Equally able students have lower academic self-concept in high achieving schools or classes, a phenomenon known as the big fish little pond effect (BFLPE). The class (more so than the school) has been shown to be the pivotal frame-of-reference for academic self-concept formation--a local dominance effect. However, many school systems worldwide…

The present study illustrates the utility of applying multilevel mixture models in educational research, using data on the homework behavior of 1,812 Swiss eighth-grade students in French as a second language. A previous person-centered study identified 5 homework learning types characterized by different patterns of high or low homework time and…

Personality traits and social cognitive variables are central constructs in psychological research. It is often assumed that personality traits are less changeable than social cognitive variables, and thus interventions usually tend to focus on the latter. However, these assumptions about the mutability of personality and social cognitive…

This research examines whether parental homework involvement mediates the relationship between family background and educational outcomes such as academic achievement and academic self-concept. Data from two studies in which grade 8 students (N = 1274 and N = 1911) described their parents' involvement in the homework process were reanalyzed via…

Little is known about the association of classroom characteristics with adolescent truancy. A critical question is whether high achievement standards, high workload, and fast pace protect against or increase adolescent truancy. In this study, self-reports from 3491 Swiss grade 7, grade 8 and grade 9 students in 202 classes were used to predict…

In the present study (N = 553; 8th and 11th grade students; 52% female) we investigated students' enjoyment, pride, anxiety, anger, and boredom while completing homework (homework emotions), and contrasted these emotions with those experienced during class (classroom emotions). Both homework emotions and classroom emotions were assessed separately…

This study examines the determinants of homework motivation and homework effort in six school subjects at three levels: student level, classroom level, and school level. We hypothesized that several factors--including stable personality characteristics such as gender and conscientiousness, students' domain-specific homework motivation, and…

The study examines whether teachers' homework objectives, implementation practices, and attitudes toward parental involvement are associated with the development of students' homework effort, homework emotions, and achievement during Grade 8. A total of 63 teachers (40 male, 23 female; mean teaching experience: M = 17.5 years) of French as a 2nd…

Effort on homework has a profound impact on student achievement. Researchers typically use an interindividual research design to explain homework effort. In this study with a total of 511 students from Grades 8 and 9, an interindividual perspective (focus on between-students differences) was combined with an intraindividual perspective (focus on…

According to the domain-specific, multilevel homework model proposed in the present study, students' homework effort is influenced by expectancy and value beliefs, homework characteristics, parental homework behavior, and conscientiousness. The authors used structural equation modeling and hierarchical linear modeling analyses to test the model in…

In 2 studies, an expectancy-value framework was applied to investigate effort expended on mathematics homework. In Study 1 (2,712 students in grades 5, 7, and 9; mean age=13.37 years), lower homework effort was found in higher grades. The effects of intrinsic value on homework effort were higher in the older cohorts, whereas the effects of the…