Category: Social and Motivational Outcomes

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Secondary School Education Social and Motivational Outcomes

Can friendships as a teenager predict later mental health?

Research by Rachel Narr and colleagues at the University of Virginia looked at whether the quality of friendships during adolescence can predict aspects of long-term mental and emotional health.

The study looked at a sample of 169 teenagers over 10 years, from age 15 to 25. They were surveyed annually and asked about who their closest friends were along with questions about those friendships. They were also assessed on anxiety, social acceptance, self-worth and symptoms of depression.

The researchers found that teens who prioritised close friendships at age 15 had lower social anxiety, an increased sense of self-worth and fewer symptoms of depression at age 25 than their peers. However, teens who had lots of friends, rather than a few close friendships, had higher levels of anxiety as young adults.

The study also determined that there was a low relation between teens having high-quality friendships and being more sought after by their peers, suggesting that although some teens manage both popularity and close friendship well, and attract both due to similar characteristics, for the most part, these two types of social success are due to different personal attributes.

 

Source: Narr, R. K., Allen, J. P., Tan, J. S., & Loeb, E. L. (2017). Close Friendship Strength and Broader Peer Group Desirability as Differential Predictors of Adult Mental Health. Child Development. Advance online publication.… Read the rest

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Effective Teaching Approach Kindergarten Social and Motivational Outcomes

Parental Scaffolding in Kindergarten Children’s Self-Regulated Learning Behaviours

The findings of a recent study have extended our understanding of the role of parental scaffolding in kindergarten pupils’ self-regulated learning (SRL) in the Chinese context. Zhang and Whitebread, from the University of Cambridge, conducted a study on 130 pupils and their parents from three kindergartens in Beijing to examine the relationship between children’s SRL strategic behaviours, their task performance and parental scaffolding behaviours.

The study involved two stages of test. The children were asked to complete a puzzle task and an origami task with their parents first. Three weeks later, children were assigned to accomplish the same two tasks by themselves. The difficulty of the parent-child tasks and the child-alone tasks was different for studying parents’ scaffolding behaviours and pupil’s SRL strategic behaviours respectively. The problem-solving processes were video-taped for an in-depth observational analyses.

Pupil’s task performance was predicted by the use of metacognitive strategic behaviours. Well-performed pupils used behaviours such as indicative of planning, self-monitoring and awareness of errors. They, for instances, talked to themselves “I have to put pieces of the lions together” before started working on the puzzle. Parental contingency, instead of cognitive and emotional support, independently predicted children’s SRL behaviours. Parents’ abilities to provide instructions contingent on children’s levels of understanding enable children to use SRL strategies. Neither posing yes/no questions when children had a clear understanding of the task, nor using questions to encourage performance monitoring when children understood the task poorly was considered as contingent.

This Chinese study found a higher level of motivational strategic behaviours usage among children comparing to previous research, which may be related to the Confucian teaching’s emphasis of effort. The researchers remarked that the sample may not reflect the diversity of the Chinese population.

 

Source: Zhang, H., & Whitebread, D. (2017). Linking parental scaffolding with self-regulated learning in Chinese kindergarten children. Learning and Instruction, 49, 121-130.… Read the rest

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Primary School Education Secondary School Education Social and Motivational Outcomes

What do pupils believe about learning and intelligence?

This study examined reported attitudes and beliefs about growth mindset (the belief that intelligence and academic ability are not fixed and can be increased through effort and learning) for a sample of 103,066 pupils and 5,721 teachers in grades 4–12 (Years 5–13) in Nevada’s Clark County School District in the US.

Three-quarters of pupils reported having beliefs that are consistent with a growth mindset. The average growth mindset score across all pupils was 4 on a scale of 1 to 5 (where 1 indicates agreement with all statements that suggest a fixed-ability mindset, and 5 indicates disagreement). In addition, reported beliefs were found to differ depending on pupils’ ethnicity, school year, prior achievement and whether pupils were native English speakers or not. For example, the average growth mindset score for pupils with English as an Additional Language (EAL) was lower (3.5) than the average growth mindset score for non-EAL pupils (4.0). Lower-achieving pupils reported lower levels of growth mindset than their higher-achieving peers (a difference of 0.8 points).

Teachers’ average growth mindset score was 0.5 points higher than their pupils’ (4.5 compared with 4.0). For the most part, their beliefs regarding growth mindset did not vary significantly depending on the characteristics of the pupils attending their schools

 

Source: Snipes, J., & Loan, T. (2017). Growth mindset, performance avoidance, and academic behaviors in Clark County School District (REL 2017–226). Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, Regional Educational Laboratory West.… Read the rest

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Primary School Education Social and Motivational Outcomes

Gender stereotypes about intelligence begin early

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Girls as young as six years old associate high-level academic ability with men more than women, according to a report published in the journal Science. The study also found that although girls aged five to seven were more likely than boys to associate their own gender with good grades, they did not link these achievements to innate abilities of “brilliance”.

Lin Bian and colleagues carried out a number of tests with children, half of whom were girls, to test the influence of gender stereotypes on children’s ideas of intellectual ability. In the first test, boys and girls aged five, six, and seven were read a story about a highly intelligent person and then asked to guess the person’s gender. Next, they were shown pictures of pairs of adults, some same-sex, some opposite sex, and asked to pick which they thought were highly intelligent. Finally, the children were asked to match objects and traits, such as “being smart”, to pictures of men and women.

The results revealed that at age five, girls are just as likely as boys to associate intelligence with their own gender. However, by ages six and seven, girls were less likely than boys to make this association, with girls identifying their own gender as “really, really smart” 48% of the time compared to 65% of the time for boys.

Source: Bian, L., Leslie, S. J., & Cimpian, A. (2017). Gender stereotypes about intellectual ability emerge early and influence children’s interests. Science, 355(6323), 389-391.… Read the rest