Karine Verschueren

KU Leuven | ku leuven · Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences

Need for Cognition has been established as a key intellectual investment trait shaping students’ academic development. However, little is yet known about its malleability, particularly in youth. This study investigated stability and change in Need for Cognition in a large longitudinal sample of 3409 adolescents from 166 classes in 27 schools in Fla...

Extensive research has highlighted the importance of Need for Cognition (NFC) in various contexts, but our understanding of its development remains limited. In particular, the current psychological literature is relatively silent regarding the factors influencing NFC development. We aim to address this gap by proposing a developmental model of NFC...

Empirical testing of talent development models or contextual developmental models of giftedness is enhanced by longitudinal research that considers contextual factors as well as individual/psychological factors. Relying on findings from the longitudinal TALENT project in Flanders, we aimed to shed light on the role of social-contextual factors (i.e...

This study examined the diversity in feelings of loneliness among high-ability students. Individual differences (intelligence level, giftedness label, and personality) and differences in the social context (peer acceptance, peer rejection, victimization, and friendship quantity) of adolescents were considered as predictors of loneliness. Additional...

Peer defending has been shown to protect bullied peers from further victimization and social-emotional problems. However, research examining defending behavior has demonstrated positive and negative social-emotional adjustment effects for defending students themselves. To explain these mixed findings, researchers have suggested that associations be...

Academic engagement in adolescence is shaped by influences from the peer environment, yet the types of peers impacting engagement remain unclear. This study explores the roles of friends, popular students, and intelligent students in shaping peers’ behavioral and emotional (dis)engagement. Data were analyzed from 3409 Flemish eighth-grade students...

This study examined the unique and interactive role of students’ quality of motivation, as defined in self-determination theory, and their mindsets about intelligence, as conceptualized in Dweck’s framework, in predicting a variety of learning outcomes (engagement, learning strategies, persistence, procrastination, and test anxiety) and achievement...

As cognitively gifted students may be at risk for motivational problems and underachievement, it is critical to find effective ways to motivate them. Grounded in self-determination theory (SDT) and the literature on teacher beliefs and mindsets, the present study examined whether teachers adapt their motivational teaching style as a function of the...

Teachers are key guidance figures in the lives of high-ability students. By building and maintaining close relationships with their students, teachers may heavily affect the socioemotional development of high-ability students. This study investigated how the teacher-student relationship quality affected the development of high-ability students’ aca...

Peer defending has been shown to protect bullied peers from further victimization and so-cial-emotional problems. However, research on the effects of defending students demonstrated positive and negative social-emotional adjustment. To explain these mixed findings, researchers have suggested that associations between defending and social-emotional...

Whereas both the family and school environment have been suggested to affect school burnout risks, the role of conditionally regarding parenting or teaching, in which affection is granted conditional on student achievement, in the development of school burnout has not yet been examined. This longitudinal study investigated students’ academic contin...

Whereas it has sometimes been asserted that the intellectually gifted would be more prone to develop mental health problems, empirical studies generally do not seem to support such claims. However, much of the available research has relied on preselected samples, introducing risks for sample selection bias. This study scrutinized the relationship b...

Introduction Since previous research on educational career exploration has mainly been cross-sectional and therefore has been unsuccessful in explaining how this process can change during the final year in secondary education before students make the transition to higher education, this study aimed to examine changes over time in the exploration pr...

Background: Teachers may play a key role in reducing bullying by responding to incidents among students. Inspired by the theory of planned behaviour, several studies have investigated teachers' bullying-related cognitions as predictors of their responses to bullying. Aims: This study investigated whether six teachers' bullying-related cognitions...

More than 20 years have passed since the publication of Pianta (2001) on the quality of the teacher-student relationship. Since then, several attempts have been made to elaborate theoretically the concept of teacher-student relationship quality and to provide empirical evidence of the impact that good teacher-student relationship quality might have...

This study used a longitudinal person-oriented approach to examine whether two distinct developmental pathways of maladaptive motivation could be distinguished among high-ability students (intelligence quotient [IQ] ≥ 120, N = 403, M age = 12.2 years, 60.5% males), as proposed by the Pathways to Underachievement Model. Latent class growth analysis...

This study aims to better understand differences in the decision-making process behind study choices for higher education by investigating the presence of exploration profiles and then explore the explanatory base. To achieve this, we first identified different exploration profiles of students transitioning to higher education (n = 5660), and then...

The move to include students with special educational needs (SEN) in mainstream education is one of the priorities of educational reform agendas in many countries. Also, in Flanders (Belgium), new legislation aims to implement a more inclusive education (IE) system, but this induces resistance from practitioners. The general aim of an extensive res...

Bullying victimization is a prevalent problem in upper elementary school that predicts various detrimental outcomes. Increasing evidence suggests that interindividual differences in the severity of these outcomes result from differences in victimization experiences. However, longitudinal research largely overlooked victimization forms. Additionally...

This meta-analysis synthesizes evidence about the associations of affective teacher–student relationships with bullying perpetration and peer victimization. A systematic database search resulted in 65 primary studies (k) that met the inclusion criteria. The final sample included 185,881 students from preschool to high school. Separate multilevel an...

Given the high prevalence and dramatic impact of being bullied at school, it is crucial to get more insight into how teachers can reduce bullying. So far, few instruments have measured elementary teachers’ responses to bullying. This study investigated the validity of the student-reported Teachers’ Responses to Bullying Questionnaire. The factor st...

Since there has been no clear overview of educational practices that beneft high-ability students in mixed-ability classrooms in grades one to six, this review aims to provide insight into the efects of educational practices on the cognitive and afective-motivational learning outcomes of high-ability students. In order to identify these educational...

Background Research on dyadic teacher–child relationships has grown rapidly. However, a review of relevant theories and its implications for assessment and intervention has been lacking so far. Methods A selective review of theories, empirical evidence and interventions was conducted. Results and Conclusions Different theories highlight distinct...

This study considers how class composition, in terms of between-student variability and the average level of achievement, is related to the academic development of students, and how these relationships can be explained by features of the class learning environment. At the start of secondary education, Flemish schools can decide autonomously how to...

Although teachers play a central role in tackling peer victimization at school, no study so far has investigated transactional associations between positive and negative teacher-student relationship dimensions and peer victimization in early adolescence. Investigating both dimensions simultaneously in upper elementary school allows to examine diffe...

This longitudinal study investigated the role of teacher-student closeness and conflict in adolescents' school engagement trajectories, and how school engagement dimensions predict achievement trajectories. A sample of 5,382 adolescents (Mage.wave1 = 13.06, SD = 0.51; 49.6% boys) were followed from Grade 7 to 9. Yearly measures included student rep...

We developed, delivered, and evaluated a unique group counseling program for underperforming, gifted university students. Aligned with developmental and contextual models of giftedness, the program was designed to achieve four overarching goals using eight counseling themes relevant to academic success as identified in the literature or best practi...

School engagement and disengagement are important predictors of school success that are grounded in the social context of the classroom. This study used multilevel analysis to examine the contributions of the descriptive norms of friends, popular students and classmates regarding engagement and disengagement to the development of Students’ own beha...

Adolescents differ in their degree of Environmental Sensitivity, that is, the ability to perceive and process information about their environment. The present study aimed to investigate the psychometric properties of the Highly Sensitive Child scale (HSC), a self-report measure of Environmental Sensitivity, in two Belgian and UK samples with a tota...

Why do students prefer one subject (e.g., mathematics) over another (e.g., languages)? This study examined how both students' individual dispositions and environmental factors predicted school subject liking in a large sample of 3409 Flemish middle-school students. First, subject preferences were found to depend on stable individual dispositions (i...

Background The study examined how teachers and children with emotional and behavioral disturbances engage in dialogues about children’s emotional experiences. Dialogues about emotions are an important strategy for teachers to co-regulate children’s emotions but have remained understudied. Aims This study aimed to explore whether the Autobiographic...

Introduction The Pathways to Underachievement model (PUM; Snyder & Linnenbrink‐Garcia, 2013) is a person‐oriented framework identifying two distinct patterns of self‐ and value beliefs that help explain underachievement among cognitively highly able students. This framework was developed to clear up inconclusive findings from variable‐centered unde...

While bivariate associations between motivation and academic achievement have been soundly established, only a few studies have documented evidence for its incremental predictive role above and beyond other student features related to student achievement, such as intelligence and personality. Moreover, it is not yet clear which motivational process...

Although teachers are key in bullying intervention, little is known about their responses to bullying and how students perceive them. This study investigated whether experimentally manipulated teacher responses in vignettes (i.e., non‐response, comforting victim, correcting bully, both comforting victim and correcting bully) predict differences in...

One important predictor of students' intrinsic motivation and schoolwork engagement is the balance between schoolwork difficulty and student skill level, such that students are adequately challenged. However, the question arises whether this is equally true for all students or whether there are students for whom having adequately challenging school...

In two independent studies, we aimed to examine the extent to which teacher and peer nominations of loneliness are associated with children's and adolescents' self-reported loneliness, respectively. Additionally, we examined whether loneliness nominations from teachers and peers were informative above and beyond peer status and social behaviors ass...

Background: Relationships with peers and teachers are keys for children's psychosocial development. However, it is unclear whether this also applies for high-ability children. This study adds to the literature by longitudinally examining the role of interpersonal relationships in the educational context for high- and average-ability students. Aim...

Extending research on the ‘disharmony stereotype’, we examined teachers-in-training’s perceptions of gifted children’s characteristics and their expected teacher-child interactions. Also, we investigated whether adding context information that contrasts the impaired social functioning of gifted students could buffer teachers’ stereotypes. An experi...

Children with Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD) have special educational needs that are challenging for teachers in early education. In the current contribution, we will discuss a large body of research suggesting that stimulating these children’s attachment development is feasible for teachers and potentially a successful strategy to ensure that...

Beliefs about academic functioning play an important role in the academic development of students. This study considers perceptions about underachievement, that is, the degree to which accomplishments are believed to be in line with potential. In particular, we examined why these perceptions might deviate from measured underachievement, determined...

Teachers’ responses to bullying incidents are key in bullying intervention at school. Scholars have suggested that teacher responses can predict student cognitions that are associated with their bullying behaviors. However, little is known about whether and how teacher responses affect these cognitions. Therefore, the current study investigated the...

The move to include students with special educational needs (SEN) in mainstream education is one of the priorities of educational reform agendas in many countries. Also in Flanders (Belgium) the government's aim is to implement a more inclusive school system, but this faces some resistance from practitioners. This study examines the way in which pr...

Objective Although intellectually gifted individuals are often portrayed as perfectionists, evidence for an association between cognitive ability and perfectionism is inconclusive. This study investigates the relations between cognitive ability and two distinct dimensions of perfectionism and addresses the role of parental antecedents of perfection...

Peer victimization is a persistent problem in early adolescents’ peer relationships that is related to various difficulties in the short and long run. Previous studies have investigated whether relationships with peers and teachers predict victimization, but to date, few studies have examined the simultaneous contribution of both classroom-based re...

Loneliness, social anxiety symptoms, and depressive symptoms are internalizing problems that are highly intertwined and often co-occur during adolescence. This overlap and co-occurrence raises the question whether three different labels are used for the same underlying phenomenon. The present study adopts a comprehensive approach to this issue by i...

Introduction. Empathy consists of a cognitive and an affective component, of which it is thought that there are gender differences. Previous studies also suggest that maternal and paternal support play a more prominent role in the development of an adolescent’s affective and cognitive empathy, respectively. Besides the environmental factor, that is...

The move to include students with special educational needs (SEN) in mainstream education is one of the priorities of educational reform agendas in many countries. In Flanders (Belgium) the aim is to implement a more inclusive school system, but it faces resistance from practitioners. The aim of this study is twofold: (1) to compare teachers’ stude...

Objectives: School belonging is key to enabling sustained engagement with learning, yet minorities. sense of belonging is more vulnerable and contingent on the intergroup context. From a social identity approach, discrimination experiences signal rejection of the minority identity, and hence threaten minorities. school belonging. Conversely, a posi...

Belgium ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2009, which implies that an inclusive education (IE) system at all levels should be realized. Consequently, recent legislation in Flanders (Belgium) aims to reduce the current segregated school system, which has caused some resistance from practitioners. Th...

This study investigated whether motivational resources play a role in predicting changes in students’ achievement and well-being above and beyond the role of intelligence during the transition to secondary school. The motivational resources entailed autonomous and controlled motivation as conceived in Self-Determination Theory and implicit beliefs...

This study investigates three important aspects of the classroom context in shaping adolescents' classroom engagement trajectories: (a) teacher support, (b) peer norms (i.e., descriptive and popularity norms), and (c) ethnic classroom composition (i.e., ethnic heterogeneity and proportion of majorities). An ethnically diverse sample of 730 adolesce...

Within an attachment perspective on teacher-child relationships three affective relationship dimensions have been identified: closeness, conflict, and dependency. Whereas a lot of research is available on relational closeness and conflict, far less is known about the construct of dependency. In this paper, we aim to further the conceptualization of...

This study investigated the joint contribution of child-mother attachment quality and child temperamental inhibition to the development of child-teacher dependency. A sample of 237 kindergartners (Mage = 60.2 months) and their teachers from 36 classrooms participated. Preschool child-mother attachment quality was assessed using the Attachment Q-set...

Learning goal orientation is a prominent motivational construct that has been linked to positive student outcomes. For high-ability students, a lack of mastery learning goals has been theoretically and empirically associated with underachievement. However, longitudinal research examining the development and outcomes of their learning goal orientati...

Research has indicated that a strictly dimensional or parental style approach does not capture the full complexity of parenting. To better understand this complexity, the current study combined these two approaches using a novel statistical technique, i.e., subspace K-means clustering. Four objectives were addressed. First, the study tried to ident...

Accurate teacher judgments of student cognitive ability are crucial to effective instruction. Building on a large survey among 7th graders and their teachers, this study considers which student characteristics affect teacher and peer recognition of high ability students. High ability judgments by teachers were found to depend more on everyday schoo...

Hoe doen cognitief sterke leerlingen het in Vlaanderen? Moeten we ons zorgen maken over hun welbevinden en hun onderwijsloopbaan? Of valt het allemaal best mee? Gaat er veel talent verloren in het Vlaamse onderwijs? Het Talent-project biedt de eerste systematische gegevens om deze cruciale vragen te beantwoorden en hardnekkige mythes aan de realite...

Research shows that genetics and effortful control play an important role in the link between parenting and problem behavior. However, little is known about how these factors act simultaneously. This article used a moderated mediation model to examine whether effortful control mediated the link between parenting and externalizing problem behavior,...

Samenvatting De Vragenlijst Studiekeuzetaken (VST, Germeijs & Verschueren, 2006a) is een Neder-landstalige vragenlijst om het keuzeproces van leerlingen voor het studeren in het hoger onderwijs in kaart te brengen. Hoewel de VST in het verleden voldoende betrouwbaar en valide is gebleken, was het nodig een geüp-datete versie te voorzien. Immers, wa...

Sexual minority youth report poorer mental health than heterosexual youth. According to the minority stress framework, this results from sexual minority individuals being societally marginalized, which for sexual minority youth may include being poorly integrated in the peer context. A sociometric approach was used to test whether peer relationship...

Background. This study used a two-wave design to examine whether (dis)agreement between mothers and adolescents and between fathers and adolescents in reports on parenting (i.e., support, proactive control, punishment, harsh punishment, and psychological control) was associated with adolescent Externalizing Problem Behavior (EPB; i.e., aggression a...

This study used a person-centered approach to identify adolescents' peer status profiles and examined how these profiles differed regarding the development of school engagement and loneliness. A sample of 794 adolescents was followed from Grades 7 to 11 (MageWave1 = 13.81 years). Measures included peer nominations of peer status, and student report...

The current study examined several indicators of students' academic and emotional adjustment during the transition from primary (i.e., grade 6) to secondary school (i.e., grades 7 and 9). Specifically, the study investigated how students' engagement, achievement, and burnout, as well as student-teacher conflict, evolve together over time. A total o...

Peer relationships form a key developmental context. The current study investigated differences in peer acceptance between high‐ability and average‐ability youth, from the perspectives of teachers, peers, and students. Relying on the person‐group similarity model, we also tested whether high‐ability students’ acceptance would depend on the peer gro...

This study explored transactional associations among adolescent personality (i.e., conscientiousness, agreeableness), parental control (i.e., proactive, punitive, psychological control), and externalizing problem behavior (i.e., aggressive or rule-breaking behavior). A three-wave longitudinal study across a two-year time span provided questionnaire...

The attachment-based perspective on teacher-student relationships assumes that teachers internalize experiences with specific students into mental representations of dyadic relationships. Once activated, mental representations are believed to influence teachers' affective and cognitive social information processing. Two priming experiments with 57...

Objectives Adolescents face multiple changes in their social environment, which makes them more vulnerable to developing internalizing problems with strong interpersonal components, such as feelings of loneliness, social anxiety, and depressive symptoms. Given the widespread tacit assumption that these internalizing problems represent distinct conc...

Adolescents are particularly vulnerable to experiencing loneliness, social anxiety symptoms, and depressive symptoms. These internalizing problems often co-occur but, until now, it remains unclear how they are associated over time. Insight in these temporal sequences is important to enhance our understanding of how internalizing problems arise and...

The study by Bureau, Deneault and Yurkowski (this issue) supports the developmental importance of preschool father-child attachment quality for child self-esteem and socio-emotional functioning in middle childhood. In this commentary article we reflect on these findings, highlighting interesting avenues for future research. First, we discuss the im...

This 4‐year longitudinal multi‐informant study examined between‐ and within‐person associations between adolescent social anxiety symptoms and parenting (parental psychological control and autonomy support). A community sample of 819 adolescents (46.1% girls; MageT1 = 13.4 years) reported annually on social anxiety symptoms and both adolescents and...

Not much is known regarding underlying biological pathways to adolescents’ loneliness. Insight in underlying molecular mechanisms could inform intervention efforts aimed at reducing loneliness. Using latent growth curve modeling, baseline levels and development of loneliness were studied in two longitudinal adolescent samples. Genes (OXTR, OXT, AVP...

This study examined the structural validity of the parenting concept throughout adolescence. First, we examined whether an established five-dimension parenting model including support, proactive control, punitive control, harsh punitive control, and psychological control, showed longitudinal invariance across time (i.e., early, middle, and late ado...

The present longitudinal study examined the relative contribution of peer acceptance and individual and class-level teacher–child interactions to the development of externalizing and internalizing behaviors in kindergarten. A sample of 237 children (49% boys, Mage = 5.19 years) from 36 classrooms was followed during three waves in kindergarten. Ind...

Previous studies often assumed that parenting practices are similar across families. This assumption is difficult to hold, especially throughout adolescence, a period of major change for both adolescents and their parents. By combining a person-centered and a variable-centered approach, the present study adds to the literature by identifying trajec...

Research stresses the importance of teacher sensitivity for the development of special needs students, including students with attachment problems. However, little is known about the antecedents of teacher sensitivity. This study investigated associations between teachers’ daily negative emotions and teacher sensitivity towards individual students....