Emma C. Burns

Macquarie University · School of Education

The present investigation examines how two novel constructs, adaptability (for self-regulation) and PB goal setting (for goal setting), operate alongside the more “traditional” constructs of the triadic model of social cognitive theory (SCT; Bandura, 1986) to predict students’ academic gains over time. Given that the triadic model highlights the im...

Harnessing social cognitive theory (SCT), we investigated the roles of personal agency (self-efficacy and perceived control) and interpersonal agency (relational support) in the academic achievement (via literacy and numeracy testing) of students with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and their non-ADHD peers. A sample of N=164 studen...

There is a well-documented developmental decline in engagement among adolescents throughout secondary school. Given this pattern of engagement poses problems for both student well-being and their academic outcomes, it is important to examine potential strategies to address this decline. As a growth-oriented strategy, personal best (PB) goal setting...

Motivation science has advanced tremendously in the past decade. However, it is now clear that future progress is going to be stalled by the extent of disagreement among motivation scientists to some basic, yet controversial, questions. To help move motivation science toward greater coherence, the editors recruited prominent scholars to debate thei...

Motivation science has advanced tremendously in the past decade. However, it is now clear that future progress is going to be stalled by the extent of disagreement among motivation scientists to some basic, yet controversial, questions. To help move motivation science toward greater coherence, the editors recruited prominent scholars to debate thei...

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) parents’ rights were openly debated around marriage legislation movements. Religious schools can deny their families services. This chapter investigates 208 LGBTQ+ parents’ euphorias in their children’s schools. Under a third of them were euphoric and mostly always or often; gay or lesbian par...

Affirming affective framings of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ+) experiences are needed in education research. Drawing on the 2021 LGBTQ+ You surveys, this chapter explores experiences of euphoria in Australian education institutions among 2407 LGBTQ+ staff, parents, and students participants and how these changed over time. S...

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) students were a point of policy contention in recent elections and often portrayed as victims. This chapter investigates 1968 LGBTQ+ students experiences of euphoria. Of over a third who had euphoric experiences, most students experienced euphorias sometimes or often. Young, out, and non-binar...

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) education professionals have been portrayed negatively in education research literature and can be fired in religious institutions. This chapter investigates 229 LGBTQ+ professionals’ euphorias in their employing education institutions. Almost half of LGBTQ+ staff were euphoric about their ide...

Motivation science has advanced tremendously in the past decade. However, it is now clear that future progress is going to be stalled by the extent of disagreement among motivation scientists to some basic, yet controversial, questions. To help move motivation science toward greater coherence, the editors recruited prominent scholars to debate thei...

Academic resilience refers to academic success despite chronic socio-educational adversity. Given increases in immigration across the world in the past decade (including in Europe), there have been calls to identify factors (e.g., engagement) that can better support immigrant students’ academic resilience. With a sample of N = 17,241 immigrant stud...

Researchers have noted a persistent decline in Australian students’ participation in senior science in secondary school (Year 12). Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (Indigenous) students are significantly less likely to continue with science, in part because western science and the present science curriculum have ignored and delegitimized Indig...

Introduction: Researchers note a consistent decline in adolescents' motivation and participation in science. It is important to examine factors vital to students' motivation in science, such as teacher-student relationships (TSRs). Limited research in science has examined TSRs from a multidimensional or person-centered perspective. The present inv...

Students' out‐of‐school science participation has been identified as a factor that supports adaptive science outcomes. Researchers have largely investigated students' out‐of‐school science participation in terms of structured science activities (e.g., attending a science camp), with far less consideration of how students' involvement in unstructure...

Little is known about the strategies elementary school students use to self-regulate their learning while in a hypermedia environment. This exploratory study investigated the self-regulatory strategies that young students ( N = 48, M age = 10.75) utilized while individually completing a 20-min online research task about space. Video data was coded...

The present longitudinal study examined the reciprocal relationships among students’ academic buoyancy, their perceptions of school support (learning support, teacher relational support, school belonging, and classroom management), and their motivation and engagement (perseverance, perceived competence, valuing of school) across 1 year of school. U...

This resource is a practical guide for school leaders and teachers on how to support students’ everyday resilience – or ‘academic buoyancy’. It synthesises the research on everyday resilience. It explains why this type of resilience is important, and provides strategies on how it can be supported by implementing What Works Best classroom practices.

Students who set and pursue growth (personal best) goals are much more engaged in school than those who do not. The benefits are even more positive for students in lower socioeconomic groups and students who have low levels of prior achievement.

To better understand instructional cognitive load, it is important to operationalize and assess it in novel ways that can reveal how different students perceive and experience this load as either challenging or threatening. The present study administered a recently developed instruction assessment tool—the Load Reduction Instruction Scale-Short (LR...

The present investigation examined the role of teachers’ instructional support (student reports of relevance, organization and clarity, feedback-feedforward) in predicting students’ growth goal setting and, in turn, the roles of instructional support and growth goal setting in predicting students’ academic engagement (perseverance, aspirations, sch...

When students set growth goals, they are more likely to have plans to attend university, to persevere in schoolwork and to engage with homework. This paper provides a synthesis of research, including new research from Australian high schools using large-scale statewide data. It explains why growth goal setting is important and provides practical su...

Extensive research has demonstrated the benefits of need-supportive teaching, but minimal research has examined social factors that may constrain these benefits. One factor that students experience contemporaneously to need-supportive teaching is classroom disruption. Perceived classroom disruption is a barrier to quality teaching and learning, esp...

Students' conceptions of their academic futures, such as completing secondary school, have been found to play a significant role in their current behavior. Indeed, research regarding future time perspectives (FTP) indicates that students with extended FTPs are likely to be more engaged and less disengaged over time. Extended FTPs comprise two criti...

Boarding school is a major educational option for many students (e.g., students living in remote areas, or whose parents are working interstate or overseas, etc.). This study explored the motivation, engagement, and achievement of boarding and day students who are educated in the same classrooms and receive the same syllabus and instruction from th...

Extant research has demonstrated that anxiety is negatively associated with self-efficacy, especially in science. However, social cognitive theory also posits that anxiety and self-efficacy are likely to dynamically interact (i.e., moderate), such that a student high in anxiety may not garner the benefits of high self-efficacy. It has been suggeste...

Introduction: Stage-environment fit theory (SEF) posits that students leave school when their environments do not meet their needs. Quality teacher-student relationships (QTSRs) are a critical element of students' environments. Moreover, QTSRs help students internalize positive intentions to graduate. QTSRs and intentions to graduate have both bee...

Among a sample of 2,071 Australian high school students nested within 188 science classrooms, the present study explored the role of science teachers’ “load reduction instruction” (LRI; instruction that seeks to reduce cognitive load by appropriately balancing explicit instruction with guided autonomy) in student- and classroom-level science engage...

Adaptability helps teachers to navigate change, novelty, and uncertainty at work. We sought to extend understanding of adaptability by considering it at the school-level in 2,189 high schools across eight nations. We investigated whether two job demands (disruptive student behavior, student diversity) and a job resource (teacher collaboration) are...

Stage-environment fit theory posits that the interpersonal dynamics and structural (i.e. school-level) resources afforded by a student’s academic environment can either support or thwart student thriving (e.g. achievement). Thus, it is important to examine how these factors impact student achievement at the student- and school-level. This investiga...

Teacher feedback in mathematics is a potential strategy for redressing declining international trends in high school mathematics achievement. Effective feedback comprises corrective information (feedback) and guidance for improvement (feedforward)—referred to herein as ‘feedback–feedforward’. Relatively little research has examined the motivational...

Previous work has established a significant increase in disengagement as students progress through secondary school. This work has also established that rates of disengagement appear to be higher among boys, leading to an increased focus on the underlying causes and factors associated with disengagement within this population. However, less is know...

In- and out-of-school participation in the arts has been shown to be positively associated with students' academic and nonacademic outcomes. Despite this finding, little work has examined the motivational processes that underpin arts participation, either as separate types (e.g., active vs. receptive) or as an overarching factor. However, given the...

https://www.teachermagazine.com.au/articles/teacher-support-reduces-girls-disengagement-in-high-school

Students' science knowledge and skills are considered critical to growing the intellectual capital on which societies rely to innovate and prosper. However, recent research has documented notable declines in students' intrinsic valuing of science and science achievement in Australia and other western countries. As a result, there have been calls to...

https://www.educationreview.com.au/2018/08/personal-best-goal-setting-can-buffer-student-disengagement-opinion/

This review explores predictors and consequences of students’ growth goals and growth mindset in school with particular emphasis on how correlational statistical methods can be applied to illuminate key issues and implications. Study 1 used cross-sectional data and employed structural equation modelling (SEM) to investigate the role of growth goals...

Personal Best (PB) goals are defined as specific, challenging, and competitively self-referenced goals involving a level of performance or effort that meets or exceeds an individual’s previous best. Much of the available research underpinning arguments for PB goal-setting is self-report-based; thus, the causal effect of PB goals on learning outcome...

https://au.educationhq.com/news/47631/using-personal-best-goal-setting-to-promote-students-academic-improvement/

Museums promote co-learning through the construction of a social community, one that involves personal, physical, and sociocultural contexts. As researchers and museum educators, we report some of our contextual reflections and recommendations that emerged from our collaborative learning experience of conducting research in a medical science museum...

The present study, based on a sample of 1649 mothers in Korea, examines dimensions of maternal self-concept and their differences across a broad range of motherhood phases i.e., among mothers of preschoolers (ages 2–5), school-aged children (ages 6–12), and adolescents (ages 13–18). Overall, seven dimensions of maternal self-concept were identified...

Adaptability has been recently proposed as cognitive, behavioural, and emotional regulation assisting individuals to effectively respond to change, uncertainty and novelty. Given students with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have known impairments with regulatory functions, they may be at particular disadvantage as they seek to navi...