TY - JOUR A1 - Festman, Julia A1 - Schwieter, John W. T1 - Self-concepts in reading and spelling among mono- and multilingual Children BT - Extending the bilingual advantage JF - Behavioral Sciences N2 - Cognitive representations and beliefs are what comprise an individual’s self-concept. A positive self-concept is related to and influences academic achievement, and the relationship between a domain-specific self-concept and achievement in the same domain is positive and strong. However, insufficient attention has been paid to these issues among multilingual children. More importantly, since instruction strongly contributes to the development of metacognition and executive functions (EFs), and since the bilingual advantage hypothesis holds that the constant management of multiple languages entails benefits for EF, we bring together these important issues in the present study. We examine the relationship between domain-specific self-concepts and standardized assessment of reading and spelling competences against the background of potential differences in self-concept between monolingual and multilingual German children. While between-group comparisons revealed no significant differences for self-concept nor reading competency, monolinguals outperformed multilinguals in spelling. Correlations between domain-specific self-concepts and academic achievement in reading comprehension, reading fluency, and spelling were positive and significant for both groups. Regardless of language background, children’s evaluations of their academic achievement (reading and spelling) were realistic. We argue, on a theoretical basis, that metacognition and EFs could facilitate a bilingual advantage and improve educational outcomes. KW - domain-specific self-concept KW - academic achievement KW - metacognition KW - executive functions KW - multilingual children KW - reading comprehension KW - reading fluency KW - spelling Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3390/bs9040039 SN - 2076-328X VL - 9 IS - 4 PB - MDPI AG CY - Basel ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Keller, Lena A1 - Preckel, Franzis A1 - Brunner, Martin T1 - Nonlinear relations between achievement and academic self-concepts in elementary and secondary school BT - an integrative data analysis across 13 countries JF - Journal of educational psychology / American Psychological Association N2 - It is well-documented that academic achievement is associated with students' self-perceptions of their academic abilities, that is, their academic self-concepts. However, low-achieving students may apply self-protective strategies to maintain a favorable academic self-concept when evaluating their academic abilities. Consequently, the relation between achievement and academic self-concept might not be linear across the entire achievement continuum. Capitalizing on representative data from three large-scale assessments (i.e., TIMSS, PIRLS, PISA; N = 470,804), we conducted an integrative data analysis to address nonlinear trends in the relations between achievement and the corresponding self-concepts in mathematics and the verbal domain across 13 countries and 2 age groups (i.e., elementary and secondary school students). Polynomial and interrupted regression analyses showed nonlinear relations in secondary school students, demonstrating that the relations between achievement and the corresponding self-concepts were weaker for lower achieving students than for higher achieving students. Nonlinear effects were also present in younger students, but the pattern of results was rather heterogeneous. We discuss implications for theory as well as for the assessment and interpretation of self-concept. KW - academic achievement KW - academic self-concept KW - mathematics KW - reading KW - nonlinear relations Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1037/edu0000533 SN - 0022-0663 SN - 1939-2176 VL - 113 IS - 3 SP - 585 EP - 604 PB - American Psychological Association CY - Washington ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Tetzner, Julia A1 - Becker, Michael T1 - How Being an Optimist Makes a Difference: The Protective Role of Optimism in Adolescents' Adjustment to Parental Separation JF - Social psychological and personality science N2 - This longitudinal study of N = 1,566 adolescents investigated the protective role of optimism in adjustment to parental separation, focusing on two salient challenges faced by adolescents, namely academic achievement and self-esteem. Based on latent change models, the results indicated associations between parental separation and short-term declines in academic achievement as well as short-term and longer term declines in self-esteem. Although optimism in general showed positive associations with academic achievement and self-esteem, its role as a protective factor proved to be particularly important for academic achievement in adjustment following parental separation. KW - parental separation KW - optimism KW - academic achievement KW - self-esteem KW - longitudinal study Y1 - 2015 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550614559605 SN - 1948-5506 SN - 1948-5514 VL - 6 IS - 3 SP - 325 EP - 333 PB - Sage Publ. CY - Thousand Oaks ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Rjosk, Camilla A1 - Richter, Dirk A1 - Luedtke, Oliver A1 - Eccles, Jacquelynne Sue T1 - Ethnic Composition and Heterogeneity in the Classroom: Their Measurement and Relationship With Student Outcomes JF - The journal of educational psychology N2 - This study explores various measures of the ethnic makeup in a classroom and their relationship with student outcomes. We examine whether measures of ethnic diversity are related to achievement (mathematics, reading) and feeling of belonging with one’s peers over and above commonly investigated composition characteristics. Multilevel analyses were based on data from a representative sample of 18,762 elementary school students in 903 classrooms. The proportion of minority students and diversity measures showed negative associations with student outcomes in separate models. Including diversity measures and the proportion of minority students, diversity of minority students mostly lost its significance. However, the results suggest that diversity measures may provide additional information over and above other classroom characteristics for some student outcomes. The various measures of diversity led to comparable results. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved) KW - ethnic composition KW - diversity KW - multilevel analysis KW - academic achievement KW - classroom Y1 - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1037/edu0000185 SN - 0022-0663 SN - 1939-2176 VL - 109 SP - 1188 EP - 1204 PB - American Psychological Association CY - Washington ER -