictive power over time is argued to be partly a function of whether raters maintain or lose sensitivity to the linguistic feature measured by that index in their own assessment as the course progresses.

The present study examined the extent to which parent involvement in education was directly and indirectly (via school engagement) related to academic outcomes in an effort to more fully understand the school experiences of urban adolescents. Participants (80% racial/ethnic minority; n = 108) were in grades 6, 7 or 8. In the Fall and subsequent Spring youth completed in-school surveys with items on parental involvement in education, school engagement (affective, behavioural, cognitive engagement) and perceived academic competence. Grades were obtained from official school records. Findings showed that parental involved was positively associated with behavioural and cognitive engagement, which in turn contributed to academic competence and achievement. Results underscore the importance of parental involvement in adolescents' engagement and academic success and highlight the importance of examining the multiple components of school engagement simultaneously, as we found differential effects for affective, behavioural, and cognitive engagement on academic competence and achievement.

This study analyses the relationships among educational performance, field dependence-independence cognitive style and factors traditionally associated with performance and style, to build a comprehensive model of factors associated with the levels of education performance of students in Bogotá. A total of 3003 students, of grades 8 and 10, from 62 public schools of the city of Bogotá, Colombia participated in the study. An analysis of multiple correspondences and a path analysis were carried out. A relationship between cognitive style and educational performance was found: field-independent students are more likely to obtain high-performance levels both in standardised tests and in teachers' evaluations. The path analysis shows that there are two directions in the association: a direct path leads to a positive association: higher levels of field independence produce better performances; an indirect path leads to a negative association: higher levels of field independence produce indiscipline and, consequently, lower performances.

During the past decade, research on the constructive learning process has been conducted mainly from two perspectives: student approaches to learning (SAL) and self-regulated learning (SRL). The SAL perspective has highlighted the role of learning conceptions with respect to other topics involved in constructive learning processes, whereas recently the SAL perspective has emphasised the effects of the future time perspective (FTP) and self-efficacy beliefs about these topics. Based on these two lines of research (SRL and SAL), using path analysis, we explored the direct and indirect effects of FTP and learning conceptions on self-efficacy, metacognitive strategies, effort and academic performance. Likewise, we identified some patterns that combine specific factors related to these variables. Participants in the present study were 100 (84% females, 16% males) Spanish fourth year university students enrolled in the Social Sciences Degree Programme. The ages of the students ranged from 18 to 49 (M = 22.02; SD = 3.68) and their participation was voluntary and anonymous. Likert-scale inventories were used to obtain data from students: FTP; learning conceptions; metacognitive strategies scale; and self-efficacy beliefs for SAL. On the one hand, the path analysis showed interesting indirect and direct relationships between topics with regard to key constructs of each of these research perspectives (SRL/SAL). However, these results do not coincide with the body of knowledge about FTP. On the other hand, results obtained using cluster and discriminant analysis revealed three specific patterns: a meaning orientation to learning and the future, a reproductive orientation to learning and the present, and an unusual pattern explained by the influence of historical-cultural characteristics on learning practices in educational contexts. We consider that this last pattern presents relevant implications for educational practice.

We tested a theoretical model of college students' ratings of messengers of resilience and models of resilience, students' own perceived resilience, regulatory strategy use and achievement. A total of 116 undergraduates participated in this study. The results of a path analysis indicated that ratings of models of resilience had a direct effect on students' perceived resilience and that perceived resilience directly influenced regulatory strategy use (i.e. effort regulation, self-regulation and time management), which influenced academic achievement (as measured by grade point average). The implications of our findings are further discussed, along with avenues for future research.

The study explores the relationships between students' experiences of the teaching-learning environment and their approaches to learning, and the effects of these variables on academic achievement. Two three-stage models were tested with structural equation modelling techniques. The "Approaches and Study Skills Inventory for Students" (ASSIST) and the "Experiences of Teaching and Learning Questionnaire" (ETLQ) were used to assess approaches to learning and student's experiences of the teaching-learning environment, respectively. These two constructs were then used as either first- or second-stage variables within the path analysis. The model using approaches to learning as a mediating variable showed the best fit with our data; variations in our students' experiences of the teaching-learning environment appear to give rise to their approaches to studying, which subsequently affect their achievement. The deep approach shows no detectable influence on academic achievement in this sample, neither there are any direct effects of experiences of the teaching-learning environment on it. The indirect effects of these experiences on achievement, acting through the strategic and the surface approaches, are related to two aspects of the teaching-learning environment only, namely "congruence and coherence in course organisation," and "integrative learning and critical thinking." The finding of a reciprocal relation between approaches to learning and experiences of the teaching-learning environment supports previous conclusions about the association between these constructs. The indirect effect of experiences of the teaching-learning environment on achievement, acting through approaches to learning, shows those approaches as a dynamic construct that varies in line with experiences of the teaching-learning environment, and so influences achievement.

This study investigated to what extent primary school teachers' perceptions of their students' ability and effort predict developmental changes in children's self-concepts of ability in math and reading after controlling for students' academic performance and general intelligence. Three cohorts (N?=?849) of elementary school children and their teachers were followed for four years. Children's self-concepts and performance ability in math and reading were measured annually during Waves 2-4. Teachers rated the children's ability and effort at each of the four waves. Domain-specific differences and developmental changes could be identified in the associations between teachers' perceptions and children's ability self-concepts. Teachers' ability perceptions predicted children's concurrent and subsequent ability self-concepts in math and reading, whereas teachers' effort perceptions predicted children's math ability self-concept only at Wave 4. Analyses with multi-sample procedure showed that these models were similar for boys and girls and for children in different cohort groups.

The objective of this study was to verify the structure of a model of how surface approach to studying is influenced by the trait variables of motivation and metacognition and the state variables of avoidance coping and evaluation anxiety. We extended the model to include: (1) the investigation of the relative contribution of the five metacognition sub-traits; and (2) the prediction of academic examination performance while controlling for past academic examination performance. A sample of 101 university students completed prior to undertaking academic examinations of the following self-report instruments: Work Preference Inventory, Metacognitions Questionnaire 30, Revised COPE Inventory, Evaluation Anxiety Scale and Approaches and Study Skills Inventory for Students. Results supported the original structure of the metacognitive-motivational model of surface approach to studying in addition to showing that it predicts academic examination performance controlling for past academic examination performance. The present study confirmed some previous findings, identified new predictive relationships and offered a comprehensive model of surface approach to studying and academic examination performance controlling for past academic examination performance.

The impact of two types of written feedback (process-oriented, grade-oriented) on changes in mathematics achievement, interest and self-evaluation was compared -- with a particular focus on the mediating role of feedback's perceived usefulness. Participants, 146 ninth graders (aged 14 to 17?years), were assigned to either a process-oriented or a grade-oriented experimental feedback condition. They worked on mathematics tests, received feedback on their test results and completed surveys measuring feedback's perceived usefulness, interest and self-evaluation. Results of path analysis showed that process-oriented feedback was perceived as more useful than grade-oriented feedback and that feedback's perceived usefulness had a positive effect on changes in achievement and interest. Consistent with this, process-oriented feedback had a greater positive indirect effect than grade-oriented feedback on changes in mathematics achievement and interest via its perceived usefulness. There were no such effects on changes in self-evaluation. Potential explanations for these findings, educational implications and possible directions for future research are discussed.

Prior research has shown personal best (PB) goals to be significantly related to students' motivation, engagement and achievement. However, research thus far has investigated PB goals only among Western samples and it is unclear to what extent PB goals hold academic merit in the Asian context. It is also unclear whether PB goals explain variance in motivation and engagement beyond that explained by "classic" performance, mastery and avoidance goals. With a sample of 3753 middle school students in China, the present study showed that mastery and PB goals explained the bulk of variance in motivation, engagement and academic buoyancy outcomes. It therefore appears that the effects of PB and "classic" goals derived in Western contexts generalise to the Chinese context. Further, although correlated, mastery and PB goals explain unique variance in distinct academic outcomes such that mastery goals appear more salient in mapping onto motivation factors while PB goals appear more salient in mapping onto engagement and buoyancy factors.

The purposes of the present study were to investigate (a) how the subjectively perceived achievement goals of significant others would predict the academic self-efficacy and achievement goals of Korean adolescents and (b) how those self-efficacy and achievement goals in turn predicted their achievement. We also compared these predictive relationships between 339 elementary and 507 middle school students. The perceived achievement goals of teachers, peers and parents made unique contributions to students' self-efficacy and achievement goals in mathematics. The perceived achievement goals of teachers demonstrated stronger relationships with students' motivation in the elementary school than middle school samples, whereas those of peers and parents showed comparable relationships across the two samples. The perceived performance goals of peers and parents displayed particularly strong links to students' motivation. Among the motivation variables, self-efficacy again emerged as the most consistent and powerful predictor of achievement. Our results confirmed perceived contexts and motivation as critical contributors to students' achievement in school.

Teachers' support of basic psychological needs, self-efficacy, achievement goals, life satisfaction and academic achievement level was measured in a sample of 240 secondary school students (8th and 10th grades). Correlation analysis showed significant positive relations between all of the variables, except for the relation between need support of competence and performance goals. A subsequent path analysis showed that these variables could be accounted for by a structural model that described basic need support as predictors of self-efficacy and achievement goals, which in turn predicted academic achievement level and perceived life satisfaction. Analysis of intra-class correlation and design effect showed that need support of relatedness also was accounted for by class level responses. Theoretical and practical implications were discussed in terms of the importance of basic need support as a predictor of personal motives in educational settings as well as the students adjustment to school and life. (Contains 2 tables and 1 figure.)

This study presents data that extend an earlier analysis of predictors of academic performance from one to three years. None of the adjustment and other psychosocial variables (help-seeking, academic motivation, self-esteem, perceived stress and perceived academic overload) could predict success at university at the end of three years of study. The only significant predictor was academic performance at the end of the first year of study. (Contains 1 figure and 2 tables.)

Research exploring students' academic learning has recently amalgamated different motivational theories within one conceptual framework. The inclusion of achievement goals, self-efficacy, deep processing and critical thinking has been cited in a number of studies. This article discusses two empirical studies that examined these four theoretical orientations from both cross-sectional (N = 279 participants) and longitudinal (N = 264 participants) perspectives. In particular, achievement goals are hypothesised to exert direct and indirect effects on academic performance via self-efficacy, study processing strategies and critical thinking. Path analysis was used to test and analyse the hypothesised conceptual models. Results from SPSS 16 and LISREL 8.72 provided good support for the hypothesised structural relationships. Students' academic performance outcomes, for example, are determined directly by deep processing and work-avoidance goals. Results from Study 2 indicate mastery goals and self-efficacy, mastery goals and critical thinking and deep processing and critical thinking operate in a reciprocal manner. In general, the evidence established from both studies contributes theoretically and methodologically. (Contains 5 tables, 4 figures, and 4 notes.)

Adjustment to the university environment is regarded as an important factor in predicting university outcomes. This study explores the pathways taken by adjustment and other psychosocial variables (help-seeking, academic motivation, self-esteem, perceived stress, and perceived academic overload), in relation to the success of economically and educationally disadvantaged students at university. Participants were 194 first-year students on need-based financial aid at a South African university; they completed questionnaires that measured these psychosocial variables, and their final first-year academic results were obtained via the university's records office. Path analyses showed that adjustment did not function as a pure mediator on academic performance as the dependent variable. Furthermore, the psychosocial factors explained much (59%) of the variance in the students' adjustment and 20% of the variance in their academic performance. Hence, the psychosocial variables better explained the students' adjustment to university than academic performance. (Contains 3 figures and 2 tables.)

In this project, 72 middle school students responded to a questionnaire tapping three aspects of perfectionism: self-striving, socially-prescribed perfectionism, and concern for mistakes. Their mothers completed a questionnaire assessing goal expression along three dimensions defined as direct expectations (e.g., "I set high standards for my child"), controlling expectations (e.g., "Only outstanding performance is good enough in our family"), and noncontingent encouragement (e.g., "Trying hard is more important than being the best"). Path modelling, using SmartPLS, revealed that direct expectations were associated positively with students' self-striving, but negatively with socially-prescribed perfectionism. Controlling expectations were associated with socially-prescribed perfectionism. Hence, adaptive and maladaptive aspects of students' perfectionism appear to be associated with differential patterns of maternal goal expression. (Contains 3 tables and 1 figure.)

This study examined the causal and mediating relations between students' learning approaches, self-efficacy beliefs, stages of reflective thinking, and academic performance. Second-year undergraduate students (n = 241; 118 females, 123 males) in the South Pacific were administered the revised version of Biggs' Study Process Questionnaire, the Reflective Thinking Questionnaire, and the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire. Latent variables analysis indicated that a surface learning approach contributed to the prediction of habitual action, and a deep learning approach predicted understanding and self-efficacy. Self-efficacy directly predicted the stages of reflective thinking, with the exception of critical thinking, and understanding negatively predicted academic performance. Finally, with the exception of critical thinking, the stages of reflective thinking were found to relate causally in a unidimensional manner. (Contains 3 tables and 2 figures.)

The study aimed to examine the relationship between morphological knowledge and reading comprehension ability among college-level English as a foreign language (EFL) students. One hundred and twenty-one students participated in this study and they completed two morphological knowledge measures (morpheme-form knowledge and morpheme-meaning knowledge), reading vocabulary knowledge, lexical inference and reading comprehension. Drawing upon hierarchical regression and path analysis, the study found that morphological knowledge explained a unique proportion of variance in reading comprehension after word-meaning knowledge was accounted for. In addition, morphological knowledge had direct and indirect effects on EFL reading comprehension via reading vocabulary breadth and lexical inference ability. To be more specific, the mediating effect of morpheme-meaning knowledge seemed to be salient in EFL reading comprehension. Conceptual and methodological interpretations were discussed based on the findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this prospective study, we recruited a sample of Belgian adolescents (N = 886) to investigate to what extent perceived teachers’ motivating style relates to quality of motivation in the beginning of the school year and, in turn, changes in study effort and procrastination by the end of the school year. After controlling for initial levels of study effort and procrastination and for a shared variance due to classroom membership, we found, through path analysis, perceived autonomy support and structure to relate positively to autonomous motivation, which in turn predicted increased study effort and decreased procrastination at the end of the school year. The findings are discussed from a theoretical and practical standpoint. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current study aimed to explore the concept of transition self-efficacy, which is defined as individuals’ subjective evaluation of their ability to execute the actions required for a successful transition from elementary to middle school. The study followed a sample of 128 sixth-grade students for 2 consecutive years (before and after the school transition). A path analysis based on structural equation modelling revealed that the students’ perceptions of the teachers’ emphasis on mastery goal orientations predicted academic and social aspects of self-efficacy. The social aspect of self-efficacy in turn predicted changes in the students’ emotional and behavioural engagement after the transition. The results were robust when we controlled for self-reported GPA and gender. An interaction between gender and aspects of self-efficacy was also observed. The findings emphasise the importance of transition self-efficacy for adaptive school transitions and provide evidence that teachers’ goal emphases play a significant role in promoting self-efficacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to prevent bullying, research has characterised the adolescents involved in terms of their social skills, maladjustment and popularity. However, there is a lack of knowledge concerning the relationships between these variables and how these relationships predict bullying involvement. Moreover, the literature has focused on pure bullies and victims, despite the fact that bully-victims are known to be the most troubled. The aim of this work is to study the relationships between these variables and their predictive value, focusing on the bully-victim role. The sample (N = 641) is made up of adolescents aged between 12 and 17 years. The results mainly indicate that the level of maladjustment and social skills predicts sociometric popularity, which is a significant predictor of bullying involvement. Differences in the social roles were observed, suggesting that social skills and maladjustment serve a different purpose for bully-victims than for the other roles involved. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study presents data that extend an earlier analysis of predictors of academic performance from one to three years. None of the adjustment and other psychosocial variables (help-seeking, academic motivation, self-esteem, perceived stress and perceived academic overload) could predict success at university at the end of three years of study. The only significant predictor was academic performance at the end of the first year of study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adjustment to the university environment is regarded as an important factor in predicting university outcomes. This study explores the pathways taken by adjustment and other psychosocial variables (help-seeking, academic motivation, self-esteem, perceived stress, and perceived academic overload), in relation to the success of economically and educationally disadvantaged students at university. Participants were 194 first-year students on need-based financial aid at a South African university; they completed questionnaires that measured these psychosocial variables, and their final first-year academic results were obtained via the university's records office. Path analyses showed that adjustment did not function as a pure mediator on academic performance as the dependent variable. Furthermore, the psychosocial factors explained much (59%) of the variance in the students' adjustment and 20% of the variance in their academic performance. Hence, the psychosocial variables better explained the students' adjustment to university than academic performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]