Hanna Jarvenjo & Sanna Jarvela (2005)
How students describe the sources of their emotional and motivational experiences during the learning process: A qualitative approach
Learning and Instruction 15, 465-480
Introduction
P466 ‘ In learning situations, individuals make personal appraisals of the situation’s meaning based on their former knowledge and experiences ( Fredrickson, 2001). ( from page 477 Emotional experiences arise when the students interpret the situation and begin to compare it to their former experiences, and to construct personal meanings (Fredrickson, 2001).These appraisals along with situational factors and the individual’s interpretations of them arouse emotions, which then need to be controlled, at least to some extent, to ensure meaningful goal directed behaviour’
‘Research on emotions has shown that students experience a rich variety of emotions in academic settings ( Schutz & De Cuir, 2002).
Schutz, D. H., & DeCuir, J. T. (2002). Inquiry on emotions in education. Educational Psychologist, 37(2), 125e134.
Results show that academic emotions are significantly related to student motivation, learning strategies, cognitive resources, self-regulation and academic achievement (Pekrun, Goetz, Titz, & Perry, 2002)
Pekrun, R., Goetz, T., Titz, W., & Perry, R. P. (2002). Academic emotions in students’ self-regulated
learning and achievement: a program of qualitative and quantitative research. Educational
Psychologist, 37(2), 91e105.
Also, not only do the emotions themselves vary, but also their sources. Learning situations instigate a variety of self-referenced, task-related and social emotions. However, even though there is a lot of research on the effects of emotional factors on classroom learning (see, e.g., Mayring & von Rhoeneck, 2003), there is hardly any research on these issues in technology-based classroom learning contexts.
Aim
1. The aim of this study was to identify the sources of emotional experiences in computer-supported inquiry learning. Specifically, we analysed the reasons the students give as sources of their emotional experiences
2. Another aim of the study was to analyze how the case students expressed and controlled their emotions in actual learning situations. by combining the interviews with the video data uur purpose was to illustrate the aspects of students’ behaviour that are not readily observable,
Framework – volition how is it used to strengthen motivation that in turn backs up goal-directed behaviours.
Learning context
Computer – supported inquiry projects in literature taking place over 12-24 lessons of 75 min duration based in a conventional Finnish classroom context. Students aged 12-15, 7 boys and 11 girls
Forum for knowledge construction discussion
Method
Interviews– students own attributions regarding the source of their emotions obtained through semi structured interviews
All 18 Students asked to describe their goals , learning strategies, interpretations of the learning environment and self-related beliefs and feelings during semi-structured interviews.
In the first phase of the data driven analysis, students’ different kinds of descriptions of their emotional expressions were identified. After several repeated coding sessions, five coding categories were formulated based on the dialectics of data and theory (Miles & Huberman, 1994). The categories were self, task, performance, context, and social (see Table 1).
Video data and case descriptions ( 2 students one boy and one girl
Process-orientated data collection. Working processes videotaped during ten lessons.
When the researcher was familiar with the data, she looked again at the videotapes with the transcriptions and wrote specific descriptions of the students’ emotional and motivational expressions and volitional behaviour. Finally, the descriptions of the two case students were made. Also, the case students’ interview data from the same project were used to complement the case descriptions
Findings
Interview data
Emotions attributed to
self (37%), context (32%), task(12%), performance(11%) social (8%)
What follows are some relevant extracts from the interview data – note p474 ‘students’ descriptions often included more than one source for their experienced emotions’
The self-category included descriptions of experiences that derive from the students’ former endeavours, their individual interests or general thoughts concerning the situation, as well as their personal motivational beliefs about themselves when confronted with the current learning context
Context in Example 7 in which the task requires writing and sharing the created theory in the learning environment and Student 7 does not understand how commenting on the other students’ work in the computer-supported learning environment helps him with his own project
The contextual element e the implemented inquiry learning model e emphasizes collaboration and sharing, and leads the student to situations where she has to share her ideas with other students. In any case, the main source for the student’s negative emotion is social instead of contextual, since she emphasizes the interaction with her classmates. The student feels anxious when the other students can read her notes in the computer-supported learning environment. The main source for the emotional experience is social although the situation was created by the inquiry model.
Combining interview data with video data
In the descriptions that follow the focus is on the expression of the emotions and how control of these emotional experiences varied in the different phases of the learning project and between the case students.
Despite the fact that for both these students 38% ( Ville) and 37%(Anna) of emotions were attributed to self, Anna talked about her emotional experiences in the interviews approximately as much as Ville, and her answers included emotional descriptions in all categories, compared to Ville’s, who did not have any performance descriptions there were some contrasts when it came to looking at the video data.
Ville ( male student) ‘ he expresses his non-task orientation and frustration by shaking his head and talking to himself e.g. non, non, no . “he lays his head on his desk and mumbles to himself
Anna ( female student) ‘almost never expresses her feelings by talking or using gestures
Conclusions
‘The cases of Anna and Ville illustrate the importance of volitional control. Anna had good self-regulation skills and she managed to control her emotional reactions and action towards the goal during the whole project. The analyses of the interviews and video data showed that she was able to highlight the motivational aspects of the task, as can be seen in Example 14, and she also seemed to be able to maintain focus and effort toward the goals despite distractions.
Ville’s working improved after he managed to control his emotions. When the goal became clearer, he was able to better regulate his actions. At the end of the project he seemed to take more responsibility for his own learning, and even if he still expressed his emotions and got distracted from time to time, he managed to return to work after the distractions much more easily.
‘Anna and Ville’s cases demonstrate how emotions can be controlled during the learning process. As Ville showed during the first part of the project, if the emotions overcome the control efforts, learning and cognitive actions become impossible. Cognitive actions may also indicate emotional control, as can be seen in Ville’s Example 14, where writing the computer notes is used as both a cognitive strategy and for controlling the emotional state.’
Learning through discussion
In this study there were surprisingly few responses in the social-category, even though the pedagogical model and computer-supported learning environment emphasized collaboration and knowledge sharing. It seems that social sources for emotional experiences are difficult to investigate and identify from the data, even though students seem to recognize the social aspects of the learning situation. It could be that emotions caused by social sources are so private that students do not want to disclose them.
