Abstract
Children’s worrying about their academic performance has profound implications for their learning and wellbeing in school. Understanding the contextual and psychological antecedents of students’ worry thus represents an important area of research. Drawing on Eccles and colleagues’ expectancy-value theory and Pekrun’s control-value theory and using data from the Childhood and Beyond Study, we examined the motivational underpinnings of elementary students’ worries about performing poorly in the domains of mathematics and reading (N = 805, grades 3, 4 and 6). With one exception, the analyses confirmed that children’s expectations of success in and valuing of mathematics and reading interacted in predicting children’s worry about these domains. Children’s worry was strongest when they rated their subjective abilities and expected success in mathematics and reading as relatively low but perceived these subjects as valuable. Moderated mediation analyses further suggested that when children’s self-concepts of mathematics and reading ability were low to moderate, students’ perceived parental valuing of their performance in these subjects indirectly positively predicted children’s worry via its positive impact on children’s own subjective valuing of mathematics and reading. Thus, when children perceive high academic performance as potentially difficult to attain, perceived parental valuing might negatively impact their wellbeing in school (by increasing not only their valuing of mathematics and reading, but also their performance-related worrying). Children’s gender, grade level, teacher-rated mathematics and reading aptitude, and prior self-reported worry about mathematics and reading performance were included as control variables in all analyses.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
The full set of variables used in the present study was available only for the third and fourth waves of data collection. Students in one of four participating school districts had transitioned to a new school in wave three, which resulted in increased worry independent of other variables. Here, we focus mainly on wave four variables, but control for wave three worry. Due to length constraints, analyses of school transition effects are beyond the scope of the present study.
Latent variables are not modelled due to single-item indicators for key constructs and because the number of free parameters would exceed the number of available teacher-students clusters in some models.
This interaction would have been significant if we had not included prior worry as a control variable (β = –0.06, p = .032). Thus, this interaction is significant when it predicts worry concurrently, but only marginally significant when it predicts change in worry relative to the previous school year (β = –0.05, p = .064).
References
Bieg, M., Goetz, T., & Hubbard, K. (2013). Can I master it and does it matter? An intraindividual analysis on control–value antecedents of trait and state academic emotions. Learning and Individual Differences, 28, 102–108.
Davey, G. C. L. (1992). Some characteristics of worrying: Evidence for worrying and anxiety as separate constructs. Personality and Individual Differences, 13(2), 133–147.
Durik, A. M., Shechter, O. G., Noh, M., Rozek, C. S., & Harackiewicz, J. M. (2015). What if I can’t? Success expectancies moderate the effects of utility value information on situational interest and performance. Motivation and Emotion, 39(1), 104–118.
Eccles, J. S., Adler, T. F., Futterman, R., Goff, S. B., Kaczala, C. M., Meece, J. L., & Midgley, C. (1983). Expectancies, values, and academic behaviors. In J. T. Spence (Ed.), Expectancies, values, and academic behaviors (pp. 75–146). San Francisco: W. H. Freeman.
Eysenck, M. W., & Calvo, M. G. (1992). Anxiety and performance: The processing efficiency theory. Cognition and Emotion, 6(6), 409–434.
Eysenck, M. W., Derakshan, N., Santos, R., & Calvo, M. G. (2007). Anxiety and cognitive performance: Attentional control theory. Emotion (Washington, D. C.), 7(2), 336–353.
Gaspard, H., Dicke, A.-L., Flunger, B., Brisson, B. M., Häfner, I., Nagengast, B., & Trautwein, U. (2015). Fostering adolescents’ value beliefs for mathematics with a relevance intervention in the classroom. Developmental Psychology, 51(9), 1226–1240.
Gniewosz, B. (2010). Die konstruktion des akademischen selbstkonzeptes: Eltern und zensuren als informationsquellen [The construction of the academic self-concept: Parents and grades as sources of information]. Zeitschrift für Entwicklungs- und Pädagogische Psychologie, 42, 133–142.
Goetz, T., Pekrun, R., Hall, N., & Haag, L. (2006). Academic emotions from a social-cognitive perspective: Antecedents and domain specificity of students’ affect in the context of Latin instruction. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 76(2), 289–308.
Harackiewicz, J. M., Rozek, C. S., Hulleman, C. S., & Hyde, J. S. (2012). Helping parents to motivate adolescents in mathematics and science: An experimental test of a utility-value intervention. Psychological Science, 23(8), 899–906. doi:10.1177/0956797611435530.
Hascher, T. (2008). Quantitative and qualitative research approaches to assess student well-being. International Journal of Educational Research, 47(2), 84–96.
Hascher, T. (2010). Learning and emotion- perspectives for theory and research. European Educational Research Journal, 9(1), 13–28.
Lichtenfeld, S., Pekrun, R., Stupnisky, R. H., Reiss, K., & Murayama, K. (2012). Measuring students’ emotions in the early years: The Achievement Emotions Questionnaire-Elementary School (AEQ-ES). Learning and Individual Differences, 22(2), 190–201.
Meece, J. L., Wigfield, A., & Eccles, J. S. (1990). Predictors of math anxiety and its influence on young adolescents’ course enrollment intentions and performance in mathematics. Journal of Educational Psychology, 82(1), 60–70.
Nagengast, B., Marsh, H. W., Scalas, L. F., Xu, M. K., Hau, K.-T., & Trautwein, U. (2011). Who took the “×” out of expectancy-value theory? A psychological mystery, a substantive-methodological synergy, and a cross-national generalization. Psychological Science, 22(8), 1058–1066.
Nicholson, C. L., & Hibpshman, T. H. (1990). Administration and scoring manual for the Slosson Intelligence Test- Revised. East Aurora. NY: Slosson Educational Publications.
Pekrun, R. (1984). An expectancy-value model of anxiety. In R. Schwarzer, C. D. Spielberger & H. M. van der Ploeg (Eds.), Advances in Test Anxiety Research (vol. 3, pp. 53–72). Lisse: Swets & Zeitlinger.
Pekrun, R. (1992). Expectancy-value theory of anxiety: Overview and implications. In D. G. Forgays, T. Sosnowski & K. Wrzesniewski (Eds.), Anxiety: Recent developments in self-appraisal, psychophysiological and health research (pp. 23–41). Washington, DC: Hemisphere.
Pekrun, R. (2000). A social-cognitive, control-value theory of achievement emotions. In J. Heckhausen (Ed.), Motivational psychology of human development (pp. 143–163). North-Holland: Elsevier.
Pekrun, R. (2006). The control-value theory of achievement emotions: Assumptions, corollaries, and implications for educational research and practice. Educational Psychology Review, 18(4), 315–341.
Pekrun, R. (2009). Global and local perspectives on human affect: Implications of the control-value theory of achievement emotions. In M. Wosnitza, S. A. Karabenick, A. Efklides & P. Nenniger (Eds.), Contemporary motivation research: From global to local perspectives (pp. 97–115). Toronto: Hogrefe.
Pekrun, R., & Perry, R. P. (2014). Control-value theory of achievement emotions. In R. Pekrun & L. Linnenbrink-Garcia (Eds.), International handbook of emotions in education (pp. 120–141). New York: Taylor & Francis.
Rozek, C. S., Hyde, J. S., Svoboda, R. C., Hulleman, C. S., & Harackiewicz, J. M. (2015). Gender differences in the effects of a utility-value intervention to help parents motivate adolescents in mathematics and science. Journal of Educational Psychology, 107(1), 195–206.
Simpkins, S. D., Fredricks, J. A., & Eccles, J. S. (2015). Parent beliefs to youth choices: Mapping the sequence of predictors from childhood to adolescence. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 80(2), 1–151.
Slosson, R. L., Nicholson, C. L., & Hibpshman, T. H. (1991). Slosson Intelligence Test - Revised. East Amora. NY: Slosson Educational Publications.
Wanous, J. P., Reichers, A. E., & Hudy, M. J. (1997). Overall job satisfaction: How good are single-item measures? Journal of Applied Psychology, 82(2), 247–252.
Wigfield, A., & Eccles, J. S. (2000). Expectancy–value theory of achievement motivation. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 25(1), 68–81.
Wigfield, A., & Meece, J. L. (1988). Math anxiety in elementary and secondary school students. Journal of Educational Psychology, 80(2), 210–216.
Wolfradt, U., Hempel, S., & Miles, J. N. V. (2003). Perceived parenting styles, depersonalisation, anxiety and coping behaviour in adolescents. Personality and Individual Differences, 34(3), 521–532.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Appendix: Items, scales, and reliabilities
Appendix: Items, scales, and reliabilities
Tables 4 and 5 show the full list of teacher-rated and self-report items in the present study, scale reliabilities (Cronbach’s α), and intra-class correlations (ICC), which reflect systematic between-classroom variance. Note, however, that systematic between-classroom variance is not explained in our study, because our hypotheses involve only individual-level predictors. These coefficients are reported for descriptive purposes. Our analyses account for the nested structure of the data by using a complex design correction in Mplus 7.11.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Lauermann, F., Eccles, J.S. & Pekrun, R. Why do children worry about their academic achievement? An expectancy-value perspective on elementary students’ worries about their mathematics and reading performance. ZDM Mathematics Education 49, 339–354 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11858-017-0832-1
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11858-017-0832-1