Math anxiety is commonly known as negatively associated with math performance among students. Per the Cognitive-Attentional theory, a high anxiety level impedes recall and the working memory capacity, subsequently leading to lower performance. Using a large sample, Yu and colleagues conducted a study to examine whether the math anxiety-achievement link depends on gender. They hypothesized that the difference may be explained by emotional susceptibility which is the ability to experience and be influenced by emotions. Females are more sensitive to negative emotions, while males are more composed and less vulnerable. Moreover, neuroimaging indicates different emotional processing modes between genders. The study involved 28,129 grade 4 and grade 8 students from 489 primary schools and 238 secondary schools in Qingdao, China. The researchers measured the students' math anxiety using an abbreviated Math Anxiety Rating Scale and math performance using a researcher compiled multiple set of tests in May 2018. The results...

In a recent study published in School Psychology International, Lei and colleagues conducted a three-level meta-analysis to investigate the relationship between teacher-student relationships (TSR) and student academic achievement (SAA) in China. The authors believed the positive link between TSR and student academic achievement is higher in hierarchical, collective China than egalitarian, individualistic western society as teachers have greater authority in China than in Western societies, and teachers are often the centre of TSR. With the greater respect of authority among Chinese students, the link between TSR-SAA could be higher compared to Western countries. The study included 74 studies (90 effect sizes) that examined the TSR-SAA correlation in the Chinese context published between 2002 and 2020 which involved both primary school and secondary school students. The results found Overall, significant positive correlation between teacher-student relation and student academic achievement (r = 0.26) was found among Chinese studies, which is larger than...

The latest National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) (2019) indicates that 65% of fourth graders in the U.S. do not show proficiency in reading. Given that reading skills in kindergarten and first grade have been demonstrated by many studies to be critical to students’ academic success and societal achievements, there is an urgent demand for interventions that effectively facilitate young children’s acquisition of reading skills. Recently, a study was conducted to examine the effect of a one-on-one high-dosage tutoring program, Chapter One, on kindergarten and first grade learners. Chapter One provides students who struggle to read with paraprofessional tutors who help them develop their literacy skills via digital applications. This study involved 185 kindergarten and first grade students in an Ohio Title 1 school, who were randomly assigned to the treatment group, who received both teacher instruction and Chapter One tutoring 2-3 times per week during school days, or the...

A recent quasi-experimental study was conducted by Shi and Cheung to evaluate the effect of an author developed and scripted a social emotional learning program, which based on the Collaborative Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) framework, on Chinese primary students. Participants were 366 students (boys = 197) from 8 fifth grade classrooms in one primary school in Northern China (4 intervention, 4 control). Outcome measures included five competencies for social emotional skills, namely, self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision making. The Strength and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) scales was used to identify strength and difficulties of children’s behavior, emotions, and relationships. All scales assessed through self-reported questionnaire. Students in treatment group attended 12 40-min lessons in fall semester of 2021. After controlling baseline scores and students’ characteristics, results of MANCOVA showed: Compared to students in control group, students in treatment group scored significantly higher in self-awareness (ES=+0.37),...

Strategies that teach self-regulated learning in the context of other academic domains have been found to support academic achievement. In response to these findings, Nuñez and colleagues conducted an experimental study to evaluate the effectiveness of the paired reading and writing activities for “Yellow’s Trials and Tribulations,” a story from The Rainbow Program. The intervention consisted of guiding students to work through activities about characters who must use self-regulated learning strategies to progress through the story and meet their goals. Study participants were children in grades 3 and 4 in state-funded and charter schools in Spain. Eighteen classes were assigned to the treatment (N=403), and 16 were assigned to a business-as-usual control condition (N=355). Treatment teachers attended four 3-hour professional development sessions focused on embedding self-regulated learning strategies in reading comprehension instruction. Researchers randomly audited lessons to evaluate the implementation fidelity and found that teachers implemented the intervention according to...

Friendships play an important role in shaping children’s developmental outcomes. For instance, research has shown that children who have friends and those have no friend differ in various aspects, such as peer group status and academic performance. Chen, along with collaborators, conducted a one-year longitudinal study using an action-partner interdependence model (APIM) to explore the role of friendship in the development of academic achievement and depression for same-domain as well as cross-domain effects, i.e., the associations between academic performance and depression in one member of a friendship dyad and later the academic performance and level of depression of the partner member. Academic achievement and depression are considered as two domains, thus, an association between antecedent academic results and later academic achievement indicates same-domain effect, while cross-domain refers to an association between academic achievement and depression. The effect within the same individual from Time 1 (T1) to Time 2 (T2) is...

Almost three years since the COVID-19 pandemic, there is a growing number of studies examining the learning loss of school-aged children during the pandemic. The first meta-analysis of global learning loss has been published in Nature Human Behavior, and reviews the existing evidence on the extent to which learning progress has slowed down since the onset of the pandemic, and how it varies across different groups of students, subject domains and country contexts. To be eligible for inclusion, studies had to: (1) measure learning progress using test scores that could be standardized across studies using Cohen’s d, (2) base their estimates on empirical data collected since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, rather than making projections based on pre-COVID-19 data, and (3) be written in English, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Norwegian, Spanish or Swedish. A total of 42 studies (including 291 estimates) across 15 countries met these inclusion criteria, conducted...

Previous evidence has consistently revealed that students in Teach For America (TFA) classrooms score higher on math assessments in the short run than otherwise similar students in the same schools. In a recent working paper released by American Institutes for Research, the authors extended the existing body of evidence on TFA by researching the relationship between being in a TFA classroom in a given year on both test and non-test academic outcomes in that year and in the following year. Based on the student-level longitudinal data from Miami-Dade County Public Schools, authors found that while students taught by TFA teachers scored higher on math and ELA assessments in a given year, these test score gains faded out by the following year. In addition, students taught by TFA teachers were less likely to miss school due to absences and suspensions both in the year of exposure and the year following. The...

Digital monitoring tools are instruments that support teachers in obtaining, organizing, and analyzing student data from test assessments. Through these tools teachers are also provided with feedback on the data they receive. A recent review studied the effects of digital monitoring tools on student academic achievement. Studies included had to compare an experimental group in which teachers used digital monitoring tools with a control group. Each group had to include at least 20 teachers and the intervention had to last a minimum of 12 weeks. Only independent measures, such as standardized tests, were included in the meta-analysis. A total of 14 studies were included in the review. Most of the studies evaluated the effects of the intervention on mathematics or reading. Studies were carried out more frequently in primary school than secondary school. Overall, the results showed positive effects of digital monitoring tools on student academic achievement (ES =+ 0.12)....