How social-emotional competence shapes classroom participation? A configurational analysis of teacher education...

University students' classroom participation is a research focus of great concern to educational scholars and university educators. Existing studies have indicated the potential impact of social-emotional competence on students' in-class engagement, but the complex combinatorial effects of its components remain under-explored. This study aims to decompose the influence mechanism of university students' social-emotional competence on classroom participation, specifically exploring how different combinations of social-emotional competence components jointly affect their classroom participation.

A questionnaire survey was conducted among 172 teacher education students to collect data on their social-emotional competence and classroom participation. Fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) was adopted as the core research method to systematically explore the complex causal configurations between social-emotional competence components and high classroom participation.​.

The analysis identified three distinct configurations of social-emotional competence that can effectively lead to high classroom participation among university students. Notably, self-awareness, relationship skills, and self-management emerged as the core conditional factors across all three configurations, playing irreplaceable roles in promoting classroom participation.

This study reveals the asymmetric and configurational nature of the relationship between social-emotional competence and classroom participation, enriching the theoretical understanding of non-linear influence mechanisms in educational psychology. The identification of core conditional factors provides practical implications for universities and educators to design targeted intervention strategies-such as strengthening self-awareness training and interpersonal skill development-to enhance students' classroom participation. Future research could expand the sample scope across different disciplines and explore the moderating effects of teaching contexts on these configurations.