Can teachers’ need-supportive practices moderate the big-fish-little-pond effect? A quasi-experimental study with elementary school children

Abstract

The big-fish-little-pond effect (BFLPE) describes a multilevel phenomenon via which class-average levels of achievement act as a negative predictor of students’ academic self-concept (ASC), although their individual achievement level acts as a positive predictor of their ASC. In this quasi-experimental pretest–posttest study, we posited that a professional development program for teachers based on self-determination theory would moderate the BFLPE on French writing ASC among elementary school students. To test our hypothesis, we relied on three groups of students (n = 189–394) who were exposed to teachers who participated in the program at different moments, and one group of students (n = 190) who were exposed to teachers who did not participate in any professional development program. Doubly latent multilevel analyses were used to test the moderation hypothesis. At posttest, we observed a significant BFLPE for the control students while no significant BFLPE was observed for the other groups of students. These results suggest that this professional development program was able to protect students against the BFLPE. Promoting a learning context supportive of students’ psychological needs thus seem able to reduce the salience of social comparison processes involving the achievement levels of the whole class by reinforcing the focus on students’ own learning experiences. These results support previous research suggesting that positive teacher-student relationships might moderate the BFLPE. Finally, our findings provide insights regarding the pedagogical practices that can attenuate the negative effect of class-average levels of achievement on students’ writing ASC.