The elusive links between teachers’ teaching-related emotions, motivations, and self-regulation and students’ educational outcomes

Abstract

Educational psychologists have traditionally been far more interested in the psychology of students than teachers. However, interest in conceptualizing and examining teachers’ emotions, motivations, and self-regulation, as well as corresponding implications for the instructional process and students’ educational outcomes, has increased in recent years. Accumulating evidence suggests that these teaching-related psychological characteristics can shape teachers’ professional decision-making, work engagement, occupational well-being, and approaches to teaching. Theoretically grounded links with students’ educational outcomes, however, remain elusive. Articles and commentaries in this special issue examine possible reasons for these puzzling results and strive to lay the foundation for theoretical cross-fertilization and an integrated research agenda focusing on whether, when, how, and why teachers’ teaching-related emotions, motivations, and self-regulation may influence—and be influenced by—students’ educational outcomes.

Educational psychologists have traditionally been far more interested in the psychology of students than teachers. Relatively recently, however, interest in conceptualizing and examining teachers’ teaching-related emotions, motivations, and self-regulation has increased (Butler, 2007; Frenzel, 2014; Frenzel et al., 2018; Keller et al., 2016; Kramarski, 2018; Kunter et al., 2013; Lauermann, 2015; Watt & Richardson, 2008). This “teacher turn” rests on the reasonable assumptions that teachers’ affective-motivational and self-regulatory characteristics affect their professional decision-making, work engagement, occupational well-being, and instructional approaches, and thus presumably their students’ academic emotions, motivations, and learning as well. Indeed, these teaching-related psychological characteristics are consistently linked to relevant “within-teacher” variables, such as self-reported instructional practices, interest in professional development, planned persistence and engagement in teaching, and psychological well-being (e.g., Butler, 2007; Keller et al., 2016; Klassen et al., 2011; Lauermann, 2015; Watt & Richardson, 2008). Educational researchers further contend that teachers’ teaching-related emotions, motivations, and self-regulation are core elements of their professional competence and thus play a central role in shaping teachers’ goal- and task-specific choices and behaviors in the classroom (Kunter et al., 2013). However, commonly hypothesized associations with students’ educational outcomes, such as students’ academic emotions, motivations, and learning, remain elusive (e.g., Fauth et al., 2019; Frenzel et al., 2018; Heirweg et al., 2021; Zee et al., 2018).

Two key proposed pathways of influence are discussed in this special issue. The first and most commonly assumed is an indirect path via teachers’ instructional practices, communications in the classroom, and management of classroom processes. Teachers who (i) experience positive teaching-related emotions (e.g., enjoyment, less emotional exhaustion), (ii) have adaptive motivational beliefs and orientations (e.g., a sense of self-efficacy, self-determination in the classroom, less work avoidance), and (iii) (self-)regulate their teaching behaviors effectively so they can attain their instructional goals (e.g., plan, monitor, and evaluate their teaching tasks and goals) are likely to use high-quality instructional practices, invest effort and persist in the face of difficulty, attend to students’ diverse educational needs, and thus support students’ academic success. The second path, which assumes comparatively more direct effects, focuses on the mere contagion of teachers’ emotions (e.g., the transmission of enthusiasm to students; Frenzel et al., 2018; Gaspard & Lauermann, 2021) and role model effects (e.g., the modeling of self-regulation strategies, Kramarski, 2018; the projection of confidence in the classroom, Miller et al., 2017). Reciprocal links between teachers’ psychological characteristics and students’ educational outcomes are also possible (cf., Holzberger et al., 2013) so that these two pathways of influence are likely bidirectional.

However, relatively few studies to date have examined these pathways systematically, and the available evidence is mixed, with some studies reporting positive links with students’ educational outcomes but others null or even negative relations (e.g., Frenzel et al., 2018; Heirweg et al., 2021; Lauermann, 2015; Lawson et al., 2019; Zee et al., 2018; Zee & Koomen, 2016). These inconsistent and sometimes puzzling results call for a critical review and analysis of existing evidence, proposed conceptual links, and potential mediating or moderating factors. Accordingly, this special issue features a synthesis of current research on teachers’ psychological characteristics and their associations with student outcomes. The four articles focus on teachers’ emotions (Frenzel et al., 2021/this issue), teaching-related competence beliefs (e.g., self-efficacy; Lauermann & ten Hagen, 2021/this issue), other motivations for teaching (e.g., self-determination and achievement goals; Bardach & Klassen, 2021/this issue), and self-regulation in the classroom (Kramarski & Heaysman, 2021/this issue). Each article discusses conceptual questions that must be addressed to advance our understanding of whether, when, how, and why different facets of teachers’ affective-motivational and self-regulatory characteristics may affect students, as well as methodological challenges and limitations that have plagued existing research. Furthermore, this special issue strives to provide a platform for the exchange of ideas across the fields of teacher emotion, motivation, and self-regulation research and concludes with two commentaries that discuss relevant conceptual intersections, key blindspots, and avenues for future research (Gill, 2021/this issue and Pekrun, 2021/this issue).

Research on teacher emotions, motivations, and self-regulation: Challenges and open questions

Until about a decade ago, teachers’ psychological characteristics—in particular, their teaching-related emotions, motivations, and self-regulation—and corresponding implications for teachers and students were largely overlooked in educational research (e.g., Butler, 2007; Frenzel et al., 2018; Kramarski, 2018; Lauermann, 2015; Watt & Richardson, 2008; Woolfolk Hoy, 2008). Note that we use the general term “psychological characteristics” as shorthand, but we do not mean to convey teachers’ teaching-related emotions, motivations, and self-regulation are fixed traits. Rather, these features are typically situational, context-specific, and in principle malleable. Whereas systematic, theory-driven, and well-established literatures have focused on the antecedents and implications of students’ academic emotions, motivations, and self-regulation in the classroom, analogous research on teachers’ psychological characteristics is still comparatively scarce. To illustrate this discrepancy, we performed a basic search of studies listed in the databases PsycINFO and ERIC that included keywords of central interest for this special issue and that referenced either students, teachers, or both.¹ About 87% of the identified studies referenced students, yet only 40% mentioned teachers (an examination of the overlap of studies indicates that 60% mentioned only students, 27% both students and teachers, and 13% only teachers). Our findings were similar when we limited our search to the abstract (85% mentioned students, 39% teachers) or the title of each study (73% mentioned students, 35% teachers). A similar discrepancy emerged for publications in Educational Psychologist (general search: 90% vs. 37% mentioned students vs. teachers, respectively; abstracts: 89% vs. 38%; titles: 94% vs. 10%). Furthermore, research on teachers and teaching has often focused on the question of what types of teaching practices and processes are likely to benefit students (Berliner, 1983; Brophy, 2010). By comparison, research and theorizing about whether, when, how, and why teachers may pursue these practices, and how teachers’ underlying psychological processes may affect (or be affected by) students, is still in its infancy (e.g., for a review of research on teacher motivation, see Lauermann, 2015).

Theory-driven research on teaching-related emotions, motivations, and self-regulation has expanded over the past decade, but new challenges and open questions have emerged that motivate this special issue. Here, we highlight three overarching questions. First, as noted earlier, educational researchers often struggle to find significant associations between teachers’ psychological characteristics (and corresponding practices) and students’ educational outcomes (e.g., for teacher enjoyment, see Frenzel et al., 2018; for teachers’ self-regulation, see Heirweg et al., 2021; for teacher self-efficacy, see Zee et al., 2018). These inconsistent results beg the question: Why are theoretically grounded associations with student outcomes so elusive and—relatedly—what role do teachers’ affective-motivational and self-regulatory characteristics play in shaping teachers’ professional competence and teaching effectiveness? Identifying the intersections between research on teachers’ psychological characteristics, professional competence, and teaching effectiveness is essential for developing an integrated research agenda that can advance our understanding of the effects of teachers and teaching on students.

Second, evidence on theorized teacher-student associations is particularly mixed when researchers attempt to link teachers’ self-reported emotions, motivations, and self-regulation with student-rated rather than teacher- or in some cases observer-rated classroom processes and outcomes. Notably, numerous studies show that the correlations between teachers’, students’, and external observers’ ratings of key proposed mediators, such as teachers’ instructional quality, are typically low-to-moderate at best (Fauth, Göllner, et al., 2020; Fauth, Wagner, et al., 2020; Kunter & Baumert, 2006). Accordingly, articles in this special issue ask: Do discrepant teacher-student-observer ratings of relevant classroom processes and outcomes contribute to the elusive links between teachers’ psychological characteristics, instructional practices, and student outcomes? And, whose perspective matters most for what type of outcome? If classroom variables such as instructional quality mediate the effects of teachers on their students’ educational outcomes, then discrepant teacher-student perceptions of these classroom variables may result in inconsistent links between teachers’ psychological characteristics and students’ educational outcomes (e.g., Lauermann & ten Hagen, 2021/this issue). All articles in this special issue, therefore, explicitly consider rater-specific effects.

Finally, pervasive methodological challenges may hamper our understanding of the effects of teachers and their teaching on students. These include the preponderance of cross-sectional and descriptive/correlational research, inappropriate analytical procedures (e.g., failure to differentiate teacher-, class-, and student-level effects; Zee et al., 2018), as well as insufficient sample sizes of teachers and classes, and thus potentially insufficient statistical power for complex analyses of teacher- and class-level effects. An important question is, therefore: What types of methodological challenges and limitations should be considered in the interpretation of available evidence on the elusive links with student outcomes? In the following sections, we briefly discuss each of these three overarching questions, explain why we believe that these questions are important for moving this research field forward, and conclude with an outlook for the special issue.

What role do teacher emotions, motivations, and self-regulation play in shaping teachers’ professional competence and teaching effectiveness?

Conceptual and empirical analyses of teachers’ affective-motivational and self-regulatory characteristics—reviewed and discussed in this special issue—typically focus on process questions such as whether, when, how, and why teachers engage in alternative courses of action that can benefit, or in some cases thwart, students’ academic success and well-being (e.g., for teacher enjoyment, see: Frenzel et al., 2018; competence beliefs: Klassen et al., 2011; self-regulation: Kramarski, 2018; Heirweg et al., 2021; motivations: Butler, 2007; Lauermann, 2015). These questions are important because teaching involves complex and autonomous decision-making in nonroutine contexts and for nonroutine tasks (Kunter et al., 2013; Praetorius et al., 2018). Examples include teachers’ decision-making regarding the distribution of limited resources such as instructional time and effort toward different and often competing teaching tasks, as well as the planning, selection, implementation, and evaluation of alternative instructional strategies that are contingent on students’ changing educational needs, classroom behaviors, and outcomes. Importantly, due to the complex and interpersonal nature of teaching, the associations between teachers’ decision-making, behaviors, and student outcomes are not deterministic and are typically situation- and context-specific (Brophy, 2010).

Teachers’ professional competence enables them to manage this complex instructional process effectively and thus contributes to desirable educational outcomes in the classroom (Blömeke & Delaney, 2014; Kunter et al., 2013). Accordingly, educational researchers conceptualize teachers’ teaching-related emotions, motivations, and self-regulation as core elements of their professional competence, in addition to other important facets such as teachers’ professional knowledge and teaching skills. For instance, Kunter et al. (2013) found that math teachers’ affective-motivational characteristics, such as their enthusiasm for teaching, emerged as a stronger predictor of students’ subject-specific motivation than was an assessment of teachers’ knowledge about how to teach math. Teachers’ instructional quality was a mediating factor (e.g., teacher- and student-rated classroom management). Similarly, Fauth et al. (2019) found that teachers’ confidence in their teaching capability (i.e., self-efficacy) was a comparatively more potent predictor of elementary students’ subject-specific interest and learning gains than was an assessment of teachers’ knowledge about how to teach relevant content in science. Teacher enthusiasm failed to predict students’ learning gains in this study but was positively related to students’ subject-specific interest. Thus, in addition to teachers’ professional knowledge and teaching skills, teachers’ emotional, motivational, and self-regulatory characteristics are presumed to play an important role in shaping various indicators of successful teaching, including students’ academic outcomes. However, as the articles in this special issue demonstrate, the unique or joint contributions of these teaching-related psychological characteristics to students’ educational outcomes, as well as potential mediating processes, are far from clear. Accordingly, this line of research—albeit promising—is still developing and is not yet well established.

Teachers’ psychological characteristics also play a central role in the so-called process-product paradigm of teaching effectiveness (Creemers & Kyriakides, 2015). An important cornerstone in educational effectiveness research has been a notable shift from analyses of the personal characteristics of effective teachers toward investigations of classroom processes that characterize effective teaching (Brophy, 2010; Creemers & Kyriakides, 2015). For instance, educational researchers have identified three generic dimensions of instructional quality as a means to describe high-quality classroom processes (Praetorius et al., 2018): (i) classroom management refers to teachers’ effectiveness in organizing and orchestrating the instructional process in a way that minimizes classroom disruptions and maximizes instructional time; (ii) cognitive activation refers to instructional practices that activate and elicit student thinking about content; and (iii) student support captures teachers’ attentiveness to students’ socio-emotional and learning needs (sometimes labeled learning support or emotional support). These three dimensions, along with other conceptually related approaches to teaching (e.g., autonomy-supportive, mastery-oriented, or student-focused practices), are often conceptualized as a mediator between teachers’ emotions, motivations, and self-regulation and students’ educational outcomes. The evidence, however, is somewhat mixed (Butler & Shibaz, 2014; Fauth et al., 2019; Kunter et al., 2013; Lauermann & Berger, 2021; Schiefele & Schaffner, 2015).

Accordingly, a shared goal for all articles in this special issue is to review and examine not only presumed outcomes but also potential mediating processes between teachers’ emotions, motivations, and self-regulation and their students’ educational outcomes, in search of the “lost signal” between teachers’ psychological characteristics and student outcomes (see Bardach & Klassen, 2021/this issue). Notably, whereas teaching effectiveness research predominantly studies implications of teachers and teaching for student achievement, current research on teachers’ professional competence and psychological characteristics is also concerned with other outcomes and process variables such as students’ motivation, self-regulation, and well-being. This broader range of outcomes and process variables is considered in this special issue.

Finally, teaching effectiveness researchers have called attention to the need for theory-driven, evidence-based research on teachers’ professional development that can build on available knowledge about teaching effectiveness, bridge theory and practice, and thus support both teachers’ and students’ successful functioning in the classroom (Creemers & Kyriakides, 2015). Kramarski and Heaysman (2021/this issue) answer this call by presenting a conceptual framework and preliminary supporting evidence for a professional development model designed to support teachers’ self-regulated teaching and learning, and thus students’ self-regulated learning and achievement as well. These authors emphasize the critical importance of targeting multiple components of teachers’ professional competence in professional development settings, which are needed to support not only teachers’ implementation of adaptive instructional practices but also student learning. Key components include teachers’ knowledge about self-regulation, their teaching skills, as well as teachers’ motivation and own self-regulation as they strive to attain desirable teaching goals and tasks. Furthermore, all articles featured in this special issue call for intensified research efforts focusing on relevant classroom processes (e.g., teachers’ decision-making, instructional adaptations, and persistence toward relevant goals) in addition to their outcomes (e.g., student motivation and achievement).

Do theorized associations with classroom processes and student outcomes vary across different raters’ perspectives?

Much of the available evidence on the antecedents and consequences of teachers’ emotions, motivations, and self-regulation is limited to a single perspective, typically that of teachers (Klassen et al., 2011; Kramarski, 2018; Lauermann, 2015). The paucity of studies focusing on associations with student-reported processes and outcomes is striking. This observation is of critical importance for this special issue because, as the featured articles show, the associations between teacher characteristics and classroom processes or outcomes tend to be stronger when all variables are assessed from the same rather than different perspectives (e.g., Frenzel et al., 2021/this issue; Lauermann & ten Hagen, 2021/this issue). Furthermore, teachers’, students’, and observers’ perceptions of the instructional process are often discordant, for instance, due to different access to pertinent information, the ability to directly observe versus the need to infer various aspects of the instructional process, the idiosyncratic experiences of different teachers and students, and self-serving biases (Fauth, Göllner, et al., 2020; Fauth, Wagner, et al., 2020). Therefore, analyses of the potential implications of teacher characteristics for students’ educational outcomes and presumed mediating processes require a careful consideration of which perspectives are most pertinent and necessary to answer a given research question.

Substantial agreement between different sources of information, such as teacher and student ratings, is often interpreted as evidence of the validity of these ratings (Fauth et al., 2020). Lack of agreement, on the other hand, calls for a systematic analysis of different raters’ perspectives. In research on teacher emotions, motivations, and self-regulation and their links with instructional quality, researchers address discrepant perspectives by (i) trying to identify the most appropriate source of information for a particular aspect of the instructional process (Fauth et al., 2019; Kunter et al., 2013), (ii) comparing and contrasting different perspectives and their complementary predictive effects (Holzberger et al., 2013; Kunter et al., 2008), or (iii) trying to statistically extract shared variance among different raters’ perspectives (Gaspard & Lauermann, 2021; Zee & Koomen, 2017).

For instance, for the three generic dimensions of instructional quality mentioned in the previous section (i.e., classroom management, cognitive activation, and student support), several studies have reported high agreement between teacher and student ratings for classroom management but comparatively lower levels of agreement for cognitive activation and student support (Fauth et al., 2020; Kunter & Baumert, 2006). Kunter et al. (2013), therefore, used different raters’ perspectives to assess each of these dimensions. These authors used a combined score of teachers’ and students’ ratings of classroom disruptions to assess classroom management, expert ratings of instructional materials to assess cognitive activation, and class-aggregated student ratings of learning supports and caring teacher-student interactions to assess student support. All three dimensions were weakly correlated with student achievement in math, but only the two student-rated or mixed teacher-student-rated dimensions predicted students’ subject-specific motivation (see Fauth et al., 2019, for a similar approach). Importantly, even when teachers’ psychological characteristics predict ratings of instructional quality, these ratings do not consistently predict student outcomes, depending on which dimension and whose perspective—that of teachers, students, or observers—is considered (e.g., for teachers’ achievement goals, see Butler & Shibaz, 2014; for teaching self-efficacy and enthusiasm, see Fauth et al., 2019; Kunter et al., 2013).

By and large, teachers’ self-reported emotions, motivations, and self-regulation have emerged as a stronger predictor of relevant teacher-rated variables, whereas student-rated instructional processes are both a more proximal and a stronger predictor of student outcomes (Butler & Shibaz, 2014; Lauermann & Berger, 2021; Schiefele & Schaffner, 2015). Observer ratings of instructional quality produce mixed associations with student outcomes, perhaps because teachers’ and students’ psychological processes are only partially observable and because observers are not immune to rating biases (Kaiser et al., 2015; Strong et al., 2011). Resolving the sources of discordant teacher-student ratings of relevant instructional processes, therefore, is likely to be crucial for understanding the elusive links between teachers’ emotions, motivations, and self-regulation and students’ educational outcomes (e.g., Lauermann & ten Hagen, 2021/this issue).

Which methodological challenges and limitations should be taken into account?

Articles featured in this special issue highlight a need not only for systematic, theory-driven research on teachers’ emotions, motivations, and self-regulation but also a need to overcome pervasive methodological limitations that plague the existing literature. We must note that we focus primarily on quantitative research because it is the predominant research paradigm in the reviewed studies. This research paradigm has some strengths but also critical blindspots, as discussed in the commentaries by Pekrun (2021/this issue) and Gill (2021/this issue). Here, we draw attention to three key limitations.

First, the situation- and context-specific nature of teachers’ emotions, motivations, and self-regulation remains largely neglected in empirical research, and—with very few exceptions—there is a paucity of research focusing on within-teacher variance in these characteristics (e.g., Bardach & Klassen, 2021/this issue; Frenzel et al., 2021/this issue; commentary by Pekrun, 2021/this issue). Yet, there is some evidence that both teachers’ emotions such as enjoyment and enthusiasm for teaching (Gaspard & Lauermann, 2021) and their competence beliefs (Raudenbush et al., 1992; Zee et al., 2018) vary substantially between students, classes, and lessons. Similarly, teachers’ self-regulation is by its very nature at least in part goal- and task-specific (Kramarski, 2018). Assessments that are sensitive to situational and contextual influences, e.g., student-, class-, and subject-specific assessments of teachers’ psychological characteristics, seem to be better aligned with student outcomes, which are also typically student-, class-, and subject-specific (e.g., teachers’ student-specific self-efficacy and student achievement; Zee et al., 2018). Predictors and outcomes should thus be assessed with similar levels of granularity to ensure a closer alignment.

Second, and relatedly, mediating processes such as instructional quality are often attributed to teachers’ actions, whereas other sources of variance such as class-specific effects are overlooked (Fauth, Göllner, et al., 2020; Fauth, Wagner, et al., 2020). Recently, however, researchers demonstrated that some student-rated dimensions of instructional quality were fairly consistent over time (e.g., classroom management), not only when students rated the same teacher but also when the same students rated different teachers (Fauth, Wagner, et al., 2020, Study 1). Furthermore, in a sample of relatively inexperienced teachers, Fauth, Wagner, et al. (2020, Study 2) reported greater variability in the three basic dimensions of instructional quality between different classes taught by the same teacher than between different teachers. Clearly, students’ and possibly observers’ ratings of instructional quality are attributable not only to characteristics of the teacher but also to characteristics of the class and to teacher-student interactions. Appropriately partitioning the variance in teaching quality assessments that is attributable to the teacher’s actions rather than factors external to the teacher is a necessary step toward understanding the implications of teachers’ psychological characteristics for the instructional process. Observations and ratings of the same teacher across different classes and contexts are needed for this purpose.

Finally, much of the available evidence is cross-sectional, perspective-specific, descriptive/correlational, and has focused only on unidirectional associations (e.g., teacher effects on students) thus neglecting potentially reciprocal influences (e.g., Frenzel et al., 2021/this issue). More diverse research designs that are suitable for analyses of reciprocal paths are needed.

Outlook

Over the past decade, there has been increasing interest among educational psychologists in the potential influences of teachers’ teaching-related emotions, motivations, and self-regulation on students and the instructional process more broadly. However, systematic research testing these associations is still relatively scarce and evidence that does exist has produced unanticipated mixed results. Accordingly, the four articles in this special issue present conceptual frameworks that explicate the presumed links between teachers’ teaching-related emotions (Frenzel et al. 2021/this issue), competence beliefs (Lauermann & ten Hagen, 2021/this issue), other motivations for teaching (Bardach & Klassen, 2021/this issue), and self-regulation (Kramarski & Heaysman, 2021/this issue) and important classroom processes and outcomes. These include teachers’ instructional quality, teacher-student interactions, and students’ academic emotions, motivations, learning behaviors, and achievement. The authors note that many of the proposed conceptual links are underresearched, implicitly assumed but not explicitly tested, or entirely overlooked in empirical research. Their proposed frameworks thus outline a research agenda for future studies. Jointly, the authors ask: (i) whether teachers’ affective-motivational and self-regulatory characteristics should influence student outcomes, (ii) which outcomes they should influence, and (iii) when, how, and why they do so: what are the proposed mechanisms, or paths of influence.

The authors note that the answer to these questions depends on the perspective from which the links between teachers’ characteristics, classroom processes, and student outcomes are studied—i.e., that of teachers, students, or external observers. Lauermann and ten Hagen (2021/this issue) and Frenzel et al. (2021/this issue) underscore the importance of examining both teachers’ and students’ ratings of instructional processes and outcomes to better understand how they are related and when they are not. Kramarski and Heaysman (2021/this issue) and Bardach and Klassen (2021/this issue) also call for more observational studies based on video data in authentic instructional settings. Such data would allow for fine-grained analyses of (self-regulation) processes rather than focusing solely on outcomes such as student achievement.

Overcoming pervasive methodological challenges and limitations is also an important goal for future research. For instance, authors in this special issue express concerns about the field’s overreliance on self-report data (Bardach & Klassen, 2021/this issue; Kramarski & Heaysman et al., 2021/this issue), the predominant use of cross-sectional and correlational study designs that preclude causal inferences (Frenzel et al., 2021/this issue; Lauermann & ten Hagen, 2021/this issue), and the insufficient attention paid to situational and context-specific influences in current research (e.g., Kramarski & Heaysman, 2021/this issue; Pekrun, 2021/this issue). The commentaries further identify important blindspots of the quantitative research paradigm that prevails in the reviewed studies (Gill, 2021/this issue; Pekrun, 2021/this issue). The authors discuss potential alternatives such as multi-informant and multi-source research (e.g., including physiological assessments of teaching-related emotions, Frenzel et al., 2021/this issue; video analyses of classroom processes, Kramarski & Heaysman, 2021/this issue). They identify a need for more advanced research designs that capture both between- and within-teacher differences across educational contexts (Bardach & Klassen, 2021/this issue; Lauermann & ten Hagen, 2021/this issue; also see commentary by Perkun, 2021/this issue) and call for intensified efforts to develop and test theory-driven interventions and professional development (e.g., Kramarski & Heaysman, 2021/this issue; also see commentary by Gill, 2021/this issue).

Finally, the featured articles and commentaries consider influences on teachers’ psychological characteristics, including student and reciprocal teacher-student influences, asking if teachers’ psychological characteristics are relatively stable or malleable, and which kinds of educational contexts, interventions, and professional development settings might prove beneficial for teachers and their students. A better understanding of how to create emotionally and motivationally supportive environments for teachers is essential for enabling them to create such environments for students.

Acknowledgments

We thank the journal editors, Lisa Linnenbrink-Garcia and Jeffrey A. Greene, for their encouragement and guidance in preparing this special issue, and for their thoughtful feedback and support throughout the editorial process. We also thank all authors for their important contributions to the special issue, as well as all reviewers for their expertise and valuable feedback.

Notes

1 We used the search terms “(student* OR teacher*) AND (emotion* OR affect* OR enthus* OR anxiet* OR compet* OR effic* OR confid* OR self* OR attribut* OR locus* OR control* OR expect* OR goal* OR motivation* OR self-regulat* OR meta-cogn*)“ and compared our results with two separate searches including either an explicit reference to students “(student*)“ or teachers “(teacher*).“ Combined searches were included for comparison: “(student* AND teacher*),“ (student* NOT teacher*), and “(teacher* NOT student*).“ We also performed separate searches limited to abstracts and titles because search terms mentioned in these sections have particularly high relevance for the identified studies (all searches in PsycINFO and ERIC; September 22, 2021).