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International educational mobility is a life event that confronts sojourners with many challenges, such as adapting to a new living environment abroad. Whether these cultural adaptation processes are successful is contingent upon different factors. In the present study, we focused on the role of personality as well as host- and home-cultural behavioral engagement in the psychological adaptation of high school students during an academic year abroad. To that end, we analyzed data from the first four waves of the project Mobility and Acculturation Experiences of Students (MAPS) (N = 1299 students in a year abroad) using a cross-lagged panel model (CLPM) and a random intercept cross-lagged panel model (RI-CLPM) to address these associations at the interpersonal and intrapersonal level. The analyses revealed the complex interplay between personality, host- and home-cultural behavioral engagement, and adaptation at both the interpersonal and intrapersonal levels of analysis. Moreover, host-cultural behavioral engagement also mediated the predictive effects of personality traits on the psychological adaptation of sojourners in the CLPM. Theoretical implications for personality and acculturation research and practical inferences for supporting students studying abroad are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite its increasing popularity and adoption across Europe, Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) is not without its critics. It has been argued that CLIL programmes are highly selective, that is, the students possess more favourable learning prerequisites than their monolingually taught peers. The present study contributes to this debate by investigating possible differences in learning prerequisites between CLIL and non-CLIL students in German CLIL secondary schools. We assessed figural and verbal cognitive skills, family background (immigration background, parents’ education, socio-economic status, and cultural capital), and achievement and motivation in the soon-to-be bilingually taught content subject History and in the foreign language of 1362 CLIL and non-CLIL eighth graders. Results indicated significant advantages of CLIL students regarding their verbal cognitive skills, parents’ education, socio-economic status, cultural capital, and achievement and motivation in History and in the foreign language. Additionally, it was investigated whether differences in students’ foreign language performance would diminish after possible differences in learning prerequisites were taken into account. Multiple regression analyses showed distinct selection effects but CLIL students still outperformed their monolingually taught peers by one to almost two school years (listening comprehension resp. C-test). These results can lay the foundation for an evaluation of the effectiveness of CLIL programmes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The use of e‐exams in higher education is increasing. However, the role of student diversity in the acceptance of e‐exams is an under‐researched topic. In the current study, we considered student diversity in terms of three sociodemographic characteristics (age, gender, and second language) and three dispositional student characteristics (computer anxiety, test anxiety, and technology openness). Objectives: The main objective of this study was to investigate the relationship between student diversity and acceptance of e‐exams. Methods: Our research combined cross‐sectional analyses (N = 1639) with data from a natural experiment on the introduction of e‐exams versus the established paper‐pencil exams (N = 626) and used both self‐report and institutional data. Sociodemographic and dispositional characteristics were indirectly related to pre‐exam acceptance via expectancy variables from the Technology Acceptance Model framework. Results and Conclusions: Comparisons of post‐exam acceptance showed that practical experience with the e‐exam led to a significant increase in e‐exam acceptance, and that students with low openness toward technology particularly benefited from this effect. Students' exam performance (i.e., grades) was unrelated to the exam format or their pre‐exam acceptance of the e‐exam format, and this was true across students' sociodemographic and dispositional characteristics. Takeaway: Student diversity plays a role in e‐exam acceptance, but its influence is mitigated by first‐hand experience with e‐exams. The practical implications for higher education institutions aiming to implement e‐exams are discussed. Lay Description: What is already known about this topic: The use of e‐exams in higher education is increasingThe role of student diversity for e‐exam acceptance is unclearTechnology acceptance is predicted by expectancies towards new system What this paper adds: We investigated students' sociodemographic and dispositional diversityDiversity predicted e‐exam acceptance via the expectanciesIn a natural experiment, first‐hand experience increased e‐exam acceptanceNo difference between performance in e‐exams and paper‐pencil‐exams found Implications of the study findings for practitioners: Higher education institutions implementing e‐exams should consider diversitySupport for older students and students with low technology openness neededNo student groups systematically disadvantaged by e‐exam implementationPractice rooms can increase experience with new system before exam [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Content and language integrated learning (CLIL) has been widely implemented in Europe. This article presents a randomised controlled field experiment on the effects of CLIL on students' science learning. Thirty sixth-grade intermediate-track German secondary-school classes (722 students) were randomly assigned to learn (5 lessons, 90 min each) a physics topic taught either in German or in English and German. We expected that the monolingually taught students would outperform the bilingually taught ones immediately after the intervention. For the follow-up test 6 weeks later, the same or smaller differences between the groups were expected due to the potential for a deeper processing of the subject matter in the bilingual condition. The results showed that the bilingually educated students' learning gains were smaller than the monolingually educated ones' immediately after the intervention (d = −0.21) and at follow-up (d = −0.23). The expectation of more sustainable processing was not supported. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By failing to appropriately control for selection effects, most previous research has overestimated the effects of Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) on the development of students' foreign language skills. Furthermore, the CLIL-effect on the content subject is still widely unknown. Therefore, the present study investigated skill development of 1806 German CLIL and non-CLIL eighth-graders in English and History controlling for a wide range of student, classroom and teacher characteristics. Results of multilevel modelling confirmed that CLIL-classrooms showed greater increases in English listening comprehension but not general English skills as measured by a C-test than non-CLIL-classrooms. In History, the increases in subject knowledge over one school year were comparable despite CLIL-students' larger amount of instruction (three instead of two hours per week). The results confirm previous, differential findings for English. For the content subject, they indicate that CLIL-classrooms need to invest substantially more time to achieve comparable learning outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the social investment principle and theories of social relationship differentiation, the present study was conducted to investigate whether personality differences in high school predict young adults' living arrangements (with roommates or a romantic partner, alone, or staying with parents) 2 years later (selection) and whether these different social contexts provoke long-term personality changes (socialization). Using data from a 3-wave longitudinal study of 8,052 high school graduates in Germany, multinomial logistic regression analyses revealed substantial selection effects of the Big Five traits on living arrangements. Propensity score matching was applied to provide a strong test of the socialization effects of these living arrangements. Young adults who lived with roommates showed increases in Openness but the smallest increases in Conscientiousness. Living with a romantic partner was the most beneficial arrangement for the development of Conscientiousness. These results highlight the importance of social contexts for personality development in young adulthood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Teachers' diagnostic competence is a crucial determinant of their teaching quality. However, prior research has indicated only a moderate association between teachers' and students' assessments of students' competence/self-concept and motivation. Furthermore, it is unclear how well teachers are able to differentiate between students' overall competence and other competence-relevant characteristics. The present article therefore investigated teachers' and students' perceptions of math competence/self-concept and two aspects of self-regulated learning (preactional and actional strategies), using a sample of 73 teachers and their fifth-grade students (N =1289). Exploratory structural equation modeling revealed three-factor solutions, indicating that both teachers and students differentiated between the assumed self-regulated learning factors and math competence/self-concept. Latent correlations between teachers' and students' perceptions were small to moderate; their assessments of students' math competence/self-concept showed the highest agreement. The findings are discussed with respect to their implications for assessing and improving teachers' diagnostic competence of students' learning. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Equally able students have lower academic self-concepts in high-achieving classrooms than in low-achieving classrooms. This highly general and robust frame of reference effect is widely known as the Big-Fish–Little-Pond Effect (BFLPE; Marsh, 1987). This study contributes to research aiming to identify moderators of the BFLPE by investigating the effects of students'' personality (i.e. Big Five traits and narcissism). Multilevel structural equation modeling was used to test the moderator hypotheses, drawing on data from a large sample of N =4973 upper secondary track students (M age=19.57). Consistent with a priori predictions, the negative effect of school-average achievement (the BFLPE) interacted significantly with narcissism. Students high in narcissism experienced smaller BFLPEs than did students with low or average levels of narcissism. The statistically significant effect for neuroticism acted in the opposite direction. The study illustrates how personality moderates frame of reference effects that are central to self-concept formation. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This study investigates socially dominant adolescents: students who are actively involved in establishing peer norms, influence their classmates’ opinions, and are often the center of attention. Data from 5,468 seventh graders (M age = 13.3; 53% girls) in 266 classrooms were used to examine how social dominance relates to achievement, peer acceptance and rejection, self-perception, and deviance and to investigate contextual moderators of these associations. Multilevel analyses confirmed social dominance to be associated with both positive and negative adjustment. Moreover, the associations with achievement and disruptive behavior were moderated by the normativeness of these behaviors within the classroom. Finally, latent profile analyses revealed 4 distinct types of highly dominant students, 2 well adjusted and 2 poorly adjusted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Proactive personality, i.e., individuals' disposition to take personal initiative and to initiate change, is a personality characteristic that is related to many favorable outcomes in the work domain and beyond. Yet, the conditions that promote its development amongst young adults have barely been researched. As international student mobility (ISM) has become an essential part of higher education in many countries, we assessed how proactive personality related to ISM experiences by self-selection, socialization and anticipation effects. We further explored if behavioural exploration served as a mediator of ISM socialization effects. We carried out a longitudinal study (N = 2163) with two measurement occasions and three study groups, i.e., control students who stayed at home, present sojourners who engaged in ISM and a waiting group of future sojourners. Latent change analyses indicated that all sojourners showed higher levels of proactive personality than control students before their departure abroad. Moreover, present sojourners increased in proactive personality as compared to the other two groups. This effect could partly be explained by sojourners' more frequent exploration of new behaviours. There was no indication that future sojourns affected proactivity development by anticipation effects. Implications of these findings for the understanding of adaptive personality development are discussed. • Proactive personality positively predicted ISM engagement. • Present sojourners increased in proactive personality compared to control students. • The ISM socialization effect was mediated by increased behavioural exploration. • Future sojourns did not affect proactive personality development by anticipation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International student mobility (ISM) is an important educational means to increase students' multicultural effectiveness and their (international) job market potential. In the present study, we investigated ISM effects by addressing the following three research questions: First, how do future sojourners differ from control students in terms of their pre-departure multicultural effectiveness? Second, how does ISM affect the development of multicultural effectiveness above and beyond effects of students' demographic characteristics, their cultural and educational background, and their previous international mobility experiences? And third, do any of these variables moderate ISM development effects and thus help to explain who benefits most from ISM? We used a sample of N = 3070 students at German higher education institutions who were assigned to three groups (i.e., control students with no mobility plans, present sojourners who participated in ISM during the study period, and a waiting group of future sojourners who participated in ISM in the semester sequencing the study period). The analyses with (moderated) latent change models showed substantially higher pre-departure multicultural effectiveness in present and future sojourners compared with control students as well as positive effects of ISM on the development of multicultural effectiveness. The strongest effects were observed amongst students without previous international mobility experiences. Theoretical implications for the understanding of adaptive development in a globalized world as well as practical inferences for ISM outreach and recruitment strategies are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International student mobility (ISM) is an important educational means to promote the international (job market) potential of university students. Beyond that, it constitutes a context of personality development in young adulthood. With the present research, we tried to integrate the perspectives of applied and personality research in addressing the following questions. First, we scrutinized the robustness of ISM effects on personality development as we controlled for effects of sociodemographic characteristics and implemented a waiting group design (N = 3070). Second, we explored ISM anticipation effects as well as the moderation of ISM effects by previous international mobility experiences. Finally, in view of the public discourse on the benefits of "Erasmus crowds", we assessed the roles of international and host relationships with regard to the personality development of sojourners. The results largely corroborated the robustness of ISM effects on personality development. No ISM anticipation effects occurred, and effects of current ISM engagement were largely unaffected by previous international mobility experiences. Finally, international contact experiences were associated with personality development above and beyond effects of host country contacts. Implications for the understanding of personality development and potential inferences for the organization and improvement of ISM programs are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several recent studies have illustrated a general increase in self-esteem from after adolescence until midlife. However, the specific pattern and possible conditions of self-esteem development from the important transition out of high school into young adulthood are still not well understood. In a longitudinal study (Transformation of the Secondary School System and Academic Careers; TOSCA), German students were interviewed 4 times beginning with their senior high school year (at Time 1 [T1]: N = 4,532; age: M = 19.6 years, SD = 0.9; 55% female). Conditional latent change models were applied and established 3 main findings. First, self-esteem showed a gradual increase across the transition, with both the self-esteem intercept and slope indicating substantial interindividual variability in the transition to young adulthood. Second, structural (having a partnership) as well as personality (Big Five) characteristics were substantially related to self-esteem development in emerging adulthood. Third, there were gender-specific associations between self-esteem and partnership status as well as between self-esteem and neuroticism and agreeableness. Findings point to a general upward development of self-esteem yet show interdependencies with the accomplishment of age-specific challenges in the transition to young adulthood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Military experience is an important turning point in a person’s life and, consequently, is associated with important life outcomes. Using a large longitudinal sample of German males, we examined whether personality traits played a role during this period. Results indicated that personality traits prospectively predicted the decision to enter the military. People lower in agreeableness, neuroticism, and openness to experience during high school were more likely to enter the military after graduation. In addition, military training was associated with changes in personality. Compared with a control group, military recruits had lower levels of agreeableness after training. These levels persisted 5 years after training, even after participants entered college or the labor market. This study is one of the first to identify life experiences associated with changes in personality traits. Moreover, our results suggest that military experiences may have a long-lasting influence on individual-level characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

• Instrument to assess family–school partnerships showed to be reliable and valid. • Welcoming culture and effective communication were reported to be relatively high. • Cooperation and parent participation were reported to be relatively low. • Only effective communication was related with more parent–child communication. Based on the Parent–Teacher Association's Standards for Family–School Partnerships (FSP), German experts on education proposed four standards for quality features of FSP in Germany: (A) welcoming and meeting culture, (B) various and respectful communication, (C) educational cooperation, and (D) parent participation. The aims of this paper were to develop a measurement instrument for the assessment of these quality features of FSP from parents' perspective, and to examine their associations with parent–child communication about school as an important aspect of parental involvement. N = 309 parents—whose children attend different school types—participated in an online survey. The analyses demonstrated that parents reported relatively high levels of standards A and B, but relatively low levels of standards C and D. Controlling for child and family characteristics, standard B (but no other standard) was found to be positively associated with parent–child communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study investigated Big Five personality trait development in the transition to early adolescence (from the fifth to eighth grade). Personality traits were assessed in 2,761 (47% female) students over a 3-year period of time. Youths' self-reports and parent ratings were used to test for cross-informant agreement. Acquiescent responding and measurement invariance were established with latent variable modeling. Growth curve models revealed three main findings: (a) Normative mean-level changes occurred for youths' self-report data and parent ratings with modest effects in both cases. (b) Agreeableness and Openness decreased for self-reports and parent ratings, whereas data source differences were found for Conscientiousness (decreased for self-reports and remained stable for parent ratings), Extraversion (increased for self-reports and decreased for parent ratings), and Neuroticism (remained stable for self-reports and decreased for parent ratings). (c) Girls showed a more mature personality overall (self-reports and parent ratings revealed higher levels of Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Openness) and became more extraverted in the middle of adolescence (self-reports). Personality changes modestly during early adolescence whereby change does not occur in the direction of maturation, and substantial differences exist between parent ratings and self-reports. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the Pygmalion effect, teachers' expectancies affect students' academic progress. Many empirical studies have supported the predictions of the Pygmalion effect, but the effect sizes have tended to be small to moderate. Furthermore, almost all existing studies have examined teacher expectancy effects on students' achievement at the student level only (does a specific student improve?) rather than at the classroom level (do classes improve when teachers have generally high expectations of their students?). The present study scrutinized the Pygmalion effect in a longitudinal study by using a large sample in regular classrooms and by differentiating between two achievement outcomes (grades and an achievement test) and two levels of analyses (the individual and classroom levels). Furthermore, students' self-concept was studied as a possible mediator of the teacher expectancy effect on achievement. Data come from a study with 73 teachers and their 1289 fifth-grade students. Multilevel regression analyses yielded three main results. First, Pygmalion effects were found at the individual level for both achievement outcomes. Second, multilevel mediation analyses showed that teacher expectancy effects were partly mediated by students' self-concept. Third, teachers' average expectancy effects at the class level were found to be nonsignificant when students' prior achievement was controlled. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In modem expectancy-value theory (EVT) in educational psychology, expectancy and value beliefs additively predict performance, persistence, and task choice. In contrast to earlier formulations of EVT, the multiplicative term Expectancy X Value in regression-type models typically plays no major role in educational psychology. The present study used latent moderated structural equation modeling to explore whether there is empirical support for a multiplicative effect in a sample of 2,508 students at the end of secondary education. Expectancy and four facets of value beliefs (attainment, intrinsic, and utility value as well as cost) predicted achievement when entered separately into a regression equation. Moreover, in models with both expectancy and value beliefs as predictor variables, the expectancy components as well as the multiplicative term Expectancy X Value were consistently found to predict achievement positively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last decades, many bilingual programs such as content and language integrated learning (CLIL) have emerged. A crucial question in CLIL is whether to assess students' content-subject knowledge in the common language or the dominant language of instruction. In two experimental field studies with N = 361 6th-graders and N = 703 8th-graders, we investigated test-language effects and their moderation by CLIL-experience, language background, instructional language use and item format. In both studies, students' achievement was higher when items were presented in the common language. This effect was less pronounced in experienced CLIL-learners and for multiple-choice than cloze-test items. Moderation effects of language background were only partially and for instructional language use not statistically significant. The results show that using the dominant language of instruction to assess content-subject knowledge in bilingual education might underestimate students' learning and that test-language and item-format effects need to be considered. • In bilingual education assessment, test-language effects occurred. • In bilingual learning, there is an advantage for L1 as test language. • Test-language effects are more pronounced in CLIL novices than in advanced CLIL-learners. • Test-language effects are stronger for cloze tests than for multiple choice items. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]