Subject learning and teachers

Welcome to this issue of Educational Psychology. Here, you will find a diversity of quality studies from a variety of countries examining important issues in subject learning and teacher effects.

Let me first consider subject learning. While much has been learned about learning in language, mathematics and music (e.g. Arens et al., 2017; Dinehart, 2015; Mehr, 2014), the studies reported here extend considerably our understandings of these important school subjects.

For written language in alphabetic scripts which are read from left to right, many individual letters and numbers have an orientation, either to the left or right, often causing problems of reversals and mirror writing by youngsters. Fischer (2018) explores young children’s writing of digits and letters, showing among the findings that children’s reversals are more common in left-oriented digits.

In spoken English, stress placed on syllables is pivotal in communication (Arciuli, Monaghan, & Seva, 2010) as is the development of vocabulary (Neuman & Kaefer, 2018). For second language learners in the studies by Zhang, Meng, Fan, Ortega-Llebaria, and Leong (2018), knowledge of stress differentiation between nouns and verbs is explored, revealing, amongst their findings, that less advanced high school students are not as sensitive to stress typicality as advanced level students. Vocabulary acquisition in young children is vital for language development and is a key indicator of school success (Neuman & Kaefer, 2018). Lenhart, Lenhard, Vaahtoranta, and Suggate (2018) examine the effects of reading aloud and oral storytelling on vocabulary development, narrator behaviour and children’s attentiveness showing, among other findings, that story modality has very little impact on vocabulary development.

In Mathematics, Korhonen, Nyroos, Jonsson, and Eklöf (2018) explore the interplay between test anxiety and working memory in primary-aged children. Their findings demonstrate working memory capacity and test anxiety being related to various levels of mathematical processing complexity. The debilitating effect of higher anxiety allied to lower working memory on mathematics performance is also demonstrated.

For the subject area of Music, the roles of parents and the home environment have been shown to influence both interest and competence in music (Mehr, 2014). Tai, Phillipson, and Phillipson (2018) examine parents’ perceptions of home support revealing that five factors reliably and validly measure such perceptions while distinguishing between parents of differing abilities.

Let me now turn to teacher effects. The essential role of teachers in student learning has been well documented (e.g. Hattie, 2008). Here, however, the focus is on teacher–student relationships and the context of teachers’ work. Zhu, Urhahne, and Rubie-Davies (2018) comprehensive, multidimensional longitudinal study of primary grade students and their teachers reinforces the self-fulfilling prophecy (Brophy & Good, 1970) with negative teacher perceptions and treatment leading to poorer achievement and less adaptive motivation. Continuing this line of work, Ma, Du, Hau, and Liu (2018) employ a large sample of high school students in order to demonstrate the vital role of positive teacher–student relationships on student self-efficacy, learning strategies and subsequent achievement.

Teachers work in structured, organised environments with associated norms and expectations (Keller, Chang, Becker, Goetz, & Frenzel, 2014). Lee and van Vlack (2018) assess the effects of teacher commitment to such organisational norms on enjoyment/frustration and subsequent self-efficacy related to classroom management. A major finding is that a deeper commitment to norms is related to greater satisfaction and higher levels of classroom management self-efficacy.

All the studies reported in this Issue raise implications for educational practice, many noting such implications within their works. An additional, noteworthy implication focusing on teachers stems from the recent quality work by Jennings et al. (2017) that demonstrates professional development of teachers can positively influence teachers’ social and emotional competence which in turn impacts classroom interactions.

Regarding future research, I continue to press for more longitudinal studies and it is pleasing to see longitudinal work reported in this Issue. One contextual factor requiring further exploration is the continued impact of new technologies. For example, with ever-increasing use of the keyboard in writing (Dinehart, 2015), what is the impact on handwriting development, reversals and mirror writing?

Finally, I would like to recognise the worthy contributions of our independent reviewers and editorial staff in facilitating the publication of the works reported here.

I know you will appreciate the quality, significance and contributions of the studies reported in this Issue.

Phillip J Moore