Perfectionism has long been recognised as a psychological factor that can enhance or interfere with the healthy adjustment of young students who are academically gifted. However, it is apparent from existing research that a wide range of methods have been adopted to study perfectionism in this population. To identify what is currently known about perfectionism among these students and what future work

This experimental study aimed to replicate and extend a previous efficacy study of an elementary grade content literacy intervention that demonstrated positive effects on students’ vocabulary knowledge depth, argumentative writing, and reading comprehension. Using a cluster (school) randomized trial design, this replication experiment was conducted with 5,494 first- and second-grade students in 30

Rapid advances in technology during the last few decades have provided a multitude of new options for teaching and learning. Although technology is being widely adopted in education, there is a shortage of research on the effects that this technology might have on student learning, and why those effects occur. We conducted a comprehensive review of the literature on various uses of digital technology

Identifying different conceptions of success and how these relate to wellbeing is an important area of research. These insights would be especially beneficial for young people who can be guided through school education to reflect on core values, life goals, and indices of success to promote aspirations that will be conducive to wellbeing. Through a systematic review of the empirical and grey literature

A century ago, spelling skills were highly valued and widely taught in schools using traditional methods, such as weekly lists, drill exercises, and low- and high-stakes spelling tests. That approach was featured in best-selling textbooks such as the Horn-Ashbaugh Speller of 1920. In the early 21st century, however, skepticism as to the importance of spelling has grown, some schools have deemphasized

Spaced and interleaved practices have been identified as effective learning strategies which sometimes are conflated as a single strategy and at other times treated as distinct. Learning sessions in which studying information or practicing problems are spaced in time with rest-from-deliberate-learning periods between sessions generally result in better learning outcomes than massed practice without

Over the last decades, extensive research has given considerable attention to teachers’ burnout. Owing to its negative personal, organizational, and social impacts (e.g., mental ill health, decreased work performance, turnover), intervention and prevention efforts have consequently been employed to minimize the effects of this phenomenon/syndrome. As teaching-specific stressors are mainly related to

Generative learning theory posits that learners engage more deeply and produce better learning outcomes when they engage in selecting, organizing, and integrating processes during learning. The present experiments examine whether the generative learning activity of generating explanations can be extended to online multimedia lessons and whether prompts to engage in this generative learning activity

The reciprocal relationship between academic self-concept (ASC) and academic achievement has been documented in multiple studies. However, this relationship has not been investigated fully from a developmental perspective. In the present meta-analysis, 240 effect sizes were aggregated from 68 longitudinal studies to examine the longitudinal relationship between ASC and achievement. The results found

The aim of this paper is two-fold. The first aim is to review the core representational and processing aspects of influential accounts of single-document and multiple-document comprehension with a particular emphasis on how readers negotiate conflicting information during reading. This review provides the groundwork for the second aim—to expand our current account of knowledge revision during reading

The testing effect—the power of retrieval practice to enhance long-term knowledge retention more than restudying does—is a well-known phenomenon in learning. However, retrieval practice is hardly appreciated by students and underutilized when studying. One of the reasons is that learners usually do not experience immediate benefits of such practice which often present only after a delay. We therefore

The bodily experiences and implications of understanding the functioning of the human brain–body mechanism has been a center of attention in the field of cognitive neurosciences for over two decades. Research in this field has enlarged the theories of learning and development, and contributed to changes in educational practices involving language processing, mathematics, and spatial thinking; however

Test anxiety is a context-specific academic anxiety which can result in poorer academic and metacognitive performance. We assessed how the quantity and relative weight of assessments contribute to the effects of test anxiety on performance and metacognitive accuracy in a smaller seminar-style class on human memory (study 1) and a larger lecture-style class on cognitive psychology (study 2). Students

Given the growing interest in retrieval practice among educators, it is valuable to know when retrieval practice does and does not improve student learning—particularly for educators who have limited classroom time and resources. In this literature review, we developed a narrow operational definition for “classroom research” compared to previous reviews of the literature. We screened nearly 2000 abstracts

Pictures are commonly used to represent problems. However, it is unclear how the addition of pictures affects students’ problem-solving performance. The multimedia effect in problem solving describes the phenomenon whereby an individual’s problem-solving performance is enhanced when equivalent pictures are added to illustrate or replace part of the problem text. Using meta-analytic techniques, this

Fletcher, Savage, and Sharon (Educational Psychology Review, 2020) have raised a number of conceptual and empirical challenges to my claim that there is little or no evidence for systematic phonics (Bowers, Educational Psychology Review, 32, 681–705, 2020). But there are many mistakes, mischaracterizations, and omissions in the Fletcher et al. response that not only obscure the important similarities

Working memory is an essential mechanism in the cognitive learning process. However, its definitions and mechanisms remain a topic of debate. Miller-Cotto and Byrnes (Journal of Educational Psychology, 112(5), 1074–1084, 2020) reported a comparison of three models of working memory to determine which best accounted for data obtained from a national US dataset of young children over time (Early Childhood

Researchers of cognitive load theory and the cognitive theory of multimedia learning have identified several strategies to optimize instructional materials. In this review article we focus on five of these strategies or solutions to problematic instructional designs in multimedia learning: (a) the multimedia principle (use visualizations and drawings to complement texts); (b) the split-attention effect

The inverse relationship between test anxiety and test performance is commonly explained by test-anxious students’ tendency to worry about a test and the consequences of failing. However, other cognitive facets of test anxiety have been identified that could account for this link, including interference by test-irrelevant thoughts and lack of confidence. In this study, we compare different facets of

In the 2018 meta-analysis of Educational Psychology Review entitled “Null effects of perceptual disfluency on learning outcomes in a text-based educational context” by Xie, Zhou, and Liu, we identify some errors and inconsistencies in both the methodological approach and the reported results regarding coding and effect sizes. While from a technical point of view the meta-analysis aligns with current

The article focuses on estimating effects in nonrandomized studies with two outcome measurement occasions and one predictor variable. Given such a design, the analysis approach can be to include the measurement at the previous time point as a predictor in the regression model (ANCOVA), or to predict the change-score of the outcome variable (CHANGE). Researchers demonstrated that both approaches can

Achievement emotions are emotions linked to academic, work, or sports achievement activities (activity emotions) and their success and failure outcomes (outcome emotions). Recent evidence suggests that achievement emotions are linked to motivational, self-regulatory, and cognitive processes that are crucial for academic success. Despite the importance of these emotions, syntheses of empirical findings

There has been a surge in interest and implementation of immersive virtual reality (IVR)-based lessons in education and training recently, which has resulted in many studies on the topic. There are recent reviews which summarize this research, but little work has been done that synthesizes the existing findings into a theoretical framework. The Cognitive Affective Model of Immersive Learning (CAMIL)

In an article published in an open-access journal, (Pennebaker et al. PLoS One, 8(11), e79774, 2013) reported that an innovative computer-based system that included daily online testing resulted in better student performance in other concurrent courses and a reduction in achievement gaps between lower and upper middle-class students. This article has had high impact, not only in terms of citations

The current meta-analysis examined the association between K-12 students’ motivation to learn mathematics and mathematics anxiety, and explored the effects of potential moderating factors, including different motivation measures, dimensions of mathematics anxiety, students’ developmental stages, and cultural contexts. This meta-analysis was conducted with 73 articles (80 independent samples, total

Multimedia pedagogical agents are on-screen characters that allow users to navigate or learn in multimedia environments. Several agents’ characteristics may moderate their instructional effectiveness, including appearance, gender, nonverbal communication, motion, and voice. Here, we conducted a meta-analysis to test hypotheses from diverse theories predicting the effects of these agents’ characteristics

This systematic review and meta-analysis explores the impact of motivational reading interventions on the reading achievement and reading motivation of school-age students. Results of preliminary searches for—and inspection of—the existing meta-analytic literature suggest that while there exist published meta-analyses on motivational reading interventions, these would benefit from inclusion of more

Children’s low academic skills are associated with a variety of behavior problems and maladaptive outcomes throughout childhood and adulthood. Given the prevalence of behavioral disorders is approximately 19% of all US children, understanding of the mechanisms through which academic achievement and externalizing behavior problems interact can inform effective intervention to prevent persistent academic

To help students acquire mathematics and science knowledge and competencies, educators typically use multiple external representations (MERs). There has been considerable interest in examining ways to present, sequence, and combine MERs. One prominent approach is the concreteness fading sequence, which posits that instruction should start with concrete representations and progress stepwise to representations

Bowers (Educational Psychology Review, 32, 681-705, 2020) reviewed 12 meta-analytic syntheses addressing the effects of phonics instruction, concluding that the evidence is weak to nonexistent in supporting the superiority of systematic phonics to alternative reading methods. We identify five issues that limit Bowers’ conclusions: (1) definition issues; (2) what is the right question?; (3) the assumption

Personalized education—the systematic adaptation of instruction to individual learners—has been a long-striven goal. We review research on personalized education that has been conducted in the laboratory, in the classroom, and in digital learning environments. Across all learning environments, we find that personalization is most successful when relevant learner characteristics are measured repeatedly

Despite its recognized importance for academic success, much of the research investigating time management has proceeded without regard to a comprehensive theoretical model for understanding its connections to students’ engagement, learning, or achievement. Our central argument is that self-regulated learning provides the rich conceptual framework necessary for understanding college students’ time

Over a century of research has established practice testing as a highly robust learning strategy that promotes long-term retention. However, learners do not always appreciate the benefits of testing for memory and do not use it as effectively as they could during their own self-regulated learning. The goal of this review is to identify common themes from research focused on learners’ metacognition

Generative learning strategies are intended to improve students’ learning by prompting them to actively make sense of the material to be learned. But are they effective for all students? This review provides an overview of six popular generative learning strategies: concept mapping, explaining, predicting, questioning, testing, and drawing. Its main purpose is to review for what ages the effectiveness

This meta-analysis investigated the extent to which relative metacomprehension accuracy can be increased by interventions that aim to support learners’ use of situation-model cues as a basis for judging their text comprehension. These interventions were delayed-summary writing, delayed-keywords listing, delayed-diagram completion, self-explaining, concept mapping, rereading, and setting a comprehension-test

An exponential increase in the availability of information over the last two decades has asked for novel theoretical frameworks to examine how students optimally learn under these new learning conditions, given the limitations of human processing ability. In this special issue and in the current editorial introduction, we argue that such a novel theoretical framework should integrate (aspects of) cognitive

Spaced retrieval practice consists of repetitions of the same retrieBjorkval event distributed through time. This learning strategy combines two “desirable difficulties”: retrieval practice and spacing effects. We carried out meta-analyses on 29 studies investigating the benefit of spacing out retrieval practice episodes on final retention. The total dataset was divided into two subsets to investigate

Almost anything worth doing takes effort, so it is no surprise that effort has played such a central role in how researchers, theoreticians, instructors, and even students think about student learning and achievement. In this special issue, the authors of the target articles explore the importance of effort to students’ self-regulated learning within multiple domains. To further support research progress

Textbooks currently include many elaborations that describe, illustrate, and explain main ideas, increasing the length of these textbook chapters. The current study investigated if the cost in additional reading time that these elaborations impose is outweighed by benefits to memory for main ideas. Given that elaborations in textbooks sometimes fail to produce memory benefits, the current study also

Building bridges between two of the most influential research fields in educational psychology, self-regulation and cognitive load theory, is highly relevant but also challenging. The collection of papers in this special issue reflects this interplay by reviewing the still scarce base of empirical data in an impressively elaborated and profound way. The papers offer different perspectives on how to

In this commentary to the Special Issue of Educational Psychology Review on visual perceptual processes, I tie the empirical studies reported in the issue with previous research in other domains to offer some points to be considered in future studies. First, I will point out to issues related to the operationalization of the theoretical constructs. The empirical papers in this Special Issue use eye

This systematic review investigated how successful children/adolescents with poor literacy skills learn a foreign language compared with their peers with typical literacy skills. Moreover, we explored whether specific characteristics related to participants, foreign language instruction, and assessment moderated scores on foreign language tests in this population. Overall, 16 studies with a total of

Models of self-regulated learning emphasize the active and intentional role of learners and, thereby, focus mainly on conscious processes in working memory and long-term memory. Cognitive load theory supports this view on learning. As a result, both fields of research ignore the potential role of unconscious processes for learning. In this review paper, we propose an interactive layers model on self-regulated

Research has shown a bi-directional association between the (perceived) amount of invested effort to learn or retrieve information (e.g., time, mental effort) and metacognitive monitoring judgments. The direction of this association likely depends on how learners allocate their effort. In self-paced learning, effort allocation is usually data driven, where the ease of memorizing is used as a cue, resulting

In this discussion paper, teaching and learning are characterized as being situated, complex, and reciprocally interactive activities. Accordingly, a teacher’s pedagogical actions are always action and reaction at the same time. Irrespective of the reciprocally interactive nature of teaching and learning, educational research has sought to identify characteristics of teacher expertise that enable teachers

Classrooms full of pupils can be very overwhelming, both for teachers and students, as well as for their joint interactions. It is thus crucial that both can distil the relevant information in this complex scenario and interpret it appropriately. This distilling and interpreting happen to a large extent via visual perception, which is the core focus of the current Special Issue. Six empirical studies

The purpose of the present study is to clarify the contributions of cognitive skills (nonverbal reasoning, language comprehension, working memory, attention, processing speed) and academic skills (mathematics facts retrieval, mathematics computation, mathematics vocabulary, reading comprehension) in performing mathematics word problems among elementary school students. With the two-stage meta-analytic

The shifting emphases of new national curricula have placed more attention on knowledge generation approaches to learning. Such approaches are centered on the fundamental sense of generative learning where practices and tools for learning become the focus of the learning environment, rather than on the products of learning. This paper, building on from the previous review by Fiorella and Mayer (2015

Based on theories of multimedia learning, the present study investigated whether the haptic sense serves as an additional channel to enhance the learning experience and learning outcomes. We therefore set up an experimental exhibition with two showrooms. In the first showroom, the sensory access of the participants to the exhibition objects was systematically varied in a 2 × 2 design with the between-subjects

Research suggests that expert understanding is characterized by coherent mental representations featuring a high level of connectedness. This paper advances the idea that educators can facilitate this level of understanding in students through the practicing connections framework: a practical framework to guide instructional design for developing deep understanding and transferable knowledge in complex

Test anxiety is a widespread and mostly detrimental emotion in learning and achievement settings. Thus, it is a construct of high interest for researchers and its measurement is an important issue. So far, test anxiety has typically been assessed using self-report measures. However, physiological measures (e.g., heart rate or skin conductance level) have gained increasing attention in educational research

Previous studies have investigated the characteristics, influencing factors, and working strategies of highly successful educational psychologists. These studies, however, have focused mainly on male scholars. Consequently, little is known about how successful female educational psychologists go about their work and are so productive. In the present study, we addressed this gap by interviewing five

Using cannabis (e.g., smoking marijuana) is becoming popular, partly due to a legalization trend across different countries. This tendency has resulted in cannabis consumption being accepted by society as if it were harmless. However, evidence shows that the use of this drug has detrimental effects on cognitive, academic, and professional performance, which tend to be larger in younger users (e.g.

We present the results of a meta-analytic synthesis of the literature on the association between the use of frequent low-stakes quizzes in real classes and students’ academic performance in those classes. Data from 52 independent samples from real classes (N = 7864) suggests a moderate association of d = .42 between the use of quizzes and academic performance. Effects are even stronger in psychology

Retrieval practice has been widely studied as an effective strategy for enhancing memory. In this review article, we discuss how its effects on learning complex problem-solving procedures are less straightforward, however, with repeated studying of worked examples sometimes more effective than problem-solving practice. This worked example benefit has been interpreted within the framework of cognitive

Previous simulation studies of randomization tests applied in single-case educational intervention research contexts have typically focused on A-to-B phase changes in means/levels. In the present simulation study, we report the results of two multiple-baseline investigations, one targeting between-phase changes in slopes/trends and the other targeting between-phase changes in variability. For each

For (facilitating) effective learning from texts, students and teachers need to accurately monitor students’ comprehension. Monitoring judgments are accurate when they correspond to students’ actual comprehension. Accurate monitoring enables accurate (self-)regulation of the learning process, i.e., making study decisions that are in line with monitoring judgments and/or students’ comprehension. Yet

The main goals of this paper are to exemplify and further elaborate on the theoretical connections between cognitive load and self-regulated learning. In an effort to achieve this, we integrate the concepts of self-control and self-management within the effort monitoring and regulation (EMR) framework laid out by de Bruin et al. (Educational Psychology Review this issue). More specifically, we argue

Academic dishonesty is a rampant and troubling phenomenon in the educational sector. Although demographic factors have been linked with students’ academic dishonesty in the literature, many of these aspects are difficult to change. However, students’ motivation, a known malleable factor, may allow for opportunities to shape students’ beliefs, goals, and values, which can, in turn, mitigate academic

A central factor in research guided by the Cognitive Load Theory (CLT) is the mental effort people invest in performing a task. Mental effort is commonly assessed by asking people to report their effort throughout performing, learning, or problem-solving tasks. Although this measurement is considered reliable and valid in CLT research, metacognitive research provides robust evidence that self-appraisals