“Warning students of the consequences of examination failure: An effective strategy for promoting student engagement?”

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Presentation in Seminar Room D, also available online.

Speaker

David W. Putwain

School of Education,

Liverpool John Moores University

Abstract

In this presentation I will present findings from a recent project that measured teacher fear appeals in mathematics lessons (messages that warn students of the negative consequences of failure as a tactic designed to increase engagement), their evaluation as a challenge/threat, and engagement in mathematics lessons, over two waves. Self-reported data were collected from 1,530 participants, aged 14-16 years, at two time points over the final two years of secondary education. These data were linked to prior and subsequent mathematics achievement. Specifically, I will focus on the analytic approach to conducting multi-level mediation in a structural equation model: (1) the meaning of fear appeals in the between and within-level portions of the model, (2), whether to conduct latent-manifest or doubly latent models, (3), mediation within a two-wave design, and (4), establishing ‘true’ contextual effects.