Self-efficacy in study-related skills was the critical academic self-efficacy variable in this study. It may play an important role in maintaining challenge appraisals to maintain pleasant emotions and better academic performance. Accordingly, practitioners in higher education may wish to consider the value of assessing and developing students' self-efficacy in relation to their independent study skills.

Variance in the test anxiety scores of Key Stage 4 students can be predicted from a number of socio-demographic variables. Further research is now required to assess the implications for assessment performance, examination arrangements and appropriateness of using a North American measure of test anxiety in a UK context.

Based on the control-value theory of achievement emotions, this longitudinal study examined students’ control-value appraisals as antecedents of their enjoyment and boredom in mathematics. Self-report data for appraisals and emotions were collected from 579 students in their final year of primary schooling over three waves. Data were analyzed using latent interaction structural equation modeling. Control-value appraisals predicted emotions interactively depending on which specific subjective value was paired with perceived control. Achievement value amplified the positive relation between perceived control and enjoyment, and intrinsic value reduced the negative relation between perceived control and boredom. These longitudinal findings demonstrate that control and value appraisals, and their interaction, are critically important for the development of students’ enjoyment and boredom over time.

No abstract

Findings provide partial support for the self-regulatory model of test anxiety suggesting that additional routes are required to account for the role of parental pressure and teachers' performance-avoidance goals and a re-examination of the relationship between test anxiety and achievement goals.

Reciprocal relations between students' academic enjoyment, boredom, and achievement over time http://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/7090/ Article LJMU has developed LJMU Research Online for users to access the research output of the University more effectively. Abstract The control-value theory (CVT) proposes that achievement emotions and academic achievement show reciprocal effects over time. Previous studies have examined how achievement emotions predict subsequent achievement. However, evidence is limited for whether achievement can also predict achievement emotions. To examine these reciprocal relations, data were collected about two achievement emotions: enjoyment and boredom, and mathematics achievement over four waves in a single school year in primary school students in Years 5 and 6. Results from structural equation modeling supported reciprocal relations between emotions and achievement. Higher enjoyment and lower boredom predicted greater subsequent achievement and, in turn, greater academic achievement predicted subsequent greater enjoyment and lower boredom. Furthermore, the relations between emotions over time were mediated by achievement. These findings build on the evidence base for CVT and further understanding of relations between achievement emotions and academic achievement in younger students. (2009). A longitudinal analysis of achievement goals: From affective antecedents to emotional effects and achievement outcomes.

Academic buoyancy refers to a positive, constructive, and adaptive response to the types of challenges and setbacks experienced in a typical and everyday academic setting. In this project we examined whether academic buoyancy explained any additional variance in test anxiety over and above that explained by coping. Two hundred and ninety-eight students in their final two years of compulsory schooling completed self-report measures of academic buoyancy, coping, and test anxiety. Results suggested that buoyancy was inversely related to test anxiety and unrelated to coping. With the exception of test-irrelevant thoughts, test anxiety was positively related to avoidance coping and social support. Test-irrelevant thoughts were inversely related to task focus, unrelated to social support, and positively related to avoidance. A hierarchical regression analysis showed that academic buoyancy explained a significant additional proportion of variance in test anxiety when the variance for coping had already been accounted for. These findings suggest that academic buoyancy can be considered as a distinct construct from that of adaptive coping.

Despite a long history of interest in North American and Western European literature, researchers in the UK are only now beginning to turn attention to the issue of academic stress in schoolchildren and how it may affect emotional well‐being, health and performance on school assessments. Based on the author's experiences of designing an extensive research project, this article explores the conceptual and methodological difficulties encountered when designing and conducting research in this area. First, there is a lack of precision in terminology used. The terms ‘stress’, ‘anxiety’ and ‘worry’ are used interchangeably in the literature as if they referred to the same phenomenon, and the domains of ‘examination stress’ and ‘academic stress’ are not clearly defined. As a consequence, it is not clear exactly what phenomenon the literature is actually referring to. Second, it is not always clear in the literature what the term ‘stress’ is referring to. In some cases, it is being used to refer to the properties of a stimulus (e.g. an examination) and in other cases to the subjective experience of distress. Assuming a subjective experience of distress will necessarily follow from a particular stimulus is problematic as it fails to account for the interpretation of that stimulus to the student involved. The much ignored construct of test anxiety may offer some advantages to the researcher by having a clearly defined domain and referent. Third, there is an overwhelming bias in the research towards quantification and ways of ‘measuring’ stress and anxiety in students. The usefulness of this approach is considered along with the potential advantages of alternative approaches.