Los estudiantes requieren apoyos complementarios que abarquen tanto lo académico como lo socioemocional, incluyendo orientación vocacional, estrategias de aprendizaje, manejo del estrés y fortalecimiento de la autoestima. Los psicólogos orientadores cumplen la función de guiar, prevenir y acompañar procesos de adaptación, utilizando métodos como entrevistas, talleres, programas de tutoría y seguimiento individual. Su propósito es favorecer el desarrollo integral y el bienestar del alumno, facilitando su permanencia y éxito en el entorno educativo.

En mi caso, considero especialmente relevante el acompañamiento en la elección vocacional. Las pruebas y observaciones muestran que muchos estudiantes experimentan ansiedad e indecisión en este proceso; por ello, una práctica efectiva es el asesoramiento vocacional basado en evaluaciones de intereses y habilidades, combinado con espacios de exploración práctica y diálogo personal, lo que permite tomar decisiones más seguras y satisfactorias.

• Paola Guio Sanchez

The Role of Test Anxiety in Shaping Learning Outcomes: Social-Emotional Factors in Higher Education.

Social and emotional conditions are powerful drivers of how people learn, not just in schools, but also in universities, workplaces, and informal settings. For instance, if we focus on test anxiety in higher education, research shows that high levels of anxiety can impair working memory, reduce information retention, and hinder problem-solving. Test anxiety is not simply a matter of “nerves”; it is tied to self-efficacy (belief in one’s ability to succeed), emotional regulation (ability to manage stress responses), and cognitive load theory (how mental resources are allocated).

Evidence from educational psychology finds that interventions such as cognitive reappraisal (reframing negative thoughts) and expressive writing before exams can improve performance by reducing intrusive worry and freeing up cognitive resources (Putwain & Symes, 2018). This reinforces the broader point that learning environments must address both affective factors (feelings, emotions) and social dynamics to optimize learning outcomes.

Just as Dorothy Espelage used research methods to understand the social-emotional aspects of bullying, focusing on test anxiety shows how targeted interventions based on psychological theory can enhance educational performance across contexts.

Reference :
https://doi.org/10.1080/00131911.2018.1441123

• Rim Smaili

El texto expone con claridad cómo la ansiedad ante los exámenes va más allá de un simple nerviosismo, afectando procesos cognitivos clave como la memoria de trabajo y la resolución de problemas. Me parece relevante cómo vincula este fenómeno con conceptos teóricos como la autoeficacia y la carga cognitiva, y cómo respalda las afirmaciones con estrategias concretas y evidencia empírica. Esto refuerza la importancia de que las instituciones educativas no se centren únicamente en los contenidos, sino también en crear entornos que apoyen el bienestar emocional y las habilidades de autorregulación de los estudiantes.

@Rim Smaili,

• Paola Guio Sanchez

n college, students need different kinds of extra support to do their best both in and outside of class. This includes help with managing stress, anxiety, and other mental health challenges, as well as guidance on things like study skills, time management, and career planning. It’s also important for students to feel connected and supported socially, and to have accommodations that respect their cultural backgrounds or any disabilities they might have. Counseling psychologists are there to help in a few key ways. Their main goal is to support students’ mental health and help them get past any personal or academic obstacles they might face by teaching coping skills and building resilience. To do this, they offer one-on-one or group counseling, where students can talk through their challenges, and they also run workshops that teach practical skills like managing emotions and organizing time effectively. In their work, counseling psychologists wear multiple hats—they provide direct emotional support and help students understand how their feelings and thoughts affect their learning. They also advocate for students by working with the college to make sure policies are inclusive and by connecting students to other helpful campus resources. Altogether, these efforts create a supportive environment—one that helps students grow, learn, and succeed in a balanced way.

• Amylia Nur

Comment:

Social and emotional conditions are the invisible architecture of learning. Whether you’re in a kindergarten classroom, a college lecture hall, or trying to absorb life lessons from a podcast at 2 a.m., your brain doesn’t work in a vacuum. Emotional safety, a sense of belonging, and positive relationships are not just nice-to-haves—they're the foundation. Without them, cognitive function takes a nosedive. Stress hijacks attention. Anxiety drowns memory. Isolation shuts down motivation.

In higher ed and workplace settings, it's the same song, different verse. Toxic team dynamics? Say goodbye to creative collaboration. A professor who doesn’t even know your name? Suddenly, showing up to class feels like walking into a void. Learning thrives where people feel seen, supported, and safe. Period.

Make an Update:

Let’s take test anxiety—a beast familiar to many students, especially in high-pressure academic environments. Like Espelage did with bullying, researchers have peeled back the layers of this phenomenon using educational psychology tools.

What does the evidence tell us?
Test anxiety isn’t just nervousness—it’s a multi-layered cocktail of worry (cognitive), tension (emotional), and avoidance (behavioral). And it crushes performance. Students who experience it tend to score lower, not because they didn’t study, but because their brain is too busy spiraling to access what they know.

Main concepts to interpret the evidence:

Cognitive Load Theory – Anxiety gobbles up working memory. When your brain is juggling intrusive thoughts like “I’m going to fail” or “I’m not smart enough,” there’s not much bandwidth left to solve math problems or recall historical dates.

Self-Efficacy – A student’s belief in their ability to succeed has a massive impact. Low self-efficacy feeds anxiety. High self-efficacy helps regulate it.

Emotion Regulation – This one’s big. The ability to manage stress, reframe negative thoughts, and self-soothe is key. And it's teachable.

Social Support – Students who feel supported by peers, teachers, or mentors experience less anxiety. The brain knows when it’s not alone, and that changes everything.

So what do we do about it?
It’s not just about teaching content. It’s about coaching minds. Embedding mindfulness practices, offering practice exams to normalize the experience, fostering growth mindsets—all of it matters. We don’t need to coddle. We need to empower.

Learning is emotional. Let’s stop pretending it isn’t.

• Bo Min Kim

Comment:

Social and emotional conditions are the invisible architecture of learning. Whether you’re in a kindergarten classroom, a college lecture hall, or trying to absorb life lessons from a podcast at 2 a.m., your brain doesn’t work in a vacuum. Emotional safety, a sense of belonging, and positive relationships are not just nice-to-haves—they're the foundation. Without them, cognitive function takes a nosedive. Stress hijacks attention. Anxiety drowns memory. Isolation shuts down motivation.

In higher ed and workplace settings, it's the same song, different verse. Toxic team dynamics? Say goodbye to creative collaboration. A professor who doesn’t even know your name? Suddenly, showing up to class feels like walking into a void. Learning thrives where people feel seen, supported, and safe. Period.

Make an Update:

Let’s take test anxiety—a beast familiar to many students, especially in high-pressure academic environments. Like Espelage did with bullying, researchers have peeled back the layers of this phenomenon using educational psychology tools.

What does the evidence tell us?
Test anxiety isn’t just nervousness—it’s a multi-layered cocktail of worry (cognitive), tension (emotional), and avoidance (behavioral). And it crushes performance. Students who experience it tend to score lower, not because they didn’t study, but because their brain is too busy spiraling to access what they know.

Main concepts to interpret the evidence:

Cognitive Load Theory – Anxiety gobbles up working memory. When your brain is juggling intrusive thoughts like “I’m going to fail” or “I’m not smart enough,” there’s not much bandwidth left to solve math problems or recall historical dates.

Self-Efficacy – A student’s belief in their ability to succeed has a massive impact. Low self-efficacy feeds anxiety. High self-efficacy helps regulate it.

Emotion Regulation – This one’s big. The ability to manage stress, reframe negative thoughts, and self-soothe is key. And it's teachable.

Social Support – Students who feel supported by peers, teachers, or mentors experience less anxiety. The brain knows when it’s not alone, and that changes everything.

So what do we do about it?
It’s not just about teaching content. It’s about coaching minds. Embedding mindfulness practices, offering practice exams to normalize the experience, fostering growth mindsets—all of it matters. We don’t need to coddle. We need to empower.

Learning is emotional. Let’s stop pretending it isn’t.

• Bo Min Kim

My work is focused on research and training with technicians and farmers, and understanding how social and emotional conditions affect learning is fundamental.

A teacher said, first we must bring water and some food to share because many people show up to class without having eaten and if they did eat it can be very little compared to the energy we are going to use learning. We are not talking about bullying but we are talking about systemic violence.

I can cite this essay: Valuing the knowledge and practices of families and communities for their integration into situated educational processes
To talk about this challenge, I visualize two important lines for collaborative and proactive research: 1) to think about and trigger other forms of family participation in the school; and 2) to encourage teachers to know and/or recognize the socio-ecological environment of their students in order to trigger situated and meaningful learning processes [Díaz, 2006; Lotz-Sisitka & Lupele, 2017].

Firstly, it is important to recognize that despite the conditions of poverty and marginalization suffered in many rural areas, the participation of families in the education of children and adolescents has been forcefully expressed through the support and contribution they make in terms of maintenance and support for educational figures. Conceiving those who make up families as knowledgeable and expert in their own trades and activities implies reversing the idea that a low level of schooling or even the illiteracy of its members makes them incapable of teaching and accompanying in learning; This requires teachers to get to know the school community and their families in order to rethink and transform their interaction and their expectations about the participation of mothers and fathers in their children's schooling.
An important line of research is the identification and collaborative definition of essential learning for a dignified survival in which the diversity of actors in rural education participates, based on epistemologies, practices and historical experiences of resistance and greater horizontality in relation to nature. This also implies overcoming the culturalist approach adopted in bilingual intercultural schools, both in practice and in the curriculum, and which reproduces a separation of nature and human society that exacerbates the socio-ecological crisis.
Families of rural students have keys to this much-needed definition and in contrast to narratives that point to minimal, homogeneous learning, which do not consider its relevance, that is, the points of view and expectations of local actors. The second line that concerns me here involves encouraging teachers to know and/or recognize the natural and social environment of their students in order to trigger situated and meaningful learning processes. In other words, it implies that they know, recognize and value what families know and what they do. I speak of knowing, because the location of teachers in workplaces far from their own places of origin is frequent; 14 In other cases, it is a matter of recognizing a physical and social environment that teachers share with students because they are from the same region and/or community.

Referencia: Retos de la educación rural: hacia una agenda de investigación y colaboración | Revista Iberoamericana de Educación Rural
Rosa Guadalupe Mendoza Zuany

• Melissa Bonilla

Social and emotional conditions significantly influence learning in several key ways:

1. Emotional Well-being and Readiness to Learn

Students who feel safe, supported, and valued are more likely to engage in learning.
Stress, anxiety, and depression can impair concentration, memory, and problem-solving.
Positive emotions (like joy and curiosity) enhance motivation and cognitive function.
2. Social Relationships and Classroom Environment

Supportive relationships with teachers and peers foster trust and collaboration, essential for active learning.
Negative interactions (like bullying or social exclusion) can lead to disengagement and lower academic performance.
3. Self-Regulation and Behavior

Students with strong emotional regulation skills can manage distractions and frustrations, leading to better focus and persistence.
Social skills help students work effectively in group settings and resolve conflicts constructively.
4. Identity and Motivation

A sense of belonging and positive self-concept boosts confidence and academic motivation.
Social identity and cultural background influence how students perceive themselves about academic success.
5. Trauma and Adverse Experiences

Trauma or chronic stress (e.g., from poverty, abuse, or instability) can affect brain development and learning capacity.
Support systems and trauma-informed teaching can help mitigate these effects.
In short, learning doesn’t happen in isolation—students’ emotions and social experiences shape how, what, and how well they learn. That's why social-emotional learning (SEL) is increasingly prioritized in education systems worldwide.

Reference:

Zins, J. E., Weissberg, R. P., Wang, M. C., & Walberg, H. J. (2004). Building Academic Success on Social and Emotional Learning: What Does the Research Say? Teachers College Press.

• Shaira Ruby Serrado

Kondisi sosial dan emosional seseorang sangat memengaruhi kualitas dan efektivitas pembelajaran. Ketika seseorang merasa aman, diterima, dan memiliki hubungan sosial yang positif, otaknya berada dalam kondisi optimal untuk menyerap dan mengolah informasi. Sebaliknya, stres, kecemasan, isolasi sosial, atau perasaan tidak aman dapat menghambat fungsi kognitif seperti memori, perhatian, dan pemecahan masalah. Ini berlaku dalam konteks apa pun—baik di kelas, ruang kerja, maupun di lingkungan masyarakat.

Contohnya, mahasiswa yang merasa cemas karena tekanan sosial atau ekspektasi tinggi mungkin mengalami kesulitan fokus saat kuliah atau ujian. Di tempat kerja, karyawan yang tidak merasa dihargai bisa menjadi enggan belajar keterampilan baru. Dalam kehidupan pribadi, trauma masa lalu bisa menurunkan kepercayaan diri untuk mengikuti pelatihan atau kursus baru. Artinya, aspek sosial-emosional bukan pelengkap—tetapi fondasi—dari proses belajar.

• Rizal Akhmad Nugraha Zal

The concept of “productive struggle,” as explored by George Reese, highlights a critical insight from educational psychology: learning is not always smooth or easy—true growth often occurs when learners grapple with challenging material. Educational psychology helps us understand why and how this happens by drawing on both cognitive and developmental theories within the learning sciences.

One key contribution comes from Cognitive Load Theory (CLT). Developed by John Sweller, CLT explains that learners have limited working memory. Struggle becomes productive when the cognitive load is optimized—not too overwhelming (which can cause frustration and disengagement), but not too minimal (which leads to boredom). Educational psychology uses this framework to guide instructional design: materials are sequenced so that learners gradually build schema (mental frameworks) without overloading their processing capabilities.

Another important area is constructivism, particularly the work of Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky. Piaget emphasized how learners actively construct knowledge through interaction with the environment—especially through disequilibrium (or struggle), which prompts new learning. Vygotsky’s concept of the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) also relates closely to productive struggle: it defines the sweet spot between what a learner can do independently and what they can achieve with guidance. In this zone, challenge leads to growth—if properly supported.

Evidence from Educational Psychology Includes:
Experimental studies on memory, retention, and problem-solving

Longitudinal research showing better retention from effortful learning

Classroom-based studies of scaffolding, feedback, and metacognition

Interpretative Concepts and Theories Provided:
Cognitive Load Theory

Constructivist learning theory

Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)

Desirable Difficulties (Bjork, 1994), which shows that effortful learning improves retention

Metacognition—students’ awareness and regulation of their own thinking

Educational psychology thus not only explains the dynamics of learning—it guides the design of learning environments where productive struggle leads to deep understanding, rather than frustration or failure. It encourages educators to strike a balance: challenge students enough to stimulate growth, while also supporting them through scaffolding, feedback, and encouragement.

• Anjana Ak

I really believe that learning is deeply connected to how we feel and the social environments we’re in. If someone feels anxious, lonely, or unsafe, it’s way harder to focus or retain information—whether you’re a kid in school or an adult at work.

On the flip side, when you’re in a space where you feel seen, supported, and emotionally okay, your brain is just more open to learning. Emotional safety isn’t just a “nice to have”—it’s essential.

• Nasywa Dhiya