Interdisciplinary Salon of Educational Psychology

Ma Shufeng

Associate Professor, Department of Educational Psychology, Faculty of Education. She holds a PhD in Educational Psychology from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Her main research interests lie in the design of interactive and collaborative learning environments as well as the evaluation of their intervention effects.

Lecture Abstract

Against the backdrop of growing global emphasis on social and emotional competency development in educational governance, schools are generally under normative pressure to embed relevant philosophies into formal institutional arrangements. Nevertheless, large-scale empirical evidence remains scarce regarding whether decoupling exists between schools’ symbolic institutional arrangements and substantive instructional practices, as well as its implications for educational equity. Drawing on cross-national data from the OECD Study on Social and Emotional Skills (SSES 2023), this study examines the distinct influences of school-level symbolic institutional adoption and teacher-level substantive classroom practices on students’ social and emotional competencies. The findings are as follows. First, prominent institutional decoupling exists within schools: teachers’ classroom practices significantly promote students’ social and emotional competencies, whereas formal institutional arrangements at the school level show no meaningful effects. Second, classroom practices yield a notable equalizing effect, such that students from disadvantaged social backgrounds gain more substantially from substantive instructional engagement, thereby narrowing social-class disparities in social and emotional competencies. Third, the primary consequence of institutional decoupling lies in the efficiency loss of policy goals rather than the widening of social inequality. These results suggest that the focus of educational governance should shift from symbolic institutional construction toward grounded classroom practice.

Key Words

institutional decoupling, social and emotional education, classroom practice, cross-national comparison

The Interdisciplinary Salon of Educational Psychology is a regular academic event initiated by the Department of Educational Psychology, East China Normal University. It invites distinguished domestic and international scholars in education and psychology to share latest research achievements and is held on a monthly basis. The salon aims to broaden the academic vision of researchers in educational psychology, advance the development of educational empirical research, and foster interdisciplinary academic collaboration.