This study examined changes in pupils' agency beliefs and control expectancy from grade four to grade six, and whether they were associated with studying in a class with a special emphasis on a ...subject as compared to studying in a class without emphasis. After controlling for the effects of mother's education, prior school achievement, and gender, we found that the average pattern of change varied for different action-control beliefs, and that class membership did not moderate these changes. Mother's education, pupils' prior school achievement, and gender all predicted class membership, but their effects on action-control beliefs varied depending on the type of belief. Implications for educational policy will be discussed.
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Scientists have studied the development of the human mind for decades and have accumulated an impressive number of empirical studies that have provided ample support for the notion that early ...cognitive performance during infancy and childhood is an important predictor of later cognitive performance during adulthood. As children move from childhood into adolescence, their mental development increasingly involves higher-order cognitive skills that are crucial for successful planning, decision-making, and problem solving skills. However, few studies have employed higher-order thinking skills such as complex problem solving (CPS) as developmental outcomes in adolescents. To fill this gap, we tested a longitudinal developmental model in a sample of 2,021 Finnish sixth grade students (M = 12.41 years, SD = 0.52; 1,041 female, 978 male, 2 missing sex). We assessed working memory (WM) and fluid reasoning (FR) at age 12 as predictors of two CPS dimensions: knowledge acquisition and knowledge application. We further assessed students' CPS performance 3 years later as a developmental outcome (N = 1696; M = 15.22 years, SD = 0.43; 867 female, 829 male). Missing data partly occurred due to dropout and technical problems during the first days of testing and varied across indicators and time with a mean of 27.2%. Results revealed that FR was a strong predictor of both CPS dimensions, whereas WM exhibited only a small influence on one of the two CPS dimensions. These results provide strong support for the view that CPS involves FR and, to a lesser extent, WM in childhood and from there evolves into an increasingly complex structure of higher-order cognitive skills in adolescence.
Dinosaurs have been a very popular science topic since signs of their presence on earth were first discovered. They have represented so-called 'edutainment' for some people. Learning from informal ...sources and in- an out-of-school environment can be effective and motivating. In this study, 12-year-old pupils (N = 366) visited a dinosaur science centre exhibition in Finland. Pupils were tested with standardised tests of motivation as defined by self-determination theory, cognitive skills, and interest via pre-, post-, and delayed post-tests during a six-month period. Findings show that pupils learned from the science centre visit and enjoyed the experience. The factors explaining their post-test knowledge in addition to their previous knowledge were (1) general cognitive competence, (2) liking studying biology at the science centre, (3) participation in a dinosaur demonstration, and (4) gender. As there was no difference between boys and girls in general cognitive competences, the knowledge results of boys and girls equally related to their cognitive competence. Autonomy also influenced situational motivation both directly and indirectly, which in turn had a strong effect on liking studying in the exhibition. It also influenced the post-test knowledge indirectly. In the lowest school achievement group, participation in the dinosaur demonstration increased knowledge in the post-test.
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•Preparing pupils for 21st century working life is an important goal of education.•Learning to learn is a measurable cross-curricular outcome of education.•The core of the cognitive learning to learn ...competences is in formal thinking.•Verbal and quantitative reasoning are only partially overlapping with formal thinking.•Formal thinking develops differently in different classes.
Enhancing thinking skills is an important goal of formal education. It is often embedded in national curricula, which, however, are seldom based on theoretical understanding of the structure of the skills or how they should be taught. Accordingly, there is only limited information available about schools’ success in this important task. The present study has two goals: firstly, to find support for the theoretical assumption of the nested structure of thinking skills with a core factor of formal thinking and specialised structures for verbal and quantitative reasoning; and secondly, to test the differentiated development of these skills in school. This was done by studying class-level variation of sixth graders’ thinking skills in a multilevel factor analysis when initial between-class differences at grade three had been taken into account. The data (N≈1543) were drawn from a learning to learn panel study in one of the major cities of Finland. The results showed that the core factor for formal thinking could be identified at both the individual and the class level, and that at the individual level there were statistically significant residual factors for verbal and quantitative reasoning. Initial between-class differences explained only a third of the variance of class-level formal thinking. This was interpreted to indicate the effect of schooling.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPUK
Background: Recent decades have been marked by an extensive movement to analyze bias in people's thinking, especially in gender-related issues. Studies have addressed the question of gender bias in ...classrooms on different levels-the use of gender in books, learning opportunities determined by students' gender, or teachers' gender preferences.
Purpose: In this study, we aim to answer the question of whether and under which circumstances the interaction between teacher gender and student gender positively or negatively influences teachers' evaluations of students' performance, while controlling for objective measures of students' performance. For instance, it could be possible that a teacher with the same gender as a student evaluates the student as better than opposite-gender students, independent of their objective performance.
Sample: The sample consisted of n > 1,500 Finnish 6
th
grade students (Mage= 12.67) and their respective class teachers.
Design and methods: Students completed several academic skills tests, including a mathematical thinking test, reading comprehension test, and scientific reasoning test. Furthermore, teachers provided their evaluation of each student, evaluating students' performance in different school subjects and answering questions regarding their probability of academic success. To test whether the teacher-student gender interaction had an effect on the criterion variable, i.e. teachers' evaluation of the students' performance, multilevel analyses accounting for between- and within-class effects were applied. Thereby, the effect of students' objective performance on teachers' evaluation of the students and main effects of gender were controlled for as covariates.
Results: The main results indicated that the interaction between student and teacher gender did not influence teachers' evaluation of the students. However, regardless of their gender, teachers tended to evaluate girls as better than boys in first language performance (i.e. Finnish language) and potential for success in school. Teacher gender did not influence the evaluation.
Conclusions: The results of the study suggest that the interaction between teacher and student gender is unlikely to be a source of possible bias in the evaluations of students in the Finnish educational system.
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38.
Multiprofessional collaboration in Finnish schools Vainikainen, Mari-Pauliina; Thuneberg, Helena; Greiff, Samuel ...
International journal of educational research,
2015, 2015-00-00, Volume:
72
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
•The focus is on multiprofessional collaboration in Finnish student welfare services.•The welfare services are organised through multiprofessional teams in all schools.•In urban areas principals' ...satisfaction depends on the quality of the work.•In remote areas the regularity of student welfare work is more important.•The quality is emphasised first when the basic structures are at satisfactory level.
In Finland, a three-tiered support model was introduced in 2007, emphasising early intervention and preventative multiprofessional student welfare. Nationally representative principal data were used in analysing how the availability of student welfare personnel and the regularity of multiprofessional team meetings influence principals’ experiences about the functioning of multiprofessional collaboration in learning-related issues in different parts of Finland. The regularity of the student welfare team meetings increased principals’ satisfaction in multiprofessional collaboration especially in geographical areas with a limited availability of services. Reaching the goals of early intervention was explained by the reactivity of the multiprofessional team. It was concluded that principals’ expectations are influenced by the availability of services. The qualitative aspects of the work receive a greater emphasis first when the basic structures are at a satisfactory level.
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In Finland, schools' effectiveness in fostering the development of transversal skills is evaluated through large-scale learning to learn (LTL) assessments. This article presents how LTL ...skills-general cognitive competences and learning-related motivational beliefs-develop during primary school and how they predict pupils' CPS skills at the end of sixth grade. The six-year follow-up of 608 pupils shows that cognitive competences demonstrated in the beginning of the first grade in a learning preparedness test predict both later cognitive LTL competences and CPS, but their development is not fully determined by earlier individual differences in learning preparedness in the first grade. Motivational beliefs begin to be related to cognitive LTL performance gradually from age 10 on, and they may have a slightly stronger effect on CPS than on cognitive LTL performance. It is concluded that the development of CPS is partly depending on pupils' initial learning preparedness and the development of their LTL skills.
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