The COVID-19 pandemic is an unprecedented health and social crisis. In an attempt to contain the spread of infection and mitigate its negative effects, countries adopted a wide range of measures. One key strategy that had been used on a global scale was to limit social contacts. Consequently, only essential services were allowed to operate; schools were closed, people were instructed to stay home, and activities involving social interactions were suspended. As a result of the measures, children and adolescents were directly impacted. Decision makers, researchers, health and educational professionals, as well as parents, became increasingly concerned with the mental health of this subpopulation as they were deprived of activities that are essential to their development. Their concerns were revealed to be well-founded; many recent studies have demonstrated the very high levels of stress, anxiety, depression, and loneliness that children and adolescents have experienced throughout the pandemic (Rogers et al., 2021; Rothe et al., 2021; Tang et al., 2021; Tardif-Grenier et al., 2021). Moreover, their mental health adjustment seemed to be closely linked to their academic functioning including their school attendance during the pandemic (Guimond et al., 2021).

Considering such evidence, it is worth examining how children and adolescents approach learning under these circumstances. In this line, several questions have emerged such as: “Is the COVID-19 pandemic affecting how children and adolescents approach learning?” and “How do children’s and adolescents’ self-perceptions and of teachers’ emotional support contributed to their intentions toward learning during these stressful times?” In the eventuality where they were not deprived of such a support, we would expect them to easily remain focused on their achievement goals (Li et al., 2019), and especially if they feel competent. Indeed, teachers’ emotional support and competence beliefs are both known to influence intentions in relation to learning (Korpershoek et al., 2020). However, these intentions and the processes underlying them have received little attention in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. The present study fills this important gap by investigating the achievement goal orientations of a sample of adolescents at the onset of the second wave of this pandemic. More precisely, their goals are examined as a function of both their own competence beliefs and their perception of their teachers’ emotional support.

This study investigated adolescents’ achievement goal orientations (i.e., mastery, performance, and work avoidance) during the COVID-19 pandemic as a function of both their own competence beliefs and their perception of their teachers’ emotional support. The results are interpreted in light of pre-pandemic evidence on the topic.

Unsurprisingly, there were significant bivariate associations between competence beliefs and each of the three orientations. Indeed, competence beliefs were found to be moderately positively associated with the mastery orientation and moderately negatively associated with the work avoidance orientation and, also, modestly and positively associated with the performance orientation. This coincides with the observation that students tend to make a self-assessment of their competence when it comes to set goals for themselves (Elliot and Hulleman, 2017). It seems indeed to be equally true during this pandemic. As for the emotional support provided by teachers, it is less strongly associated with these orientations. In fact, teachers’ emotional support appeared to be modestly and negatively associated with the adoption of a work avoidance goal orientation and modestly and positively associated with the adoption of a mastery orientation, this last association being marginal. Yet, these results corroborate the observation that students’ perception of their relationship with their teachers, notably the emotional support provided by them, can determine how they approach learning opportunities (Wentzel, 2002; Wentzel et al., 2012; Diaconu-Gherasim et al., 2019).

Further analyses revealed competence beliefs to be a stronger predictor of the three goal orientations than teachers’ emotional support is, at least during this pandemic. Indeed, when considering these two dimensions together, teachers’ emotional support was not associated with these goals. It could be that there is an overlap between these two perceptions that underlie a competence assessment. In comparison, competence beliefs were found to be significantly associated to a mastery orientation as well as a performance orientation. In addition, positive competence beliefs, to a certain extent, seem to be negatively associated with a work avoidance orientation. As already mentioned, these findings are congruent with existing evidence. Indeed, it is well known that when adolescents display confidence in their academic abilities, they tend to seek opportunities to develop their knowledge and skills and to gain recognition for them (Seaton et al., 2014; Jiang et al., 2018). Accordingly, they are much less at risk for adopting learning avoidance strategies (Law et al., 2012; Jiang et al., 2018). Thus, it seems that during this pandemic these beliefs played their usual role and helped students preserve positive intentions toward learning.

Now, it was worth wondering if teachers’ emotional support could, at least, be associated with one or several of these goal orientations, through competence beliefs. Results of mediation analyses suggested that teachers’ emotional support was associated to a mastery orientation approach to learning when competence beliefs were considered as a mediator. This observation is in line, notably, with Wentzel’s (2002, 2012) pre-pandemic research findings suggesting that, when teachers take interest in their students’ learning endeavors and hold positives expectations for them, two underlying dimensions behind the construct of teachers’ emotional support, their students tend to pursue ambitious goals and, for example, seek to develop their knowledge and competence. These mediation analyses did not reveal competence beliefs to play a similar mediating role between teachers’ emotional support and a performance or a work avoidance orientation and this may be due to the previously mentioned potential overlap. So, ultimately, teachers’ emotional support appeared to have a limited effect on goal orientations. That said, in the achievement goals literature, this particular support is described to have effects on how students approach and adapt to learning. Thus, it is worth investigating further its effect alongside self-perceptions.

The current findings should be considered with caution. First, the results may not be directly explained by the pandemic. Second, our sample was very small and was not representative of the entire student population. Thus, our findings cannot be generalized. In addition, we cannot claim causality in our results since they are correlational in nature. Regardless of these limitations, this study has merit, such that it includes an estimation of the association of both competence beliefs and perception of teachers’ emotional support with several achievement goal orientations. It appears that these relationships have been extensively discussed from a theoretical point of view but have not been systematically (and conjunctly) tested, at least not in the context of the ongoing pandemic. Therefore, the emerging results improve our understanding of the relationships between how students feel competent and supported in line with how they approach learning during these particular times.

Our results identify adolescents’ own competence beliefs as an adequate predictor of their goal orientations. Further, the extent of these beliefs was shown to be a better predictor of goal orientations than the level of perceived emotional support by teachers. Indeed, teachers’ emotional support ultimately appeared to have a limited effect. This result is somewhat surprising as both of these dimensions have been previously related with achievement goal orientations (Schunk and Mullen, 2012). As highlighted in Wentzel’s (2002, 2012) work, students who consider their teachers to be caring and supportive are much more likely to value the learning process and, notably, to set ambitious goals for themselves. We would have expected to observe such a relationship in a period of uncertainty like the COVID-19 pandemic, while teachers were likely to constitute a source of support and comfort (Curby et al., 2013) and even a source of inspiration. Perhaps the measure that has been used did not allow to fully capture the scope of this support even if it is in line with the reference construct. Nonetheless, it is promising that a resource that resides within adolescents (beliefs about one’s own competence) plays an important role in how they approach learning in such unique and challenging circumstances.

The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation.

The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by Comité d’Éthique de la Recherche (CÉR) Éducation et Sciences Sociales. Written informed consent to participate in this study was provided by the participants’ legal guardian/next of kin.

JS: conceptualization, data curation, formal analysis, investigation, methodology, project administration, resources, software, supervision, validation, visualization, writing-original draft preparation, writing-review and editing. M-FN: conceptualization, validation, visualization, writing-original draft preparation, writing-review and editing. IA: conceptualization, formal analysis, investigation, methodology, validation, visualization, writing-original draft preparation, writing-review and editing. F-AG: investigation, methodology, validation, visualization, writing-original draft preparation, writing-review and editing. JS-A: validation, writing-review and editing. CF: validation, writing-review and editing. MG: project administration, supervision to participate in this study was provided by the participants’ legal guardian/next of kin. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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