Ronnel B. King

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Associate Professor at Chinese University of Hong Kong

Socio-emotional skills have been identified as critical for individuals to achieve success in the twenty-first century. These skills are especially crucial for undergraduate and postgraduate students to navigate the challenges associated with academic learning, well-being, and future job performance. However, little attention has been given to expl...

Background Past studies on mindsets have mostly examined them as an individual difference variable. However, the mindset-by-context framework argues that mindsets do not occur within a vacuum, and their successful implementation depends on the social context. One of the most important social contexts for students is the socioeconomic conditions of...

Parents are important stakeholders in school counseling, but research is impeded by the lack of a scale to measure their perceptions. We developed the Parental Perceptions of School Counseling (PPSC) Scale in Chinese and English. We conducted an exploratory factor analysis and found four factors: (1) negative beliefs about school counseling, (2) wi...

Students’ self-efficacy in language learning is not a static attribute but rather a dynamic construct. However, studies have seldom explored how students’ self-efficacy beliefs change over time, whether there are heterogeneities in the pattern of change among students, and what factors are associated with these patterns of change. This study aimed...

Much of the research on mindsets has focused on implicit theories of intelligence. However, there are other types of mindsets that might have important implications for learning and achievement. Among those that have received less attention is mindset of socioeconomic status (SES), which pertains to the belief that SES is changeable (i.e., growth m...

Most research on doctoral education assumes face-to-face interaction, but higher education institutions are increasingly adopting remote and hybrid modes of learning. By investigating the challenges that PhD students encounter with remote learning and exploring the measures that universities take to sup-port their well-being, this study can offer v...

(50 days' free access: https://kwnsfk27.r.eu-west-1.awstrack.me/L0/https:%2F%2Fauthors.elsevier.com%2Fc%2F1kM2V1HucdZu6-/1/0102019417f0b0dc-82be7daa-6829-4241-8340-416213586dc2-000000/TLPIrSreLuc5eOQE7abG2peQUBc=406) Exploring whether students are motivated and engaged in the context of online learning has become increasingly important given the p...

Given the critical role of socio-emotional skills in students’ academic success, psychological well-being, and other critical life outcomes, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) developed the Survey on Social and Emotional Skills (SSES) to measure these skills among school-age students. However, the broad conceptual scop...

This study aims to explore the factors that influence the well-being situation of doctoral students in education from a qualitative perspective and draws on the ecological systems theory as an overarching framework. A total of 18 doctoral students in education from 3 universities in Hong Kong were interviewed. In line with the ecological systems th...

Socio-emotional skills are vital for individuals to thrive academically, personally, and socially in the twenty-first century. However, limited attention has been devoted to the factors that might facilitate or hinder the development of socio-emotional skills among university students. To address this gap, we explored the association between the te...

Students' digital reading literacy has attracted increasing attention in the current digital era; however, few studies have been conducted to explore how factors at different levels influence students' digital reading achievement. Grounded by socio-ecological theory, the current comprehensively explored the relative importance of 24 individual, mic...

Self-determination theory posits that teachers who support students' basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness (i.e., need-supportive teaching) are better able to facilitate students' optimal academic outcomes. However, the association between need-supportive teaching and students' socio-emotional skills remains relatively...

Background: Self-determination theory (SDT) posits that teachers who engage in need-supportive teaching through satisfying students’ basic needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness facilitate optimal well-being. However, there are debates about the purported applicability and relevance of need-supportive teaching across cultural, economic, an...

As the teaching profession becomes more demanding and teachers’ work conditions become increasingly challenging, recent reports have shown declining levels of teacher well-being. Past studies on teacher well-being mostly focused its associations with teacher- and school-related outcomes. However, less research has been conducted on the implications...

Dear Colleagues, You are cordially invited to join the hybrid Symposium co-organized by the Teaching and Learning Innovation Centre (TALIC) and the Consortium for Higher Education Research in Asia (CHERA): Student Engagement across Pacific Asia: Steps toward a shared framework. This symposium offers opportunities to meet speakers from institutions...

Fear of failure undermines students’ learning and well-being. However, despite the prevalence of fear of failure, there is a lack of a measurement tool explicitly designed to assess the fear of failure in learning among Chinese students. This study aimed to adapt and validate the Chinese version of the Fear of Failure in Learning Scale (C-FOFLS). E...

Learning Management Systems (LMSs) are underutilized in universities despite them being standard components of higher education. Given this, there is a need to gather the perspectives of students and teachers to examine how these key end-users engage with LMS and utilize its various features and functions. Such an endeavor could aid in addressing t...

Little is known about parents’ perceptions of school counselling in Hong Kong. We adopted an explanatory sequential mixed methods design to investigate Chinese and non-Chinese parents’ perceptions. In phase one, 287 parents in Hong Kong were surveyed. Results suggested that Chinese parents had a poorer understanding of counsellors’ roles, more nega...

While higher education has been led by the West for hundreds of years, the coming century has long been forecasted as belonging to Pacific Asia. The presented edited volume is a first step toward building bridges between Pacific Asian universities that are destined to be part of this future. The overarching aim is to support the region's universiti...

Asian higher education is now the world’s largest. There has been a rapid expansion of higher education among the different higher education systems in Asia.

Plain Language Summary Purpose: The purpose of this study was to develop and validate a scale called the Artificial Intelligence Learning Intention Scale (AILIS). AILIS was designed to measure the different factors that shape university students’ behavioral intentions to learn about AI and their AI learning. Methods: We recruited 907 Chinese univer...

Alongside academic learning, there is increasing recognition that educational systems must also cater to students’ well-being. This study examines the key factors that predict adolescent students’ subjective well-being, indexed by life satisfaction, positive affect, and negative affect. Data from 522,836 secondary school students from 71 countries/...

This special issue was motivated by the realization that student motivation is inherently complex and no single framework can capture it in its full richness. How- ever, the current zeitgeist in educational psychology seems to explicitly discourage attempts at integration as researchers are incentivized to stay within their own theoretical camps. I...

This special issue was motivated by the realization that student motivation is inherently complex and no single framework can capture it in its full richness. However, the current zeitgeist in educational psychology seems to explicitly discourage attempts at integration as researchers are incentivized to stay within their own theoretical camps. In...

Background Previous research has indicated that placing emphasis on communal goals within the field of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education can yield beneficial learning outcomes. However, there remains a relative dearth of investigation into the factors that contribute to the success of STEM education programs integra...

Background: Socio-emotional skills are critical to life outcomes such as achievement, well-being and job success. However, existing research has mostly focused on the consequences of socio-emotional skills, with less attention devoted to the role of school climate in the deployment of these skills. Aims: This study investigated the role of school...

Partnerships between school counsellors and parents can improve students’ wellbeing and learning outcomes. School counsellors are well placed to take on central roles in the development and maintenance of such partnerships. However, research is limited on counsellor-parent partnerships in the Philippines, where the professional identities of school...

Background Socio‐economic status is one of the most important factors shaping students' motivation and achievement but has seldom been explored in relation to achievement goals. Aims This study aimed to investigate whether mastery‐approach goals explain the link between SES and key learning‐related outcomes ( mediation ) and whether SES modifies t...

Educational research has emphasized the importance of help-seeking in learning and engagement. However, little is known about the impact that help-giving may potentially have on student engagement and academic achievement. There is also a lack of knowledge about the environmental factors that might facilitate help-giving. This study investigated ho...

Past studies have shown gender differences among English as a foreign language (EFL) learners. However, most of these studies have focused on mean-level differences using variable-centered analyses. Studies have seldom explored similarities and differences in motivational profiles using person-centered approaches. To bridge this gap, we examined th...

Social contagion, the process whereby psychological states spread from one person to another, is a pervasive phenomenon. However, this has not been adequately explored in the educational context, especially in relation to the social contagion between principals and teachers. This study aimed to examine the social contagion of job satisfaction from...

Though well-being problems are prevalent among PhD students, the contextual antecedents and underlying mechanisms behind these problems remain underexplored. The aim of this study was to explore whether and how the research environment affects the well-being of PhD students through their motivation. Self-determination theory was used as the theoret...

There is a vast literature focusing on students’ learning and academic achievement. However, less research has been conducted to explore factors that contribute to student well-being. Rooted in the ecological framework, this study aimed to compare the relative importance of the individual-, microsystem-, and mesosystem-level factors in predicting s...

In this chapter, we described how a gratitude intervention, which aims to increase student well-being, was integrated with Academic and Social Skills Building Seminar (ASSB), which aims to develop academic skills among students—in line with positive education’s goals of incorporating a well-being component to traditional education. In Part I, we pr...

The recent COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted how students’ learning and well-being are inextricably related; this insight has been the core assumption of positive education.

Students’ academic learning and socio-emotional well-being are inextricably linked. This chapter introduces the importance of positive psychology and education perspectives in the Asian context. It gives an overview of how the different authors tackled the issue of well-being in their chapters. Cross-cutting themes across the different chapters are...

Immersive technology plays an increasingly important role in design education, supporting digital literacy and experiential learning in higher education, particularly in the post-COVID-19 context. Many design disciplines, such as Architecture and Landscape Design, which used to rely heavily on physical field trips, and dialogic studios as signature...

This study investigated whether teachers’ perceptions of school leaders’ need-supportive practices were associated with teacher well-being using variable- and person-centred approaches. Self-determination theory was used as the theoretical lens. A sample of 611 high school teachers nested in 14 schools participated in this study. We first examined...

Alongside academic learning, there is increasing recognition that educational systems must also cater to students’ well-being. Hence, understanding the different factors that predict students’ well-being is a critical educational issue. The objective of this study is to examine the key factors that predict students’ subjective well-being, indexed b...

Background Research on predictors of test anxiety has focused primarily on the role of psychological factors and the proximal environment. However, the role of the broader socio-ecological context, specifically, national income inequality, is seldom explored. Aims The present study aimed to test whether national income inequality is associated wit...

Despite the importance of artificial intelligence (AI) for university students to thrive in the future workplace, few studies have been conducted to assess and foster their intentions to learn AI. Guided by the situated expectancy-value theory, this study adopted both variable-and person-centered approaches to explore the role of supportive environ...

Resilient students attain high levels of academic achievement despite the presence of chronic socioeconomic disadvantage. Identifying factors that promote resilience in the domain of science is crucial to making equitable and high-quality science education accessible for all students. Rooted in the opportunity-propensity framework, this study exami...

Individuals often misconstrue the actual degree of economic inequality, which might account for the ambiguity in the literature about the role that inequality plays in well-being. Instead of focusing on objective inequality, we propose a subjective inequality approach by investigating the long-term association between subjective economic inequality...

The aims of this study were to (1) to explore the state of students’ and teachers’ well-being and (2) examine the factors that predict their well-being during the pandemic-related school closures in the Philippines. Our sample comprised 733 students and 1168 teachers. During the height of the pandemic, 22.10% of the students and 13.44% of teachers...

The purpose of the study was to examine the relationships among information and communication technology (ICT) engagement, meta‐cognitive strategies and digital reading. Specifically, we used PISA 2018 data to examine whether (a) the behavioural aspect of ICT engagement negatively impacted digital reading, (b) the motivational aspect of ICT engagem...

Gender inequality is one of the main barriers to human well-being. In societies with higher levels of gender inequality, people have lower levels of life satisfaction and happiness. However, previous studies have found inconsistent results in terms of whether gender inequality affects men’s and women’s subjective well-being differently. Furthermore...

Self-determination theory emphasizes the crucial role of need-supportive teaching in facilitating student motivation and engagement. However, much of the research on need-supportive teaching focuses on its effects on students. An equally important but less explored topic is what facilitates teachers’ need-supportive teaching. This two-part cross-se...

Research on grit indicates that perseverance positively predicts academic achievement. Yet, the mechanisms through which perseverance might lead to academic success remain less explored, particularly in cross-cultural research. The current study investigated such mechanisms by examining possible mediating effects of students’ use of self-regulated...

Past studies on doctoral education have mostly focused on the critical role of supervisors in students' research experience. However, the role of peers has been relatively neglected. It is not clear how both supervisors and peers contribute to doctoral students' research experience. One possibility is that they are additive, which means that both s...

Learning poverty, defined as being unable to read and understand a simple text by the end of primary school, is a critical social problem. Past studies on learning poverty have mostly focused on the role of economic and demographic factors but have seldom explored the role of culture. To address this gap, we examined whether national cultural value...

Gratitude has mostly been explored in relation to well-being but whether it is associated with school-related outcomes such as motivation and engagement has seldom been explored. Motivation and engagement, however, are critical to students’ academic success. Hence, the aim of this study was to examine how gratitude is associated with different type...

Mental health promotion has been gaining recognition as an important teacher competency. Hence, it is imperative that teachers have adequate mental health literacy (MHL). However, most studies and programs on teacher MHL focus on teachers’ knowledge of mental disorders, whereas very few have explored their knowledge of positive mental health, perha...

Much of the existing educational research has focused on affluent Western societies. Despite comprising a broad swathe of the world population, less work has focused on lower middle-income economies such as the Philippines. Perhaps part of this reason is the lack of high-quality data in such contexts. PISA provides a potential solution to this prob...

Social contagion has been documented across various domains. However, this phenomenon has not been explored in relation to formative assessment in schools. This study examines the social contagion of school teachers' formative assessment practices and self-efficacy. A sample of 296 teachers from 12 Hong Kong primary and secondary schools participat...

This tribute celebrates the distinguished scholarship and extraordinary life of Dennis Michael McInerney, who passed away in Hong Kong on May 20th, 2022. It is a testimony of his impact on our professional and personal lives while highlighting the multitude and depth of his scholarly contributions. McInerney was one of those thinkers who invited us...

School counselling has the potential to deliver significant support for the wellbeing of children. However, much of the research on school counsellors has been conducted in developed Western countries, with very limited research into factors influencing the effectiveness of counsellors in lower middle-income countries or in Asia. The aim of this qu...

This article reports on a study of a teacher professional development (TPD) course that combined digital courseware with a face-to-face professional learning community. The aim of the course, implemented in a developing country, was to improve teacher knowledge and practice in early childhood literacy and numeracy. Using interview and questionnaire...

Self-determination theory argues that students' intrinsic motivation is cultivated when teachers teach in ways that meet students' basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness (i.e., need-supportive teaching). However, the suspension of in-person teaching and learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic has urged teachers to search...

Expectancy-value theory mostly focuses on how expectancy and value beliefs are associated with academic achievement. Both expectancy and value beliefs are multidimensional and can be further decomposed into general and specific factors. However, few studies have explored the associations of these general and specific factors with academic achieveme...

Although Macau students have consistently been recognized as top performers in international assessments, little research has been conducted to explore the various factors that are associated with their achievement. This paper aimed to identify factors that could best predict Macau students’ reading achievement using PISA 2018 data provided by 2,97...

Instructional quality is associated with better academic outcomes for students. This study aimed to investigate how teachers' job satisfaction was associated with clarity of instruction and cognitive activation as measures of instructional quality. In addition, we investigated whether this association between teachers' job satisfaction and instruct...

The COVID-19 pandemic has presented as one of the largest educational disruptions in recent times. It has wrought significant challenges to not only teaching and learning but also well-being. Students have experienced significant learning loss during the pandemic (Engzell et al., 2021; Skar et al., 2021; Storey & Zhang, 2021) and a decline in well-...

Previous studies on student well-being have focused on a limited number of factors. However, well-being is facilitated or hindered by many different factors. Therefore, focusing on a limited set of constructs could lead to an incomplete understanding of the various factors that predict student well-being. The current study drew on the Programme for...

One of education’s primary goals is to cultivate citizens who want to contribute to society. However, surprisingly little research has been conducted on how students’ desire to contribute to society is related to crucial learning-related outcomes. The aim of this study was to examine how the desire to contribute to one’s society, which we call soci...

The Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ) is one of the most widely used instruments to measure students' motivation and self‐regulated learning. However, the MSLQ was developed and has been predominantly used in the Western context, is a domain‐general measure, and is quite lengthy. Hence, adapting the MSLQ to the Chinese educatio...

Background: Individuals pursue teaching careers for numerous reasons, such as for instrumental or prosocial purposes. Aims: This study examined the personal (instrumental motivation) and social (prosocial motivation) utility of teaching as predictors of teaching quality in terms of clarity of instruction, classroom management, and cognitive acti...

Willingness to communicate (WTC) plays a key role in foreign language learning. However, little research has been devoted to the role of achievement goals and achievement emotions in understanding WTC. The present study aimed to examine the relationship between achievement goals (i.e., mastery goals, performance-approach, and performance-avoidance...

Research experience is widely used in quality assurance exercises to benchmark postgraduate education at the institutional level. However, individual differences in students’ research experience have been largely neglected. Furthermore, little is known about how differences in students’ research experience are associated with skill development and...

Research Findings: Previous studies have found that a growth mind-set was associated with optimal learning and well-being outcomes. However, much of this research has been conducted among adolescents and young adults. Relatively little is known as to whether these associations also apply to young children. The present study aimed to examine whether...

STEM education has been regarded as an important educational initiative for cultivating students' twenty-first century skills. The present work aimed to explore ways to promote students' twenty-first century skills through an integrated STEM-based curriculum. Specifically, we designed and implemented an 8-week crossover program of STEM and communit...

Self-regulation is a core concept to understand the metacognitive, motivational, and emotional aspects of learning. The outbreak of COVID-19 resulted in large numbers of courses being shifted online, thus providing a large-scale setting to collect new empirical evidence to shed light on the specific challenges that different learner subgroups strug...

Self-determination theory (SDT) posits that need-supportive teaching, which includes support for autonomy, competence, and relatedness facilitates motivation and achievement across cultures. However, prior evidence of SDT's cross-cultural generalizability were drawn from a limited set of cultural contexts. Furthermore, prior work has mainly focused...

English as a foreign language (EFL) learners in China view learning vocabulary as one of their biggest challenges. Despite the importance of vocabulary learning for mastering English, no existing survey specifically measures Chinese students' vocabulary learning motivation. This study aimed to cross-culturally adapt the Vocabulary Learning Motivati...

Objective: This research investigates how economic inequality shapes basic human values across three cross-national, cross-regional, and longitudinal studies (Ntotal = 219,697). Methods: Study 1 examined the relationship between objective economic inequality and values across 77 societies from all five continents (n = 170,525). Study 2 examined...

Although Macau students have consistently been recognized as top performers in international assessments, little research has been conducted to explore the various factors that are associated with their achievement. This paper aims to identify factors that could best predict Macau students’ reading achievement using PISA 2018 data provided by 2,979...

Students from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds generally have worse academic outcomes than their more advantaged peers. However, some resilient students beat the odds and achieve academic success despite socioeconomic adversity. Identifying the factors that promote resilience is of critical theoretical and practical importance. Hence, this s...

Grouping students in terms of ability and aptitude is assumed to be advantageous, given that high-performing students may be stimulated more while low-performing students may be supported more. However, studies on ability grouping often provide mixed results. Additionally , although ability grouping is a common practice in the Philippines, it has n...

The self-system model of motivational development was used in this study to examine whether and how student motivation and self-assessment practices—as psychological and behavioural mechanisms, respectively—link need-supportive teaching to students’ objective achievement scores in English language learning. We applied a multilevel mediation analysi...

Students’ school belonging is critical to overall functioning. Most past studies of school belonging’s antecedents focused on individual-level and proximal environmental factors, neglecting broader socioecological factors such as income inequality. Hence, this study examined whether income inequality is associated with students’ school belonging. W...

Objectives Interprofessional education (IPE) harnesses the power of teams to facilitate collaborative learning across disciplines. However, prior research has not paid sufficient attention to the role of team-level factors on IPE outcomes, posing a major theoretical and methodological limitation. In response to this, using social interdependence th...

Motivation and engagement have long been recognized as determinants of foreign language learning. However, prior studies have mainly used variable-centered approaches to explore their relationships with key learning-related outcomes. Individual differences in foreign language learners' motivation and engagement and how they are associated with othe...

Mainstream research in higher education and motivation has shown the importance of intrinsic and instrumental motivation on student learning and achievement. However, the role of social motivation has been relatively neglected. This gap is especially salient in a collectivist cultural context where social factors play a critical role. Drawing on a...

Studies on utility value, metacognitive strategies, and achievement have usually examined these variables in a static manner. However, each of these variables changes across time and the relationships among them are dynamic. Hence, studies that examine changes in individual trajectories (change in each variable over time) and concurrent trajectorie...

East Asian students have consistently performed well in mathematics compared to their international peers. Though many researchers have attempted to explore the factors that underpin their success, most studies have focused only on a limited set of variables. Mathematics achievement, however, is a complex phenomenon, determined by multiple factors,...

This study investigates the changeability of learning approaches via a longitudinal design (Study 1) and explores the factors that potentially influence the use of and change in learning approaches through a qualitative research method (Study 2) in a Chinese cultural context. In Study 1, 439 Chinese university students participated in the pre-test,...

Adolescent students' educational aspiration is a crucial predictor of both concurrent academic achievement and educational attainment later in life. Past studies on educational aspiration have mostly focused on the role of individual factors and the immediate context but have neglected the role of the broader societal environment. The current study...