Social, dimensional, and temporal comparisons by students and parents: An investigation of the 2I/E model at the transition from elementary to junior high school.

Abstract

The present research examined the joint effects of social, dimensional, and temporal comparisons on students’ academic self-concepts and parents’ beliefs about their children’s competencies during students’ transition phase from elementary school to junior high school. To this end, we tested the newly developed 2I/E model using longitudinal data including 2,417 students between Grades 6 and 7 and 1,846 parents. We found strong social comparison effects and moderate dimensional and temporal comparison effects on students’ self-concepts. In line with our assumption that students should be particularly sensitive to changes in their achievements during phases of school transition, the temporal comparison effects were stronger than in any prior study of the 2I/E model. Parents’ ratings of their children’s competencies were also predicted by social, dimensional, and temporal comparisons. However, whereas the social comparison effects on students’ and parents’ ratings were equally strong, the dimensional and temporal comparison effects were stronger on students’ ratings. We finally tested how social, dimensional, and temporal comparisons affected changes in students’ self-concepts and parents’ competence beliefs over 1 year. Although the effects of all 3 comparisons were still significant, we found drastic changes in their strengths, with the strongest effects on changes in competence beliefs occurring for temporal comparisons. Overall, our study provides a variety of new insights into the impact of comparison processes on the formation of competence beliefs. In particular, it emphasizes the role of temporal comparisons. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

How Classmates’ Gender Stereotypes Affect Students’ Math Self-Concepts: A Multilevel Analysis

“…Future research should, therefore, aim to examine how individual and shared math-related gender stereotypes relate to changes in students’ self-concepts. In particular, it would seem worthwhile to conduct such investigations during phases of school transitions, which have shown to come along with significant changes in students’ self-concepts (e.g., Wigfield et al, 1991 ; Wolff et al, 2020c ), given that these changes might also result from changes in gender stereotypes shared within the classroom. Moreover, it would be advisable for future research to measure students’ gender stereotypes (and other covariates) some time before the self-concepts as such a design would be more suitable to allow an approximation to causal conclusions than the simultaneous assessment of these constructs.…”

The reciprocal 2I/E model: An investigation of mutual relations between achievement and self-concept levels and changes in the math and verbal domain across three countries.

“…To date, the 2I/EM assumptions have found support in 11 empirical studies (Wolff, Helm, et al, 2019; Wolff, Helm, Zimmermann, et al, 2018; Wolff, Nagy, et al, 2019; Wolff, Wigfield, Möller, Dicke, & Eccles, 2019). Usually, these studies have revealed strong positive social comparison effects, moderate negative dimensional comparison effects, and small positive temporal comparison effects across student samples of different age groups, school types, and countries.…”

“…A few studies have tested the 2I/EM while controlling for students’ prior self-concepts, measured before the first achievement measure (Wolff, Wigfield, et al, 2019; Wolff, Nagy, et al, 2019, Study 4; see also Figure 4). In accord with the RI/EM, these studies assumed and found support for positive effects of self-concepts on self-concepts within subjects (ε), and near-zero effects of self-concepts on self-concepts between subjects (η).…”

The “big fish” from the teacher’s perspective: A closer look at reference group effects on teacher judgments.

“…1Note that other work also focused on dimensional comparisons (i.e., comparisons between different school subjects) in parent assessments of students’ abilities (e.g., Wolff et al, 2020) and teacher assessments of students’ ability self-concepts (e.g., Dickhäuser, 2005; Helm et al, 2018). Also studies investigating halo effects on teacher judgments across different school subjects target dimensional comparisons (e.g., Dompnier et al, 2006; Stang & Urhahne, 2016a).…”