In addition to COVID‐19 being a health threat, its longevity and restrictions act as significant stressors and risk for mental health. In the current study, we take a look at how psychological response, both its positive aspects, for example, mental well‐being and life satisfaction, and its negative aspects, for example, anxiety and COVID‐19 anxiety, have changed as the pandemic has continued (first three waves in Slovenia). Additionally, we are interested in whether the psychological response is associated with the perception of stress level in waves 2 and 3 as less, equally or more stressful when compared to the stress level in wave 1 and what shapes these perceptions. An online questionnaire battery (COVID‐19 stress level comparison, Warwick‐Edinburgh Mental Well‐being Scale; LAOM Anxiety Scale; Global Life Satisfaction scale; COVID‐19 anxiety), with ANOVA and qualitative analysis of the open‐ended question on reasons for perceiving wave 2 and wave 3 as more stressful when compared to wave 1, was used on a Slovene convenience adult sample (wave 1: N = 364, 83.5% female; wave 2: N = 987, 85.5% female; wave 3: N = 467, 78.5% female). The findings show (a) a significant increase in COVID‐19 anxiety from wave 1 to wave 3, with a peak in wave 2, and a significant decrease in mental well‐being from wave 1 to wave 3; (b) the level of anxiety, mental well‐being, and life satisfaction differs significantly between individuals who perceive wave 2 and 3 as more stressful compared to individuals who perceive wave 2 and wave 3 as equally or less stressful when compared to wave 1; (c) reasons for perceiving the succeeding waves of the pandemic as more stressful compared to wave 1 are diverse, with some being reported in both succeeding waves (e.g., negative emotional response to the pandemic, negative perceptions of measures). The findings highlight the important role of stress analysis in identifying the support mechanisms for dealing with the challenges of the COVID‐19 pandemic.

In order to understand water balance in plants, students must understand the relation between external representations at the macroscopic, microscopic, and submicroscopic levels. This study investigated how Slovenian students (N = 79) at the primary, secondary, and undergraduate tertiary levels understand water balance in plants. The science problem consisted of a text describing the setting, visualizations of the process occurring in a wilted plant stem, and five tasks. To determine students' visual attention to the various elements of the tasks, we used eye tracking and focused on the total fixation duration in particular areas of interest. As expected, primary school students showed less knowledge and understanding of the process than the secondary school and university students did. Students with correct answers spent less time observing the biological phenomena displayed at the macroscopic and submicroscopic levels than those with incorrect answers, and more often provided responses that combined the macro-, micro-, and submicroscopic levels of thought. Learning about difficult scientific topics, such as the water balance in plants, with representations at the macroscopic and submicroscopic levels can be either helpful or confusing for learners, depending on their expertise in using multiple external representations, which is important to consider in biology and science education.

Over the last few decades, there has been a significant rise in the number of programmes aimed at developing students’ social, emotional and intercultural competencies. This has coincided with growing recognition of the role that schools have to play in fostering not only the cognitive, but also the social and emotional development of their students. Despite targeting separate competencies, there seem to be many similarities in approaches to students’ social and emotional learning (SEL) as well as developing intercultural skills, presenting a rationale for their integration and conceptualisation on the social, emotional and intercultural (SEI) level. The myriad of different SEI programmes provides an arsenal of useful tools for school-based SEI learning. However, choosing which programme to use, considering how to implement it and determining whether it will be effective can be quite overwhelming. Existing approaches aimed at teaching SEI competencies vary greatly depending on the programme, as does the content of the programme and its design. In this article, we seek to tackle the question of how SEI competencies are taught, with particular emphasis on the content and theoretical or conceptual background of existing interventions, together with their methodological and organisational aspects. We also explore whether and how the evaluation of existing programmes has been conducted, the most important results and the aspects of implementation which are key to fostering the development of SEI competencies in educational contexts. This article presents an overview of relevant aspects worth acknowledging while developing and implementing SEI programmes, and which might prove especially useful when programmes are conceptualised within the overall SEI (instead of the more often used SEL) learning framework. Given the importance of SEI competencies for the overall well-being of students (and hence their parents and school staff), we encourage researchers and practitioners to build upon these insights while developing and implementing comprehensive SEI programmes.

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With stress related to the COVID-19 pandemic, an increase in anxiety and a decrease in overall mental well-being is expected. We investigated the role of emotional competencies (mindfulness and emotional self-efficacy) for psychological responding (mental well-being, general anxiety, and COVID-19 anxiety) during the COVID-19 pandemic. We also examined whether practising mindfulness with inner (meditation-based) and body (yoga-based) exercises supports emotional competencies. Our sample consisted of 364 participants (83.5% females, M = 37.21 years, SD = 12.92 years). Findings showed that emotional competencies are a viable source of support in psychological responses to COVID-19, with Emotional self-efficacy and Accept without judgement playing the strongest roles. Moreover, practising mindfulness was shown to foster several aspects of emotional competencies (i.e., Observe, Describe, and Emotional self-efficacy). There is an ambiguous finding regarding Observe scale that was also found problematic in other studies. The implications for possible interventions are discussed.