Uncovering the situational impact in educational settings: Studies on motivational and emotional experiences

The aim of this Special Issue was to bring together studies that help to uncover the situational impact in educational settings above and beyond the impact of individual learners’ characteristics. In this conclusion, we evaluate the degree to which the studies were successful in meeting the challenges accompanying this pursuit. Educational research has long focused on interindvidual differences while neglecting intraindividual processes and the temporal dynamics of important constructs like emotions and motivation as well as their antecedents and correlates. Studying intraindividual processes in education entails a) assessing variables repeatedly over time, and in doing so, sampling different learning situations, and b) dealing with complex data by applying advanced statistical methods to identify dynamic relationships between variables. This post-script takes a critical look at the efforts made by the studies to meet these requirements and summarizes lessons for future research.