British Journal of Educational Psychology最新文献

Background: As AI-enabled social robots become more common in schools, children may form strong emotional bonds with them despite robots not being caregivers and lacking the capacities for "true" attachment. Given limited understanding of potential risks and safeguards, professional perspectives are needed to inform responsible design and educational use.

Aims: This study explores how educators and psychologists interpret children's attachment-like (parallel yet different from caregiver-child ties) bonds with social robots.

Sample(s): 123 Greek professionals (62 educators, 61 psychologists) evaluated three vignettes depicting core attachment features, applying human Attachment Theory to child-robot interactions.

Methods: Participants provided written responses to three attachment-focused vignettes, which were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis to identify recurrent themes in professionals' interpretations of child-robot bonding.

Results: Thematic analysis revealed nine themes: secure bond architecture, robot role negotiation, and balancing potential benefits against risks. Participants emphasised trust, emotional safety, and predictability, while warning against over-identification and dependency. Personalisation, memory, and responsiveness fostered intimacy but raised also ethical concerns. Strict privacy controls and adult mediation were deemed necessary. Robots were seen as fostering emotional resilience, social scaffolding, and personalised learning, but also as causing dependency, isolation, privacy breaches, and blurred boundaries. Most participants supported a functional alliance model - robots as supervised, goal-directed learning tools that enhance socioemotional development and transfer it to human relationships, not as attachment substitutes.

Conclusions: The Child-Robot Emotional Bonding Ecosystem framework integrates these insights, showing how design, mediation, and pedagogy shape development. Findings from Greece stress intentional design, adult guidance, and strict ethics to support, not supplant, human growth.

Background: Scholars have reached a consensus on the influential roles and dynamic characteristics of epistemic emotions during the problem-solving process; however, few research provided empirical evidence to reveal the temporal progression of these emotions.

Aims: This study leverages multimodal data-self-reports and physiological sensors-to examine variations in a focal epistemic emotion across learning phases and performance levels and to uncover transition patterns among different epistemic emotions.

Samples: A total of 105 students enrolled in a five-year undergraduate medical program were involved in the data analysis.

Methods: Participants diagnosed a virtual patient in an intelligent tutoring system designed based on the self-regulated learning (SRL) model. We recorded electrodermal activity (EDA) peaks as an indicator of physiological arousal and collected self-reports of surprise, curiosity, confusion, enjoyment and boredom across three SRL phases. Two-way mixed-design ANOVAs examined variations in the focal emotion and EDA peaks across the forethought, performance and self-reflection phases, comparing high- and low-performing groups. Temporal network analysis was used to identify transition patterns between emotions during the self-regulated problem-solving process.

Results: Epistemic emotions varied distinctly by performance level and SRL phase. For instance, high performers' confusion decreased over time, while low performers showed persistently high confusion. EDA peaks were more frequent during forethought and self-reflection phases for both groups. More importantly, temporal network analysis revealed several key emotional transitions, including surprise/curiosity → confusion and enjoyment → surprise/boredom.

Conclusions: Overall, this study offers empirical insights into the temporal trajectories of epistemic emotions, informing targeted emotional scaffolding across learning phases.

Background: Test anxiety is a situation-specific form of anxiety that occurs before, during and/or after a performance-evaluative context. Beyond educational outcomes, test anxiety can have detrimental effects on students' subjective well-being (SWB). However, the predictive relationship between test anxiety and SWB remains unclear as limited studies to date have examined the association using longitudinal designs.

Aims: The current study seeks to provide a more comprehensive evaluation of the predictive relationship between cognitive test anxiety and SWB, which is operationalized by the PERMA model.

Sample: The sample comprised 3497 students (2026 boys, 1471 girls) across 13 government schools in Singapore.

Methods: The PERMA domains (Positive emotions, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, Accomplishment) and cognitive test anxiety were measured over two time points, across a span of 1 year. Separate cross-lagged panel models were set up to examine the reciprocal predictive effects between cognitive test anxiety and each of the five PERMA well-being domains independently.

Results: All five models point to the presence of a unidirectional predictive relationship between cognitive test anxiety and SWB. Students' test anxiety at Time 1 negatively predicted all five PERMA domains at Time 2, while the reverse associations were not significant.

Conclusion: Test anxiety negatively predicted students' future levels of SWB, while the reciprocal predictive pathway from SWB to test anxiety may not hold. This highlights the potential benefits of early interventions for test anxiety, which predicts higher future levels of SWB in students later along their academic journey.

Background: Curiosity in learning is a driving force for students' knowledge acquisition and academic achievement, yet its declining trend during adolescence has been observed across multiple countries.

Aims: This study aimed to identify key supports for adolescents' learning curiosity across countries by examining the associations of learning curiosity with psychological need-based supports from family and school and further comparing the effectiveness of these supports across three countries.

Method: Representative samples of 19,161 adolescents aged 10 and 15 from the OECD Social and Emotional Skills Study were selected in the study (7246 in China, 6433 in the USA and 5482 in Finland), and hierarchical linear modelling was adopted for analysis.

Results: (1) Relatedness supports, especially sense of school belongingness, stood out as the most effective factor for curiosity in learning, followed by parents' autonomy support and teachers' competence; (2) startling differences were observed between China and the other two countries: among Chinese adolescents, sense of school belonging and parental autonomy support were vital for learning curiosity, whereas in the USA and Finland, emotional supports from parents and teachers played more essential roles than the same supports in China; and (3) parents' academic communication showed modest effects on only Finnish adolescents' learning curiosity.

Conclusion: By uncovering both cross-national similarities and differences in the key curiosity facilitators, findings provide crucial insights into adolescents' learning curiosity stimulation in family and school contexts across diverse national settings.

Background: University students around the world learn English as a foreign language (EFL) as it is considered vital for their post-education opportunities locally and internationally. Optimising English language learning in EFL classrooms at the university is thus important.

Aim: This study examined the roles of classroom support (teacher-to-class support, self-to-class support and peer-to-class support) and psychological needs satisfaction in Japanese university students' willingness to communicate (WTC) in English in the EFL classroom.

Sample and methods: Harnessing self-determination theory and drawing on a sample of 396 students from five Japanese universities, single (students) and multilevel (students and classrooms) structural equation models were run to elucidate the process implicated in students' WTC in English in the EFL classroom.

Results: The study found that classroom support for EFL learning predicted psychological needs satisfaction in the EFL classroom and that psychological needs satisfaction predicted students' WTC in English in the EFL classroom. In addition to these direct effects, psychological needs satisfaction significantly mediated the links between classroom support and WTC in English.

Conclusion: Our results shed light on the role of classroom support in fostering students' needs satisfaction and WTC in English in the EFL classroom. We discuss how our results can help teachers consider the role of support in creating an optimal learning environment in the EFL classroom.

Background: Flow is an affective and cognitive psychological state characterized by complete absorption, intrinsic enjoyment and enhanced performance. Although flow experience in educational contexts-often termed learning flow-has attracted considerable research attention, empirical findings remain fragmented across studies and theoretical perspectives.

Aims: This meta-analysis aimed to synthesize existing empirical evidence and systematically examine the antecedents and outcomes of learning flow in academic contexts. Drawing on flow theory and integrating motivational and affective frameworks, the study sought to clarify the nomological network surrounding learning flow.

Materials and methods: A meta-analysis was conducted based on 108 independent studies comprising a total sample of 42,952 participants. Effect sizes were synthesized to examine associations between learning flow and four conceptual domains: (a) learning task and learning environment characteristics, (b) individual characteristics, (c) individual attitudes and behaviours and (d) interpersonal exchange characteristics. Moderator analyses were performed to assess the potential influence of cultural context and flow measurement approaches.

Results: The results indicated that learning flow was positively associated with optimal learning tasks, supportive learning environments, adaptive learner characteristics and high-quality interpersonal interactions. Furthermore, learning flow demonstrated positive associations with key educational outcomes, including academic performance, learning attitudes and psychological well-being. Moderator analyses showed that neither cultural context nor measurement approaches significantly influenced the observed effect sizes.

Discussion: The findings suggest that learning flow emerges from the dynamic interplay of individual, interpersonal and contextual factors within educational environments. Given that most primary studies relied on correlational designs, the results delineate a comprehensive nomological network rather than establishing causal relationships.

Conclusion: Overall, the meta-analysis highlights the importance of adopting multilevel perspectives when studying learning flow in educational settings. Future research should further investigate causal mechanisms and longitudinal dynamics to better understand how learning flow develops and influences academic outcomes.

Background: Academic buoyancy is conceptualized as students' capacity to cope with academic challenges. Studies that examine how academic buoyancy and coping responses are reciprocally related, or that include relations with achievement, are lacking.

Aims: The study examined reciprocal relations among academic buoyancy, coping and achievement.

Sample: The sample comprised students aged 16-19 years in upper secondary education. At the first wave of data collection, there were 533 students (138 male, mean age = 16.4 years).

Methods: Data were collected in five waves over two school years. Achievement was collected in waves one, three and five. Academic buoyancy and coping were measured in waves two and four via self-report questionnaires.

Results: Data were analysed in a structural equation model. Adaptive coping positively and non-adaptive coping negatively predicted subsequent academic buoyancy. Additionally, academic buoyancy predicted subsequent achievement. A positive indirect relation from adaptive coping to subsequent achievement was mediated by adaptive coping.

Conclusions: The findings show that personal resources can operate in cycles of resource gain as 'co-travellers'; effective coping can build academic buoyancy, and academic buoyancy can lead to better achievement. Moreover, study support for students could include ways to develop effective coping responses.

Background: Research on procrastination mostly focuses on person-related antecedents and neglects situational and social factors, such as group work. Prior research indicates that conjunctive and additive group work may increase individual effort and performance as compared to individual work.

Aims: Based on these findings, we investigate whether conjunctive and additive group work may also help reduce procrastination as compared to individual work.

Methods: In a registered field experiment, N = 218 students with high levels of trait procrastination worked on an academic task over the course of 10 days in one of three conditions (individual work vs. conjunctive group work vs. additive group work). Dependent variables comprised task procrastination, task performance, and positive and negative task-related affect.

Results: Regarding conjunctive group work, results are mixed, with some evidence that conjunctive group work leads to lower procrastination as compared to individual work. Both types of group work resulted in higher negative task-related affect when assessed prospectively. No other effects were found.

Conclusions: The findings contribute to the idea that targeted changes in the learning environment, such as the implementation of group work, may help reduce procrastination.

Background: Teacher-student relationships (TSR) significantly shape teaching and learning processes. Current research rarely leverages qualitative analyses of students' perceptions, leaving a critical gap in understanding how positive TSR manifest from students' perspectives.

Aims: This study explores students' perceptions of the enactment of positive relationships in classroom settings, identifies teacher behaviours perceived as relationally significant, and examines how these influence emotional and academic experiences.

Sample: Participants included 16 middle school students (aged 13-14) and four teachers identified as 'relational experts' in a large urban public school. Teachers were selected via convergent ratings from school principals and a survey of 175 recent graduates.

Methods: A qualitative study design was used. Twenty lessons taught by relational experts were video-recorded and analysed to identify relational moments. These were used as stimuli in episodic interviews with students. Thematic analysis with inter-rater validation was conducted to identify categories of relational practice and student-perceived outcomes.

Results: Terms such as 'friendship' and 'family' are used to describe the relationship, yet students maintain respect for teachers' authority. Positive relationships are associated with positive feelings about subject matter and also act as a buffer against challenging classroom interactions. Ten relational practices teachers perform in class are identified and detailed (e.g., humour, openness, interest).

Conclusion: This study shows how long-term TSR are affected by classroom interactions and provides a grounded typology of classroom-based verbal relational practices, offering practical tools for advancing relational pedagogy.

Background: Academic performance during adolescence is shaped by the interplay of cognitive and emotional processes. According to the Self-Regulatory Executive Function (S-REF) model, maladaptive metacognitive beliefs (MB) contribute to anxiety, while deficits in emotion regulation may exacerbate this process. However, little is known about how specific MB dimensions interact with ED to influence anxiety and academic performance among Chinese adolescents.

Aims: This study investigated whether ED moderated the relationship between MB dimensions and anxiety and whether the indirect effect of MB on academic performance via anxiety was moderated by emotional dysregulation (ED) in Chinese adolescents.

Sample: A total of 353 middle school students (ages 12-15; 174 females) from Zhejiang Province, China, participated in the study.

Methods: Participants completed questionnaires on MB (MCQ-30), ED (DERS-16), and anxiety (DASS-21 Anxiety Subscale). Academic performance was indexed using standardized examination scores. Latent moderated structural equation modelling (LMS) was used to test the moderated mediation effects.

Results: Results revealed that ED significantly moderated the positive relationships between negative beliefs, cognitive confidence and need for control with anxiety. Furthermore, an inconsistent mediation (suppression) effect was found, where the negative beliefs were positively associated with academic performance, while ED amplified the negative indirect effect of negative beliefs on academic performance via anxiety.

Conclusions: These findings underscore the importance of targeting both maladaptive MB and ED in school-based interventions. Targeting specific MB components, such as negative beliefs, may be particularly beneficial for adolescents with poor emotion regulation capacities.