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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.
Four topics were investigated in this longitudinal person-centered study: (a) profiles of subjective task values and ability self-concepts of adolescents in the domain of mathematics, (b) the stability of and changes to the profiles of motivational beliefs from Grade 7 to 12, (c) the relation of changes to student-perceived classroom characteristics, and (d) the extent to which profile membership in early adolescence predicted mathematics achievement and career plans in late adolescence and the choice of math-related college majors and occupations in adulthood. Data were drawn from the Michigan Study of Adolescent and Adult Life Transitions Study. We focused on students who participated in the following 4 waves of data collection (N = 867): at the beginning of Grade 7 (Wave 3), at the end of Grade 7, in Grade 10 (Wave 5), and in Grade 12 (Wave 6). Four profiles that were stable across Grades 7 to 12 were identified using Latent Profile Analysis. Student-reported fairness and friendliness and competition in class predicted changes in profile membership. Profile membership in Grade 7 predicted math-related career plans in Grade 12. Profile membership in Grade 12 predicted the choice of math-related college major after finishing school and of math-related occupations in adulthood.