University life offers opportunities for growth but can also bring heightened psychological challenges. Although parental involvement usually declines during this stage, many parents continue to influence their children through motivational messages. Yet little is known about how these messages relate to students’ psychological well-being and distress. Drawing on self-determination theory, this study explored the relationships between perceived parental motivational messages (PMM), students’ self-determination and their psychological outcomes. A sample of 119 undergraduate students in the United Kingdom (UK) completed an online questionnaire. Multiple regression analyses revealed that reassurance messages (i.e. downplaying academic outcomes and providing emotional support) were linked to greater flourishing, while pride (i.e. striving to make parents proud) and behaviour (i.e. motivational withdrawal when reminded to study) messages were associated with increased psychological distress. Furthermore, the results of mediation analyses showed that behaviour messages were indirectly associated with flourishing and life satisfaction through self-determination, with no significant direct associations observed. As one of the first studies to examine these relationships, the current findings offer preliminary insights for those seeking to promote psychological well-being and reduce psychological distress among university students.
Literacy self-concept is associated with various educational outcomes, particularly literacy skills. A positive literacy self-concept enhances literacy skills and increased skills positively influence self-concept. At preschool age, a stimulating home literacy environment may additionally contribute to a stronger relation between literacy self-concept and early literacy skills, i.e., an accurate literacy self-concept, as it offers children opportunities to apply and observe their skills. To test this idea, the current study examined the correlations between literacy self-concept and early literacy skills and the role of the home literacy environment in this relationship with moderated regressions. Data from 500 preschool children and their families over two years with four timepoints (t1-t4) were analyzed. Early literacy skills at t1 were negatively correlated with subsequent measures of literacy self-concept, but early literacy skills at t4 correlated positively with literacy self-concept. The home literacy environment was significantly associated with early literacy skills, but not with literacy self-concept. The home literacy environment was a significant moderator in the relation between early literacy skills and literacy self-concept at t2, t3, and t4. Here, stronger correlations between early literacy skills and literacy self-concept were found for children with a higher-quality home literacy environment than those with a lower-quality Home Literacy Environment. The findings offer important insights into how a stimulating home literacy environment may help children develop a positive and accurate self-concept.
This mixed-methods systematic review synthesizes empirical evidence on instructional interventions designed to support multilingual learners’ STEM motivation, with a focus on self-efficacy, interest, and engagement. We analyzed 41 studies published between 2000 and 2025 across K–12 STEM contexts, integrating a structured quantitative synthesis with thematic qualitative analysis and Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) to examine how combinations of instructional features relate to motivational outcomes. Across studies, engagement was most consistently supported, particularly when inquiry-oriented tasks were paired with structured collaboration and explicit language supports. Interest and self-efficacy were more likely to improve when interventions also positioned students as competent disciplinary actors, validated multilingual repertoires (e.g., translanguaging and culturally sustaining pedagogy), and provided multiple representations and tools that made concepts discussable. Technology contributed when embedded as a mediational resource for participation and representation rather than as an isolated add-on. QCA pathways suggest that no single feature was sufficient; positive outcomes were associated with coherent designs that aligned language, representation, and participation. The review highlights practical design principles for teachers and curriculum developers and identifies measurement and reporting gaps that limit cumulative knowledge about motivational mechanisms for multilingual learners in STEM.
Effectively managing cognitive demands during problem solving is crucial for academic success. While instructional design research offers strategies to support learners, the effects of task complexity and pre-training on cognitive processes and performance require further investigation. This study reports on four experiments to examine their individual and combined effects on problem-solving performance, cognitive load, and mental effort. Participants completed three task rounds with either high or increasing complexity. Cognitive load and mental effort were assessed using self-report questionnaires, and performance was measured in the final round. Across three experiments, pre-training was provided and compared with a condition without pre-training. Results indicated that consistently high task complexity tended to be associated with lower cognitive load and mental effort than gradually increasing complexity. However, the effects of task complexity on performance were not consistent across experiments. Pre-training was associated with fewer moves needed to solve the task, whereas effects on completion time, cognitive load, and mental effort varied across experiments. No significant interaction effects between task complexity and pre-training were observed.
Students’ motivational characteristics, such as growth mindset, self-concept, and interest are significant for their academic outcomes. Previous research shows that parental support plays a crucial role. Children who perceive parental support through homework assistance and encouragement show a more positive self-concept and subject-related interest. However, little is known about the mechanism underlying these relations, particularly the mediating role of children’s growth mindset. As children’s growth mindset is linked to both parental support and self-concept and interest, we assume that it might play an important role in the outlined relationships between parental support and both children’s science self-concept and science interest. In order to address this research gap, children’s growth mindset is examined as a mediator and thus as an explanation for the expected relations. We collected cross-sectional survey data from 401 primary school students (mean age 10.97 years; 46.88
The prevalence of scientific research on the impact of social-emotional learning (SEL) interventions within primary educational contexts has notably escalated in recent years, particularly facilitated by the application of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) to evaluate their efficacy. Contemporary research elucidates a sophisticated interplay of emotional, social, and cognitive components that significantly affect student behavior, emotional regulation, and academic performance. SEL programs consistently demonstrate beneficial impacts on students’ interpersonal skills, emotional regulation, and academic achievements. The most efficacious interventions incorporate explicit pedagogical strategies in social competencies, self-awareness, and self-regulation, frequently resulting in enhancements in classroom conduct and peer interactions. A systematic review of 11 primary research peer-reviewed articles, drawn from two databases and spanning all research up to September 2024 was conducted to identify the key information collectively provided on Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) interventions in primary schools worldwide that used randomized samples. In answering the research questions posed, the following 4 key elements were synthesized: (1) interventions, (2) factors, (3) research outcomes, and (4) future implications. Research findings demonstrate the beneficial effects of SEL interventions on emotional regulation, social competencies, and academic success; however, challenges persist regarding long-term outcomes and adherence to implementation protocols, use of technology, necessitating adaptability for diverse demographics, synergistic integration with other educational interventions, and enhanced engagement from educators and parents for optimal efficacy, while future inquiries should investigate sustainability, transformative processes, and economic evaluations to bolster SEL’s effectiveness and scalability. Classroom frameworks, educator training, and community participation are emerging as critical determinants in the effective enactment of SEL initiatives. These conclusions correspond with the increasing consensus that SEL constitutes a fundamental component for comprehensive child development within primary education.
This paper synthesizes insights from a scoping workshop funded by the Volkswagen Foundation that focused on reading competencies in the digital age. The purpose of the workshop was to discuss the current state of research, identify actionable next steps and outline considerations for future work in the context of learning to read in a digital world. The conference brought together German researchers with a wide range of backgrounds and expertise in reading research including computer science, psychology, language processing and educational science. Presentations and discussions during the conference centred broadly on potentials and challenges of learning to read and reading support in the context of digitalization—focusing on issues related to artificial intelligence and app-based learning. Results of the workshop and subsequent writing sessions include a synthesis of key considerations and core questions for the field of research on digital approaches to support reading. Findings highlight the need for the field at large to identify and develop digital tools for diagnosing readers’ abilities and providing them with the support they need, and to do so with increased interdisciplinary collaboration, open science practices and communication among scholars.
This study examined how university students’ motivations and emotions shape their engagement and success in a social-science statistics course (N = 376). Drawing on Achievement Goal Theory and Control-Value Theory, we explored three types of goal orientations-mastery, performance-approach, and performance-avoidance-and their connections to achievement emotions, use of learning strategies (help-seeking, cognitive processing), and end-of-semester performance. Data were collected using the Patterns of Adaptive Learning Scales (PALS), the Achievement Emotion Scale (AES), and the Learning Strategies Questionnaire. Additionally, students’ performance was measured using final semester exams. Findings revealed that students with mastery goals reported greater enjoyment before learning and more frequent use of strategic help-seeking and deep cognitive processing. In contrast, those with performance-avoidance goals experienced more negative emotions after studying and tended to avoid seeking help. Negative emotions emerging after learning were linked to lower performance, whereas positive anticipatory emotions supported engagement. Emotional responses also served as a pathway through which motivations influenced learning behaviors and outcomes. These results highlight the importance of fostering mastery-oriented goals and positive emotional experiences to support effective learning in statistics.
Recently, the widespread use of computers to support collaborative learning has introduced a new challenge for children, as they coordinate their cognitive resources to interact simultaneously with both the computer and their peers. However, there are lack of studies to investigate whether individual cognitive ability, such as working memory, can predict computer-supported collaborative performance in a group. This study examined whether children’s working memory predicts collaborative performance during pair programming and whether children’s working memory and collaborative performance predict learning outcomes. Participants were 115 children aged 6–10 years. Children’s working memory capacity and coding ability were assessed, and they engaged in pair programming lessons. All lessons were recorded, and the videos were analyzed using the collaborative performance assessment framework, focusing on attentional states, emotional states, and interactive behaviors. The results indicated that children’s working memory significantly predicted collaborative performance in a pair programming environment through its interaction with their mate’s working memory, including task-related attention and joint attention. Specifically, for children with higher working memory capacity, being paired with a mate who also had a high working memory capacity was associated with higher levels of task-related attention and joint attention. In addition, children’s individual working memory capacity significantly and positively predicted neutral emotions. Furthermore, task-related attention and peer observation behaviors during pair programming were linked to fewer debugging behaviors. These findings suggest that collaborative performance is influenced by the interaction between children’s working memory capacity and their mate’s working memory capacity. Additionally, collaborative performance observed during pair programming appears to have an impact on learning outcomes. Accordingly, the current study suggests that grouping children based on their working memory capacity is important for enhancing collaborative performance in computer-based collaborative learning contexts such as pair programming.
Achievement emotions are influenced by a series of antecedents, but the role of some of them – such as personality traits and emotion regulation (ER) strategies –, particularly in primary and middle school students, remains underexplored. Guided by the Control-Value Theory, this study examined the additive contribution of demographic variables (sex and age), personality traits, and ER strategies to 10 school-related achievement emotions. A sample of 330 fourth, sixth, and seventh-grade students completed measures of Big Five personality traits, two behavioral (Actively Approaching and Withdrawal) and two cognitive (Positive Refocusing and Catastrophizing) ER strategies, and five positive (enjoyment, pride, hope, relief, and relaxation) and five negative (anxiety, anger, shame, hopelessness, and boredom) school-related emotions. Linear mixed models were estimated, with variables entered hierarchically, to assess the additive contribution of each group of factors. Results showed that females reported higher anxiety and lower boredom, while older students reported lower positive and higher negative emotions. Personality traits and ER strategies displayed consistent patterns of associations across emotions: Extraversion, Conscientiousness, Openness, Actively Approaching, and Positive Refocusing were associated with higher positive emotions and lower negative emotions, and vice versa for Neuroticism, Withdrawal, and Catastrophizing. Despite the cross-sectional design, which limits causal interpretations, these findings highlight the role of both stable individual characteristics (sex, age, and personality) and more malleable factors (ER strategies) in students’ emotional experiences at school. The results may inform future research and interventions aimed at promoting adaptive ER in educational settings.
Retrieval practice requires learners to retrieve previously learned information from memory. It has proven to be a powerful strategy for long-term learning. The aim of the present paper is to investigate the effectiveness of this strategy, as a function of the students’ working memory capacity and the number of tests performed in real class settings conditions and over the course of a school year. Study 1 aimed to determine whether the effectiveness of retrieval practice was affected by the students’ working memory skills. Students were tested on half of the content taught throughout the school year. Tested content was better memorized in the long term than non-tested content, and this result did not vary as a function of the students’ working memory. Study 2 aimed to test the effect of the number of tests on the retrieval practice. Throughout the school year, the learning content was either tested frequently, moderately frequently, or not at all. Results showed that the more frequent the tests, the better the long-term learning. These results offer promising prospects for more systematic retrieval practice in the classroom.
Despite increasing interest in academic motivation among university students, limited research has explored how distinct motivational profiles relate simultaneously to mental health, wellbeing, and perceived social support. This study aims to examine these interconnections to better understand how varying motivational profiles impact students’ psychological and social functioning. Grounded in self-determination theory, we identified five different academic motivation profiles based on differences in the level of autonomous motivation (intrinsic motivation and identified regulation), controlled motivation (external and introjected regulation), and amotivation. The sample consisted of 931 college students (Mage = 22.4; SD = 4.75; 70.6
The accelerating integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into higher education offers clear opportunities for learning support while also raising concerns that bear directly on student well-being; in particular, although AI-enabled tools such as ChatGPT can widen access to information and on-demand assistance, their implications for students’ emotional well-being, especially their capacity to tolerate uncertainty and regulate emotions, have yet to be examined in sufficient depth. Guided by the concepts of Situated Learning Theory, the present study investigated the possibilities of a structured ChatGPT-assisted instructional routine through an individually randomized experimental pretest-posttest control-group design, drawing on a convenience sample of 60 undergraduate students from a state university. Participants were randomly allocated to an experimental group (n = 30), which engaged in an instructor-orchestrated ChatGPT-assisted learning routine over a 12-week semester, or to a control group (n = 30), which received traditional instruction. Data were collected via pre- and post-tests assessing intolerance of uncertainty (IU) and emotion regulation (ER). Independent samples t-tests were used to examine pretest group comparability, and ANCOVAs controlling for pretest scores were used as the primary analyses of posttest group differences. The baseline-adjusted results indicated lower posttest IU and higher posttest academic ER among students in the experimental condition. These findings indicate that participation in a carefully structured ChatGPT-assisted instructional package can support cognitive growth and strengthen students’ emotional resilience, with potential to ease anxieties that often accompany higher education and to encourage the deliberate integration of AI tools in ways that foster more supportive and emotionally intelligent learning environments.
This study examines how learners’ beliefs about competition (positive vs. negative) and learning orientations (cooperative vs. competitive) shape engagement in language learning on Duolingo, with autonomy and motivation serving as mediators. Although competition is often viewed as either motivating or debilitating, little is known about how differing competition beliefs and orientations jointly influence engagement in digital learning contexts. Accordingly, a sample of 191 multilingual Duolingo users, recruited via convenience sampling, completed self-report scales assessing competition beliefs, learning orientations, autonomy, motivation, and engagement. Structural equation modeling indicated that positive beliefs about competition significantly and positively predicted both autonomy and motivation, whereas negative competition beliefs negatively predicted motivation. Moreover, competitive orientation significantly predicted autonomy, motivation, and engagement, whereas cooperative orientation showed only a direct positive path to engagement. Mediation analysis also revealed that both positive and negative beliefs about competition, along with competitive orientation, were indirectly associated with engagement, whereas cooperative orientation had no indirect effects. These findings suggest that cooperative and competitive dynamics promote engagement through different mechanisms, highlighting the value of supporting both orientations in digital learning environments. This study contributes to understanding how individual differences in learners’ beliefs and orientations interact with motivational processes to shape engagement, offering practical implications for designing adaptive, inclusive, and motivating language learning platforms that cater to diverse learner profiles.
The relationship between student–teacher interactions and mental health issues in elementary school children is well-documented in the literature. This study aimed to examine the relationships among student–teacher conflict, emotional awareness, somatic symptoms, and mental health problems, and to test a moderated mediation model in which emotional awareness attenuates the mediating effect of student–teacher conflict on mental health problems through elementary school children’s somatic symptoms. The sample consisted of 76 teachers (93
This study primarily investigates gender differences in peer experience, mathematical self-efficacy, intrinsic value, and mathematical achievement, as well as the prospective associations among these variables. First-year students from two Chinese colleges participated in this research. Data were collected across three waves over the course of one academic year. Initially, 800 first-year students completed scales measuring peer experience and intrinsic value. Six months later, 660 students completed a mathematical self-efficacy scale during the second phase of the study. Eight months later, data on mathematical achievement were collected from 647 students. The first finding indicated that there were gender differences in peer experience, intrinsic value, and mathematical self-efficacy, with males’ average values being significantly higher than those of females. The second finding revealed that peer experience positively and significantly predicted mathematical self-efficacy; however, it had no direct predictive effect on mathematical achievement. Furthermore, intrinsic value significantly moderated the relationships between peer experience and both mathematical self-efficacy and mathematical achievement. The mediated moderation model accounted for 4.3
Parents’ mindsets play a critical role in children’s academic achievement. Nonetheless, little is known about whether and how parents’ failure mindset contributes to early numeracy development. This study therefore explored whether parents’ failure mindset was associated with young children’s numeracy competence through parents’ numeracy expectations and home numeracy activities (including operational, mapping, and informal activities). Participants were 222 third-year kindergarteners in Hong Kong and their parents. The children individually completed various numeracy and cognitive tests, and their parents completed a questionnaire. Results of structural equation modeling showed that when children’s gender, their verbal and visuospatial working memory, and parents’ educational level were controlled, parents’ failure mindset was directly positively associated with young children’s numeracy competence. An indirect association, first through parents’ numeracy expectations and then operational activities, was also found. Parents’ numeracy expectations were positively associated with mapping and informal activities, but these two types of activities were not significantly correlated with young children’s numeracy competence. These findings indicate that helping parents appreciate the educational value of failure and coaching them to initiate home numeracy activities conducive to children’s numeracy learning is beneficial.
This study examined how child- and word-level characteristics as well as contextual information influence reading strategy use and whether there are interdependencies between the levels. German-speaking second graders (N = 124) were assessed on rapid automatized naming and vocabulary. To assess reading strategies, students read individual words aloud, with half of the words being presented with auditory context sentences. Word-level characteristics included frequency and familiarity. A linear mixed-effects model was used to analyze the relationships between context, child-level and word-level characteristics and reading strategies simultaneously. Context, child-level (vocabulary and naming) and word-level (frequency and familiarity) characteristics significantly influenced reading strategy use. Furthermore, interaction effects showed that both naming and vocabulary moderated the influence of context. Multiple factors influence the word reading process. However, these factors are not independent of one another, suggesting that different factors should be considered in reading lessons and reading support to adapt learning units to the specific needs of individual children.
This study examined the associations between perfectionism, achievement goal orientations, and academic performance among 1,028 first-year university students in New Zealand. Using latent profile analysis, four distinct perfectionistic profiles were identified: (1) High-Range Mixed Perfectionists with High Family Pressure (high Personal Standards Perfectionism [PSP], high Evaluative Concerns Perfectionism [ECP]), (2) Mid-Range Mixed Perfectionists with Moderate Family Pressure (moderate PSP, moderate ECP), (3) High-Range Mixed Perfectionists with Low Family Pressure (high PSP, high ECP), and (4) Non-Perfectionists (low PSP, low ECP). Profiles characterised by moderate-to-high PSP and ECP with elevated family pressure were more likely to endorse performance-avoidance and work-avoidance goals, whereas High-Range Mixed Perfectionists with Low Family Pressure were more likely to endorse mastery-approach goals and achieved the highest academic performance. Overall, these findings extend person-centred perfectionism research by demonstrating that not only the level, but also the source of evaluative concerns is critical. Specifically, distinguishing between internally regulated and family-driven evaluative pressures provides a more nuanced understanding of how perfectionism relates to students’ motivation and academic adjustment in underrepresented educational contexts, such as New Zealand.
This study evaluated the impact of a school-based pilot program designed to reduce gender stereotypes and biases in fourth-grade school children. The program used multiple strategies to reduce gender stereotypes and biases relating to social roles and to the agency-communion paradigm. It also aimed to improve egalitarian attitudes. One hundred and seventeen students, divided into two groups (control and intervention), were subjected to implicit and explicit measures before and after the program. After the educational program, results showed a significant reduction in gender stereotypes and biases and a significant improvement in gender egalitarian attitudes in the group which participated in the program (the intervention group), but not in the control one. Results discussion focused on the impact of the program for educational practices.
