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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Educ.
Sec. Higher Education
Volume 9 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/feduc.2024.1456878
This article is part of the Research Topic Educational Transformation: 21st century skills and challenges for higher education View all 21 articles

Perception of the learning climate and its prediction of well-being in psychology students at a Chilean university

Provisionally accepted
Rubia Cobo-Rendon Rubia Cobo-Rendon 1,2*Diego García - Álvarez Diego García - Álvarez 3,4Ramón Cobo Rendón Ramón Cobo Rendón 5Javiera Santana Javiera Santana 6
  • 1 Instituto de Bienestar Socioemocional IBEM, Facultad de Psicología, CONCEPCION, Chile
  • 2 Facultad de Psicología, Universidad de Desarrollo, Santiago, Santiago Metropolitan Region (RM), Chile
  • 3 Departamento de Ciencias del Comportamiento, Universidad Metropolitana, Caracas, Venezuela
  • 4 Center for Psychology Studies, University of Montevideo, Montevideo, Uruguay
  • 5 Departamento de Física, Facultad Ciencias Físicas y Matemáticas, Universidad de Concepción, Concepción, VIII Biobío Region, Chile
  • 6 Dirección de Docencia, Universidad de Concepción, CONCEPCION, Chile

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    This paper aimed to examine the perception of learning climate and its predictive ability in the multidimensional well-being of university students. An associative and predictive approach was adopted, carried out through a cross-sectional study that included 295 students from a Chilean university. Participants completed a learning climate questionnaire and the PERMA-Profiler. Results indicated that students reported moderately high levels of well-being in general, with the dimensions of positive relationships, engagement, and purpose showing the highest scores. Regarding learning climate, responses indicated a mostly positive perception, with scores above the midpoint on the scale. No significant differences were found in well-being or perception of learning climate according to academic year. However, a significant interaction effect between gender and learning climate was found for overall multidimensional well-being, F(1, 286) = 4.67, p = .032, η² = 0.016. Men in the high learning climate group showed higher well-being than women, while women in the low climate group outperformed men in the same group. Additionally, significant gender differences were observed in the engagement dimension, F(1, 286) = 11.23, p < .001, η² = 0.033, with men in the high learning climate group reporting higher engagement, and women in the low learning climate group showing higher engagement than their male counterparts. Perception of learning climate explained a significant amount of the variance in all dimensions of well-being. These findings highlight the importance of promoting learning environments that foster autonomy and teacher support, and suggest that the learning climate may have different impacts on well-being depending on gender.

    Keywords: subjective well-being1, psychological well-being2, autonomy support3, Higher Education4, flourishing5

    Received: 29 Jun 2024; Accepted: 18 Nov 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Cobo-Rendon, García - Álvarez, Cobo Rendón and Santana. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Rubia Cobo-Rendon, Instituto de Bienestar Socioemocional IBEM, Facultad de Psicología, CONCEPCION, Chile

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