British Journal of Educational Psychology

Background. This paper explores the conceptual and methodological problems arising from several empirical investigations of professional education and learning in the workplace. Aims. 1. To clarify the multiple meanings accorded to terms such as ‘ non‐formal learning’, ‘ implicit learning’ and ‘ tacit knowledge’, their theoretical assumptions and the range of phenomena to which they refer. 2. To discuss their implications for professional practice. Method. A largely theoretical analysis of issues and phenomena arising from empirical investigations. Analysis. The author's typology of non‐formal learning distinguishes between implicit learning, reactive on‐the‐spot learning and deliberative learning. The significance of the last is commonly overemphasised. The problematic nature of tacit knowledge is discussed with respect to both detecting it and representing it. Three types of tacit knowledge are discussed: tacit understanding of people and situations, routinised actions and the tacit rules that underpin intuitive decision‐making. They come together when professional performance involves sequences of routinised action punctuated by rapid intuitive decisions based on tacit understanding of the situation. Four types of process are involved‐reading the situation, making decisions, overt activity and metacognition‐and three modes of cognition‐intuitive, analytic and deliberative. The balance between these modes depends on time, experience and complexity. Where rapid action dominates, periods of deliberation are needed to maintain critical control. Finally the role of both formal and informal social knowledge is discussed; and it is argued that situated learning often leads not to local conformity but to greater individual variation as people's careers take them through a series of different contexts. This abstract necessarily simplifies a more complex analysis in the paper itself.

Summary. Research into qualitative differences in students' approaches to study, the quality of learning outcomes, and the relations between them has, in the main, been conducted on learning resulting from involvement in small academic tasks such as reading an academic article. This study, based on a sample of 122 first year university nursing students, focused on student learning on the whole course. The results of the study confirmed the hypothesised relationship between approach and outcome at the course level. In the process, an indicator of qualitative differences in learning outcomes at the course level was developed. The results also provided further support for the validity of three subscales of the Approaches to Study Inventory, and cast further doubt on the use of assessment results as measures of learning outcomes.

Background: Two theories in the field of motivation and achievement, namely the future time perspective theory and goal theory, result in conflicting recommendations for enhancing students' motivation, because of their differential emphasis on the task at hand and on the future consequences of a task.

Aims: We will present a framework consisting of four types of instrumentality that combines both perspectives. The implications of those different types for goal orientation, motivation, cognitive strategies, study habits and performance are investigated.

Samples: Participants were a group of 184 first‐year nurse students with ages ranging from 18 to 45 years.

Methods: Questionnaires were administered that measured instrumentality, goal orientation, motivation, deep and surface level learning strategies, study habits, and a manipulation check. At the end of the year, exam scores were collected.

Results: The results showed that different types of instrumentality are related differently to the motivational, cognitive and achievement measures. Being internally regulated and perceiving the utility of the courses resulted both in a more adaptive goal orientation and higher intrinsic motivation, which led to the use of more adaptive cognitive strategies and to better study habits, which ultimately enhanced performance. Linking performance to extrinsic rewards and not seeing the utility of the course for the future yielded the opposite pattern.

Conclusions: Type of instrumentality has indeed a differential influence on motivational, cognitive, and behavioural variables.

Background. Researchers often test people before and after some treatment and compare these scores with a control group. Sometimes it is not possible to allocate people into conditions randomly, which means the initial scores for the two groups may differ. There are two main approaches: t test on the gain scores and ANCOVA partialling out the initial scores. Lord (1967) showed that these can lead to different conclusions. This is an often‐discussed paradox in psychology and education.

Aims.  The reasons why these approaches can lead to different conclusions, the assumptions that each approach makes and how the approaches relate to group allocation, are discussed

Methods.  Three sets of simulations are reported that investigate the relationships among effect size, group allocation, measurement error and Lord's paradox.

Conclusions.  Recommendations are given that stress careful examination of the research questions, sampling and allocation of participants and graphing the data. ANCOVA is appropriate when allocation is based on the initial scores, t test can be appropriate if allocation is associated non‐causally with the initial scores, but often neither approach provides adequate results.

Summary. The present study investigated some relationships between age, socio‐economic status (SES), and cognitive task performance among 120 children from Grades 1 and 4. A battery of tasks differing in transformational requirements and ostensibly in cultural loading was administered to all children. Analyses of results indicate that low SES children were more handicapped in some tasks of so‐called reasoning ability when compared to middle SES children. But contrary to expectations, the test scores of the contrasted SES groups were more disparate in Grade 1 than in Grade 4. For the older age group, SES differences on the culturally loaded Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) were apparent, whereas differences on the culturally‐reduced Raven's Coloured Progressive Matrices were statistically non‐significant.

Background. A small number of prior studies have found that victims of school bullying tend to exhibit poor social skills. Few of these have examined this issue from multiple perspectives, and there has been a focus on a restricted range of social skills.

Aims. To determine the extent to which self, peers, and teachers regard victims as having poorer social skills than non‐victims across 20 behaviours/competencies.

Sample. A convenience sample of 330 pupils aged between 9 and 11 years (162 girls and 168 boys) provided self‐report and peer‐report data. They were drawn from 12 classes from 6 junior schools in the UK. Additionally, 11 of the class teachers provided data.

Method. Three separate methods were employed and in each case, participants were provided with 20 short statements that described a different social skill: (1) participants who were classified as either ‘victims’ or ‘non‐victims’ (using peer nominations) rated themselves on a 3‐point scale in terms of how like them each description was, (2) participants were asked to think of a victim and a non‐victim in their class and to rate both of these people on each description, and (3) teachers were asked to rate a previously identified victim and a non‐victim from their class on each description.

Results. Using a direct discriminant function analysis of the self‐ratings, six of the social skills items were found to discriminate between victims and non‐victims, and the discriminant function was able to correctly classify 80% of the participants. For 18 of the items, peer ratings indicated significantly more pronounced social skills problems for victims than for non‐victims. Teacher ratings were significant for eight of the social skill items, and in each case, victims were rated as having greater problems.

Conclusion. The finding that victims are perceived by three different sources to have poor social skills has important implications for interventions to support victims of bullying.

Background and Aims. The literature documents fewer classroom mastery goal structures in secondary school compared to elementary. However, little is known about how personal achievement goals may influence classroom goal structures. This is especially true at the level of pre‐service teachers. Our objective was to investigate if pre‐service teachers’ personal goals predicted their intended classroom goal structures.

Sample. Participants were 125 elementary and 175 secondary school pre‐service teachers from two Western Canadian universities.

Method. Structural equation modelling was used to examine if the structural relationships and latent means of personal and intended classroom goal structures differed for elementary and secondary school pre‐service teachers.

Results. The results revealed that personal goals predicted the goal structures that pre‐service teachers intended to establish; however, the relationships and means differed between elementary and secondary school pre‐service teachers. Specifically, personal mastery‐approach goals positively predicted classroom mastery goals much more strongly at the elementary than the secondary level. Furthermore, elementary pre‐service teachers had significantly higher latent mean scores on personal mastery‐approach goals than their secondary counterparts.

Conclusions. It seems possible that the currently documented differences between classroom goal structures noted for elementary compared to secondary school may be based on the personal goals endorsed as pre‐service teachers. The results are further discussed in terms of alignment with research on practising teachers’ personal and classroom goals and implications for teacher education.