Basic psychological needs satisfaction, autonomy support, and mindsets as predictors of self-regulation in university online learners

Problem: In contrast to more traditional learning environments, it can be difficult to "see and hear" both the instructor and, more crucially, the students when engaging in online education. This has been one of the most common criticisms leveled against online education for a long time.The COVID-19 disruption and transformation of online learning in higher education underlines the fact that variance among online learners in terms of academic success and psychological well-being are determined by the level and quality of self-regulation. What is the degree of self-regulation among American university students who study online because of the COVID-19 pandemic's impact, and what variables might affect or perhaps predict this level of self-regulation? Purpose of Study: The purpose of the present study was to test a theoretical model that explains how autonomy support, satisfaction of basic psychological needs, and mindsets predict self-regulation among university online learners in the United States. Based on the model fit and direct effect results of the first research hypothesis, the second research model was developed to examine the mediating effect of basic psychological needs satisfaction on the relationship between autonomy support and self-regulation, and whether mindsets could moderate the indirect effect of basic psychological needs satisfaction on the relationship between autonomy support and self-regulation. To assess the data, structural equation modeling (SEM) was employed. Method: This study used quantitative analysis of non-experimental survey data collected via Alchemer. A model-testing design was used to examine a theoretical model which proposed that basic psychological needs satisfaction (autonomy, competency, relatedness), autonomy support, and mindsets predict online learners' self-regulation. 1257 people in all completed the survey. The number of complete and valid participant responses was a sample of 404. Excel, SPSS version 26, Mplus version 8.3 were used for data analysis. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was adopted as the main statistical technique. Results: The first research model of this study hypothesized that autonomy support, basic psychological needs satisfaction, and mindsets predict university online learners' self-regulation. Analysis of the data indicated that the first hypothesized research model fit the data (X2=464.364, df=200, Normed Chi-Square=2.231, CFI=0.925, TLI=0.913, RMSEA=0.057, SRMR=0.053). The path analysis indices of model one suggested that autonomy support positively affected university online learners' basic psychological needs satisfaction (b=0.82, p<0.001). Basic psychological needs satisfaction positively affected self-regulation (b=0.44, p<0.001) and mindsets positively affected self-regulation (b=0.23, p<0.001). Overall, research model one explained 44.2% variance of online learners' self-regulation.The model fit indices showed that the second hypothesized research model fit the data (X2=378.398, df=146, Normed Chi-Square=2.259, CFI=0.921, TLI=0.908, RMSEA=0.063, SRMR=0.050). A significant mediator effect of basic psychological needs satisfaction was found between autonomy support and self-regulation. The results indicated that the conditional indirect effect of autonomy support on self-regulation via basic psychological needs satisfaction was significant both when the mindsets score was high (which suggests growth mindset orientation) (beta=0.216, 95% CI [0.098, 0.316]) and when the mindsets score was low (which suggests fixed mindset orientation) (beta=0.150, 95% CI [0.031, 0.250]). Conclusions: Applying SEM technique for data analysis, the model fit indices showed that the first hypothesized research model of this study fit the data and explained 44.2% variance of university online learners' self-regulation. The path analysis indices of model one suggests that basic psychological needs satisfaction... (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

Coping in the time of COVID-19: Mindsets and the stories we tell

Across two studies (N = 803), we explored how meaning-making systems (i.e., mindsets and narrative identity) are related to each other as well as to coping in the wake of challenges faced during the COVID-19 pandemic. In Study 1, we find that struggle-is-enhancing, relative to struggle-is-debilitating, mindsets predicted stories defined by elements of personal control with opportunities for growth (agency) and an emphasis on the positive, rather than on the suffering (redemptive). Stronger enhancing mindsets and agentic as well as redemptive narratives predicted more adaptive coping, including less negative affect, less avoidance, and positive expectations for future success. In Study 2, we replicated these fundamental findings and explored relations with wellbeing. Struggle-is-enhancing, relative to debilitating, mindsets related to greater wellbeing as did agency and redemptive stories. Overall, creating meaning from struggle, crafting tales with more positive themes, and using active coping show promise for future work focused on enhancing social, emotional, and psychological wellbeing. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

Remote work mindsets predict emotions and productivity in home office: A longitudinal study of knowledge workers during the Covid-19 pandemic

Over the past decades, developments in information and communication technologies have enabled more and more employees to work from locations other than the office in what has come to be interchangeably called remote work, telecommuting, or distributed work. This trend has attracted much scholarly attention, in particular the question of how remote work can be implemented in optimal ways for employees and organizations. A new urgency was brought to the study of remote work when the COVID-19 pandemic prompted organizations across the world to shift their workforce unexpectedly and rapidly to home office. In light of the crisis, many organizations have planned to increase the amount of remote work available to employees, including "tech giants" such as Twitter that announced employees can work remotely forever if they desire. Accordingly, scholars and practitioners alike predict that in the aftermath of the global crisis, remote work will be part of the "new normal". (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

Adult education and entrepreneurship: getting young adults involved.

This paper reflects on adult education and the fostering of an entrepreneurial mindset. It solicits roles adult education, especially the non-formal education (NFE), could play in fostering entrepreneurial mindset of young adults. It examines short-to-medium, and long-term plans of young adults in nurturing growth and enterprising mindsets through involvement in NFE endeavours. It probes into entrepreneurial opportunities and challenges in the communities that young adults could recognise and create enterprises for themselves. This is a narrative case study which purposively selected, as the unit of analysis, an adult learner who was operating a micro-enterprise and pursuing a degree programme at Accra Learning Centre. An in-depth telephone interview was conducted to garner stories and experiences young adult have had innovating with an entrepreneurial mindset. Thematic, analytical, narrative and interpretivist approaches were adapted in presenting the results. The participant had a good experience in his start up, he learned lessons, and worked hard to grow his micro-enterprises. The savings culture he built allowed him to cope with difficulties posed by Covid-19 pandemic to his micro-enterprises. Governments and stakeholders in entrepreneurship should via policy, advisory and financial support motivate young adults to invest in entrepreneurship and create sustainable jobs for themselves.

The upside: How people make sense of difficulty matters during a crisis

We used IBM theory and the COVID-19 pandemic to test the prediction that how people respond to all-encompassing life difficulties requiring novel difficult tasks/goals is a function of what they infer about their identities from these experiences of difficulty (N = 698 U.S. adults, three datasets). People were more likely to see silver linings if they experienced difficulties with a task/goal as implying its importance and life difficulties as opportunities for self-improvement. People who endorsed difficulty-as-importance were more likely to mask, distance, and wash hands in part because they saw silver linings for themselves in the pandemic;for difficulty-as-improvement, silver linings fully mediated these effects. People apply their difficulty-as-importance and difficulty-as-improvement mindsets to cope with novel life difficulties. © 2022 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Mindsets as predictors for Chinese young language learners' negative emotions in online language classes during the pandemic: mediating role of emotion regulation

With a post-pandemic churn gaining steam, foreign language (FL) learning and teaching are becoming increasingly challenging. This study investigated young FL learners' language mindsets, negative emotions, emotion regulation, and their relations in online FL classes during the Covid-19 pandemic. An altogether 640 young Chinese FL learners aged between 11 and 19 from a snowball sampling were enrolled and surveyed. Three major findings were obtained. First, the participants overall reported a higher growth mindset toward their FL learning and were experiencing a medium magnitude of negative emotions in online FL classes, with the feelings of shame, anxiety, and boredom being strongest, followed by anger and hopelessness. They demonstrated a relatively high level of emotion regulation when learning the FL online. Second, the growth language mindset (significantly) negatively and the fixed language mindset significantly and positively predicted the participants' negative emotions in online classes. Third, a 'growth language mindset - emotion regulation - emotion' pattern emerged in the data, with the emotion regulation mediating the predictive effects of the participants' growth language mindset on negative emotions (boredom and anger) in online FL learning. Pedagogical implications and suggestions for further research were also discussed.

Effective Firm Alignment with SIGEL Crises: The Temporal Mindsets of Decision Makers

When COVID-19 hit, a surprising, intractable, global, existential, and lingering (SIGEL) crisis was unleashed, creating challenges unknown to humankind. To avoid failure, firms' realignment to fit this SIGEL crisis became necessary. Yet, not all firms realigned. Why? Because of these firms' decision makers' temporal mindsets or their interpretative lenses about time. Contrary to the assumption that fast crisis response is essential, we argue and find that decision makers' time urgency (i.e., innate self-imposed pressure to act quickly) hinders their firms' effective alignment. While past focus (i.e., innate tendency to attend to the past) had 'o effect on effective firm alignment, present focus (i.e., innate tendency to attend to the present) and future focus (i.e., innate tendency to attend to the future) had a positive effect. Interestingly, data show that the co-existence of (1) high future, low present, and low past and (2) high future, high present, and high past foci in decision makers' minds drive the most effective firm alignment, but (3) low future, low present, and low past foci drive the least. Using US and UK panel data, we show, conceptually and empirically, the importance of temporal mindsets to firm alignment with SIGEL crises.

Design thinking mindsets: Reconstituting failure to increase students' problem-solving skills

The researcher conducted an ex-post facto evaluation to investigate whether design thinking mindset curriculum has a positive effect on self-efficacy and belief in the students' ability to problem-solve. All students included in the evaluation were part of a sixth-grade Team 1 team day and participated remotely due to COVID-19. By analyzing both quantitative and qualitative data, the researcher sought to identify the extent to which self-efficacy and belief in one's ability to problem-solve increased, how researchers might create problem-seekers of our secondary students, and to gauge to what extent language acquisition for design thinking mindsets occurs with minimal exposure. In this dissertation in practice, the researcher's aim is to add to understanding about the effects of design thinking mindsets on the youngest secondary students and determine the relationship between exposure to design thinking mindsets and belief in the ability to problem-solve. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

Making sense of a pandemic: Mindsets influence emotions, behaviors, health, and wellbeing during the COVID-19 pandemic.

RATIONALE: As the SARS-COV-2 virus spread across the world in the early months of 2020, people sought to make sense of the complex and rapidly evolving situation by adopting mindsets about what the pandemic was and what it meant for their lives. OBJECTIVE: We aimed to measure the mindsets of American adults over the first six months of the COVID-19 pandemic to understand their relative stability over time and their relationship with emotions, behaviors, experiences, and wellbeing. METHODS: American adults (N = 5,365) were recruited in early March of 2020 to participate in a longitudinal survey with follow-up surveys at 6-weeks and 6-months. Three mindsets that people formed about the COVID-19 pandemic were measured: 'the pandemic is a catastrophe', 'the pandemic is manageable' and 'the pandemic can be an opportunity'. RESULTS: In line with our pre-registered hypotheses, these mindsets were associated with a unique and largely self-fulfilling pattern of emotions (positive, negative), behaviors (healthy, unhealthy, and compliance with CDC guidelines), experiences (growth/connection, isolation/meaninglessness) and wellbeing (physical health, mental health, quality of life). Moreover, mindsets formed in the first week of the pandemic were associated with quality of life 6 months later, an effect that was mediated by emotions and health behaviors. CONCLUSION: The mindsets that people adopted about the COVID-19 pandemic - that it is 'a catastrophe', 'manageable', or 'an opportunity' may explain some of the heterogeneity in the lived experiences of Americans through their self-fulfilling impact on peoples' emotions, health behaviors, and wellbeing.

Reflecting on the Anthropocene: The Call for Deeper Transformations : This article belongs to Ambio's 50th Anniversary Collection. Theme: Anthropocene.

Research on global environmental change has transformed the way that we think about human-environment relationships and Earth system processes. The four Ambio articles highlighted in this 50th Anniversary Issue have influenced the cultural narrative on environmental change, highlighting concepts such as "resilience," "coupled human and natural systems", and the "Anthropocene." In this peer response, I argue that global change research is still paying insufficient attention to how to deliberately transform systems and cultures to avoid the risks that science itself has warned us about. In particular, global change research has failed to adequately integrate the subjective realm of meaning making into both understanding and action. Although this has been an implicit subtext in global change research, it is time to fully integrate research from the social sciences and environmental humanities.

Well-being in the time of COVID-19: Do metaphors and mindsets matter?

Communications about the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) often employ metaphors, which can help people understand complex issues. For example, public health messages may focus on "fighting" the disease, attempting to rouse people to action by instilling a sense of urgency. In contrast, change-focused metaphors may foster growth mindsets and self-efficacy-cornerstones of well-being and action. We randomly assigned participants to read one of two articles-either an article about coronavirus that focused on fighting the war or an article that highlighted the possibility of change. In Study 1 (N = 426), participants who read the war, relative to the change, message reported lower growth mindsets and self-efficacy and these in turn, predicted lower well-being and weaker intentions to engage in health behaviours. In Study 2, (N = 702), we sought to replicate findings and included a no treatment control. We failed to replicate the effects of message condition, although both messages predicted greater self-efficacy compared to the control. Similar to Study 1, growth mindsets predicted intentions to engage in recommended health behaviours and self-efficacy predicted both well-being and action. We discuss theoretical reasons for discrepancies as well as practical applications for developing public health communications.