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In this longitudinal, observational study, following 883 adolescents (aged 11 - 15 years, grades 6th - 8th) we tracked changes in perceived school motivation and effort across four time points during the two years of remote education in Perú as a consequence of COVID-19 (retrospective reports before the pandemic, May 2020, July 2021, and November 2021). Compared to before the pandemic, levels of perceived school motivation and effort dropped sharply in May 2020 and continued to decrease across 2 years. Perceived school motivation was positively associated with perceived school effort at almost all time points. Furthermore, students with lower levels of perceived school motivation had a steeper decline in perceived school effort. In a subsample of 380 students in 8th grade, perceived school effort in July 2021 predicted objective math performance in November 2021. Our findings suggest that COVID-19 has further compounded decreases in subjective and objective indices of school engagement and performance that are typically observed in early adolescence. Our results from a large sample of low- to middle-class Peruvian adolescents highlight the experiences of youth in a country that had particularly long school closures, and that is under-represented in the literature.

Some students view their abilities as malleable with effort and aim to improve themselves (incremental beliefs), while others believe abilities are fixed and cannot change with effort and aim to prove themselves (entity beliefs). Here, we investigated how such ability beliefs in undergraduates (N=115) relate to their effort investment during a challenging arithmetic task, indexed by whether they make low vs high effort-related choices (easy vs difficult equations). The influential social cognitive theory suggests that past performance experiences (mastery vs failure) and physiological state are important sources for competence self-evaluations. Therefore, we investigated whether and how effort-related choices are further influenced by making mistakes during the task and sympathetic nervous system activity measured with impedance cardiography. Results showed that ability beliefs did not predict effort-related choices, but making mistakes led participants to choose lower difficulty levels in the subsequent round. Sympathetic nervous activity was not associated with subsequently chosen difficulty levels. This study further supports the importance of mastery experiences for effort investment, and provides a novel approach for integrating different levels of influence on effort-related choices during an educationally-relevant task.

The COVID-19 pandemic caused lockdowns and sudden school closures around the world in spring 2020, significantly impacting the education of students. Here, we investigate how the switch to distance learning affected study activity and performance in an online retrieval practice tool used for language learning in Dutch secondary education. We report insights from a rich data set consisting of over 116 million retrieval practice trials completed by more than 133 thousand students over the course of two consecutive school years. Our findings show that usage of the tool increased substantially at the start of lockdown, with the bulk of study activity occurring on weekday mornings. In general, students' progress through the material was largely unaffected by lockdown, although students from the highest educational track were somewhat more likely to be on or ahead of schedule than students from lower tracks, compared to the previous year. Performance on individual study trials was generally stable, but accuracy and response time on open answer questions went up, perhaps as a result of students being more focused at home. These encouraging findings contribute to a growing literature on the educational ramifications of distance learning during lockdown.

The transition from secondary to tertiary education varies from country to country. In many countries, secondary school is concluded with high-stakes, national exams, or high-stakes entry tests are used for admissions to tertiary education. In other countries, secondary school grade point average (GPA) is the determining factor. In the Netherlands, both play a role. With administrative data of close to 180,000 students, we investigated whether national exam scores or secondary school GPA was a better predictor of tertiary first-year retention. For both university education and higher professional education, secondary school GPA was the better prediction of retention, to the extent that national exams did not explain any additional variance. Moreover, for students who failed their exam, being held back by the secondary school for an additional year and entering tertiary education one year later, GPA in the year of failure remained as predictive as for students who had passed their exams and started tertiary education immediately. National exam scores, on the other hand, had no predictive value at all for these students. It is concluded that secondary school GPA measures aspects of student performance that is not included in high-stakes national exams, but that are predictive of subsequent success in tertiary education.

During the spring of 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic induced many governments to close schools for many months. In the Netherlands, primary schools were closed during a lockdown lasting from March until June. While education was continued online, evidence so far suggests that learning has suffered from the lockdown. Here, we report results from Dutch primary schools that relied on adaptive practicing software for teaching mathematics. The software, installed on tablets that could be taken home by the pupils, continued to be used during school closures. Performance was tracked throughout the lockdown for 53,656 pupils in grades 2 through 6 from 810 schools, and compared to performance of similar pupils in the preceding year. While performance up to the lockdown was similar for school year 2019-20, during the lockdown learning was faster that it had been in 2018-19, contradicting results reported so far. These enhanced gains were correlated with increased use, and remained after the lockdown ended. Pupils ended the year with a higher proficiency score than was reached in earlier years. This was the case for all grades but more so for lower grades, for strong and weak students but more so for weak students, and less so for students in schools with disadvantaged populations than in schools with non-disadvantaged populations.

Some students view their abilities as malleable with effort and aim to improve themselves (incremental beliefs), while others believe abilities are fixed and cannot change with effort, and aim to prove themselves (entity beliefs). Here, we investigated how such ability beliefs in undergraduates (n=115) relate to their effort investment during a challenging arithmetic task, indexed by whether they make low vs high effort learning-related choices (easy vs difficult problems), and whether this relation is influenced by 1) making mistakes and 2) sympathetic activity measured with impedance cardiography. Results show that incremental theorists chose relatively higher difficulty levels compared to entity theorists. Moreover, higher sympathetic activity was associated with subsequently choosing lower difficulty levels. This effect was stronger for entity theorists, indicating that higher sympathetic activity affected their choices more. Also, helplessness mediated the relation between ability beliefs and chosen difficulty level.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many institutions of higher education had to close their campuses and shift to online education. Here, we investigate how stay-at-home orders impacted students. We investigated results obtained by 15,125 bachelor students at a large Dutch research university during a semester in which the campus was closed and all education had shifted online. Moreover, we surveyed 166 students of the bachelor of psychology program of the same university. Results showed that students rated online education as less satisfactory than campus-based education, and rated their own motivation as having gone down. This was reflected in a lower time investment: lectures and small-group meetings were attended less frequently, and student estimates of hours studied went down. Lower motivation predicted this drop in effort. Moreover, a drop in motivation was related to fewer credits being obtained during stay-at-home orders. However, on average students reported obtaining slightly more credits than before, which was indeed found in an analysis of administered credits. In a qualitative analysis of student comments, it was found that students missed social interactions, but reported being much more efficient during online education. It is concluded that whereas student satisfaction and motivation dropped during the shift to online education, increased efficiency meant results were not lower than they would normally have been.

The present research investigates the relations between motivation and academic achievement in educational contexts. The first main question is whether motivation is reciprocally related to achievement and a cyclic loop of motivation and achievement is formed over time. The second objective is to study a possible behavioural mediating pathway between motivation and achievement by measuring objective effort spent on learning. Third, we examine the causality of these relations by investigating the dynamics between motivation and achievement (rather than the individual constructs) when perceived achievement is experimentally manipulated. The study is a short-timeframe experiment in which undergraduate Dutch students learn new English vocabulary and their motivation, effort, and achievement is measured at multiple time points within one hour. Roughly halfway in the experiment, participants receive rigged feedback that their achievement has dropped, which is expected to influence their subsequent motivation, effort, and actual achievement. To study these dynamics, we will model how one construct affects another construct over time under a random-intercept cross-lagged panel framework. Planned analyses, expected (narrative) results, and simulated data are provided.