Achievement Imagery of Schoolbooks and Academic Performance in Elementary School

Based on empirical studies, we expected the achievement imagery of elementary textbooks to be positively related to academic performance in elementary school. To test this, within the framework of two international large-scale educational assessments in fourth grade (TIMSS and PIRLS), we asked math and language teachers to report which textbooks they currently use, and the achievement imagery of these books was coded. A positive relationship between achievement imagery of textbooks and math achievement was found. This supports our expectation even the effect was small. For reading achievement, the relationship was positive, but revealed not to be significant. Overall, the results can be regarded as a further indication that achievement imagery is an important factor in academic achievement. Beyond these analyses, findings revealed that the use of certain mathematics textbooks was associated with higher or lower academic achievement.