We conducted an experiment to determine the impact of short-term pressure on 1,228 Grade 8 students' outcomes when performing simple math exercises. We required all students to complete 100 simple math questions for 90 seconds. We analysed students' results and then divided them into three groups: (i) a control group who did nothing; (ii) a group…

Converging evidence suggests that traditional domain-general working memory (WM) training does not have reliable far-transfer effects, but produces reliable, modest near-transfer effects on structurally similar untrained tasks. Given the critical role of WM in academic development, WM training that incorporates task-specific features may maximize…

Early prediction of student difficulty during long-duration learning activities allows a tutoring system to intervene by providing needed support, such as a hint, or by alerting an instructor. To be effective, these predictions must come early and be highly accurate, but such predictions are difficult for open-ended programming problems. In this…

The rapid advances in information and communication technologies, coupled with increased access to information and the formation of global communities, have resulted in interest among researchers and academics to revise educational practice to move beyond traditional "literacy" skills towards an enhanced set of…

Many recent studies have stressed the importance of teacher candidates' (TCs) self-regulated learning (SRL) skills for successful learning. Because of the promising consequences of SRL for academic performance, teacher educators (TEs) are encouraged to increase TCs' SRL opportunities in educational programs. Because of the difficulty and…

This research article reports on two correlational studies that examined the notion of "optimized functioning." Optimized functioning, introduced in a recent published study, offers an alternative approach into the understanding of optimization. Optimized functioning is proposed to consist of four distinctive components: personal…

"Game-Based Assessments: A Promising Way to Create Idiographic Perspectives" (Adrienne Walker and George Englehard) comments on: "How Task Features Impact Evidence from Assessments Embedded in Simulations and Games" by Russell G. Almond, Yoon Jeon Kim, Gertrudes Velasquez, and Valerie J. Shute. Here, Walker and Englehard write…

The objective of this paper is to discuss how blind students learn basic concepts of probability using the tactile model proposed by Vita (2012). Among the activities were part of the teaching sequence "Jefferson's Random Walk", in which students built a tree diagram (using plastic trays, foam cards, and toys), and pictograms in 3D…

Students' self-determined or autonomous motivation in educational contexts is associated with adaptive educational and behavioural outcomes including persistence on educational tasks and academic performance. A key question for educators is whether promoting autonomous motivation toward activities in an educational context leads to increased…

Thoughts drift in everyday life and in the classroom. The goal of this study was to investigate how often students reported off-task thinking while watching online lectures. These findings were related to working memory capacity, topic interest, and achievement goal orientations. Structural equation modeling was used to evaluate how all of these…

Besides cognitive factors, children's learning at school may be influenced by more dynamic phenomena, such as motivation and achievement-related task-avoidant behavior. The present study examined the developmental dynamics of task-avoidant behavior and math performance from kindergarten to Grade 4. A total of 225 children were tested for their…

Research Findings: This study examined concurrent associations between family sociodemographic risk, self-regulation, and early literacy and mathematics in young children from Azores, Portugal (N = 186). Family sociodemographic risk was indexed by low maternal education, low family income, and low occupational status. Behavioral aspects of…

Executive functions (EF) and intelligence are of critical importance to success in many everyday tasks. Working memory, or updating, which is one latent variable identified in confirmatory factor analytic models of executive functions, predicts intelligence (both fluid and crystallised) in adults, but inhibition and shifting do not (Friedman et…

Although the effects of achievement goals and working memory on academic performance are well established, it is not clear whether they jointly affect academic performance. Children from Primary 4 and 6 (N = 608) were administered (a) measures of working memory and updating from the automated working memory battery and a running span task, (b)…

Effortful control (EC), the capacity to deliberately suppress a dominant response and perform a subdominant response, rapidly developing in toddler and preschool age, has been shown to be a robust predictor of children's adjustment. Not settled, however, is whether a view of EC as a heterogeneous rather than unidimensional construct may offer…