Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2021 Dec 8:12:751120.
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.751120. eCollection 2021.

Cognitive and Affective-Motivational Factors as Predictors of Students' Home Learning During the School Lockdown

Kathrin Lockl  1 , Manja Attig  1 , Lena Nusser  1 , Ilka Wolter  1
Affiliations

Cognitive and Affective-Motivational Factors as Predictors of Students' Home Learning During the School Lockdown

Kathrin Lockl et al. Front Psychol. .

Abstract

During the COVID-19 pandemic, students were facing great challenges. Learning was shifted from the classroom to the home of the students. This implied that students had to complete their tasks in a more autonomous way than during regular lessons. As students' ability to handle such challenges might depend on certain cognitive and motivational prerequisites as well as individual learning conditions, the present study investigates students' cognitive competencies as well as affective-motivational factors as possible predictors of coping with this new learning situation at home. The study uses data of Starting Cohort 2 of the German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS). Data of two measurement points are analyzed: Predictors were assessed at the earlier time point, when students (N=1,452; M age=12years, 8months; 53.4% female) mostly attended seventh grade of a secondary school. They completed competence tests in reading as well as mathematics and rated affective-motivational aspects in terms of willingness to exert effort, learning enjoyment, and intrinsic motivation. One and a half years later - during the COVID-19 pandemic and the first period of school closures - the second measurement point took place. Students' parents rated the situation of learning at home with respect to students' coping with the new situation and parents' difficulties to motivate them. Regression analyses controlling for school track, students' gender, and parents' educational level and parental stress revealed that students' reading competencies and their willingness to exert effort were significant predictors of their coping with the new learning situation at home. Moreover, parents reported that boys were more difficult to motivate to learn during this time as compared to girls. Other predictors (e.g., learning enjoyment) turned out to be non-significant when entered simultaneously in the regression analyses. The results point to the importance of children's prerequisites for autonomous learning situations without structuring elements by teachers within the school context.

Keywords: COVID-19; competencies; home learning; longitudinal; motivation.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

References

    1. Alloway T. P., Gathercole S. E., Pickering S. J. (2006). Verbal and visuospatial short-term and working memory in children: are they separable? Child Dev. 77, 1698–1716. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8624.2006.00968.x, PMID: - DOI - PubMed
    1. Anderson L. W., Ryan D. W., Shapiro B. J. (1989). The IEA Classroom Environment Study. Oxford: Pergamon Press.
    1. Arbuckle J. L. (1996). Full information estimation in the presence of incomplete data. In G. A. Marcoulides & R. E. Schumacker (Eds.), Advanced structural equation modeling: Issues and Techniques (pp. 243–277). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
    1. Blossfeld H.-P., Roßbach H.-G.von Maurice J. (Eds.) (2011). Education as a lifelong process: The German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS). Z. Erziehungswiss. [Special Issue 14]. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften.
    1. Boekaerts M. (1999). Self-regulated learning: where we are today. Int. J. Educ. Res. 31, 445–457. doi: 10.1016/S0883-0355(99)00014-2 - DOI