The Direct and Indirect Effects of Implicit Beliefs of Intelligence on Academic Achievement in English among High School Students: Goal Orientation as a Mediator

Introduction. High academic achievement in English is a valued key for high school students in Sudan to guide them toward a better life, career, and social opportunities. At the same time, many of the Sudanese students have linguistic, cultural, and rhetorical problems in the English language, and many of them face challenges in expressing themselves in English. Thus, the core purpose of this study is to explore what may help them in this matter; this includes examining the direct effects of the entity and incremental beliefs of intelligence on academic achievement in English and testing the indirect effects through goal orientation. Method. A quantitative research method was used by applying scales of implicit beliefs of intelligence (Dweck, 2000) and goal orientation (Elliot & Church, 1997). The data were collected using a cluster sampling technique from 392 respondents, mainly high school students in Sudan. A structural equation model (SEM-AMOS) of relations among constructs was employed to examine the relationships among the construct variables. Results. The findings of the structural equation modelling indicated that there was no direct effect of entity belief of intelligence and that there was a direct effect of incremental belief of intelligence on academic achievement in English. Regarding the mediation role of the goal orientation in the relationship between entity belief of intelligence and academic achievement in English, there was no mediation role play. Nevertheless, the goal orientation partially mediated the relationship between the incremental belief of intelligence and academic achievement in English among Sudanese high school students. Discussion and Conclusion. Academic achievement in English is influenced by students' motivations, beliefs of intelligence, and goal orientations. Accordingly, the English language of Sudanese high school students requires more attention and consideration for the incremental belief of intelligence, goal orientation, and other significant variables in order to support those students in Sudanese high schools to overcome their weaknesses in English and improve themselves so that they can achieve high scores academically in English.

Development and verification of the programming resilience scale for university students

Learning programming challenges students who encounter difficulties such as resolving syntax and format errors. These challenges require students to invoke resilience to overcome programming problems and keep trying. In response, this study developed the programming resilience scale for university students (PRSUS). The snowball-sampling method was used to collect the data of science and engineering undergraduates, and the participants were divided into two groups (n1 = 316, n2 = 358) for an exploratory and a confirmatory factor analysis, respectively. For the PRSUS, 3 items were retained for each of 4 dimensions, namely: persistence, perceived value, difficulty cognition, and incremental belief. The reliability and validity indexes indicate the scale is reliable for measuring programming resilience. Moreover, the results showed that most undergraduates had a high level of programming resilience, and they could judge their level correctly in comparison to their peers. The study also found that, although no significant difference was found among the grade or age groups, the programming resilience of the male students was significantly better than that of the female students. The PRSUS is expected to help researchers and teachers to identify students who have difficulties learning programming and to provide early interventions to students. Implications for practice or policy: Students can use the PRSUS to test if they have a high level of programming resilience and improve their programming resilience in a targeted way. Educators can use the PRSUS to identify students who find it difficult to finish programming learning or to judge whether their teaching can make students more willing to overcome programming difficulties.

Basic psychological needs and implicit beliefs of ability in secondary education | Necesidades psicológicas básicas y creencias implícitas de habilidad en educación secundaria

El objetivo de este estudio fue analizar la relación entre el desarrollo de las necesidades psicológicas básicas y las creencias implícitas de habilidad en alumnado de Educación Secundaria. La muestra estuvo formada por un total de 97 estudiantes de Educación Secundaria, con edades comprendidas entre los 13 y los 15 años (edad media = 13.32 ± 0.62 años) a los que se les aplicaron los cuestionarios de apoyo a las necesidades psicológicas básicas y creencias implícitas sobre la habilidad en sus clases de Educación Física. Los resultados no encontraron diferencias significativas en las variables de necesidades psicológicas básicas y de creencias implícitas de habilidad en función del género de los estudiantes. Por otro lado, la creencia de entidad correlacionó positivamente con el apoyo a las relaciones sociales, mientras que la creencia incremental correlacionó positivamente con el apoyo a la competencia y las relaciones sociales. Estos resultados pueden servir de referencia a profesores de Educación Física a la hora de establecer estrategias en función del género que favorezcan la satisfacción de las necesidades psicológicas básicas de sus estudiantes.AbstractThe aim of this study was to know the levels of basic psychological needs, and implicit beliefs of ability in secondary stage students. The sample was made up of a total of 97 students of Secondary Education, with ages between 13 and 15 (mean age = 13.32 ± 0.62 years) to whom the questionnaires to support basic psychological needs and ability beliefs were applied in Physical Education lessons. The results found no significant differences in the variables of basic psychological needs and implicit beliefs of ability based on the gender of the students. On the other hand, entity belief positively correlated with support for social relationships, while incremental belief positively correlated with support for competition and social relationships. These results can serve as a reference for physical education teachers when establishing gender-based strategies to meet the basic psychological needs of their students.

Non-Prioritized Iterated Revision: Improvement via Incremental Belief Merging

In this work we define iterated change operators that do not obey the primacy of update principle. This kind of change is required in applications when the recency of the input formulae is not linked with their reliability/priority/weight. This can be translated by a commutativity postulate that asks the result of a sequence of changes to be the same whatever the order of the formulae of this sequence. Technically then we end up with a sequence of formulae that we have to combine in order to obtain a meaningful belief base. Belief merging operators are then natural candidates for this task. We show that we can define improvement operators using an incremental belief merging approach. We also show that these operators can not be encoded as simple preorders transformations, contrary to most iterated revision and improvement operators.

Middle School Students’ Beliefs About Intelligence and Giftedness

This study investigated middle school students’ beliefs about intelligence and differences in the development of intelligence across ages, beliefs about giftedness and the development of giftedness, and how beliefs about intelligence and giftedness were related. A total of 52 eighth graders from two regular classes ( n = 36) and one gifted class ( n = 16) at a public school in the U.S. Midwest completed a survey and a vignettes task. Results revealed that participants associated intelligence with school and non-school intelligence, knowledge and learning, smartness, and motivation. They associated academic giftedness with intelligence, motivation, school achievement, and high ability. Participants were more certain young children could grow intelligence. Most participants endorsed incremental views of intelligence and giftedness. This was more evident in students holding an incremental belief about intelligence, and in non-gifted students. Gifted participants and those holding an incremental belief about intelligence placed more value on motivation and learning. Theoretical and practical implications were discussed.

Implicit theories of smoking and association with current smoking status

Implicit theories of smoking refer to people’s beliefs about whether smoking behavior is something that is changeable (incremental belief) or fixed (entity belief). This study examines implicit theories of smoking and its association with smoking behavior in a nationally representative sample of US adults using data from the Health Information National Trends Survey. The current results show that implicit theories of smoking are associated with smoking. Among former smokers, 90 percent endorsed an incremental belief about smoking compared to 70 percent of current smokers. Our study provides initial evidence for the role of implicit theories of smoking as a psychological factor associated with smoking behavior.