Studies, such as Programme for International Student Assessment 2012, indicate that there are gender based differences in measures of mathematics anxiety, self-concept and self-efficacy among students. In this study we explore self-efficacy, self-concept and mathematics anxiety in a sample of Year 7 and 8 South Australian students to examine if…

This qualitative study examined the complexities of mutually engaging across differing positionalities (students and students, students and teacher) while intentionally working in spaces of distress (e.g. push and pull between oppression and liberation). The findings demonstrated the ways in which building a beloved community while situated within…

Student self-concept of math ability (SCMA) and math utility value shape course-taking patterns, achievement, and entree into mathematics-intensive college majors (Eccles & Wigfield, 2005). The development of SCMA and math utility value are embedded in social contexts (Marsh et al., 2005). School racial climate is a particularly important…

How do children develop identifications with mathematics over time, seeing themselves as agents in their math classrooms (or not)? This ethnographic and interview study followed nine Latino/a children with and without learning dis/abilities through two years of mathematics in a high-poverty urban school. The children participated in two distinct…

Through the influences of our social environment, both boys and girls learn their sexual norms, specific rules and values from the early childhood. Hence, children grow up in the world of distinct sexual duality. In their efforts to act according to their sexual stereotypes, children adopt these widespread stereotyped conceptions in developing…

The purpose of this ethnographic study was to analyze seventh grade students' and teachers' perceptions of literacy learning in language arts and reading classes. This paper includes a report of a section of this study that focused on discussions about literature. The impact of this diverse school culture on teachers' literacy instruction and…

Recent research has distinguished between the components of competency and affect in students' academic self-concept. The competency component operates on the basis of a comparison with peers. This comparison may lead to a big-fish-little-pond (BFLP) effect. To investigate the sustainability of the BFLP effect, a sample of 7th graders from 6…

Affective experiences have been shown to influence student self-concept and to influence and predict academic achievement. In the present research, two groups of seventh-grade boys and girls numbering 30 in all participated in either facilitated or directed affective experiences in which they explored personal feelings and attitudes toward school,…

This paper describes the REAP (Reading, Enjoying, And Presenting) project, in which seventh-grade students enhance their reading ability and self-concept by preparing and presenting a reading performance at various child care and adult care facilities. The paper presents an illustration of what the research says about reading aloud; the completed…

This study is an attempt to determine if it is possible to establish causal direction between academic self-concept and academic achievement, focusing on whether academic self-concept and the subject-matter self-concepts of English and mathematics serve to generate academic, English, and mathematics achievements, respectively. This study of causal…

Individuals who are stigmatized are people for whom others hold negative beliefs. In these three 1989 studies members of a stigmatized group were 7th- and 8th-grade adolescents, aged 14 and 15 years old, from a large urban midwestern African-American population. In the first study the Piers-Harris Children's Self-Concept Scale was administered to…

The classroom management system of a junior high school reading program was designed to provide an atmosphere in which students could develop positive self concepts, responsible independence, and improved reading skills. To stress skill accountability, the class was organized as a business company where each student interviewed for a specific job,…

Self-regulated learning is usually viewed as the fusion of skill and will, referring to the students' development of different learning strategies in service of their goals. This definition is expanded in a study of self-schemas as a means of representing multiple goals for learning. Measures of self-schemas were used with 151 seventh graders (86…

Working on the assumptions that person, strategy, and task are essential metacognitive variables for explaining effective learning and that a reader's metacognitive knowledge about his or her strengths and limitations necessarily influences the types of strategies applied to different tasks, investigators studied the degree to which seventh and…

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of self-concept and anxiety in Japanese early adolescents who participated in an eight-day adventure camp, conducted in 1982 and 1983. The study used 155 sixth- through eighth-grade volunteers, ages 11 to 14. The paper describes the camp program and training for the main activity, a three-day…