Editorial

How can we render our schools a better place for our students? How could we help them become joyful learners and higher achievers? In this issue, the authors of six articles try to shed some light on these fundamental questions. Through their research, they examine how quality of learning environment (as indexed by teacher-student and peer-to-peer quality of relationships), motivational variables (such as self-efficacy beliefs, growth mindset, and achievement goal pursuit), and trait-like characteristics (as reflected by temperament, emotion regulation skills, gender, and family background) relate to desired educational outcomes. Outcomes that include, but are not limited to, adaptive learning behaviours, academic achievement, and well-being.

In the first article of this issue, Schwab et al. (2022) showed that teachers’ beliefs regarding how well they could use effective instructional strategies towards each particular student, how well they kept that student sufficiently engaged, and whether they could provide sufficient emotional support towards her or him predicted that student’s academic self-concept. Remarkably, teachers and students partly agreed on teachers’ effectiveness in these three domains. However, no such agreement was observed for classroom management. Inspection of the means implies that for that behaviour, teachers overrated (or students underestimated) their ability to manage disruptive behaviours and set up a conducive classroom atmosphere. This interesting phenomenon is worth further investigation through studies that will try to triangulate teachers’ and students’ ratings with third-party observations. At any rate, Schwab et al. pointed out that the higher teachers’ ability to set up effective instructional strategies, engage their students, and provide emotional support, the more their students’ self-concept is on the rise.

In the second article, Vestad et al. (2022) illustrated the joint role of personal and contextual antecedents in predicting students’ efficacy beliefs – a cornerstone of adaptive academic functioning (Honicke & Broadbent, 2016; Richardson et al., 2012). Using longitudinal data from a large sample of adolescent students, Vestad et al. showed how changes over a school year in academic beliefs coincide with respective changes in personal attributes (namely, emotional regulation and relationship skills) and contextual features (herein, perceived emotional support from teachers and collaborative peer relations). Of note, the confluence between academic efficacy beliefs and this set of predictors was found after controlling for students’ grade point average. Such findings underscore the vital role that educators can play in the learning process as supportive learning environments can foster students’ efficacy beliefs over and above their actual competencies. Equally important, Vestad et al. showed the inextricable relations between personal and contextual variables, as variation in emotional regulation and relationship skills corresponded to the respective fluctuation of emotional support and peer relations. We hope we see soon more studies which through multiple waves spanning more than one school year, will examine not only the linear but also non-linear trajectories of self-efficacy beliefs and their coincidence with emotional regulation, relationship skills, and perceived emotional support that relevant third variables might moderate.

In the third article of this issue, van der Ploeg et al. (2022) zoomed on students’ adaptive responses to threatening situations. In line with the other studies of this issue, the authors showed that personal and contextual factors may predict students’ disclosure of their victimisation at school. Setting aside the alarming figure that approximately 10% of students in the sample reported that they have been bullied at school, van der Ploeg and colleagues found that both personal and contextual variables predicted disclosure of such victimisation. The personal ones consisted of background variables (such as gender and ethnicity) and trait-like characteristics (such as emotional regulation, social anxiety, and depressive symptoms). Contextual variables were reflected through perceptions of classroom cohesion. In their analyses, van der Ploeg et al. revealed a paradox: The higher the emotion regulation and perceptions of classroom cohesion were, the less likely a student reported their victimisation. Could some of the reasons the authors nicely elaborate in their discussion explain these intriguing findings? Again, future studies need to take a closer look and examine possible moderating effects of third variables that could explain this phenomenon.

The joint role of personal and contextual factors predicting desired behaviours is further illustrated in the next article, written by Acar et al. (2022). In their study, Acar et al. recruited a sample of teachers and parents of preschoolers to uncover to what extent children’s temperament (specifically, reactivity and persistence) and quality of interpersonal relationships with their teacher and parents relate to teacher-rated learning behaviours – namely, attention, learning attitudes, and competence and motivation. In their multi-informant study, the authors found that parent-rated child’s reactivity and persistence could explain part of the variance of preschoolers’ teacher-rated learning behaviours. They also found that such learning behaviours could be also explained by teacher-rated conflictual relationships between them and the child. Notably, the authors found that the absence of parent-child conflictual relationships functioned as a buffer of reactivity, as in that case reactivity did not negatively predict learning behaviours. These findings suggest, again, that both contextual and personal characteristics may play a role in predicting preschoolers’ learning behaviours. They also helped us understand the likely mechanisms throw which each socialiser can foster desired learning behaviours of preschoolers. Future research may need to testify their specialised role through research that will incorporate observational and experimental design.

Nevertheless, as the next article of this issue indicates, not only the context but also the motivational baggage that students bring into the classroom plays its role. As Abercrombie et al. (2022) revealed in their cross-sectional study, university students who scored high in need for cognition and mastery approach goals and low in mastery-avoidance goals were more likely to report a preference for challenging, potentially threatening tasks. Of interest, such opting was also predicted by students who endorsed performance-approach goals. This latter finding supplemented prior studies showing that, under certain circumstances, performance-approach goals may not be dysfunctional (Senko & Dawson, 2017). Such results can be used as further evidence of the true nature of performance goals in a long-held debate that lasts over two decades (Harackiewicz et al., 2002; Midgley et al., 2001). Undoubtedly, future research must determine whether performance-approach goals predict preference for challenging tasks once competence beliefs are considered.

The present issue concludes with an intervention study by Huang et al. (2022) who showed how educational settings can enhance learners’ intrinsic motivation and academic achievement. Using a sample of elementary school students, Huang et al. showed that a context that hints that abilities are not fixed but can be cultivated can increase students’ intrinsic motivation and maths grades. Strikingly, the changes in students’ growth mindset occurred just after a two-session, 90-minute workshop. So, again, this study tells us that we can establish conducive learning environments through well-designed, theory-driven instructional practices, and we can do so through inexpensive time-efficient interventions. Perhaps the fact that growth mindset changes did not predict increased grades deserves further investigation through future research. The same holds for the null effects of growth mindset intervention on grades in language. Is it because of the unique characteristics of each subject matter? Next-generation studies focussing on the differences among different subject matters may unveil whether more intensive growth mindset interventions are needed in certain knowledge domains.

To sum up, the studies in this issue have expanded our knowledge of how personal and contextual features can explain – sometimes independently, sometimes additively, and sometimes interactively – learning processes and outcomes. More crucially, the authors of these studies have managed to provide new insights and generate novel questions awaiting future researchers to address them.