Academic Emotions in Students' Self-Regulated Learning and Achievement: A Program of Qualitative and Quantitative Research
Summary (5 min read)
Introduction
- It appears that test anxiety has continued to attract many researchers, whereas other achievement-related emotions have received much less attention.
- As part of each study, the authors presented a fixed sequence of questions, but answers were less constrained, the focus being on individual descriptions of emotional episodes.
Frequencies of Different Emotions
- In accordance with theoretical expectations, the results of the five studies showed that students experience a wide range of emotions in academic settings.
- There was virtually no major human emotion not reported by their participants, disgust being the only notable exception.
- This may apply to test anxiety research and to traditional conceptions of hope, fear, pride, and shame as relating to achievement motivation.
- Different categories of discrete emotions appeared with differing frequencies, depending in part on the type of academic situation addressed.
- Overall, anxiety was the one emotion reported most often, accounting for 15% to 25% of all emotions reported in their studies.
Tracing Unexpected Phenomena
- The qualitative accounts given by their participants also enabled us to detect phenomena that otherwise would have gone unnoticed.
- A case in point was students’meta-emotions, that is, their feelings about their own emotions.
- A number of students gave detailed accounts of experiencing anger about being anxious before exams.
- Many of their participants’ reports about boredom conformed to this analysis:.
- A sizable number of other students told us that they had experienced boredom when feeling unable to keep up with demands, implying that boredom was connected to low self-evaluations of abilities and high evaluations of demands.
Constructing Taxonomies of the Internal Structures of Academic Emotions
- From a more systematic perspective, the authors used their exploratory findings as an empirical basis for constructing theoretical taxonomies of the internal structures of different academic emotions.
- The authors participants reported a broad range of affective, cognitive, physiological, and motivational elements of their emotional experiences that were used for creating these taxonomies.
- Concerning cognitive components, three major categories of cognitions that were experienced as being part of academic emotions were thoughts about the task (e.g., the quantity, difficulty, and relevance of tasks), thoughts about mastery and achievement, and thoughts about the social situation within an academic setting.
- This would suggest some overlap among different emotions, as in the case of worries about failure that were reported as being part of exam-related anxiety but also as components of shame and hopelessness.
- Rather than being characterized by specific, exclusive elements, it seems that different emotions show specific profiles of components, some of them being shared with other emotions.
Academic Emotions and Physiological Activation
- Finally, the authors also used their qualitative data to analyze relations between academic emotions and stress-related physiological processes.
- It is interesting that measures of emotional intensity based on their participants’ qualitative reports about their emotions experienced during an important exam were systematically related to cortisol levels before and after the exam, whereas questionnaire-based measures showed a much less consistent pattern.
- This evidence suggests that qualitative reports may prove useful even for studying functional relations between subjective and physiological levels of emotions, a field that has been plagued by inconsistent findings to date (Spangler et al., in press).
- In sum, findings of their qualitative studies demonstrated that students experience a rich and intense emotional life in academic settings, suggesting that reductionist conceptions of students’ emotions may fall short of adequately covering this domain.
- Positive emotions were reported no less often than negative emotions, thus pointing to the need to investigate them more thoroughly (cf. also Fredrickson, 2001).
Theoretical Considerations Guiding Scale Development
- In line with contemporary component process models (e.g., Scherer, 1984), the authors view emotions as involving sets of interrelated psychological processes.
- Such a conception goes beyond traditional models of test anxiety by taking motivational components into account as well.
- Specifically, the authors used three criteria in creating this set of emotions: (a) The scales should represent those categories of primary human emotions that play a role in academic settings—.
- Third, clarification concerning the situational and temporal generality of the emotion constructs to be measured was necessary.
- Regarding academic situations, being in class, studying outside of class, and taking tests and exams are the three most important types of academic situations at school and university.
Construction of Scales
- Item construction was based on the student reports gained in their exploratory studies, on theoretical considerations, and, concerning test anxiety, on Sarason’s (1984) Reactions-to-Tests Questionnaire and Hodapp and Benson’s (1997) Integrative Test Anxiety Questionnaire.
- From an initial item pool, items were selected for preliminary versions of the scales by using expert judgment and criteria of redundancy.
- Selection of items for the final versions was based on item statistics of the preliminary versions and on results of confirmatory factor analysis for each scale (cf. Titz, 2001).
Item Statistics, Reliabilities, and Structures of Scales
- Table 3 presents item numbers and internal reliabilities for the trait versions of the AEQ scales.
- Coefficients imply that internal reliabilities are quite satisfactory.
- The third cluster represents negative emotions implying lack of subjective control and the last cluster negative emotions characterized by higher levels of control (cf. Roseman, Antoniou, & Jose, 1996).
- Finally, the authors translated the scales (short versions) into the English language and analyzed these versions using samples of undergraduate students at a midwestern Canadian university.
Previous Research
- Laboratory-based experimental research on mood effects has shown that mood, which may be regarded as low-intensity emotion, can have a number of distinct effects on cognitive processes and performance.
- Second, positive and negative mood have been shown to trigger specific modes of thinking and problem solving.
- Many of these and other specific effects found in experimental research have been weak and inconsistent, and it is open to question as to what extent they are generalizable to field settings outside the laboratory.
- Because laboratory research on human emotions is confined by methodological and ethical constraints, it may well be suited to generate hypotheses, but it cannot replace a more direct analysis of the emotions experienced by students in real-life educational settings.
- Test anxiety tends to correlate negatively with academic achievement at school and uni- versity (cf. Hembree, 1988; Zeidner, 1998).
A Cognitive-Motivational Model on the Effects of Emotions
- Different emotions can influence these mechanisms in different ways.
- Note, however, that using these two dimensions instead of one still requires a number of simplifications.
- Positive intrinsic emotions may be assumed to direct attention toward the task, thus directly facilitating learning and performance.
- Generally, positive activating emotions may be assumed to affect achievement positively by strengthening motivation and enhancing flexible learning.
- The effects of positive deactivating as well as negative activating emotions, on the other hand, may be equivocal.
Empirical Findings
- In a series of seven cross-sectional, three longitudinal, and one diary-based study using samples of university and school students, the authors analyzed the relations of academic emotions to learning and achievement (summarized in Pekrun, Hochstadt, & Kramer, 1996; Pekrun & Hofmann, 1999; Pekrun, Molfenter, Titz, & Perry, 2000; Titz, 2001).
- It turned out that students’ anxiety correlated negatively with intrinsic as well as overall extrinsic motivation but positively with extrinsic avoidance motivation (i.e., motivation to invest effort to avoid failures; Pekrun & Hofmann, 1999).
- Negative emotions, on the other hand, correlated positively with task-irrelevant thinking.
- In sum, findings corroborate that students’ academic emotions are closely linked to their learning, self-regulation, and scholastic achievement.
- Second, on a more general level, it cannot be inferred from the sample statistics normally derived from correlational and experimental studies that the implied relations between variables do in fact apply to all participants under study (cf. Schmitz & Skinner, 1993).
A SOCIAL COGNITIVE, CONTROL–VALUE THEORY
- Genetic dispositions, physiological processes, and cognitive appraisals can be regarded as main proximal sources of emotions.
- Genetic dispositions and physiological processes of students are beyond the control of educators.
- Specifically, it has been shown that negative self-concepts and achievement-related expectancies, as well as a helpless attributional style, may be important for test anxiety and students’ hopelessness (Abela & Seligman, 2000; Hembree, 1988).
- Students’ anger, on the other hand, may be characterized by task frustration combined with higher levels of subjective control, as well as high values of outperforming others (high need to win; Rhodewalt & Morf, 1998).
- Concerning students’ positive emotions, however, evidence on antecedents is largely lacking, with the exception of attributional studies showing that internal attributions of success may be important for positive achievement-related emotions (Weiner, 1985) and other person-directed emotions (Weiner, 1995).
Individual Antecedents of Academic Emotions
- Causal attributions and causal expectancies may be regarded as specific cases of appraisals of subjective control and aca- demic self-concepts as appraisals of one’s own competences underlying control.
- The theory holds that control-related and value-related appraisals are main sources of students’ academic emotions.
- Enjoyment originating from statistics was high when both statistics-related control and the subjective value of this domain were high, and low when either control or value, or both, were low.
- In line with these assumptions, test anxiety studies have shown that high achievement expectancies, pressure for achievement, classroom competition, feedback of failure, and punishment after failure correlate with students’ achievement-related anxiety.
Implications for Instruction and Intervention
- Finally, a number of implications for prevention and therapy and for the design of instruction and educational environments may be inferred from their theoretical perspective.
- Individual prevention and therapy can aim at changing students’ control and value appraisals underlying their emotions.
- Research done by Perry and his colleagues has shown that attributional retraining procedures can help students enhance their subjective control over academic performance (cf. Perry, Hechter, Menec, & Weinberg, 1993; Perry & Penner, 1990).
- Educational intervention studies should consider exploring the empirical fruitfulness of strategies of this kind.
RECIPROCAL LINKAGES BETWEEN EMOTIONS, EFFECTS, AND ANTECEDENTS
- The research perspectives discussed in the previous two sections pertain to the effects of emotions and to their antecedents.
- Taken together, however, the assumptions of the two models imply that antecedents, emotions, and effects are linked by reciprocal causation .
- Two reciprocal linkages may be of specific importance.
- Second, classroom instruction and social environments can induce academic emotions in students, but students’ emotions can influence instruction, environments, and the behavior of significant others.
- In similar ways, Meece, Wigfield, and Eccles (1990) and Schnabel (1998) have used longitudinal data to disentangle causal relations between test anxiety and students’ academic achievement.
CONCLUSION
- The findings presented in this article demonstrate that students’ academic emotions are often multifaceted, can be measured in reliable ways by the AEQ self-report scales, and relate significantly to students’ learning, self-regulation, achievement, personality antecedents, and instructional as well as social environments.
- Limitations of the studies summarized here should be noted as well.
- Specifically, the quantitative field studies the authors have conducted so far largely used cross-sectional or predictive designs, as yet not allowing more precise inferences of causal relations.
- In addition, the assessment of students’ self-regulated learning, and of variables of appraisals and social environments, has focused on self-report scales in their studies to date.
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Citations
2,757 citations
Cites background or methods from "Academic Emotions in Students' Self..."
...We then developed quantitative measures (specifically, the Achievement Emotions Questionnaire, AEQ; Pekrun et al., 2002a; Pekrun, Goetz, & Perry, 2005; and the Test Emotions Questionnaire, TEQ; Pekrun et al., 2004), and used these measures to do quantitative studies testing assumptions of the control-value theory....
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...…(see Table I for a summary overview; for more complete accounts of the assumptions, see Pekrun, 1984, 1988, 1992a, and for overviews of related empirical evidence, Pekrun et al., 2002a,b; Pekrun, Goetz, Perry, Kramer, & Hochstadt, 2004; Pekrun et al., 2006a; Pekrun et al., in press; Titz, 2001)....
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...In our own program of research, we first carried out a number of qualitative studies exploring students’ achievement emotions (Pekrun, 1992c; Pekrun et al., 2002a)....
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...Achievement emotions can be described by common, underlying dimensions like valence and activation (Pekrun et al., 2002a), but a full account of these emotions presupposes that the multiplicity of qualitative differences between discrete achievement emotions be taken into account....
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...Two types of achievement emotions differing in object focus can thus be distinguished: activity emotions pertaining to ongoing achievementrelated activities, and outcome emotions pertaining to the outcomes of these activities (Pekrun et al., 2002a; Pekrun, Elliot, & Maier, 2006a)....
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2,526 citations
Cites background from "Academic Emotions in Students' Self..."
...To be sure, there have been studies of emotions as outcomes of classroom activities, such as the work on “flow” (Csikszentmihalyi & Rathunde, 1993) and the role of attributions as generators of emotions (Weiner, 1986), but very little on how various positive and negative moods or emotions might guide or direct academic cognition and learning (Linnenbrink & Pintrich, 2002; Pekrun et al., 2002)....
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...Affect also may increase or decrease workingmemory load by using cognitive resources that could be devoted to the academic task (Pekrun, 1992; Pekrun et al., 2002)....
[...]
...…work on “flow” (Csikszentmihalyi & Rathunde, 1993) and the role of attributions as generators of emotions (Weiner, 1986), but very little on how various positive and negative moods or emotions might guide or direct academic cognition and learning (Linnenbrink & Pintrich, 2002; Pekrun et al., 2002)....
[...]
1,431 citations
Cites background from "Academic Emotions in Students' Self..."
...…for example, the centrality of children’s interest and emotion in initiating and sustaining their participation in learning activities (e.g., Pekrun et al., 2002; Schutz & DeCuir, 2002) and highlights the burden that an emotion as commonplace as boredom can put on children’s effortful…...
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1,150 citations
1,139 citations
References
9,580 citations
"Academic Emotions in Students' Self..." refers background in this paper
...To obtain a more complete picture of students’ academic reality, it would seem necessary to analyze their positive experiences as well (cf. also Fredrickson, 2001)....
[...]
...Although anxiety was the single discrete emotion reported most often, positive emotions were reported no less often than negative emotions, thus pointing to the need to investigate them more thoroughly (cf. also Fredrickson, 2001)....
[...]
6,982 citations
"Academic Emotions in Students' Self..." refers background or result in this paper
...Recent findings by J. E. Turner and Schallert (2001) on students’ shame are in line with this assumption, as well as earlier research by Weiner (1985)....
[...]
...…students’ positive emotions, however, evidence on antecedents is largely lacking, with the exception of attributional studies showing that internal attributions of success may be important for positive achievement-related emotions (Weiner, 1985) and other person-directed emotions (Weiner, 1995)....
[...]
...In a control–value theory of academic emotions (Pekrun, 1998, 2000), an attempt was made to integrate assumptions of expectancy–value and attributional theories of achievement-related emotions (Pekrun, 1992a; J. E. Turner & Schallert, 2001; Weiner, 1985)....
[...]
...The only major exception is the attributional research on achievement emotions undertaken by Weiner (cf. Weiner, 1985)....
[...]
...Concerning students’ positive emotions, however, evidence on antecedents is largely lacking, with the exception of attributional studies showing that internal attributions of success may be important for positive achievement-related emotions (Weiner, 1985) and other person-directed emotions (Weiner, 1995)....
[...]
3,125 citations
2,207 citations
"Academic Emotions in Students' Self..." refers background in this paper
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[...]
1,640 citations
Related Papers (5)
Frequently Asked Questions (11)
Q2. What are the common emotions that predict high achievement?
With the exception of relief, positive emotions such as academic enjoyment, hope, and pride predicted high achievement, and negative emotions predicted low achievement.
Q3. What contributions have the authors mentioned in the paper "Academic emotions in students’ self-regulated learning and achievement: a program of qualitative and quantitative research" ?
Based on the studies in this article, taxonomies of different academic emotions and a self-report instrument measuring students ’ enjoyment, hope, pride, relief, anger, anxiety, shame, hopelessness, and boredom ( Academic Emotions Questionnaire [ AEQ ] ) were developed. Using the AEQ, assumptions of a cognitive-motivational model of the achievement effects of emotions, and of a control/value theory of their antecedents ( Pekrun, 1992b, 2000 ), were tested in 7 cross-sectional, 3 longitudinal, and 1 diary study using samples of university and school students.
Q4. What future works have the authors mentioned in the paper "Academic emotions in students’ self-regulated learning and achievement: a program of qualitative and quantitative research" ?
Bearing these limitations in mind, the findings may nevertheless warrant some more general conclusions and implications for future research.
Q5. What does the model assume that positive emotions can deactivate motivation to continue academic work?
Positive emotions such as relief or relaxation can deactivate any immediate motivation to continue academic work, thus facilitating disengagement.
Q6. What were the common emotions reported by students?
Aside from anxiety, emotions reported most often were enjoyment of learning, hope, pride, and relief, as well as anger, boredom, and shame.
Q7. What are the main assumptions about the effect of positive activating emotions on academic achievement?
positive activating emotions may be assumed to affect achievement positively by strengthening motivation and enhancing flexible learning.
Q8. What were the components of the emotional experiences used for creating these taxonomies?
Their participants reported a broad range of affective, cognitive, physiological, and motivational elements of their emotional experiences that were used for creating these taxonomies.
Q9. How should the authors address reciprocal causation in classroom research?
Future research should address reciprocal causation by including measures of academic emotions into longitudinal classroom research.
Q10. What are the correlations between positive emotions and learning strategies?
With the exception of relief, positive emotions related positively to metacognitive strategies, elaboration, organization, and critical thinking, thus suggesting that positive academic emotions may in fact facilitate flexible, creative modes of thinking.
Q11. What did the authors expect to see in the students’ reports about boredom?
The authors had expected that boredom should occur when demands are too low, as in the case of high-ability students who are taught in regular classes.