Dr. TANG Xin Presented His Research in AERA 2025 Annual Meeting

Recently, Dr. TANG Xin, an associate professor from the School of Education attended and gave an oral presentation at the 2025 Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA).

The AERA annual meeting is one of the largest and most influential academic conferences globally in educational science, providing a platform for scholars, educators, and graduate students across various fields of education to share research and engage in academic exchange. This year’s conference was held from April 23 to 27, 2025 in Denver, Colorado, USA, under the theme “Research, Remedy, and Repair: Toward Just Education Renewal.”

During the conference, Dr. TANG Xin delivered an oral presentation at the symposium titled “International Perspectives of SEL Skills, Belongingness, and Assessment in Primary and Middle Schools.” His presentation was based on a study entitled “Which Social-Emotional Skills Are Most Important for Students’ Learning and Well-Being? An International Comparison Among China, the United States, and Finland.”

This study drew on data from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) 2019 Study on Social and Emotional Skills, including nearly 20,000 adolescent samples from China, the United States, and Finland. Using both relative weight analysis and dominance analysis methods, and controlling for demographic variables, the researchers examined the associations between social-emotional skills and students’ academic performance and well-being.

The findings revealed that curiosity, perseverance, and responsibility were key social-emotional skills influencing academic performance across all three countries. Meanwhile, optimism, vitality, and stress tolerance were identified as core skills affecting students’ well-being. Additionally, the study uncovered cross-national differences in the impact of social-emotional skills on academic achievement. In the U.S. educational context, tolerance played a crucial role in student performance, while in the Chinese cultural context, boldness and creativity emerged as key drivers for academic success.

By conducting a cross-country comparative analysis, this research identified the most critical combinations of social-emotional skills influencing students' academic outcomes and well-being. These results not only provide empirical support for developing targeted strategies to cultivate social-emotional skills and designing customized intervention programs but also offer valuable insights into understanding how these skills function within specific educational contexts.

The first author of the study is LIU Zepeng, a Year 2023 Master's student in Education supervised by Professor TANG, who served as the corresponding author of the research.

Written by TANG Xin

Edited by KUANG Xuemei

Proofread by CHEN Ruoxi