Boosting student motivation is an important goal, as it fuels effective learning and collaboration in school. Motivation develops through both personal beliefs and environmental influences. While peers make up much of students' social world, they have received less attention than teachers. Articles in this special issue explore the complex and dynamic ways peer relationships are intertwined with student motivation.

Motivation is central to student learning and achievement, yet it does not operate in isolation. Peer relationships play a fundamental role in shaping students' motivation, engagement, and academic development. Explicit investigation of the interplay between motivation and peer relationships is scarce, especially with the reciprocal and dynamic nature of these interactions still being little understood-the subject of the present issue.

Relationships and interactions with peers have been related consistently to a range of motivational outcomes at school. This collection of papers has important implications for and raises interesting questions about the role that classmates play in motivating each other to engage academically. This is especially important given that the 'how' and 'why' of social influence on academic motivation has rarely been addressed in a systematic fashion.

Early secondary school students' perceptions of their social relationships in class are closely linked to their levels of motivation. However, person-centred research examining patterns of social relationships with both peers and teachers remains limited.

The impacts of classroom climate on students' academic engagement and disaffection have been well documented. However, previous research has focused primarily on teacher-led instructional time; the impacts of classroom climate indicators that permeate both instructional and noninstructional periods on academic engagement and disaffection remain unclear.

As theoretical perspectives on peer relationships and motivation expand, new methodological challenges emerge in capturing the complex, dynamic and context-sensitive nature of these associations.

Social-emotional (SEL) skills play a crucial role in promoting children's academic performance and mental health. However, the use of self-reported questionnaires may reveal discrepancies between students' self-assessments and adults.

Creative thinking has been widely recognized as a potential contributor to improved academic performance. However, this association has not been systematically confirmed across culturally diverse societies.

Despite a growing body of research demonstrating that control and value appraisals predict students' experiences of boredom, less attention has been paid to appraisals arising from specific learning situations and their consequences for students' emotional responses.

On computation items, young girls tend to use algorithmic approaches more than boys do. However, it is unclear whether these patterns persist as students progress into adulthood.

Youth with neurodevelopmental disorders are at risk for school failure, but little is known about the contextual factors influencing academic achievement.

This study examined preschool-aged children's attention to text in video, and whether it may be related to their developing orthographic knowledge. SAMPLE 1: Study 1 showed 66 children videos that included text. Method Children's attention to the video was measured using eye-tracking, and their recognition of orthographic patterns within the video was tested after viewing. Results During viewing, children attended to the text 6% of the time it was available. However, children who both had pre-existing letter knowledge and attended to the text in the video were able to identify the written words. SAMPLE 2: A second study extended these findings to a younger age group (n = 59).

Growth mindsets refer to the belief that personal attributes can be developed and improved through learning and effort. Much of the prior work on mindsets has focused on mindsets of intelligence, with little attention devoted to whether and how growth mindsets might also be relevant to the domain of social-emotional skills.

Previous research has shown that testing differs significantly from other classroom activities and is associated with heightened negative emotions and lower levels of positive emotions. However, relatively little is known about students' emotions surrounding testing, particularly in higher-stakes assessment settings.

Despite increasing research attention to teachers' emotional states, there remains a significant gap in understanding how educational leaders can effectively mitigate these issues.

Successful inclusion in education depends heavily on the attitudes of teachers, and stereotypes play a significant role in shaping these attitudes. However, social desirability bias may limit direct measures of stereotypes. Combining direct and indirect measures offers better insights. But studies on SEN-specific stereotypes combining these measures are rare.

Interest and effort are key motivational constructs in educational psychology, yet their interplay in learning remains underexplored. Building on Dewey's (Interest and effort in education, 1913) view that effort complements interest in fostering academic achievement, this research examines their relationship across different learning phases in accordance with a process model developed by Thoman et al. (The science of interest, 2017).

Bullying research has traditionally relied on self-reported measures such as questionnaires and interviews. Previous studies have shown developmental differences in attention mechanisms, with adults relying more on top-down processing and younger individuals on bottom-up attention. However, it remains unclear whether these differences extend to bullying scene observation and how they influence the perception of different bullying roles.

Test anxiety is known to be negatively associated with emotional resilience. However, some studies suggest that emotional resilience helps adolescents manage test anxiety, while others argue that test anxiety undermines emotional resilience.

Low socio-economic status (SES) is a persistent risk factor for educational attainment. Parent expectations and student's academic self-concepts contribute to this link; however, few studies have examined how changes in these constructs over time contribute to SES gaps in attainment and how teachers may buffer against the consequences of these changes.

Early reading development, which is influenced by various factors, such as family environment, school environment, and individual psychological characteristics, plays a crucial role in children's later reading ability and academic achievement.

Self-regulated learning (SRL) interventions have been widely recognized for their potential to enhance students' academic achievement; however, their effects on math-related motivational constructs remain less explored. This study investigated the impact of an SRL intervention on multiple math-related motivational factors (math perseverance, math self-efficacy, math utility value, STEM vocational interest and theory of intelligence) and math performance among Year 6 and Year 7 middle school students (N = 382), assessing outcomes both immediately after the intervention (post-test) and 6 months later (follow-up).

The internal/external frame of reference (I/E) model explains the formation of domain-specific academic self-concepts. The generalized I/E (GI/E) model extends the I/E model to other motivational constructs, such as intrinsic value, and to various school subjects. When extending the I/E model to various school subjects, the domains of music and visual arts have seldom been examined.

Within China's rural educational landscape, students in residential primary boarding institutions face distinctive psychosocial difficulties, with mathematics-related anxiety demonstrating heightened prevalence in these settings. As primary sources of social interaction within school settings, teachers exert significant influence on students' academic outcomes and psychological well-being through shaping their perceptions of educator support.

Teacher motivation is key to high-quality instruction and positive student outcomes. While its links to teaching and student development are indicated by a series of studies, less is known about the situational processes connecting motivation to teaching behaviours. This special issue addresses this research gap and has the objective to bring together contributions that enable a better understanding of the process-oriented character of teacher motivation, instruction, and their interrelations with student outcomes.

We investigate whether a principle-based professional development programme can effectively promote teachers' talk in primary mathematics classrooms. The programme aimed to implement accountable talk (AT), integrating three design principles: (a) incorporating authentic classroom episodes, alongside individual and collective reflection; (b) long-term duration; and (c) video-based discussions.

Parent-teacher communication is key to children's school functioning. It can help teachers adjust their educational practices and interactions with students and increase parent involvement at school.

Seductive details (interesting digressions in learning materials) are often integrated into learning units to make them more appealing to learners. However, studies indicate that this tends to overload students cognitively and impairs their learning performance.

Developing social-emotional competence and executive function is essential to children's long-term success. While their interconnection is well-established, limited evidence exists on interventions that systematically integrate both domains.