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This article examines the extent to which normative beliefs on acculturation constitute (a) individual resources and risk factors for adolescents facing developmental tasks and (b) institutional norms that define developmental milieus in secondary schools. To what extent do egalitarianism, multiculturalism, assimilationism, and segregationism help or hinder academic and psychosocial adjustment in mid-adolescence? We examined how both individually endorsed beliefs and socially shared beliefs at the 10th-grade cohort level relate to students' academic performance, educational and occupational aspirations, motivational and emotional attachment to school, self-esteem, and life satisfaction. Data came from a random sample of 15- to 17-year-olds in Berlin, Germany, assessed at the end of Grades 9 and 10 (N = 1,992). Multivariate analyses identified egalitarianism and multiculturalism as the most prevalent acculturation beliefs, forming a combined belief pattern that pairs recognition of equality with respect for diversity. At the individual level, this belief pattern was positively related to academic and psychosocial adjustment. Assimilationism beliefs were associated with higher motivational and emotional attachment to school in both minority and majority students. Segregationism beliefs were associated with higher self-esteem in all adolescents regardless of background, but with lower levels of academic performance in immigrant youth. At the grade cohort level, a single bipolar factor (egalitarianism/multiculturalism vs. assimilationism/segregationism) described the institutional diversity culture. An environment characterized by egalitarianism/multiculturalism beliefs was positively associated with motivational and emotional attachment to school but not related to academic adjustment or psychological well-being.

Expectancy-value theory (EVT) proposes that students' appraisals of success expectancy and task value are the main drivers of their study and career choices. Dimensional comparison theory proposes that these beliefs are themselves affected by students comparing their ability across different domains. However, only a few studies have aimed to integrate these approaches and clarify the role of dimensional comparisons within EVT. Using longitudinal data, we aimed to fill this gap by studying within- and cross-domain effects of achievement (grades and test scores), academic self-concept (as a surrogate for expectancy beliefs), and values on German adolescents' (N = 519) high school course choices and their intentions to major in a STEM subject at university. We show that: (1) self-concepts predicted course choices, whereas values predicted STEM study intentions; (2) dimensional comparison patterns (positive within-domain and negative across-domain relations) were present; (3) gender differences in course choices were mediated by differences in achievement, self-concept, and value; and (4) there was an incremental gender effect on STEM study intentions above and beyond achievement, self-concept, value, and previous course choices. Furthermore, overall, a model incorporating cross-domain paths representing dimensional comparisons fit the data better than a model without these paths. We conclude that direct and indirect dimensional comparison effects contribute to predicting choices of high school courses and university majors and to understanding gender differences in these choices. We recommend that studies in the EVT framework include cross-domain effects.

Teacher-assigned grades provide important information that is used by universities and colleges to make admission decisions and by employers to make hiring decisions. Besides grades, the results of standardized achievement tests are frequently used for student selection and allocation. However, correlations between the two achievement measures are far from perfect, and researchers have argued that this discrepancy can be at least partially attributed to norm-referenced grading, which is based on the composition of performance in a class. In this study, we investigated the results of a curricular intensification reform, which introduced changes in the distribution of student performance by making enrollment in certain courses mandatory. We investigated whether the reform resulted in changes in the relationship between standardized achievement-test results and teacher-assigned grades. We analyzed cohort control design data from two large representative samples of students from two German states (Baden-Württemberg: N = 5,574; Thuringia: N = 2,202) before and after the reform. Results indicated that students who received a certain grade before the reform (e.g., a grade of A, B, C, or D) differed in their standardized test performance from students who received the same grade after the reform. Furthermore, in math, course-level-specific reform effects on the association between grades and standardized test performance were found to vary between groups of students receiving good and poor grades. Implications for educational policy and school reforms and suggestions for grading are discussed.

The use of punctuation in German incunabula is often described as arbitrary, irregular, and unsystematic (cf. Masalon 2014: 54–56). This concerns the inventory, frequency, and function of punctuation marks as well as pragmatic aspects such as how typesetters treated punctuation in their respective target texts. In this paper, punctuation is not seen as an independent linguistic subsystem, but as a means of text segmentation that – along with other measures (e. g. capital letters, pilcrows, and white space) – was used to structure a text with respect to its formal appearance, helping the reader to decode information. This case study is based on a corpus of German pamphlets written by the Bohemian astrologer Wenzel Faber and printed annually beginning in 1481 at various print shops, principally in Leipzig and Nuremberg. The analysis finds significant changes in the editions before and after 1490. These changes include an increasing consistency in the intensity of text segmentation, and a use of capital letters and punctuation marks developed from a polyfunctional to a monofunctional approach. Finally, different types of text segmentation are proposed, each characterized by a specific relationship between its frequency and its function. Despite this overall tendency, one must still take into account that typesetters followed individual punctuation practices in their search for suitable forms of text segmentation.

Markus Schiegg's book, "Flexible Schreiber in der Sprachgeschichte," explores the linguistic variation in letters written by patients in psychiatric hospitals from 1850 to 1936. The book examines the conditions of writing in psychiatric institutions, the archival status of patient texts, and the types of texts found in medical records. Schiegg also develops a linguistic model for measuring intraindividual variation in historical letters and reveals the linguistic flexibility of the writers. The study highlights the importance of considering the socio-historical context and individual experiences when studying language variation. Overall, the book offers valuable insights into historical linguistics and provides a voice to marginalized individuals. [Extracted from the article]

Research has shown that academic self-concepts (ASCs) are subject to contextual influences, in particular to the big-fish-little-pond effect (BFLPE). The BFLPE refers to the phenomenon whereby able students report more negative ASC when exposed to learning environments with relatively higher-achieving students. Although the BFLPE has been identified across various educational settings, there is surprisingly little research on its persistence across contexts. The present study fills this gap and explores the lasting consequences of the BFLPE for ASC development after the transition from one educational context to another. It draws on a longitudinal study of N = 1,617 students from Grades 6 to 9, which followed students across the transition from elementary to secondary school. We found indications of cross-sectional BFLPEs in both elementary and secondary schools for all 3 of the ASC dimensions we investigated (general academic, German language arts, and mathematics). Yet, after students had transitioned into secondary schools, the effects of the elementary school context persisted to a certain extent, but this varied by self-concept domain: for general ASC (GASC), some elementary school effects remained during secondary schooling, alongside the new effect of the secondary school context. For German language arts and mathematics self-concepts, the BFLPE from elementary school faded after students transitioned from elementary school. BFLPEs varied by secondary school track for synchronous, cross-sectional effects but not for longitudinal elementary school effects.

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The present study investigates school context effects on psychosocial characteristics (academic self-concept, peer relations, school satisfaction, and school anxiety) of high-achieving and gifted students. Students who did or did not make an early transition from elementary to secondary schools for high-achieving and gifted students in 5th grade in Berlin, Germany, are compared in their psychosocial development. The sample comprises 155 early-entry students who moved to an academically selective secondary school ("Gymnasium") and 3,169 regular students who remained in elementary school until the end of 6th grade. Overall, a complex pattern of psychosocial development emerged for all students, with both positive and negative outcomes being observed. Specifically, the transition into academically selective learning environments seemed to come at some cost for psychosocial development. Propensity score matching analysis isolating the effects of selective school intake and the school context effect itself revealed negative contextual effects of early transition to "Gymnasium" on academic self-concept and school anxiety; additionally, the positive trend in peer relations observed among regular students was not discernible among early-entry students.

In Germany, the "Abitur" grades awarded at the end of upper secondary education are critical in the allocation of sought-after university places. Drawing on a representative sample of 3526 grade 13 "Abitur" students in the German state of Baden-Wurttemberg, this article examines whether and to what extent grading is affected by the mean achievement of the school serving as frame of reference ("group-referenced grading"), and to what extent this influence differs for coursework and examination grades in mathematics and English as a foreign language. Overall, the results indicate that the higher level of standardization of the central "Abitur" examinations makes examination grades less susceptible to frame-of-reference effects than are coursework grades. (Contains 4 tables.)

Using a data set specifically tailored to homework research, with a sample of 1275 students from 70 classes in Switzerland, the association between homework and achievement in French as a second language was tested at three levels (class level, between-student level, and within-student level). The strength and direction of the homework-achievement association depended on the homework indicator chosen and differed to some degree across analytical levels. At the class level, achievement was higher in classes set frequent homework assignments and in classes where students reported low overall levels of negative emotions when doing homework. At the between-student level, high individual homework effort and low levels of negative homework emotions predicted favorable developments in French achievement, whereas high homework time predicted lower achievement. At the intraindividual level, high homework effort, high homework time, and low levels of negative homework emotions were statistically significantly associated with positive student evaluations of the learning gains from the specific assignment. (Contains 1 figure and 4 tables.)