Springer Science and Business Media LLC

Memory researchers have traditionally made use of verbal materials in their empirical studies. During the last decade or so, there has been a burgeoning interest in memory for other classes of materials — in particular, memory for action events. This report reviews briefly some of the research in this area. The emphasis is on the recall of series of instructions, such aslift the pen, put on the ring. The core finding in those studies is that enactment of the instructions during the study phase, either by the subject or by the experimenter, improves performance on a subsequent recall test. Some explanations for the mnemonic effect of enactment are examined, as also are subsidiary issues, such as population and individual differences in the recall of action events. Implications for education are discussed, including the possibility of a two-way interaction between enactment and cognition.

School engagement is considered an antidote to several academic problems found in middle and high school. Previous data highlight the importance of understanding school engagement in early years. The present systematic review aims to outline investigations regarding school engagement in elementary school. Findings are expected to (i) help educators learn about research in a comprehensible way, (ii) design future school-based interventions with strong theoretical support, and (iii) systematize information about research gaps and indicate new avenues for investigation. The systematic search for original articles published up to 2018 followed the PRISMA statement and Cochrane’s guidelines. A total of 102 articles were included and organized, according to the self-system model of motivational development from Skinner et al. (Journal of Educational Psychology, 100, 765–781, 2008). Results showed that balanced and quality support from peers, teachers, and parents positively influenced school engagement. Additionally, some common characteristics of the school context were found to undermine school engagement. Regarding interventions aimed to promote school engagement, we found various effective designs, differing in complexity. Moreover, studies focused on students’ emotions, behaviors and cognitions, experiences, motivational variables, and learning provided important inputs to promote school engagement. Furthermore, studies focused on examining the trajectories of school engagement provided data to understand how to prevent school engagement from declining throughout schooling. Finally, most studies found a positive and significant relationship between school engagement and achievement; however, results differ regarding the source of information or school domain examined. The school engagement conceptualizations, dimensions, and measures used were analyzed and their relationships to the results were discussed.

Despite well-established benefits, the majority of young people around the globe are not sufficiently active. In many countries, including Australia, physical activity (i.e. physical education and school sport) is not mandatory in the final two years of high school (i.e. senior school years). The aim of this study was to assess the impact of a time-efficient physical activity intervention on senior school students’ on-task behaviour and subjective vitality. This was a sub-study of the Burn 2 Learn (B2L) cluster randomised controlled trial, which included two cohorts. Participants for this sub-study (N = 221) were from 10 secondary schools (23 classes) located in New South Wales, Australia (Cohort 2). Teachers allocated to the B2L intervention group were provided with training, resources and support to facilitate the delivery of two high-intensity activity breaks per week during lesson time for five weeks. A wait-list control was used as comparison group. On-task behaviour was assessed at baseline and post-test, using a momentary time sampling procedure and expressed as a percentage of lesson time. At post-test, subjective vitality was assessed at the start and end of the lesson using a validated questionnaire. Significant group-by-time effects were observed for students’ on-task behaviour in favour of the B2L group [adjusted mean difference = 19.3% of lesson time (95% CI, 0.8 to 37.8), p = 0.042, d = 0.43]. At post-test, significant group-by-time effects were observed for students’ subjective vitality favouring the B2L group [adjusted mean difference = 0.67 units (95% CI, 0.3 to 1.0), p < 0.001, d = 0.36]. The B2L intervention was successful in improving senior school students’ on-task behaviour and their subjective vitality. These findings highlight the potential academic benefits of re-allocating curriculum time to physical activity during the senior school years.

This paper outlines a systematic review and meta-analyses to identify, describe, and evaluate randomised and non-randomised controlled trials of psychological programs targeting the mental health, professional burnout, and/or wellbeing of school classroom teachers. Eighty-eight unique studies were identified for inclusion in the review, and of those 46 were included in the meta-analyses (23 randomised controlled trials). In randomised controlled trials, the programs examined had large effects on stress (g=0.93), and moderate effects on anxiety (g=0.65), depression (g=0.51), professional burnout (g=0.57), and wellbeing (g=0.56) at post. In non-randomised controlled trials, programs had moderate effects on stress (g=0.50), and small effects on anxiety (g=0.38) and wellbeing (g=0.38) at post. Studies were heterogeneous in design and methodological quality was generally poor, particularly in non-randomised controlled trials. There was an inadequate number of comparisons to perform sub-group analyses, meta-regression, or publication bias analyses. Most of the programs examined required significant time, effort, and resources to deliver and complete. These programs may not translate well outside of research trials to real-world contexts due to teachers being time-poor. Priorities for research include using methodologically rigorous designs, developing programs for teachers with teachers (i.e. co-design), and considering implementation factors to ensure feasibility, acceptability, and uptake. Systematic Review Registration Number: PROPSERO - CRD42020159805.

In this commentary, I explore the contributions of the articles in this special issue from the vantage point of a theorist, researcher, and educator invested in student learning and academic development. First, I consider how these writings differentiate on the basis of the means authors applied to achieve the special issue goal of dismantling theoretical siloes and forwarding alternative models that strengthen the construct strains that exist in the educational psychology literature. Second, I position the articles in this special issue along a motivation-nonmotivation continuum, which describes the emphasis authors placed on motivation constructs and theories. Finally, I bring my ideas about these thought-provoking articles back to my personal investment in student learning and achievement to question the viability of the new theoretical variants that the contributing scholars have proposed.

For (facilitating) effective learning from texts, students and teachers need to accurately monitor students’ comprehension. Monitoring judgments are accurate when they correspond to students’ actual comprehension. Accurate monitoring enables accurate (self-)regulation of the learning process, i.e., making study decisions that are in line with monitoring judgments and/or students’ comprehension. Yet, (self-)monitoring accuracy is often poor as the information or cues used are not always diagnostic (i.e., predictive) for students’ actual comprehension. Having students engage in generative activities making diagnostic cues available improves monitoring and regulation accuracy. In this review, we focus on generative activities in which text is transformed into visual representations using mapping and drawing (i.e., making diagrams, concept maps, or drawings). This has been shown to improve monitoring and regulation accuracy and is suited for studying cue diagnosticity and cue utilization. First, we review and synthesize findings of studies regarding (1) students’ monitoring accuracy, regulation accuracy, learning, cue diagnosticity, and cue utilization; (2) teachers’ monitoring and regulation accuracy and cue utilization; and (3) how mapping and drawing affect using effort as a cue during monitoring and regulation, and how this affects monitoring and regulation accuracy. Then, we show how this research offers unique opportunities for future research on advancing measurements of cue diagnosticity and cue utilization and on how effort is used as a cue during monitoring and regulation. Improving measures of cue diagnosticity and cue utilization can provide us with more insight into how students and teachers monitor and regulate students’ learning, to help design effective interventions to foster these important skills.

Who are the people who become positive educational leaders? This essay presents WICS as a model of positive educational leadership. WICS stands for wisdom, intelligence, creativity, synthesized. Each of these elements is asserted to constitute one of the elements of educational leadership. Regrettably, our society is organized around a closed system of selection and talent development that emphasizes intelligence in a narrowly defined way that sometimes ignores its synthesis with creativity and wisdom.