Perceived competence and coping strategies

Competence and perceived competence—or the extent to which individuals see themselves as competent—are central to the understanding of achievement motivation (Elliot et al., 2017). In the academic setting, students’ and teachers’ perceived competence has typically been conceptually operationalised in such constructs as self-efficacy, self-concept, or perceived satisfaction of the need for competence (e.g. Basarkod et al., 2022; Klassen & Tze, 2014; Lohbeck et al., 2018; Ryan & Deci, 2017), and has been empirically studied in its associations with key self-regulatory processes (e.g. goal setting, goal orientation, meta-cognition, effort regulation, causal attribution) and outcomes (e.g. skill acquisition, knowledge gain, job retention) (e.g. Freire et al., 2020; Ziegler & Opdenakker, 2018).

Insofar as perceived competence promotes productive self-regulation, it is also closely connected with the coping strategies that individuals deploy and the degree to which their effort to cope with challenges and adversity succeeds. Indeed, the current issue comprises six high quality papers that collectively revolve around this theme. Specifically, these papers report on studies that focus on either perceived competence or coping strategies, or both; involve samples of either students or teachers; adopt either a (quasi-)experimental or non-experimental design; and traverse across culturally diverse contexts and cultures (France, Germany, South Korea, the United States). Each of these papers is outlined below.

In an experimental study with South Korean undergraduates, Kim et al. (2021) examined how self-efficacy for self-regulated learning and autonomy-supportive contexts predicted perceived temptation to engage in alternative tasks, affect, and performance. Their findings showed that less efficacious students perceived an increase in temptation over time, whereas more efficacious students perceived a decrease in temptation over time. Importantly, providing opportunities to choose or adding relevance to the task—two key elements of autonomy-supportive practices (see Reeve & Cheon, 2021)—yielded lower temptation, higher positive affect, and lower negative affect of the students with lower self-efficacy for self-regulated learning.

Moving to Germany, Berner et al. (2021) conducted an experimental study to investigate how 5-to-7-year-old children’s basic arithmetic skills and mathematic self-concept could be promoted through provision of specific or unspecific feedback during an interactive game session. While the children in both feedback groups experienced greater gains in the acquisition of their basic arithmetic skills than those in the control group, the children in the specific feedback group showed even greater gains than those in the unspecific feedback group.

In a study of K-12 teachers in the Midwestern United States, Shim et al. (2021) examined how perceived satisfaction or frustration of competence, autonomy, and relatedness needs was related to job satisfaction, intention to leave the job, and flow teaching experience. In support of the Dual-Process Model (Jang et al., 2016), Shim et al. found the different predictive utility of the perceived satisfaction (vs. frustration) for each of the three needs. With a few exceptional findings, the observed pattern suggested that perceived needs satisfaction was a positive predictor of positive outcomes (job satisfaction, teaching flow) whereas perceived need frustration was a negative predictor of these outcomes. The reverse was true for teachers’ intention to leave as a negative outcome.

Teaching is known to be a highly stressful profession. In a study of German teachers, Mikus and Teoh (2021) sought to understand how teachers cope with stress and how this affects their well-being. Underpinned by the classic Transactional Model of Stress and Coping (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984), they investigated how teachers’ psychological capital (self-efficacy, hope, resilience, optimism) related to future-oriented coping (proactive and preventive) and work-related well-being (job satisfaction and work engagement). Their analyses showed that optimism and self-efficacy predicted proactive coping, and hope predicted preventive coping. Proactive coping, in turn, mediated the relationships between self-efficacy and work engagement as well as between optimism and work engagement, whereas preventive coping was not a significant mediator. The results imply that fostering the psychological capital attributes and proactive coping through interventions can be a valuable avenue to nurture teacher well-being.

In another intervention study, Parada and Verlhiac (2021) examined the effectiveness of a growth mindset intervention in promoting French first-year undergraduates’ proactive coping, mastery goals, effort attribution, and academic performance. The intervention sought to highlight that competence can be improved with persistent effort. Their findings showed that the growth mindset of students in the intervention group was higher than those in the control group immediately after the intervention was completed. Further, the students’ growth mindset was also found to be positively related to effort attribution, mastery goals, proactive coping, and academic achievement.

In addition to the stress induced by the demands of their profession, teachers may also experience stress or strain due to school noise. This is the focus of the study by Tomek and Urhahne (2022) with teachers in Germany. Latent profile analysis identified four groups of teachers who differed according to their commitment and resilience levels: the healthy group, the unambitious group, the type-A group, and the burnout type. The four groups, in turn, were also found to differ in terms of their threat appraisal, noise stress, voice and hearing problems as well as noise-related burnout. Compared to the healthy group, the types-A and burnout groups reported higher levels of stress. In general, teachers of the ‘risk’ types seemed to be more sensitive to school noise than teachers of the healthy type.

To conclude, the six empirical papers in this issue have ‘nudged’ us to seriously think about the educational policy and practice that seek to promote students’ or teachers’ performance and well-being through enhancement of their perceived competence and equipping them with adaptive coping strategies. Each of the papers has gone through a rigorous and iterative process of review. For this, I am sincerely thankful to the numerous reviewers who had shared their expertise and provided their valuable inputs to bring these papers to their highest quality. I am also grateful to the editorial team who has always collegially worked together to facilitate the review process of submitted papers. I trust you, the readers, will find this issue insightful!