Primary School Students’ Situation-Specific Learning Experiences

I will present findings from the Learning Every Lesson study in which students in years 5 and 6 completed around 15 electronic questionnaires using Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) during one week. Students reported their situation-specific motivation, perceived difficulty, effort exertion and help-seeking, competence beliefs, and affect. Their learning experiences varied from one situation to the next, and were differentially interrelated between students. Higher performers exerted more effort at difficult tasks, girls exerted more effort than boys for the same level of competence evaluation, and students who in general found school difficult evaluated their competence higher at easier tasks.

Lars-Erik Malmberg, Dr, is Associate Professor in Quantitative Methods in Education at the Department of Education, University of Oxford, and Docent in Quantitative Methods at the Faculty of Education, Åbo Akademi University in Finland. He is associate editor of the Journal of Learning and Instruction, and a Senior Fellow in the Higher Education Academy (UK). He investigates students’ beliefs about themselves as learners, student-teacher interaction, and teacher development using state-of-the-art quantitative modelling, including multilevel and structural equation models. His recent research is on intraperson (situation-specific) aspects of students’ learning and teachers’ mastery experiences, stemming from two projects: the Learning Every Lesson (LEL) and Teaching Every Lesson (TEL) studies.