Primary education and secondary education

Like no other organised activity, primary and secondary education brings together people of different gender, social status, ability, and personality. Differentiating considerations of the persons in the school system are required to take account of the enormous heterogeneity of individual profiles. Different groups of students with different requirements call for differentiated analyses in order to meet their individual needs. For example, students with learning or behavioural deficits need different support than regular or average-ability students, who in turn may be differently treated than physically or mentally gifted students. Gender differences should be considered as well as differences in the status or age of persons.

In this issue of primary and secondary education, the differentiating element of research becomes particularly clear. Different groups of students with different abilities and goals are examined by means of differentiated research methods. It becomes obvious that no research approach is the same as another, that no research method duplicates another. Each research activity is tailored to the specific needs of the student groups under investigation. In this way, the methodological diversity reflects a heterogeneity that is unquestionably present at school, with the aim of providing research findings, conclusions, and recommendations tailored to specific groups or recipients. All the contributions collected here realise this worthwhile goal in the most excellent way. The seven articles presented can be divided into two groups, the first five focusing on primary education and the last two on secondary education.

The article by Paananen, Aro, Nähri, and Aro (2018) presents a group-based training program for primary school students with attention and executive function deficits. Depending on the severity of the disorder, attention, executive functions, and academic skills improved over the course of half a year in comparison to a control group. The study by Acar, Evans, Rudasill, and Yildiz (2018) draws attention to the development of antisocial behaviour in young elementary school children. The authors show that teacher–child relationship quality moderates the relation between parent–child conflict and children’s antisocial behaviour. When teachers manage to build a close relationship with the student, antisocial behaviour is reduced. The paper by Vogelaar and Resing (2018) points out that dynamic testing can favour analogy-problem solving. The graduating prompting techniques built into the training program helped gifted as well as average-ability children but did not provide any advantage for processing a transfer task. Hänze, Müller, and Berger (2018) realised with their study the idea of a modified tutor training, which puts more emphasis on knowledge-building than on knowledge-testing. Third-grade primary students who were instructed by trained tutors reported more self-determined behaviour and learned more than same-aged tutees of untrained tutors. Vendeville, Blanc, and Brechet (2018) dealt with the question of how primary school children process reported emotions in stories. After hearing stories, elementary school children were asked to draw emotions into the contours of the main characters. The authors found notable differences between boys and girls in the portrayal of sadness and anger.

The study by Kam, Hue, and Cheung (2018) focuses on the issue of academic dishonesty of secondary school students. Based on the theory of planned behaviour by Beck and Ajzen (1991), the attempt was made to predict both the intention to cheat as well as self-reported cheating in a structural equation model. The article by Jansen, Ellinger, and Lehmann (2018) is dedicated to the connection between physical and mental activity. More specifically, the authors documented positive effects of visiting special sports classes on the processing of visuospatial tasks in comparison to regular classes. This does not mean that sports classes, in general, can better promote cognition and academic achievement, but that some specific cognitive effects can be expected by practicing sports.

All in all, the seven studies illustrate the variability of research methods that educational psychology holds in the area of primary and secondary education. Starting with the application of questionnaires in self-report (Kam, Hue, & Cheung, 2018) and third-party report (Acar, Evans, Rudasill, & Yildiz, 2018), through the use of achievement tests (Jansen, Ellinger, & Lehmann, 2018), video recordings for obtaining process data (Hänze, Müller, & Berger, 2018), and the analysis of children’s drawings (Vendeville, Blanc, & Brechet, 2018) up to the conception of trainings (Vogelaar & Resing, 2018) and intervention programs (Paananen, Aro, Nähri, & Aro, 2018). The methodological diversity serves the purpose of an optimal adaptation to the research subject. It makes us aware that students – the subject of research – are not a uniform mass but have to be considered individually. Only in this way, we can support them best in primary and secondary education.