Background: Assessment for Learning (AfL) is believed to create a rich learning environment in which students develop their cognitive and metacognitive strategies. Monitoring student growth and providing scaffolds that shed light on the next step in the learning process are hypothesized to be essential elements of AfL that enhance cognitive and…

Background: The multidimensionality of the academic self-concept in terms of domain specificity has been well established in previous studies, whereas its multidimensionality in terms of motivational functions (the so-called affect-competence separation) needs further examination. Aim: This study aims at exploring differential effects of enjoyment…

Background: It is well established that children's self-evaluation bias of competence is related to the quality of parent-child emotional relationship. Such biases are linked to children's academic functioning and achievement. Links have also been established between the quality of parent-child emotional relationship and children's…

Background: The interrelation between mothers' parental self-efficacy (PSE) and their school-aged children's well-being has been repeatedly proved. The lack of research in this area situates mainly on the absence of fathers, non-existent family-level studies, the paucity of independent evaluators, and the use of global PSE estimates.…

Background: It is well established that the activity of producing a text is a complex one involving three main cognitive processes: Planning, translating, and revising. Although these processes are crucial in skilled writing, beginning and developing writers seem to struggle with them, mainly with planning and revising. Aims: To trace the…

Background: Metacognition and working memory (WM) have been found associated with success in reading comprehension, but no studies have examined their combined effect on the training of reading comprehension. Another open question concerns the role of listening comprehension: In particular, it is not clear whether training to improve reading…

Sample: Fifty-three third and fourth graders from China participated in this study. Method: Participants' working memory (WM) was assessed by the Automated Operation Span task. Then, they solved mental addition problems of different types under low- and high-pressure conditions. Performance was analysed as a function of pressure condition,…

Background: Text reading prosody has been associated with reading comprehension. However, text reading prosody is a reading-dependent measure that relies heavily on decoding skills. Investigation of the contribution of speech prosody--which is independent from reading skills--in addition to text reading prosody, to reading comprehension could…

Background: Compulsory school entrance age and admission policies differ across countries and educational systems, and there is a continuing debate on the question whether and how the age at school entry affects various student outcomes. Aims: This study explored the relation between school entrance age and school achievement among students…

Background: Self-explanation, or generating explanations to oneself in an attempt to make sense of new information, can promote learning. However, self-explaining takes time, and the learning benefits of this activity need to be rigorously evaluated against alternative uses of this time. Aims: In the current study, we compared the effectiveness of…

Background: The development of socially appropriate behaviour is increasingly seen as an important part of a student's education. Aim: To examine whether changes in a student's behaviour, as part of an ongoing social empathy intervention, can in part be explained by the difference between the student's self-perception of their behaviour and their…

Background: Many countries rely on immigrants for population growth and to maintain a skilled workforce. However, many such immigrants face literacy-related barriers to success in education and in the labour force. Aims: This meta-analysis reviews experimental and quasi-experimental studies to examine strategies for teaching English literacy to…

Background: Prior studies outside of the UK have shown that peer victimization is negatively associated with school adjustment. Aims: To examine concurrent and short-term longitudinal associations between peer victimization (physical, malicious teasing, deliberate social exclusion, and malicious gossiping) and two measures of school adjustment…

Background: Most previous studies in Western societies have demonstrated a general decline in school motivation. However, it is not clear whether motivational decline occurs uniformly for all students. The moderating effects of individual and cultural differences on students' motivational decline need to be further explored. Aims: This study aimed…

Background: The study was conducted in an attempt to further our understanding of how working memory contributes to written arithmetical skills in children. Aim: The aim was to pinpoint the contribution of different central executive functions and to examine the contribution of the two subcomponents of children's written arithmetical skills.…