Editorial

Educational psychology research continues to make positive and substantial contributions to our understandings of learning, instruction and assessment (Alexander, 2017; Mayer, 2017) and Educational Psychology is committed strongly to making such contributions. As such, this issue adds important new insights by presenting a diverse set of quality studies, eight in all, focusing on cognition, self-efficacy, and teachers, and teaching from an international perspective.

What are the contributions and significance of these works?

Cognition and especially cognitive demand temper the ways individuals perform and achieve. In a novel approach, Zhu and Chen (2017) examine USA adolescents’ running performance and situational interest under different cognitive demand situations revealing that cognitive demand has a significant effect on both interest and running performance as long as the load is not too high or extraneous. Cognitive demand, in the context of judgements of learning (JOLS) and problem solving by Dutch adolescents, is investigated in an intricate study by Baars, van Gog, de Bruin, and Paas (2017) who provide various timings of JOLS, provision of practice problems and timing of practice problems in a problem-solving context offering different levels of complexity. Importantly, they show that practice problems reduce overconfidence in JOLS and increase regulatory accuracy. Incorporating JOLS into classroom learning is advocated.

Mathematics, as a cognitive task, is investigated by Park and Cho (2017) who take a developmental perspective on relationships between maths achievement and both number and length acuity in primary aged children in South Korea. Their contribution is by extending the current understanding, especially of length acuity, to children of older ages and focussing on various domains of maths such as geometry and applied problems rather than global achievement measures. Training children in acuity may bring additional benefits to learning in maths.

Assessing cognitive and intellectual development in young children has a long history. By applying Rasch analysis, Campbell and Bond (2017) psychometrically challenge the use of the commonly employed Goodenough-Harris Drawing Test (Harris, 1963). They importantly demonstrate from their sample of Australian children that an interval-level drawing continuum is possible and that a single drawing is as effective as multiple drawings in reliably measuring intellectual development in children. The findings provide new opportunities for figure drawing in educational and clinical settings.

Self-efficacy (Bandura, 1997) is explored in the context of coping strategies and procrastination in Chinese college students by Zhou and Kam (2017). In a well-analysed study, they examine the potential mediating role of cognitive and behavioural coping strategies between achievement goals, self-efficacy and reported procrastination. Their contribution is in showing that higher avoidance goals lead to avoidance behaviours which are likely to increase procrastination. Self-efficacy has a differential impact. Educators need to be aware of the correlates of procrastination.

To St Clair-Thompson et al. (2017) aspects of self-efficacy, especially confidence in abilities, are part of a larger construct of mental toughness (Clough, Earle, & Sewell, 2002). They comprehensively examine how various aspects of mental toughness relate to student concerns about transitioning to higher levels of schooling in the United Kingdom. A prime finding is that mental toughness, especially confidence in abilities is associated with lesser concerns about transition with adolescents, while at the undergraduate level, the findings are more generalised. Interventions aimed at developing mental toughness are advocated.

Teaching, Assessment and Learning are pivotal to the educative process and two studies focus on teachers and their approaches to instruction. In a comprehensive study of Canadian pre-service teachers, Daniels and Poth (2017) employ Achievement Goal Theory (Ames, 1992) to both learning and assessment, providing a unique picture of mastery and performance approaches to assessment, their links to approaches to instruction and conceptions of assessment. Their findings raise issues about teaching for integrated conceptions of assessment and instruction.

At the tertiary level, Zhang, Evans, and Postiglione (2017) also explore approaches to instruction but in concert with perceived university organisational commitment in elite Chinese universities. Not only do they provide quality psychometric support for the measures of instruction and commitment, they ably demonstrate, among other things, that environments that are seen to be supportive of occupational ambitions are predictive of conceptual change approaches to teaching. Organisational commitment, at least in the eyes of the academics, seems to matter.

What of the future? While each of the studies suggests future research endeavours, a number of important candidates for further research emerge. Prime among them is the need for longitudinal studies to further examine developmental dynamics and possible reciprocal relationships among variables across time (King & McInerney, 2016; Senko & Dawson, 2017). This is vital. A second candidate is the utilisation of more qualitative data such as observations and learning artefacts to complement self-report data (Daniels & Poth, 2017).

Before summarising, I would like to thank sincerely our reviewers whose critiques provided helpful advice to authors during the publication process. Also to be recognised are the tireless efforts of our Editorial team.

In summary, each of the above studies has not only made a significant contribution to our understandings about cognition (including metacognition), self-efficacy and related concepts, and teachers and teaching, but they have provided also a springboard to further investigations. I know that you will appreciate the rigour and insightfulness of the works in this issue.

Phillip J. Moore
[email protected]