Children's motivations to engage in everyday activities draw on their experiences in thinking of oneself and the activities. In theory, these personal and social realities provide the complex foundations of self-concepts. The aim of this project was to define the foundations of children's self-concepts about everyday activities; to focus…

The concept of "Home Learning Environment" (HLE) covers activities in a family providing intellectual stimulation for a child, such as reading to him or her or visiting libraries. Numerous studies have shown an association between HLE and children's cognitive development. In this longitudinal study, we focus on HLE as a predictor…

Although the relation between teacher--student relationship and academic achievement has been addressed in many studies, the reciprocal relations between these two constructs have not been explored sufficiently. The aim of the present study was to test three competing models that hypothesized directionality of influence in relations between…

Social support-seeking is recognised as an important strategy used by children to cope with negative emotions. However, there are important gaps in our knowledge about children's perceptions of different sources of social support, and the associations that these perceptions have with individual differences in socio-emotional functioning. The…

The internal/external (I/E) frame of reference model (Marsh, "Am Educ Res J" 23:129-149, 1986) conceptualizes students' self-concepts as being formed by dimensional as well as social comparison processes. In the present study, the I/E model was tested and extended in a sample of elementary school children. Core academic skills of…

The observation and assessment of quality of teacher--child interactions in elementary school settings are increasingly recognized as important; however, research is still very limited in European countries. In this study, we examined the quality of the interactions between teacher and children in first-grade classrooms in Portugal and the extent…

It is now well known that adolescence is frequently marked by a decline in students' achievement motivation, which in turn is often associated with a decline in individual school self-concept. Less is known about the mediating role of socio-motivational support in the association between individual school self-concept and achievement…

In the framework of teacher's approaches to teaching, this study investigates the relationship between student-related variables (i.e., study time, class absence, domain knowledge, and homework completion), students' approaches to learning, and teachers' approaches to teaching using structural equation modeling (SEM) with two…

We measured age and gender differences in children's awareness and endorsement of gender stereotypes about math, science, and verbal abilities in 463 fourth, sixth, and eighth graders. Children reported their perceptions of adults' beliefs and their own stereotypes about gender differences in academic abilities. Consistent with study…

The more people believe in a just world (BJW) in which they get what they deserve, the more they are motivated to preserve a just world by ones' just behavior. Consequently, we expected school students with a strong BJW to show less deviant behavior as cheating or delinquency. The mediating role of teacher justice was also examined.…

The study aims to assess the relative importance of a large number of variables for predicting students' positive-activating emotions during mathematics learning. Participants were 668 first-year upper secondary school students from 33 schools of different sizes and locations. Two questionnaires were distributed, one assessing students'…

A relatively large number of South African learners drop out of school during the last 2 years of high school. This has important negative consequences for the individual learners, as well as for the country as a whole since it contributes greatly to the high number of unskilled and unemployed people. This study was carried out to explore whether,…

The present study complements previous research findings with new data to improve our understanding of the relationship between motivational variables and academic performance in math mediated by self-regulated learning (SRL). A structural equation model with predictor (i.e., grade retention, grade level, and study time), process (i.e., perceived…

This study aims to develop and validate a multidimensional scale of willingness to communicate in a foreign language. Multidimensional random coefficient multinomial logit model was employed to analyze the scale. Likelihood deviance test and information criteria showed that a three-dimensional model fits significantly better than a two-dimensional…

This investigation examines the relation between self-esteem and socially desirable responding by integrating previous findings via a meta-analysis. In 55 studies containing 73 independent samples (N?=?11,901), the correlation between self-esteem and Impression Management was weak, that between self-esteem and Self-Deceptive Enhancement was from…