Although professional training or development opportunities can help university academics to expand their competences and implement high quality educational practices, academics differ in the extent to which they engage in such learning opportunities and their resulting learning gains. A theoretical explanation for these differences involves their motivations in the form of achievement goals. Accordingly, in the current study we investigated the effects of academics’ achievement goals on their learning engagement and learning gains in professional development courses. Forty-eight German university academics completed assessments of achievement goals prior to course participation, their learning engagement during the course (three short assessments measuring: effort, learning intensity, risk-taking, elaboration, implementation, and persistence), and their learning gains afterwards. Latent growth curve modeling revealed a significant influence of achievement goals on the overall levels of learning engagement. Specifically, learning-approach goals led to more functional learning engagement while work-avoidance goals led to less functional learning engagement. Further analyses confirmed that academics’ achievement goals were related to the amount they learned, mediated by their learning engagement. These findings highlight the importance of supporting academics’ achievement goals to ensure quality learning experiences.

Teaching quality is a crucial factor within higher education. Research on this topic often requires assessing teaching quality as a global construct through self-reports. However, such instruments are criticized due to the lack of alignment between teacher and student reports of instructional practices. We argue that while teachers might over- or under-estimate specific dimensions of teaching quality, the aggregation of these dimensions in the form of overarching teaching quality well reflects differences in teaching quality between teachers. Accordingly, we test a ten-item measure that allows faculty to self-report their teaching quality based on the aspects distinguished in the SEEQ ( Marsh, 1982 , 2007 ). Using 15,503 student assessments of teaching quality in 889 sessions taught by 97 faculty members, we conducted Doubly Latent Multi Level Modelling while considering bias and unfairness variables to model overarching teaching quality assessed by students, and simultaneously corrected for measurement error and potential distortions through the assessment situation. This global factor of teaching quality was strongly associated with teacher self-reported teaching quality (ρ = .74), which we interpret as evidence that global teacher reports of teaching quality can serve as sensible indicators of overarching teaching quality for nomothetic research in higher education.

Achievement Goal Theory (AGT) has been applied as a core concept for understanding and promoting students' motivation in physical education (PE) and shows considerable relevance for theoretically and empirically justifying the significance of PE. However, systematically organized reviews of empirical research on AGT are limited to physical activities without explicit PE perspective. First, we aimed to compile basic tenets of AGT and its pedagogical potential for PE. Second, to bring together key findings and discuss future research, we systematically examined the existing empirical literature that applied AGT constructs in both observational and interventional PE settings. We searched the Web of Science, Scopus, Education Source, ERIC, SPORTDiscus, Physical Education Index, PsychInfo, and PsychArticles databases to identify English-language peer-reviewed journal articles with no restriction to publication date. The review was conducted according to the PRISMA Statement. Two independent reviewers screened all studies identified for eligibility, and assessed the methodological quality as well as the risk of bias. A total of 91 studies were included for analysis. Most of the studies (70) were observational, 21 studies were intervention based. On average, the methodological quality of the included studies was moderate and the risk of bias was moderate to high. Mastery goals, mastery-approach goals, and mastery climates appear to be highly relevant for supporting multiple political and curricular PE aims such as psychological well-being, motor skill development, general sports participation, prosocial behavior, and aspects of healthy living. Achievement goal profiles combining high mastery goals, high to low performance goals, and performance-approach goals partly show desirable functions. The results provide comprehensive information for planning and shaping PE lessons based on AGT constructs that match the intended ambitions. The integration of the results into everyday school PE practice is a promising avenue for promoting students' motivation in PE and for fulfilling the overall political and curricular aims. However, this may be challenging in PE practice, as PE teachers at least partially follow a performance-pedagogical structure, including an orientation toward agonal sports, competition, and social comparison.

The COVID-19 pandemic drastically impacted the educational sector on a global front. A plethora of research has been conducted to better understand the effects that the pandemic had on education as a whole, including investigations into different topics (e.g., school closures, e-teaching and learning, mental and physical health), populations (e.g., students, teachers), and levels of education (e.g., school, higher education). To summarize the available literature on education during the pandemic both qualitatively and quantitatively, many systematic reviews and meta-analyses have begun to emerge. With the present systematic meta-review, we aimed to synthesize and combine this existing database to derive broader and more comprehensive insights that can aid educational stakeholders. We summarize and evaluate 43 systematic reviews, four meta-analyses, and eight combined systematic reviews and meta-analyses published until November 2022 to provide a comprehensive narrative of how this crisis affected education and what can be learned moving forward.

Previous research has successfully used basic psychological need satisfaction and achievement goal approaches for describing the motivations of university faculty for teaching and for explaining differences in faculty experiences, success, and learning. However, the interplay between these motivational constructs has been largely ignored, with only faculty from specific educational contexts being studied—neglecting those from other higher education systems and institution types that potentially differ in the configurations, levels, and effects of their motivations. As combining both approaches and examining multiple educational contexts is essential for a comprehensive theoretical understanding of faculty motivation and generalizable results, we conducted an international study including 1410 university faculty members from German, Indian, and US-American teaching and research universities. Aside from need satisfaction and achievement goals, we measured their positive affect, teaching quality, and professional learning. Results demonstrated measurement invariance of basic need and achievement goal scales regarding language, higher education context, and institution type. We found small differences in motivations between the three higher education contexts and negligible differences between institution types. Task, learning, and relational goals were positively and work avoidance goals were negatively linked to the outcome variables. Need satisfaction sensibly explained differences in pursuit of these goals, and—directly and indirectly through the goals—also the outcome variables. Taken together, these results provide international evidence for the importance of faculty motivation for teaching and illuminate how need satisfaction is relevant for goal pursuit, while both motivation approaches uniquely matter for faculty experiences, success, and learning.