Trajectories of scholastic well-being: The effect of achievement emotions and instructional quality in the first year of secondary school (fifth grade).

Due to their connections with positive educational outcomes, the maintenance of good health and scholastic well-being are highly relevant topics. However, to date, no studies have investigated developmental changes in scholastic well-being in the light of achievement emotions and instructional quality-although these predictors offer good approaches for intervention. A sample of N = 667 (age: M = 10.16; SD = 0.46; 81.7% female) students was questioned three times over one year, from the beginning of their fifth grade into sixth grade, using reliable questionnaires. The results of multilevel linear growth curve modelling calculations show that a decrease in scholastic well-being during the fifth grade was induced by changes in the predictors (achievement emotions and instructional quality). Since the highest effects are evident regarding achievement emotions, support programs should focus on facilitating these aspects in secondary school children.

Stress development during emergency remote teaching in higher education.

Higher education includes e-learning in addition to on-site learning. Still, the shift to Emergency Remote Teaching (ERT) as reaction to the Covid-19 pandemic in the summer semester 2020, presented a challenging situation for students. Cross-sectional studies pointed towards higher stress levels of students. However, only a few studies addressed the development of students' stress across several dimensions (joy, worry, tension, demands) within one semester. The current study analyzed trajectories of stress in ERT in relation to age, gender, digital readiness, and experience of loneliness, based on a sample of N = 2795 German students. Latent Growth Curve Models (LGCM) revealed a significant increase in demands, tension and worries and a decrease in joy during the summer term 2020. The development of tension and demands was influenced by age, gender, digital readiness, and loneliness. The decrease in joy and increase in worries could be primarily attributed to digital readiness and loneliness.

Differences in students' scholastic well-being induced by familial and scholastic context.

BACKGROUND: Since scholastic well-being is connected with intrinsic motivation, positive emotions and effective learning, it is highly relevant for educational research. It is influenced by a variety of individual and contextual determinants and differs for several groups of students with respect to their environmental conditions. AIMS: Up to now, there has been neither approach in answering questions about group-differences between students with high or low levels of scholastic well-being nor in defining variables that are most different for these groups. The current study addresses this research gap by investigating differences in familial and scholastic aspects in two distinct groups of students (extreme high or low level of scholastic well-being). SAMPLE AND METHOD: Self-report questionnaires from N = 852 fifth graders were evaluated using the multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) and a discriminant analysis. RESULTS: Results of the discriminant analysis show that attainment of academic educational track, good classroom-management, positive social climate in class and high clarity of instruction, as well as low parental pressure on performance are characteristics that classify students with an extreme high level of scholastic well-being. Therefore, those variables can be used to divide students into disjoint groups without having any information about their actual scholastic well-being. CONCLUSION: Firstly, it can be deduced from the findings that measures within the schools to promote scholastic well-being should start with the improvement of instructional quality and social climate. Second, reduction of parental pressure on performance as well as the implementation of successful cooperation between families and schools is vital.

[Associations between students' social background, mode of instruction and learning outcomes during the pandemic]. / Zusammenhänge zwischen sozialer Herkunft, Unterrichtsform und Learning Outcomes während der Pandemie.

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to widespread school closures, which have been associated with massive changes in teaching and learning and student learning outcomes. While initial performance studies have examined learning losses due to the school closures, there are few findings to date that provide evidence on key predictors of the development of other student outcomes (stress experience, learning gain, learning time) during the school closures. This study approaches these questions by retrospectively predicting student self-assessments in these student outcomes for the periods before and during school closures by social background (academic household, language spoken at home) and instructional design (open vs. traditional). The multilevel regression models presented are motivated by theories of educational inequality and concepts of open instruction. In addition, the hypotheses tested are based on recent survey studies on COVID-19 and school. Results calculated on the basis of data from N = 1566 upper secondary school students show higher values in the retrospectively assessed stress experience of students without German as their native language than for children with German as their native language during school closures. With regard to the retrospectively self-assessed learning gain and learning time, however, there are no correlations with social background (beyond the differences in the baseline values before COVID). With respect to the relations between open instruction and student outcomes, it appears that students from traditional instruction report statistically significant higher learning time during school closures than students in open instruction. Students in open instruction, however, do not rate their learning gain to be lower than traditionally taught students despite less learning time.