News
At the 2025 Academic Ceremony of Justus Liebig University Giessen (JLU), Dr Valentin Emslander was awarded the Wolfgang Mittermaier Prize. The prize, worth 3,000 euros, was awarded to him in recognition of his outstanding achievements in academic teaching. The nomination for this prize came from teacher training and psychology students who had attended his seminars ‘Determinants of School Performance: Motivation and Emotion’ and ‘Basic Concepts of Educational Psychology’.
The Wolfgang Mittermaier Prize is awarded every two years to outstanding lecturers in departments 01 to 06. The Erwin Stein Foundation awards the prize in memory of Prof. Dr Wolfgang Mittermaier, who taught as a professor of criminal law in Giessen from 1903 to 1933 and was particularly committed to supporting his Jewish students. The award focuses on promoting critical thinking, academic responsibility and the strengthening of tolerance and international understanding. Students not only have the right to nominate candidates for the prize but are also represented on the board of trustees.
Dr. Valentin Emslander receives award for his doctoral thesis
On 30 September, Dr Valentin Emslander was awarded the Doctoral Thesis Prize by the Educational Psychology Section of the German Psychological Society. Dr Emslander has been working at Justus Liebig University Giessen since 2024 as a senior lecturer in the Individual Differences and (Digital) Learning research group (Prof. Dr Lisa Bardach). He received the award for his outstanding doctoral thesis entitled “An Exploration of Factors Driving School Success in Diverse Students Through Meta-Analytic and Value-Added Modelling”.
The award jury highlighted the exceptionally high quality of the work: “The level of methodology and content presented here is nothing short of breathtaking for a young researcher, with qualitative methods being applied alongside extremely sophisticated quantitative analyses.” The four articles, together with the synopsis, would therefore have had the potential, had they been presented in book form rather than as a collection, “to fill three excellent doctoral theses”. The award jury also praised the exemplary use of open science practices.
In his doctoral thesis, Dr. Emslander researched effective psychological teaching strategies in the context of Luxembourg’s culturally diverse and multilingual student body. He also examined key factors influencing academic success, such as the quality of teaching, cognitive functions, and the relationship between teachers and pupils. Key findings included the importance of positive teacher-pupil relationships for academic success, as well as the link between executive functions and mathematical abilities in pre-school children.
The prize is worth €1,500 and is awarded every two years. Congratulations, Dr. Emslander!
Keynote at International Conference on Motivation (ICM)
Titel
Revisiting intellectual investment trait theories in educational contexts
Abstract
Intellectual investment trait theories posit that mutually reinforcing relationships exist between intellectual investment traits (selected motivational characteristics and personality traits such as interest, curiosity, need for cognition, or openness) and cognitive abilities. In this talk, I discuss recent research revisiting intellectual investment trait theories in educational contexts. First, I will present longitudinal evidence on reciprocal relations between intellectual investment traits and cognitive abilities in adolescence. I will discuss theoretical and methodological extensions that take into account the day-to-day dynamic interplay between investment states and cognitive performance states, thus moving from intellectual investment trait theory to dynamic intellectual investment trait and state theory. I will also refer to emotional experiences and argue that emotions play an important role for shaping reciprocities between cognition and investment traits, and, therefore, for our understanding of cognitive and motivational development. Then, I will cover research that aims to drill deeper into the mechanisms that underlie links between investment traits and markers of cognitive performance, focusing on behavioral traces of learning and information-seeking (e.g., online information search behavior, gaze patterns while individuals solve cognitive tasks, or engagement patterns derived from educational apps).
https://icm2024.unibe.ch/program/invited_speakers/index_eng.html