Journal of Educational Psychology

Impact of a content-rich literacy curriculum on kindergarteners’ vocabulary, listening comprehension, and content knowledge.
This study examined the impact of a widely used content-rich literacy curriculum on kindergarteners’ vocabulary, listening comprehension, and content knowledge. In combined findings from two randomized controlled trials (RCTs), the second being a replication of the first, 47 schools in large urban U.S. districts were randomly assigned to implement Core Knowledge Language Arts: Knowledge Strand (CKLA: Knowledge) or to a waitlist control condition. CKLA: Knowledge focuses instruction on language comprehension through interactive read alouds that systematically build content knowledge. Teachers received two days of professional development workshops, along with light-touch support from facilitators during implementation. Participants included 1,194 kindergarten students, who were administered individual pre- and posttest measures of proximal and standardized vocabulary, listening comprehension, and content knowledge (i.e., science, social studies). After approximately one semester of curricular implementation, CKLA: Knowledge demonstrated positive and significant impacts on proximal vocabulary and science and social studies knowledge. Significant interactions were found for vocabulary and content knowledge, such that children who began the year with relatively higher receptive vocabulary scores derived a greater benefit of learning the words and content knowledge taught in the curriculum. The present work is unique in that it tested the effects of a content-rich literacy curriculum that integrated literacy and content-area instruction and replicated the effects across two RCTs. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)
Using multimodal learning analytics to validate digital traces of self-regulated learning in a laboratory study and predict performance in undergraduate courses.
Undergraduates enrolled in large, active learning courses must self-regulate their learning (self-regulated learning [SRL]) by appraising tasks, making plans, setting goals, and enacting and monitoring strategies. SRL researchers have relied on self-report and learner-mediated methods during academic tasks studied in laboratories and now collect digital event data when learners engage with technology-based tools in classrooms. Inferring SRL processes from digital events and testing their validity is challenging. We aligned digital and verbal SRL event data to validate digital events as traces of SRL and used them to predict achievement in lab and course settings. In Study 1, we sampled a learning task from a biology course into a laboratory setting. Enrolled students (N = 48) completed the lesson using digital resources (e.g., online textbook, course site) while thinking aloud weeks before it was taught in class. Analyses confirmed that 10 digital events reliably co-occurred ≥ 70% of the time with verbalized task definition and strategy use macroprocesses. Some digital events co-occurred with multiple verbalized SRL macroprocesses. Variance in occurrence of validated digital events was limited in lab sessions, and they explained statistically nonsignificant variance in learners’ performance on lesson quizzes. In Study 2, lesson-specific digital event data from learners (N = 307) enrolled in the course (but not in Study 1) predicted performance on lesson-specific exam items, final exams, and course grades. Validated digital events also predicted final exam and course grades in the next semester (N = 432). Digital events can be validated to reflect SRL processes and scaled to explain achievement in naturalistic undergraduate education settings. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)
Instructional intervention effects on interleaving preference and distance during self-regulated inductive learning.
Interleaving (intermixing exemplars from different categories) is more effective in promoting inductive learning than blocking (massing exemplars from a given category together). Yet learners typically prefer blocking over interleaving during self-regulated inductive learning, highlighting the need to develop effective interventions to overcome this metacognitive illusion and promote learners’ practical use of the interleaving strategy. Drawing on a sample of university students, three experiments examined the effects of an instructional intervention on (a) correction of metacognitive fallacies regarding the superiority of blocking over interleaving for inductive learning, (b) adoption of the interleaving strategy during self-regulated learning when learners are allowed to make study choices exemplar-by-exemplar, (c) classification performance, and (d) transfer of category learning across diverse domains. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that instructions about the benefits of interleaving over blocking improved metacognitive awareness of the efficacy of interleaving and enhanced self-usage of the interleaving strategy during learning of new categories. However, this intervention had negligible influence on interleaving distance and did not improve classification performance. Experiment 3 found that informing learners about the benefits of extensive interleaving, as compared to minimal interleaving or no interleaving, successfully increased interleaving distance and boosted classification performance, and the intervention effects transferred to learning categories in a different domain. These findings support the practical use of the instructional intervention in promoting self-usage of the interleaving strategy and highlight the important role of enlarging interleaving distance in facilitating inductive learning. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)
The association between relational reasoning in nonverbal and verbal representations and mathematics achievement.
Emerging evidence has demonstrated the close association between relational reasoning (RR) and mathematical performance. While mathematics is a discipline with multiple representations, prior investigations on the RR–mathematics relation mainly relied on nonverbal tests of RR. The role of RR in linguistic contexts to mathematics achievement was rarely explored. With a newly developed verbal test of RR for children, the present study attempted to examine the contribution of nonverbal and verbal RR to mathematics achievement. Sixth graders in Hong Kong (n = 235) were assessed on their nonverbal and verbal RR, numerical operations, and mathematical problem solving. The novel verbal test of RR showed satisfactory psychometric properties. A structural equation model was subsequently estimated. With the effect of cognitive abilities and literacy skills (working memory, spatial skills, and reading comprehension) accounted for, results indicated that while nonverbal RR was significantly associated with both mathematics achievement outcomes, verbal RR significantly predicted numerical operations but not mathematical problem solving. The above findings provided preliminary evidence of the contribution of verbal RR to mathematics achievement. Implications and future directions will be discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)
All real numbers are important: The significance of negative number understanding for mathematics achievement.
The knowledge of various types of numbers, such as integers and fractions, has been shown to be crucial for students’ success in mathematics. However, the significance of negative number knowledge has not been explored enough. This study aims to investigate the role of negative number knowledge in mathematics achievement. A group of seventh graders (n = 192) in Hong Kong were assessed on their understanding of positive and negative integers, mathematics achievement, fluid intelligence, working memory, and inhibition. Using hierarchical linear models, the study found that negative number understanding significantly predicted mathematics achievement, even after controlling for school, general cognitive skills, and positive number understanding. The findings confirm the importance of negative number understanding in early adolescents’ mathematics learning. Educators should pay more attention to this aspect of numerical magnitude. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)
Big-fish–little-pond effects on ninth-grade students’ mathematics and language self-concepts: The moderating role of cognitive ability.
The big-fish–little-pond effect (BFLPE) is a well-supported contextual effect that hypothesizes that school-average achievement is negatively related to academic self-concept, even though the relation between individual achievement and self-concept tends to be positive. However, there are some uncertainties about possible moderators of the BFLPE. The bright-student hypothesis assumes that the negative relation between school-average achievement and student self-concept is less strong for higher achieving students. This hypothesis has been tested mainly with measures of individual achievement, but there have been few or no attempts to investigate if the BFLPE varies by individual cognitive ability. The objective of the present study was to provide clarity on the issue by using a measure of cognitive ability, operationalized as students’ verbal, spatial, and inductive abilities, to study the moderating effect of cognitive ability across levels. Multilevel structural equation modeling was used to test the BFLPE in the mathematics and language domains using Swedish representative ninth-grade data (N = 24,771). Support for the BFLPE was found in the mathematics domain (b = −0.32, p <.001) and the language domain (b = −0.23, p <.001). A statistically significant cross-level interaction effect was found between individual cognitive ability and school-average achievement in the mathematics domain (b = 0.22, p <.001) but not in the language domain (b = 0.07, p = .051). This indicated that the negative relation between school-average mathematics achievement and mathematics self-concept was less strong for students with higher cognitive abilities, thus supporting the bright-student hypothesis. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)
Temporal comparison effects on students’ academic self-concepts: An investigation of different comparison periods in the 2I/E model with weighted achievement levels.
Recent research has increasingly discussed the importance of temporal comparisons (comparisons with previous achievements) for the formation of students’ academic self-concepts, in addition to social comparisons (comparisons with others’ achievements) and dimensional comparisons (comparisons with achievements in other subjects). However, empirical findings on temporal comparison effects are inconsistent. In this paper, we contribute to this debate by arguing that temporal comparison effects were overestimated in previous studies testing the 2I/E model—a model that has often been used to investigate the joint effects of social, dimensional, and temporal comparisons in recent years—due to an inappropriate specification of social and dimensional comparison effects. Moreover, we examine the potential impact of comparison periods on the strength of temporal comparison effects. Specifically, we developed an extension of the 2I/E model in which we calculated students’ achievement levels (used to specify social and dimensional comparison effects) by weighting rather than averaging students’ grades from earlier school years. Subsequently, we tested this 2I/E model extension, together with two alternative models, in a sample of 1,006 tenth-graders from Germany by examining social, dimensional, and temporal comparison effects, relating to periods from 0.5 to 2.0 years, on students’ math and German self-concepts. Overall, we found evidence for our assumption that temporal comparisons were overestimated in previous 2I/E model studies. Nevertheless, we still found significant temporal comparison effects in our 2I/E model extension. The periods for which the temporal comparison effects became significant differed between math and German. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)
Longitudinal relationships between academic self-control and achievement motivation during different adolescence stages.
Self-control has emerged as a research focus, particularly among adolescents, as they frequently struggle with self-control when studying. We examined the longitudinal relationship between achievement motivation (i.e., attainment value and mastery-approach goal) and self-control at the within-person level after controlling for trait-like interpersonal variance. We used 3-year longitudinal data sets from two panels of the 2010 Korean Children and Youth Panel Survey for the multigroup random intercept cross-lagged panel model. The final analysis included self-reported responses to academic self-control, attainment value, and mastery-approach goal for 3 years from 2,152 early adolescents (11–13 years old) and 2,163 middle adolescents (14–16 years old). Our multigroup random intercept cross-lagged panel models with two different adolescent cohorts revealed strong associations between achievement motivation and self-control at the between-person level, regardless of the adolescent cohort. At the within-person level, early and middle adolescents exhibited distinct longitudinal associations between these two variables. Early adolescents’ self-control demonstrated noticeable stability and correlations with mastery-approach goal pursuit. By contrast, middle adolescents’ self-control exhibited a fluctuating state, which was predicted by attainment value. Practically, this implies that for early adolescents, self-control may function as a trait that can determine and guide adaptive mastery-approach goal pursuit implicitly and habitually. For middle adolescents, however, self-control may no longer function as a trait; instead, it can fluctuate and be affected by their identity-related attainment value perceived within a given academic context. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)
Investigating the remembered success effect with elementary and middle school students.
The “remembered success effect” (Finn, 2010) refers to the finding that challenging academic tasks that start or end with extra opportunities for success are preferred to challenging tasks that do not include these opportunities. Work on remembered success has primarily been done with adults. We assessed (in a preregistered study) whether the remembered success effect could be detected in two school-aged groups of students (281 third-graders and 289 sixth-graders). We examined the effect in terms of students’ future activity choices and task evaluations, as well as their expectancies for success, task values, and perceived costs, key motivational constructs from expectancy-value theory. More specifically, we tested whether students would prefer an “extended” difficult math task that began or ended with a set of moderately difficult problems (i.e., that included experiences of relative success) over a shorter task that contained the same number of difficult problems, but none of the moderate problems. Results showed that students in both grades preferred the extended task. In addition, students’ expectancies and subjective task value were higher, and perceived costs lower, in the “extended” condition than in the short condition. Results were generally stronger for the older students. Adding experiences of remembered success to challenging math tasks could turn out to be a straightforward, cost-effective way to increase the likelihood that students will choose to engage in and persist at such tasks, even as early as Grade 3. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)

Journal of Educational Psychology - Vol 117, Iss 2