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In the absence of a contemporaneous measure, the present study aimed to validate a French language translation of the Multidimensional Test Anxiety Scale (MTAS). In addition, measurement invariance was tested for gender and age. The participants were 520 secondary school students aged 11-16 years. A four-factor model of the MTAS showed a good fit to the data, good internal consistency, and the expected relations with trait anxiety and fear of assessment (positive), and examination performance (negative). Scalar invariance was shown for gender and age. Female students reported higher test anxiety scores. Older students reported higher scores on just one MTAS factor (cognitive interference); remaining factors were stable with age. The translated measure will greatly assist researchers and practitioners in the assessment of test anxiety in French language populations.

The quality of life of students at school is an increasingly topical issue in relation both to public health issues, made more acute by the pandemic and successive confinements, and to the technical nature of future jobs which means training has become an economic issue. There are therefore two issues, one linked to health and the other to school performance. A cross-sectional design was adopted. Questionnaires were administered to 470 volunteer student's seventh grade US to the first year of the Senior Technician Curriculum aged from 12 to 23 years (139 girls and 331 boys, mage = 15.7 years). Latent profiles analysis and the Games-Howell post hoc test were used. Analyses carried out with MPlus reveal three possible profiles. They also show that these profiles have a strong predictive power on motivation and perceived health.

This study investigated the extent to which trainees' perceptions about previous training experiences determine their decision to re-enrol in future multimodal training programmes. A post-training reaction instrument adapted to multiple training modalities was developed. The results showed that trainees' perceptions of the training design and utility for professional activities had an impact on their intention to attend training, which in turn affected the decision to re-enrol in English as a foreign language training programme measured four months later. Trainees less satisfied with their training experience also considered it less useful to reach their goals and were less likely to re-enrol in future programmes on the same topic. Nevertheless, the level of pre-training motivation to learn and task self-efficacy should be monitored, as they can strongly affect perceived training usefulness. Practical and research implications are proposed in the discussion.

An assessment-related stress is an object of interest of both educational and neurobiological research. In educational literature, "feeling stressed" is measured by self-reports and mostly in the situation of high-stakes examinations before and after an exam. In neurophysiological research, "acute stress" is laboratory observed through controlled variables. However, the studies of functionally measured stress in real school context are missing in scientific literature. This article relates the results of a study carried out in a real school context during a class test. Stress data obtained through the functional measurement (heart rate variability) in 16 students and behavioral data in 76 students were analyzed. The results show that class tests under assessment are more stressful compared with nonassessed tests. A decrease in number of correct responses and an increase in response time was observed. Girls show better performance and respond more slowly under assessment. The results are discussed in the scope of interdisciplinary research.

Implementation intentions are self-regulatory strategies that increase the probability that desired goals will be achieved. While their effectiveness in the short term is well established in the literature, the long-term effects are not. The present study, which was conducted in France during the COVID-19 lockdown, aimed to test whether reminders could support the effects of forming implementation intentions over time. It proposed to help people adopt a new behavior: to set themselves three daily goals for four weeks and send the results to a dedicated website. A total of 118 participants (from an initial sample of 194) sent their three daily goals at least once and constituted our final sample. A 2 (implementation intention: with vs. without), ×2 (reminders: with vs. without), and ×4 (week: 1-4) repeated measures ANOVA was conducted. The results showed significant main effects for all three factors, from small to medium to large. However, no significant interaction emerged. Hence, text message reminders did not seem to intensify the effect of forming implementation intentions.

Introduction: This study looked at how an assessment instruction and test anxiety (TA) can influence divergent thinking (DT) components of creativity in a playful robotic problem-solving task. Methods: We measured TA and creative performance (TD) under assessment and non-assessment conditions in 122 secondary students engaged in creative problem solving (CPS). Result: The aspects of DT (fluidity and originality) showed a tendency to be impacted by assessment instruction. Thus, under non-assessment conditions, the learners show higher fluidity and better originality in the first occurrence of the CPS task. In the second occurrence, time spent on CPS decreases. Moreover, the originality turns to be impaired in the second trial and only student under assessment maintain their engagement in the activity. No correlation was found between TA and DT, and no gender or age differences were observed. The results suggest that TA does not influence the performance of the students involved in creative problem-solving processes. Discussion: We discuss the findings in relation to game-based learning specificities. The assessment instruction in playful activities can be perceived as a positive challenge and even the students showing higher levels of test anxiety do not perceive it as a threat. Furthermore, if time constraints are minimized, the impact of assessment instruction on creative performance might be further reduced. The finding of this study opens promising perspectives to the research on innovative forms of school assessment and creative problem solving. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

School dropout intention and reduced academic achievement are two crucial indicators of school dropout risk. Past studies have shown that school performance plays a mediating role in the models explaining dropout intentions. School burnout and test anxiety have been identified as predictors of both academic performance and school dropout. However, their combined effects on the intention to leave school have not yet been investigated. We aimed to address this gap by exploring the predictors of school dropout intention in a sample of 205 French secondary school students. Structural equation modelling analyses have revealed the specific facets of school burnout (devaluation) and test anxiety (cognitive interference) that explained the school dropout intentions and academic performance. Grade Point Average (GPA) was a mediator of the effects of these variables on the intention to drop out of school. The findings highlight the need to acknowledge assessments as a school stress factor that could contribute to health problems and intentions to drop out of school. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study is based on the analysis of academic results of 692 undergraduate and graduate students in two disciplines in a French university who attended their courses using one out of four possible learning modalities. Within the two disciplines, Art History and Educational Sciences, students chose between face-to-face learning (on campus), paper-based distance learning (correspondence), Web-based distance learning (e-learning) or a blend of Web-based and face-to-face learning (combined) modalities. Comparison, using two indicators of overall academic success between the four learning modality types was conducted. The analyses revealed that e-learners attending at least one course on-campus (combined modality) did just as well as students attending all their courses using the on-campus only modality. Furthermore, depending on the discipline, e-learners' academic success was higher than correspondence learners', albeit not as high as on-campus and combined learners' achievements. (Contains 15 tables.)

In order to extend previous research on procrastination as a cause of performance failure due to faulty self-regulation, we developed a model of self-regulated learning failure and tested it in two separate studies (N1 = 378, N2 = 315). The relationships between procrastination, disorganisation, the forethought phase of self-regulated learning (SRL), academic performance and self-regulation failure are addressed. Self-report scales were used to assess procrastination, disorganisation, and forethought. Three hypotheses about the relationships between these dimensions were tested. The first is that disorganisation and procrastination are two distinct constructs; it is argued that they represent two routes via which self-regulation failure can be manifested. The second is that disorganisation and procrastination have a negative impact on academic performance; the results obtained showed that only disorganisation had a negative impact on academic performance. The third is that the implementation of high-quality processes during the forethought phase is a safeguard against disorganisation and procrastination.

In this experiment we studied the effect of goal setting on the strategies used to perform a block design task called SAMUEL. SAMUEL can measure many indicators, which are then combined to determine the strategies used by participants when solving SAMUEL problems. Two experimental groups were created: one group was given an explicit, difficult goal and the other was not given a goal. The two groups were comparable in their average visual-spatial ability. The results indicated no goal effect on the strategies, defined in terms of the combined indicators. However, the goal did have an effect on some of the indicators taken alone (total problem-solving time, total viewing time, and model-viewing frequency) but this was true only for subjects with a low cognitive ability. These findings demonstrate that setting a goal can have an effect on some strategy indexes used to assess performance on a visual-intelligence design task. This research has implications for defining intelligence-test instructions and educational requirements in school. (Contains 1 table and 8 figures.)