Editorial

What a dynamic year 2016 was for Educational Psychology. First, the journal advanced to publishing two more issues per year for a total of 10 annual issues. This enabled the journal to include more high-quality papers and up-to-date research. Second, to better foster the sustainable development of Educational Psychology, a new editorial structure was introduced on 1 April 2016, with eight Associate Editors, an Editorial Board, a team of 117 Consulting Editors and a pool of reviewers. Thanks to the concerted effort and brilliant efficiency of the Associate Editors, Editorial Board members, Consulting Editors, reviewers and authors under both the old and new editorial structures, the journal’s visibility greatly increased as reflected in the improved Impact Factor (from 0.667 in 2014 to 1.157 in 2015). The coverage of the journal in the Social Sciences Citation Index and many other databases and indices proves that its role in the academic arena of educational research is gaining importance. A review of the papers published in the 10 issues in 2016 highlights the wide range of topics related to learning and education that are included in Educational Psychology. Research in social and emotional learning, assessment, goal, motivation, additional support to students provided by teachers and students, as well as self-efficacy were broadly covered by the 93 high-quality papers in the regular issues of the journal last year. Contributing to the new area of psychometric studies (Kuo & de la Torre, 2016), a special issue was also published with five papers addressing innovative approaches to research, practical issues related to the construction of cognitive diagnostic assessments, theories and applications of cognitive diagnosis modelling, and the use of digitally mediated diagnostic assessments. Moreover, as a journal published in the English language, its internationalisation is demonstrated by the many countries from which the manuscripts were submitted. In the past year, scholars from over 390 institutions in 80 countries or regions across different continents chose Educational Psychology as their publication outlet. With the detailed comments made by our resourceful reviewers from more than 260 institutions located in 35 countries or regions, the authors of the manuscripts submitted to the journal gained much inspiration in refining their study reports. Perpetual research activities and publications are necessary to present the rapid developments in the field of educational psychology and the emerging themes. Thus, Educational Psychology encompasses the latest developments in these areas by including relevant researches in its special and regular issues. For readers interested in the new approaches to second language writing, the recently published special issue of the journal outlines automated writing evaluation, a genre-based approach to writing, and cognitive diagnostic assessment of writing, and serves as a reference for further research in the teaching, learning and assessment in this area (Aryadoust & Riazi, 2017). Educational Psychology addresses many new themes as well, among which the psychology of learning of multi-lingual learners and students from different cultural backgrounds and technology-related psychology are two foci. Globalisation introduces the trend of people’s enhanced mobility, resulting in a diverse composition of immigrant students from various countries in the same educational environment. Learning problems, such as adaptation issues in classroom language and adversities in learning, may affect students’ interest towards learning and their performance. At the same time, rapid developments in information technology pose both opportunities and challenges for teaching and learning. In Educational Psychology’s 2016 collection, researches done by Suviste, Kiuru, Palu, and Kikas (2016), Johnson (2016), and Megalakaki, Aparicio, Porion, Pasqualotti,