Deborah Stipek - US grants

Developmental change in children's experience, expression, and understanding of achievement-related emotions will be investigated in the proposed research. The research is based on a cognitive-evaluation model of emotions: emotional experiences are assumed to become increasingly differentiated with age in part because the underlying cognitive constructs become more differentiated. In the first set of studies behaviors--including facial expressions and postural cues--presumed to reflect pride and shame are examined in children aged one-and-a-half to four years. Achievement-related situations are systematically varied to provide evidence on the early emergence of pride and shame in situations in which success and failure are defined by task-intrinsic criteria, the difficult level of the task, and social comparison. The second set of studies concerns developmental change in the situational variables associated with the experience of achievement-related emotions. The studies address developmental questions based on an attribution model of emotions. The first study employs vignettes to provide information on children's judgments about the relationships between emotional responses (pride, shame, guilt, happiness, sadness, gratitude, surprise) and causal attributions (luck, ability, effort, other's help). The second study extends the first by studying the same emotional responses in a real achievement task situation. The studies have practical as well as theoretical value. Children spend a considerable portion of their time in achievement settings and their emotional experiences in those settings have important implications for their mental health and well-being and their school achievement.

The proposed research is designed to assess the immediate and long-term (two years) effects of three different instructional approaches on preschool and kindergarten-age children's academic achievement and their social-emotional and motivational development--including their perceptions of their abilities, dependency and need for approval, emotional reactions in achievement contexts, intrinsic interest in academic tasks, and preference for challenge. The study will assess the independent and interactive effects of instructional practices in the school, and parents' beliefs and learning-related activities with their children at home. Altogether, 288 children will participate--half from poor, minority families and half from ethnically diverse middle-class families. Three types of data will be collected. (1) Children will be assessed in both an experimental and a semi-naturalistic context; (2) parents will complete a questionnaire; and (3) parents will be observed in their homes engaged in a teaching task with their children. All assessments will be repeated a year later for half of the sample. The proposed study will provide longitudinal data on theoretically derived relationships between instructional approaches and child outcomes and between social-motivational variables and achievement. It also has practical significance. It will provide systematic evidence on the effect of instructional practices on children's social-motivational development that can be used to inform early childhood education program decisions and those who advise parents about appropriate learning-related interactions with their children. These social-motivational effects have important implications for how well children learn and for their emotional well being.

This project will develop a model mathematics portfolio practice in which cycles of productive activity and assessment recur throughout each curriculum unit. The model is grounded in work in developmental psychology that emphasizes social and cultural supports and the role of motivation in children's learning. Two studies are planned: (a) a trial of portfolio practice to refine it and the measures needed to evaluate it; (b) a systematic comparison among classrooms that vary in curriculum approach and portfolio use to evaluate the impact of portfolio practice on classroom instruction and assessment, on teachers' knowledge of students' mathematical understandings and motivations, and on students' own understandings and motivations. Research measures include quantitative (group tasks, questionnaires) and qualitative (individual tasks and interviews, videotapes of classroom practices, field notes) methods. The work has import for diverse audiences: For educators, a completed set of materials for classroom portfolio assessment; for researchers, increased knowledge of fundamental relations among assessment and instruction practices and teacher and student outcomes; for evaluation specialists, an effective system of classroom assessment that has implications for the design of coordinated external assessments.