The Relationship between Academic Demands, Academic Resources, Academic Emotions, and Classroom Attention Difficulties: A Focus on the Daily Diary Method

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between academic demands, academic resources, academic emotions, and classroom attention difficulties at both the within-individual and between-individual levels. The study involved 179 elementary school students in the 5th and 6th grades who participated in a repeated-measures survey over a 10-day period. Mplus 8.0 was used to test model fit and mediation effects. The research model, which included a direct path from academic demands and resources to classroom attention difficulties, was compared with a competing model that excluded the direct path, and the research model provided a better fit to the data. At the within-individual level, the experience of boredom fully mediated the relationship between daily academic demands and classroom attention difficulties. At the between-individual level, academic resources and academic demands led to classroom attention difficulties only through learning-related boredom. The findings suggest that it is important to consider intra-individual variability when identifying emotional or behavioral problems in an academic context, and that addressing classroom boredom, along with environmental factors such as academic demands and resources, is necessary to mitigate attention difficulties in elementary school students.