Intelligence and motivation are two crucial components of the education process that can significantly influence its efficiency. The level of intelligence determines our ability to learn from experience and to solve a problem successfully, whereas motivational processes energize and organize our behavior to reach our goals. This paper is connected to our previous article focused on the influence of teachers' abilities on secondary business schools' students' motivation in the Economics. In our current study, we monitored the motivational potential of teachers' abilities in a connection with students' level of intelligence, measured by Vienna Matrices Test. As we would expect according to the results of our previous study, the expertise of teachers has the most important influence in the groups of both the above-average intelligent and the average intelligent students. Nevertheless, we found some differences in other preferences of both groups: except the teachers' expertise, the average intelligent students refer to be motivated mostly by exposition of curriculum and ability to develop thinking, whereas above-average students refer only about the exposition of curriculum (except the teachers' expertise). The next factor that we observed in our study is an amount of time that students spend on preparation to school.

The research deals with the development of cognitive process dimensions in economic education. The aim is to research factors that influence academic achievement of students according to their intellectual level and grades. The researchers used quantitative design of research based on standardized assessment of intelligence and non-standardized questionnaire. The questionnaire was used to analyse the pedagogical competences of the teachers of economic subjects from the students' point of view in close relation to the teaching management and the impact on the motivation to learn and the achievement of students in these subjects. The respondents were 277 Czech students aged 16-17 who were divided into groups according to their intellectual level and grades. The data were analysed by a correlation analysis and a multiple regression model. In conclusion, the following can be stated: (a) From the point of view of the above average intelligent students, expertise can be considered as an important competency of the teacher; teaching average intelligent students, communication and presentation skills seem to be important. (b) It is desirable to develop cognitive processes, critical thinking actively, to lead students to become aware of changes in their own thinking and to orient them towards mastery goals. (c) Particularly for students with weaker results it is necessary to create intrinsic motivation, which develops cognition and thus is able to develop higher cognitive dimensions further. The links between these areas are of utmost importance for education and, above all, for developing of students' scholarship. Each student can be educated, and it is necessary to influence them to develop their personality and all of their potential abilities. The conceptual four-sector model represents the initial pathway to lead students who are differentiated according to the intellectual level and academic achievement to the active development of thinking, learning and critical insight. Keywords: cognitive process dimensions, abstract visual thinking, intellectual level, motivation to learn, academic achievement.

An educational efficiency of an individual is strongly and bidirectionally connected with his/her self-perception determined by the unique family system and overall sense of social well-being. The role of parents is obvious and both theoretically and empirically well-researched. Nevertheless, academic self-efficacy may be significantly affected also by siblings, whose role is neglected by theory and research. Our research deals with various specifics of siblings' constellations and their impact on selected dimensions of academic self-efficacy (perception of school success, efficiency, educational dispositions, and ambitions). Our findings proved differences in all observed categories (gender, family order, age-distance) and indicate relative better academic self-efficacy (compared with a sibling) by females and respondents with a brother. Similarly, higher level of academic self-efficacy was detected by older siblings and respondents with a longer age-distance between them and their siblings. Moreover, the research points out the siblings-related specifics of social support perceived from a family. Conclusions are applicable in educational theory as well as in praxis of educational counselling with an intention to support equal opportunities in education and professional development.

Relationships among siblings play a crucial role in early socialization and further social development. Siblings inherently belong to the system of family relationships; their observation without involving parent-child bonds, is to some extent, generalization. Therefore, our research analyzes with mutual connections between parenting styles and the characteristics of siblings’ relationships in a family using a quantitative design of data collection and processing. The outputs from the Sibling Relationship Questionnaire and Questionnaire of Parenting Styles in a Family were collected from 264 bachelor’s students. The study found the overall associations of positive emotional relationships and freedom provided by parents with generally desirable characteristics of siblings’ bonds and vice versa, and associations between negative emotional relationships and requirements with negatively perceived traits of siblings’ bonds. The unexpected outcome of our research is that it revealed more connections between paternal parenting styles and the characteristics of sibling relationships than with those of maternal parenting styles. To reflect the complexity of these relationships more precisely, complex structural equation models were created and successfully adjusted.

Students’ motivation is one of the key factors that determine their school success. It is closely linked to their attitudes toward individual school subjects. This research analyzes four crucial dimensions of students’ subject-related attitudes (practical importance, difficulty, popularity and curriculum contents attractiveness) in the secondary economic education in the Czech Republic and Slovakia in the international context. The research focused on the four dimensions of students’ attitudes (n = 573) toward four major school subjects (economics, accounting, mathematics and the mother tongue) at business academies. It analyzes the data from the questionnaires using the Spearman Correlation Coefficient, the non-parametric Kruskal-Wallis test and the modification of Tukey’s method for multiple comparisons. The results show that the popularity of a school subject significantly correlates with its curriculum contents attractiveness and practical importance. However, the difficulty of school subjects did not influence their popularity in a negative way, which opens several questions for further research in the area. Keywords: economic education; students’ attitudes; motivation in economic school subjects; school subject popularity; school subject difficulty.