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, metacognition, 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