Abstracts - Earli

competencies for lifelong learning?’ Based on ideas of constructivism and situated learning,learning environments are developed, according the principles of Design-Based Research. Thebasis for these complex learning environments is twofold: the development of students is thecentral issue, and authentic tasks of the future jobs are part of the training. These learningenvironments are evaluated, with an experiment-control design, using questionnaires filled out bystudents (N=107). With T-Tests, correlation and regression analyses the data are analysed.Preliminary results show that motivation is positively influenced by these complex learningenvironments, and that there is a relation between work identity and characteristics of theselearning environments. In this paper the effects of the characteristics of the complex learningenvironments (called ‘job task learning environments’) on acquiring competencies will beelaborated on.Parental attitudes towards academic achievement and academic adjustment in adolescence:Effects of development.Francisco Peixoto, I. S. P. A., PortugalResearch on the relationships between family dynamics and school related variables shows anassociation between variables associated to parenting (as parental practices, attitudes orinvolvement in schooling) and school adjustment (academic achievement, academic self-conceptor motivation). In the present research we intend: 1) to analyse differences in parental attitudestowards academic performance in function of gender, school grade and socio-cultural background;2) to identify the relations between adolescent’s perceptions of parental attitudes towards academicperformance and self-esteem, academic self-concept, achievement motivation and academicperformance; 3) to test a model of the mediation of individual variables as motivationalorientations and self-concept in the relationship between the perception of parental attitudestowards academic performance and academic achievement. Participants were 756 studentsattending 7th, 9th and 12th grades. To collect data we used a self-concept scale (Peixoto &Almeida, 1999), a scale of motivational orientations (Skaalvik, 1997) and a scale to assess parentalattitudes towards academic performance (Antunes & Fontaine, 2003). Results show main effectsof grade and socio-cultural status on the adolescents’ perceptions of parental attitudes towardsacademic performance. Correlation analysis show positive associations between process centeredattitudes and academic self-concept, self-esteem, task orientation and academic achievement.Performance centered attitudes are negatively correlated with academic self-concept, self-esteemand academic achievement, and positively correlated with self-enhancing ego orientation and selfdefeatingego orientation. Separated correlation analysis by school grade show some differences inthe pattern of associations. Path analysis reveals different paths, in the relationship betweenparental attitudes and academic achievement, for process centered attitudes and for performancecentered attitudes. Results will be discussed in terms of possible implications for educationalpsychology.Reading activity in French by Croatian young learners – the first results of a longitudinalresearchVanda Marijanovic, Universite de Toulouse - Le Mirail, FranceThe aim of this study is to analyze the reading activity in French (L2) by Croatian children (9-11years) with respect to the development of the phonological awareness across the prism ofBaddeley’s phonological loop (1992). More precisely, we are interested in low-level mechanismsinvolved in reading a foreign language in order to explore throughout the productions of childrenwithin the "critical age", in which way the different learning strategies may influence the– 577 –