Abstract
Existing research shows that high achievement boredom is correlated with a range of undesirable behavioral and personality variables and that the main antecedents of boredom are being over- or under-challenged. However, merely knowing that students are highly bored, without taking their achievement level into account, might be insufficient for drawing conclusions about students' behavior and personality. We, therefore, investigated if low- vs. high-achieving students who experience strong mathematics boredom show different behaviors and personality traits. The sample consisted of 1,404 German secondary school students (fifth to 10th grade, mean age 12.83 years, 52% female). We used self-report instruments to assess boredom in mathematics, behavioral (social and emotional problems, positive/negative affect, cognitive reappraisal, and expressive suppression), and personality variables (neuroticism and conscientiousness). In comparing highly bored students (more than one SD above M, n = 258) who were low vs. high achievers (as indicated by the math grade, n = 125 / n = 119), results showed that there were no mean level differences across those groups for all variables. In conclusion, our results suggest that high boredom can occur in both low- and high-achieving students and that bored low- and high-achievers show similar behaviors and personality profiles.
Highlights
Boredom is one of the most commonly experienced emotions in educational settings [1,2]
We formulated the following exploratory research question: Do low-achieving students with high boredom systematically differ in their self-reported behaviors and personality traits from high-achieving students with high boredom? We propose that an answer to this question enhances the scientific understanding of achievement boredom and offers practical implications, especially with respect to potentially dealing differentially with students who are bored due to being over- vs. under-challenged
Strong relations were found for conduct problems and hyperactivity (r between .52 and .56), and medium-sized relations were found for emotional symptoms, positive and negative affect, and neuroticism and conscientiousness (r between -.45 and .45)
Summary
Boredom is one of the most commonly experienced emotions in educational settings [1,2]. Bored students were shown to avoid schoolwork [6], to have attention problems, and reduced effort, self-regulation, and motivation [7,8,9]. They were shown to use less effective learning strategies [2,9]. An important and well-documented characteristic of boredom is that it can be triggered by both over- and under-challenge [21]. It is unclear whether boredom is severe when students are bored due to over-challenge
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