Control Value Theory

Lohbeck, A., Nitkowski, D., & Petermann, F. (2016). A control-value theory approach: Relationships between academic self-concept, interest, and test anxiety in elementary school children. Child & Youth Care Forum, 45(6), 887-904. doi: 10.1007/s10566-016-9362-1

Introduction

Pekrun emphasises the importance of self concept to academic emotion and does this through the control value model

Positive= adaptive action- enjoyment

Negative= maladaptive- anxiety

Self concept- interest- academic emotion

This study focuses on the relationship between SC and AE (More specifically negative emotion) rather than the achievement aspect of it. This is a high topic of interest as anxiety can disinhibit performance therefore if the topic can be understood,

Also does gender impact the way anxiety is perceived.

SC is subjective experiences from our environment.

Interest is if they subject find the topic engaging

Test anxiety is a psychological response of fear or distress

Method

Sample 192 forth grade student (9-12 years old), 97 boys and 95 girls all with a mean age of 10.04 and a SD of 0.64. this study was across 11 classes in Germany.

The study used self report methods of questionaires generated by the “German Self-Description questionnaire”. The anxiety traits for interest and test anxiety were measured on a subscale and for SC a likert scale. Prior to the study all materials used were was approved by parents and governing bodies of the area.

Results

Statical test ofT-test and pearson were used to analyse the data as well as paramentric means

Girls report higher levels of anxiety however it was only small change

There is a positive relationship between Sc and interest thouse who perceived themselved to be good were more interested

Negative relationship between SC and text anxiety however interest had no given impact on test

Where girls scored marginally higher this seems to indicate that girls are more at risk of developing anxiety than boys. However, the high score across all results suggests that this is a majorly topical issue that needs to be addressed urgently.

There is the explanation that it is domain specific and a particular measure is produces particular self-concept, interest and anxiety and it may be able to be generalised to all schools. However, school and classroom level result the score were almost equal, this suggests that the same predictors are to be considered potentially supporting the fact that its domain based.

The age range is small and at this particular age there is not the same decrease of interest as seen in older children through prior research, further global and domain research would need to be conducted across a greater age range and population to provide greater probability in