Fostering excellence: Nurturing motivation and performance among high- and average-ability students through need-supportive teaching.

When students with high cognitive abilities disengage from school, this implies a severe loss of talent to students themselves and to society. Hence, it is important to understand how teachers can prevent disengagement and underachievement in high-ability students. Whereas a large body of research has demonstrated that need-supportive teaching (i.e., the provision of autonomy support, involvement, and structure) and differentiated instruction relate positively to students' academic development, it remains unclear whether such practices would be equally, more, or less beneficial for high-ability students. Drawing on data from a longitudinal four-wave study among early adolescents from Flanders (N = 3586), this study showed that need-supportive teaching in math classes was positively associated with intrinsic motivation, behavioral engagement, and math performance in high-ability students, both at the level of between-student differences and at the level of changes in students over time. Standardized estimates were typically between 0.05 and 0.20 at the between-person level, indicating small effect sizes, with more modest effect sizes at the within-person level. Importantly, these associations were found to be generally equivalent across high- and average-ability students. Comparing the provision of need-supportive teaching to either high- or average-ability students, high-ability students particularly reported more autonomy support from their math teachers than average-ability students, with small effect sizes (i.e., Cohen's d between 0.16 and 0.27). These findings underline the importance of need-supportive teaching to support the motivational and academic development of both high- and average-ability students.

Coaching dynamics in elite volleyball: The role of a need-supportive and need-thwarting coaching style during competitive games.

Grounded in Self-Determination Theory, this game-to-game study among Flemish volleyball coaches and athletes had two primary objectives. First, we examined how variations in need-supportive and need-thwarting coaching styles related to variations in athletes' basic psychological needs, motivation, and coach-rated performance. Second, we examined whether athletes who perceived their coach as need-thwarting during a specific game would experience different outcomes based on the overall need-supportive or need-thwarting coaching style they encountered across games. Linear mixed modeling on data from 190 elite volleyball athletes (Mage = 23.95, 32.6 % male) and their 26 coaches (Mage = 48.12, 95.7 % male) indicated positive associations between game-specific need-supportive coaching and athletes' reports of game-specific basic psychological need experiences and motivation, as well as coach-rated performance, whereas game-specific need-thwarting coaching showed opposite trends. Athlete perceptions of a coaching style were more predictive of the outcomes than coach perceptions. Second, the lack of systematic cross-level interactions between game-specific coaching and team-level coaching indicated that the observed correlates of game-specific need-thwarting and need-supportive coaching hold regardless of the perceived overall need-thwarting or need-supportive style of the coach across games.

Adolescents' mental health in the social-media era: The role of offline and online need-based experiences.

INTRODUCTION: Debate about the precise role of social media use (SMU) in the mental health of today's adolescents is still ongoing. The present study adds to the literature by focusing on adolescents' experiences during SMU and in their offline activities through the lens of basic psychological needs, which are central to self-determination theory. METHODS: To examine the joint and supplementary effects of need-experiences in the offline and SMU domain (i.e., SMU satisfaction, offline satisfaction, SMU frustration, offline frustration) on several indicators of adolescents' mental health (i.e., vitality, life satisfaction, sleep quality, anxiety, and depression), polynomial regression analyses were used. Three cross-sectional samples were collected in Belgium, including early to mid-adolescents during the COVID-pandemic (Sample 1; N = 447; Mage = 14.26; 54.4% female) as well as postpandemic (Sample 2; N = 179, Mage = 15.25; 54.2% female), and among college students in postpandemic times (Sample 3; N = 4977; Mage = 20.72; 69.1% female). RESULTS: The results showed that need-experiences common to both domains were a robust factor associated with mental health. This finding was obtained across all samples and outcomes, with need satisfaction playing a beneficial and need frustration a harmful role. We further found that offline need-experiences serve as a more crucial predictor of adolescents' mental health than need experiences on social media. CONCLUSIONS: Adolescents' experiences of need satisfaction and need frustration on social media and in offline activities are central to their mental health. However, only relying on SMU as a single source of need satisfaction may not be recommended, given that offline experiences seem to be more decisive.

Attachment, emotion regulation and coping in Portuguese emerging adults: a test of a mediation hypothesis

Although the quality of parent-adolescent emotional bonds has consistently been proposed as a major influence on young adult’s psycho-emotional functioning, the precise means by which these bonds either facilitate or impede adaptive coping are not well-understood. In an effort to advance this inquiry, the present study examined interrelationships among measures of parental attachment, emotion regulation processes, and preferred coping strategies within a sample of 942 college freshmen. Structural Equation Modelling was used to test whether the link between attachment to parents and the use of particular coping strategies is mediated by differences in emotion regulation mechanisms. As hypothesized, differences in attachment to parents predicted differences in the use of emotion regulation mechanisms and coping strategies. More specifically, having a close emotional bond, feeling supported in autonomy processes and having (moderately) low levels of separation anxiety toward parents predict more constructive emotion regulation mechanisms and coping strategies. Additionally emotion regulation was found to (partly or totally) mediate the association between attachment and coping (AU)

Aunque la calidad de los lazos emocionales entre padres y adolescentes siempre ha sido propuesta como una importante influencia en el funcionamiento psico-emocional del adulto joven, los mecanismos precisos por los cuales estos lazos facilitan o impiden el afrontamiento adaptativo no son bien conocidos. En un esfuerzo por avanzar en esta indagación, el presente estudio examinó las interrelaciones entre las medidas de apego parental, los procesos de regulación emocional, y las estrategias preferidas de afrontamiento en una muestra de 942 estudiantes de primer año de universidad. Para probar si la relación entre el apego a los padres y el uso de determinadas estrategias de afrontamiento está mediada por las diferencias en los mecanismos de regulación emocional, se utilizaran Modelos de Ecuaciones Estructurales. Como fue hipotetizado, las diferencias en el apego a los progenitores se demostraron predictivas de diferencias en el uso de los mecanismos de regulación emocional y estrategias de afrontamiento. Más específicamente, tener un vínculo afectivo cercano con los padres, sentir su apoyo en los procesos de autonomía y sentir niveles (moderadamente) bajos de ansiedad de separación hacia los progenitores, son condiciones predictivas de mecanismos de regulación emocional y estrategias de afrontamiento más constructivos. Además, se encontró en la regulación emocional un mediador (total o parcial) para la asociación entre el apego y el afrontamiento (AU)