An increasing amount of research has indicated that the effectiveness of growth mindset (GM) intervention is sensitive to population characteristics. However, few studies have investigated whether GM interventions can be leveraged to promote academic performance among non-westerners such as Chinese students. Attuning to the Chinese background, we…

Engagement in academic tasks is important. However, compared to the large body of research on task engagement, the number of studies on task disengagement is quite limited. The aim of this study is to examine the associations between the motivational (self-determination) and attitudinal antecedents (learning orientations) of task disengagement.…

Childhood obesity and its repercussions will be one of the most serious public health challenges of the 21st century. Promoting physical activity and preventing the decline of children's fitness and the increase of childhood obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease therefore need to be a high priority. So far, besides a few large-scale…

The goal of the present study is to investigate the relationship between pupils' problem posing and problem solving abilities, their beliefs about problem posing and problem solving, and their general mathematics abilities, in a Chinese context. Five instruments, i.e., a problem posing test, a problem solving test, a problem posing questionnaire,…

Numerous studies have been conducted on the accuracy of teacher judgement in different educational areas such as mathematics, language arts and reading. Teacher judgement of students' foreign-language achievement, however, has been rarely investigated. The study aimed to examine the accuracy of teacher judgement of students' foreign-language…

The purpose of these exploratory studies was to examine Chinese and American elementary teachers' perceptions of how various classroom activities contribute to student creativity, and how often teachers report engaging their students in these activities. Third, fourth, and fifth grade teachers in the Midwestern United States (N = 51) and in…

Creative problem-finding ability (CPFA) is an important component of creativity, but research into it has just started and results so far could not offer much guidance to teaching. This study utilized a 2 (teaching materials or tasks of different difficulty: high and low) × 3 (group member construction: homogeneous group, heterogeneous group, and…

This study investigates how 217 students in Years 5, 6 and 7 from three schools in Nanjing, China, link number and algebra (called relational thinking in this study). It categorizes their performances in terms of five levels, and uses these levels to create profiles of algebraic thinking across Years 5, 6, and 7. The study examines the…

For almost a century, researchers have studied creative imagination, most typically that of children. This article reports on a study of the development of creative imagination of Chinese youths and its relation to the educational environment. Data consisted of 4,162 students from grades 4 through 12. Findings showed that students' creative…

The present study explored whether first and second order cognitive holding power perceived by children in mathematical classrooms, fluid intelligence, and mathematical achievement predicted their performance on standard problems, and especially realistic problems. A sample of 119 Chinese 4-6th graders were administered the word problem test, the…

This study explored the development of meta-cognitive knowledge and control, the relationship between the two constructs, the types of strategy knowledge Chinese students consider valuable and comparisons with US children's knowledge of strategies at the third-grade level. One hundred and twenty students were randomly sampled from third-, fifth-…

Background: The latest report by the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS), issued in 2006, indicated that Hong Kong Primary 4 Chinese students outperformed children from 45 countries and provinces in reading comprehension tests that measured their higher-order reading proficiency. However, the study gave no indication of how…

Three studies were conducted to explore Chinese children's understanding of shyness. In Study 1 (N = 174, M age = 10.18) interviews with Chinese children revealed a group of diverse attributes that characterized their conceptions of shyness. In Study 2 (N = 273, M age = 10.19) a rating procedure was used to identify attributes that were…

This preliminary study investigates the current situation of school library support of K-12 health education in China. A survey of 42 school librarians and 115 K-12 teachers from selected schools was conducted to find out their views about school library's role in school health education and their current practice of library use in health…

This study investigated relationships among measures of perfectionism, academic self-concept, and academic achievement in fourth and fifth grade children from selective primary schools in Hong Kong where admission involves strict assessment of students' aptitude and potential. Based on their overall academic performance 331 students were…