Advanced-placement students outperformed vocational-school students on most learner characteristics, with large effect sizes except interest¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · causal r2 · q3 · i3 large
Currency · newest study 2025 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q3 i3 APS students significantly outperformed VS students on prior knowledge, general reasoning, sustained attention, and visual-spatial ability (large effects, d = 1.20 to 1.00) and on self-concept (medium effect, d = 0.46), but not on interest. → Sarah I. Hofer 2025

Evidence¶

Sarah I. Hofer 2025¶

Sarah I. Hofer, Frank Reinhold. (2025). Scaffolding of learning activities: Aptitude-treatment-interaction effects in math?. Learning and Instruction 99 (2025) 102177. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.learninstruc.2025.102177

q3 · i3 · causal · r2

Welch t-tests comparing the two school tracks in the sample of 332 6th-graders showed large standardized differences (d = 1.20 to 1.00) on cognitive characteristics and d = 0.46 on self-concept; interest did not differ significantly (d = 0.01, p = .94).

"According to Welch t-tests, APS students outperformed VS students significantly in terms of prior domain knowledge, d = 1.20, general reasoning, d = 1.19, sustained attention, d = 1.04, and visual- spatial ability, d = 1.00, with large effect sizes, and in terms of self- concept, d = 0.46, with a medium-sized effect (Table 4)."

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• Dynamic visualizations compensate vocational-school students with low general reasoning when learning with analogies — related
• Hypothesized ATI effects of individualized explanations based on typical mistakes were not supported; exploratory benefits emerged for high-resource vocational-school students — related
• Scaffolds yielded minimal effects for advanced-placement school students — related
• Adaptive task difficulty compensates low interest but not low self-concept among vocational-school students during repeated practice — related