In many academic settings, teachers often utilize messages that focus on the positive consequences of students’ actions (success appeals) and/or those that highlight the negative consequences of failure (fear appeals) to encourage behavioral engagement and achievement. For fear appeals, students usually assess them as either a challenge that they are able to overcome or a threat that they do not have enough resources or capability to deal with (Symes & Putwain, 2016). Although studies have been done in the past examining the two types of messages, there is little research on the differential outcomes of each type in high-stakes qualification settings. Moreover, there were some weaknesses presented in the limited existing studies on the relationship between fear appeals, evaluation, and subsequent behavior and performance, including not having a temporal separation between measuring the evaluation of the appeals and subsequent behaviors and not measuring the frequency of the fear appeals.
To fill these gaps, Putwain et al. (2023) studied a sample of 1,530 students from 14 secondary schools in the Northwest of England from year 10 to year 11. The first data collection took place in year 10, and the second one took place in year 11. Students answered questionnaires regarding the frequency and evaluation of fear appeals used by their teachers (e.g., “How often does your math teacher tell your class that unless you work hard you will fail your maths GCSE?”) based on a five-point scale (1= never and 5= most of the time) and personal behavioral engagement (e.g., “I try hard to do well in my GCSE maths class.”) based on a five-point scale as well (1= strongly disagree and 5= strongly agree). The achievement was measured using year 9 mathematics examination grades and GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education) grades in year 11. Results showed that the frequency of fear appeals identified in year 10 predicted greater challenge evaluations in year 11, which in turn predicted greater behavioral engagement in year 11 as well. The behavioral engagement during year 11 predicted better performance on the GCSE examination. In addition, challenge evaluations mediated relations between fear appeals frequency and behavioral engagement while behavioral engagement mediated challenge evaluation and GCSE examination grades. In other words, students who tended to evaluate the fear appeals as challenges exhibited greater behavioral engagement, which subsequently resulted in higher achievement. Furthermore, the relations between year 9 grades and GCSE exam grades were mediated by threat evaluation and behavioral engagement in both years 10 and 11s, suggesting that students who evaluated the fear appeals as threats tended to have lower subsequent achievement.
Despite using relevant methodologies, the study still has several limitations to it. For instance, due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, the study only had two waves of data collection and did not use the mathematics grades from the GCSE examination throughout the data collection.
The results of the study hint at effective interventions for teachers. For instance, to avoid having students view fear appeals of high-stakes exams as threats, teachers can enhance students’ confidence in their ability to achieve their expected academic performance either verbally or through additional educational support. Other potential interventions align with EPIC’s work to foster students’ persistence when faced with challenges. For example, to motivate students to engage in studying in high-stake examination settings, instructors can target students’ evaluations of the potential negative consequences associated with the exam and have students read the failure stories of great scientists or exceptional athletes, adopting their challenge view of failures and setbacks that are associated with enhanced subsequent engagement and performance.
If you want to learn more about Putwain et al.’s (2023) study, check it out at:
https://doi.org/10.1037/edu0000741
This post was written by Jessica Wang.
Reference:
Putwain, D. W., & Symes, W. (2016). The appraisal of value-promoting messages made prior to a high-stakes mathematics examination: The interaction of message-focus and student characteristics. Social Psychology of Education, 19(2), 325–343. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11218-016 -9337-y
Putwain, D. W., Nicholson, L. J., & Kutuk, G. (2023). Warning students of the consequences of examination failure: An effective strategy for promoting student engagement?. Journal of Educational Psychology, 115(1), 36.
