The Psychology of Academic Achievement

Abstract

Educational psychology has generated a prolific array of findings about factors that influence and correlate with academic achievement. We review select findings from this voluminous literature and identify two domains of psychology: heuristics that describe generic relations between instructional designs and learning, which we call the psychology of "the way things are," and findings about metacognition and self-regulated learning that demonstrate learners selectively apply and change their use of those heuristics, which we call the psychology of "the way learners make things." Distinguishing these domains highlights a need to marry two approaches to research methodology: the classical approach, which we describe as snapshot, bookend, between-group experimentation; and a microgenetic approach that traces proximal cause-effect bonds over time to validate theoretical accounts of how learning generates achievements. We argue for fusing these methods to advance a validated psychology of academic achievement.

Cuestionario de Clima Motivacional de la Clase: validez intercultural, intergénero, evolutiva y predictiva

“…Respecto de la coincidente pequeña proporción de varianza de rendimiento explicada por las variables motivacionales en su conjunto, éste era un resultado esperado, dado que el rendimiento escolar depende de múltiples factores personales, escolares, contextuales, sociales, económicos y culturales (Adeyemy & Adeyemy, 2014;Payandeh, Najafabadi, & Farid-Rohani, 2013;Romanik, 2010;Schiefelbein & Simmons, 1981;Tuñón & Poy, 2016;Winne & Nesbit, 2010), por lo que no es extraño que la varianza explicada por solamente algunas de ellas sea pequeña. La diferencia respecto del rol del CMC y las demás variables motivacionales que refleja la ausencia de invarianza del modelo predictivo entre los niveles podría ser explicada por las diferencias entre las muestras, que corresponden a estadios de desarrollo con características muy distintas entre sí.…”

The new policy sciences: combining the cognitive science of choice, multiple theories of context, and basic and applied analysis

“…Policy analysts have always known the value of some responses to human cognition. For example, the exhortation to keep policy analysis short, minimize jargon, and favour concrete examples over an abstract problem, is based generally on the need to minimize the cognitive load on your audience (Winne and Nesbit 2010). Yet, consider if policymakers feel antagonism towards a person giving what they perceive to be dubious evidence without realizing they are 'carrying' a group emotion with them (Menges and Kilduff 2015).…”

“Learning to like learning”: an appreciative inquiry into emotions in education

“…In this study, we made use of self-report measures where students were given the opportunity to provide their own experiences of the learning situation. With researchers such as Nett et al (2011) and Winne and Nesbit (2010) who attested to the inherent validity of self-report measures, we value the reflections and self-reports of students. Still, researchers in the field also referred to possible self-report biases and the need to supplement self-reports with actual observations and observer-reports (Hill et al 2013;Linnenbrink-Garcia and Pekrun 2011).…”