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Given the significance of education in Chinese culture and based on the contextual model of parenting style (Darling & Steinberg, Psychological Bulletin, 113, 487-496, 1993 (See CR14)), the present study attempted to explain the association between parental expectations and students' educational expectations in Chinese families by testing the potential moderating role of the training parenting style, a parenting style that is based on Chinese culture. 281 Chinese adolescent-parent dyads, including early adolescents (49.5% girls, M.sub.age = 12.54) and one of their parents (70.5% mothers, M.sub.age = 40.91), completed two versions of a self-report survey questionnaire. Results indicated that parental expectations exerted influence on students' educational expectations with perceived parental expectations as a mediator. Moreover, training parenting style moderated the relationship between parental expectations and perceived parental expectations. High training parenting style buffered the effect of low parental expectations on perceived parental expectations. The interaction between parental expectations and training parenting style revealed a culturally specific mechanism that contributed to the transmission of educational expectations in Chinese families., Author(s): Ru-De Liu [sup.1] , Cai-Xia Shen [sup.2] , Yan Sun [sup.1] , Yi Ding [sup.3] , Xinchen Fu [sup.1] , Shuyang Jiang [sup.1] , Tian-Po Oei [sup.4] [sup.5] , [...]

Background: Too many students persevere in relying upon one (sometimes suboptimal) strategy for solving a wide range of problems, even when they know more efficient strategies. Although many studies have mentioned such phenomena, few studies have examined how emotional factors could affect this type of inflexible perseverance in strategy use. Aims: To examine whether mathematics anxiety could affect students' inflexible perseverance in strategy use and whether this effect could be mediated by cognitive reflection, which is the ability to engage in deliberate reasoning. Sample and method: In Study 1, 164 undergraduate students' (18-22 years) mathematics anxiety, cognitive reflection, and performance in overcoming inflexible perseverance were measured by a questionnaire battery. Structural equation models were used to examine the correlations between these variables. In Study 2, 98 undergraduate freshmen (17-18 years) were assigned to two groups, where one group's mathematics anxiety was temporarily induced by task instructions, while the other group served as a control group. Cognitive reflection and inflexible perseverance of the two groups were compared. Results: Study 1 showed that mathematics anxiety was negatively correlated with students' performance on overcoming inflexible perseverance, while cognitive reflection mediated such an effect. Study 2 showed that compared to the control group, the experimental group showed lower cognitive reflection, which led to lower performance in overcoming inflexible perseverance. Conclusions: Mathematics anxiety was showed to impair students' ability to engage in deliberate reasoning and was associated with inflexible use of strategies. Alleviating students' mathematics anxiety should be considered when promoting students' strategic flexibility.

Background: The dropout rate of Chinese elementary school students after 2007 rose again. Little research to date has identified individual differences in pathways of academic engagement to discern those at risk of disengagement and dropout from schools, as well as the longitudinal linkages between cognitive beliefs with academic engagement. Aims: Examine the developmental trajectories of cognitive, emotional, and behavioural engagement, and assess relations between the implicit theory of intelligence and academic self-efficacy and the development of academic engagement. Sample and methods: We recruited 532, 450, and 415 elementary students to rate on self-report scales in April 2016 (T1), October 2016 (T2), and April 2017 (T3), respectively. Trajectories of academic engagement were analysed by using a multiple-process growth mixture model, and levels of entity theory of intelligence and academic self-efficacy between engagement groups were compared by using analysis of variance. Results: We categorized the students into four groups: persistent (71.24%), climbing (6.01%), descending (16.54%), and struggling engagement (6.20%) groups. Within each group, the levels of academic self-efficacy from T1 to T3 demonstrated a consistent trend with the engagement trajectory; the levels of the implicit theory of intelligence over time showed the reverse trend. Conclusions: Attention should be given more on the students from the descending and struggling groups. The implicit theory of intelligence and academic self-efficacy showed different longitudinal associations with engagement trajectories.

This study investigates Spanish and Chinese students' performance on both addition problems and proportion problems considering a cross-national perspective. The effect of number structure and nature of quantities was also considered. Nine hundred twenty-five 4th to 8th graders (453 Chinese, 472 Spanish) took a test which is composed of addition and proportion problems in a missing-value format. The findings showed that Chinese students held a different developmental model of the additive and proportional reasoning from Spanish students. Moreover, number structure and nature of quantities had a different impact in each country. These results indicated that students' additive and proportional reasoning may vary from country to country due to the different cultures and educational environments. Further studies with a larger-scale sample will be needed to confirm such cross-national effects.

Recent studies have suggested a link between bullying victimization and passive bystander behaviors, such as more outsider behaviors and fewer defender behaviors. However, little is known about the internal mechanism underpinning this relation. The present study aimed to examine the direct and indirect relationships between bullying victimization and two types of bystander behaviors (defender behavior and outsider behavior), considering the possible mediator role of bullying sensitivity and moral disengagement among Chinese adolescents. Participants were 435 primary school students aged from 11 to 13 years (M = 12.27, SD = 0.69) who completed measurements of bullying victimization, bullying sensitivity, moral disengagement, and bystander behaviors. The results of the total effect model indicated that bullying victimization was positively related to outsider behavior and negatively related to defender behavior. The results from the structural equation modelling (SEM) analysis showed that bullying sensitivity mediated the relationship between bullying victimization and defender behavior. The relationship between bullying victimization and outsider behavior was mediated by moral disengagement, as well as the multiple mediation of bullying sensitivity and moral disengagement. These results highlight the roles of bullying sensitivity and moral disengagement in explaining the relation between bullying victimization and bystander behavior among adolescent students. The findings provide important implications for developing intervention programs aiming at school bullying prevention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]