Pekrun, Reinhard
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Our individual order of things directs how we think we feel
Our work draws upon Foucault’s idea that the order of things, defined as the way we categorise our world, matters for how we think about the world and ourselves. Specifically, and drawing upon Pekrun’s control-value theory, we focus on the question of whether the way we individually order our world into categories influences how we think about our typically experienced emotions related to these categories. To investigate this phenomenon, we used a globally accessible example, namely, the categorisation of knowledge based on school subjects. In a longitudinal sample of high school students (grades 9–11), we found that judging academic domains as similar led to judging typical emotions related to those domains as more similar than experienced in real life (assessed via real-time assessment of emotions). Our study thus shows that the order of things matters in how we think we feel with respect to those things.
The AEQ-S : A Short Version of the Achievement Emotions Questionnaire
The Achievement Emotions Questionnaire (AEQ) is a well-established instrument for measuring achievement emotions in educational research and beyond. Its popularity rests on the coverage of the component structure of various achievement emotions across different academic settings. However, this broad conceptual scope requires the administration of 6 to 12 items per scale (Mdn = 10), which limits the applicability of the AEQ in empirical studies that necessitate brief administration times. We therefore developed the AEQ-S, a short version of the AEQ, with only 4 items per scale that nevertheless maintain the conceptual scope of the instrument. We validated the AEQ-S based on a reanalysis of Pekrun, Goetz, Frenzel, Barchfeld, and Perry (2011) dataset (N = 389 university students) and by administering them to a new and independent validation sample (N = 471 university students). Despite their brevity, the AEQ-S scales achieved satisfactory reliability and correlated substantially with the original AEQ scales. Moreover, structural relationships and intercorrelations between the scales and their relations with external measures of antecedents and outcomes of achievement emotions were highly similar for the AEQ-S and AEQ scales. These findings suggest that the AEQ-S is a suitable substitute for the AEQ when administration time is limited.
Happy fish in little ponds : Testing a reference group model of achievement and emotion
A theoretical model linking achievement and emotions is proposed. The model posits that individual achievement promotes positive achievement emotions and reduces negative achievement emotions. In contrast, group-level achievement is thought to reduce individuals' positive emotions and increase their negative emotions. The model was tested using one cross-sectional and two longitudinal datasets on 5th to 10th grade students' achievement emotions in mathematics (Studies 1-3: Ns = 1,610, 1,759, and 4,353, respectively). Multilevel latent structural equation modeling confirmed that individual achievement had positive predictive effects on positive emotions (enjoyment, pride) and negative predictive effects on negative emotions (anger, anxiety, shame, and hopelessness), controlling for prior achievement, autoregressive effects, reciprocal effects, gender, and socioeconomic status (SES). Class-level achievement had negative compositional effects on the positive emotions and positive compositional effects on the negative emotions. Additional analyses suggested that self-concept of ability is a possible mediator of these effects. Furthermore, there were positive compositional effects of class-level achievement on individual achievement in Study 2 but not in Study 3, indicating that negative compositional effects on emotion are not reliably counteracted by positive effects on performance. The results were robust across studies, age groups, synchronous versus longitudinal analysis, and latent-manifest versus doubly latent modeling. These findings imply that individual success drives emotional well-being, whereas placing individuals in high-achieving groups can undermine well-being. Thus, the findings challenge policy and practice decisions on achievement-contingent allocation of individuals to groups.
Emotion transmission in the classroom revisited: A reciprocal effects model of teacher and student enjoyment
Enjoyment is one of the most relevant and frequently experienced discrete emotions for both teachers and students in classroom learning contexts. Based on theories of emotion transmission between interaction partners, we propose a reciprocal effects model linking teachers’ and students’ enjoyment in class. The model suggests that there are positive reciprocal links between teachers’ and students’ enjoyment and that these links are mediated by teachers’ and students’ observations of each other’s classroom behaviors. The model was tested using 3-wave longitudinal data collected across the 1st 6 months of a school year from N = 69 teachers (78% female) and their 1,643 students from Grades 5 to 10 (57% female). A multilevel structural equation model confirmed our mediation hypotheses. Teacher enjoyment at the beginning of the school year (Time 1 [T1]) was positively related to student perceptions of teachers’ enthusiasm during teaching 4 weeks later (T2), which was positively related to student enjoyment at midterm (T3). Further, student enjoyment at T1 was positively related to teacher perceptions of their students’ engagement in class at T2, which was positively related to teacher enjoyment at T3. This study is the first to provide longitudinal evidence of reciprocal emotion transmission between teachers and students. Implications for future research and teacher training are discussed.
Measuring emotions in mathematics : the Achievement Emotions Questionnaire-Mathematics (AEQ-M)
Understanding the structure, antecedents, and outcomes of students' emotions has become a topic of major interest in research on mathematics education. Much of this work is based on the Achievement Emotions Questionnaire-Mathematics (AEQ-M), a self-report instrument assessing students' mathematics-related emotions. The AEQ-M measures seven emotions (enjoyment, pride, anger, anxiety, shame, hopelessness, boredom) across class, learning, and test contexts (internal structure). Based on control-value theory, it is assumed that these emotions are evoked by control and value appraisals, and that they influence students' motivation, learning strategies, and performance (external relations). Despite the popularity and frequent use of the AEQ-M, the research leading to its development has never been published, creating uncertainty about the validity of the proposed internal structure and external relations. We close this gap in Study 1 (N = 781 students, Grades 5-10, mean age 14.1 years, 53.5% female) by demonstrating that emotions are organized across contexts and linked to their proposed antecedents and outcomes. Study 2 (N = 699 students, Grade 7 and 9, mean age 14.0 years, 56.9% female) addresses another deficit in research on the AEQ-M, the lack of evidence regarding the assumption that emotions represent sets of interrelated affective, cognitive, motivational, and physiological/expressive components. We close this gap by evaluating extended AEQ-M scales, systematically assessing these components for five core mathematics emotions (enjoyment, anger, anxiety, hopelessness, boredom). Our work provides solid grounds for future research using the AEQ-M to assess emotions and their components in the domain of mathematics.
Mathematics Motivation in Students With Low Cognitive Ability : A Longitudinal Study of Motivation and Relations With Effort, Self-Regulation, and Grades
Expectancy-value theory (EVT) is a popular framework to understand and improve students' motivation. Unfortunately, limited research has verified whether EVT predictions generalize to students with low levels of cognitive ability. This study relies on Grade 5 and 8 data from 177 students with low levels of cognitive ability and a matched sample of 177 students with average to high cognitive ability from the German "Project for the Analysis of Learning and Achievement in Mathematics." Results showed that students with low levels of cognitive ability were able to differentiate EVT components. Both groups demonstrated a similar downward developmental trend in motivation from early to middle adolescence, and similar relations between EVT components and levels of efforts, self-regulation, and mathematics class grades.
Getting along and feeling good : Reciprocal associations between student-teacher relationship quality and students’ emotions
Relationship quality and emotional experience are both important constructs in learning environments but the question of how they are linked requires more attention in empirical research. We hypothesized reciprocal associations between student-teacher relationship quality (i.e., interpersonal closeness) and students' emotions in the classroom (i.e., enjoyment, pride, anxiety, anger, boredom, and shame). Data from a two-wave longitudinal study with annual assessments in grade 10 (Time 1) and 11 (Time 2) were used to test this hypothesis (N = 535; mean age at Time 1: 16.7 years, SD = 0.6). Student-perceived relationship quality and students’ emotions were assessed in the academic domains of mathematics, German, English, and French. In line with our hypothesis, cross-lagged panel models showed reciprocal associations: Higher relationship quality was associated with stronger positive emotions and weaker negative emotions over time. In turn, lower negative emotions and higher positive emotions were associated with higher relationship quality. The association between initial emotions and student-teacher relationship quality one year later was stronger than the reverse association. Further, the links between relationship quality and emotions were largely equivalent across school domains but differed in strength across emotions. Implications for future research and educational practice are discussed.
Do positive illusions of control foster happiness?
Positive emotions have been shown to benefit from optimistic perceptions, even if these perceptions are illusory (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000). The current research investigated the effects of increases and decreases in illusory control on positive and negative emotions. In two studies we experimentally induced changes in illusory perceptions of control (increase vs. decrease of illusory control) and assessed the extent to which these changes, in turn, influenced participants’ emotions. Extending prior research, the results of both studies revealed that whereas illusions of personal control over environmental outcomes mitigated the experience of negative emotions, they did not foster positive emotions. Perceiving a loss of illusory control, however, significantly reduced the experience of positive emotions, but had no effect on negative emotions. Implications for emotion theory and intervention programs are discussed.