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's (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.     

Emotions in medical education: Examining the validity of the Medical Emotion Scale (MES) across authentic medical learning environments

To advance emotion research in education, there is a need to develop practical and context-relevant measures of emotion and to test the applicability of emotion theories using these measures. In two studies, we examined validity evidence of a self-report scale (the Medical Emotion Scale, MES) designed to measure the unique range of emotions activated within medical education. In Study 1, we administered the MES and conducted interviews with medical trainees (N = 15). Content analysis of interviews demonstrated that the MES captured an appropriate range of emotions and that there was alignment between scale responses and interview responses. In Study 2, we measured medical trainees' (N = 60) emotions using the MES for three learning environments. Results from principal components analysis revealed a structure of emotions according to valence (negative, positive) and novelty. The findings have implications for the measurement of emotions within technology-rich learning environments and beyond.     

Expectancy-value appraisals and achievement emotions in an online learning environment: Within- and between-person relationships

Motivation and emotion are of critical importance for students' academic learning and achievement. Drawing on Eccles and Wigfield's situated expectancy-value theory and Pekrun's control-value theory, we examined to what extent specific expectancy-value appraisals related to studentsʼ achievement emotions. We collected intensive state data of N = 95 university students over one semester in an online learning environment. Students' appraisals were analyzed on different aggregation levels in a hierarchical design, which accounts for variability within learning situations and between students. Our results corroborated theoretical assumptions that expectancy-value appraisals are positively associated with positive emotions and negatively with negative emotions. However, we found that students experienced positive emotions in learning situations of high intrinsic and utility value, but not in situations of high attainment value. Examining appraisal combinations and discrete emotions, we found that particularly studentsʼ perceived costs moderated the relationship between expectancy and frustration and boredom on the situation level.     

The power of anticipated feedback: Effects on students' achievement goals and achievement emotions

In an experimental study (N = 153 high school students), we tested a theoretical model positing that anticipated achievement feedback influences achievement goals and achievement emotions, and that achievement goals mediate the link between anticipated feedback and emotions. Participants were informed that they would receive self-referential feedback, normative feedback, or no feedback for their performance on a test. Subsequently, achievement goals and discrete achievement emotions regarding the test were assessed. Self-referential feedback had a positive influence on mastery goal adoption, whereas normative feedback had a positive influence on performance-approach and performance-avoidance goal adoption. Furthermore, feedback condition and achievement goals predicted test-related emotions (i.e., enjoyment, hope, pride, relief, anger, anxiety, hopelessness, and shame). Achievement goals were documented as significant mediators of the influence of feedback instruction on emotions, and mediation was observed for seven of the eight focal emotions. Implications for educational research and practice are discussed.     

Exploring Achievement Emotions in Physical Education: The Potential for the Control-Value Theory of Achievement Emotions

ABSTRACT

Emotions experienced in educational settings link to students’ motivation, engagement, learning, and achievement. Despite meaningful interconnections between emotions, motivation, and desired outcomes, a dearth of research on student emotions in physical education (PE) currently exists. The Control-Value Theory of Achievement Emotions (CVTAE) highlights the importance of emotions within students’ achievement motivation and provides a comprehensive framework for investigating their antecedents and outcomes. The purpose of this investigation was to explore CVTAE as a potential framework to understand students’ achievement emotions in PE. We focus on emotional antecedents associated with the PE learning context and the role of emotions in facilitating desired PE outcomes.     

Cognitive ability,exam-related emotions and exam performance: A field study in a college setting

Using lab and field data, this paper investigates (a) the degree to which pre- and post-exam positive and negative achievement emotions and cognitive ability are uniquely and jointly associated with exam performance and (b) the degree to which exam performance influences subsequent post-exam emotions. Based on a sample of 102 students, results show that ability influences exam performance both directly and indirectly via pre-exam emotions. Also, ability and distraction interact to influence performance such that ability has a buffering effect. Distraction has a significant deleterious effect on performance for low ability students, but does not disrupt performance for high ability students. Moreover, positive emotions facilitate performance by decreasing distraction whereas negative emotions hinder performance by increasing it. Finally, results show that the exam itself has a significant impact on post-exam positive and negative emotions, even when controlling for pre-exam emotions. Results are discussed in terms of the emerging research on achievement emotions beyond test anxiety.     

Beyond cold technology: A systematic review and meta-analysis on emotions in technology-based learning environments

Understanding emotions in technology-based learning environments (TBLEs) has become a paramount goal across different research communities, but to date, these have operated in relative isolation. Based on control-value theory (Pekrun, 2006), we reviewed 186 studies examining emotions in TBLEs that were published between 1965 and 2018. We extracted effect sizes quantifying relations between emotions (enjoyment, curiosity/interest, anxiety, anger/frustration, confusion, boredom) and their antecedents (control-value appraisals, prior knowledge, gender, TBLE characteristics) and outcomes (engagement, learning strategies, achievement). Mean effects largely supported hypotheses (e.g., positive relations between enjoyment and appraisals, achievement, and cognitive support) and remained relatively stable across moderators. These findings imply that levels of emotions differ across TBLEs, but that their functional relations with appraisals and learning are equivalent across environments. Implications for research and designing emotionally sound TBLEs are discussed.     

Measuring students' emotions in the early years: The Achievement Emotions Questionnaire-Elementary School (AEQ-ES)

This article reports about the development and validation of a measurement instrument assessing elementary school students' achievement emotions (Achievement Emotions Questionnaire-Elementary School, AEQ-ES). Specifically, the instrument assesses students' enjoyment, anxiety, and boredom pertaining to three types of academic settings (i.e., attending class, doing homework, and taking tests and exams). Scale construction was based on Pekrun's (2006) control-value theory of achievement emotions. The instrument was tested using samples from German and American elementary school classrooms. The results of Study 1 (German sample) corroborate the reliability and structural validity of the new emotion measure. Moreover, they show that students' achievement emotions were linked with their control and value appraisals as well as their academic performance, thus supporting the external validity of the measure as well as propositions of Pekrun's (2006) control-value theory of achievement emotions. Study 2 (American sample) corroborated the cross-cultural equivalence of the measure and the generalizability of findings across the German and American samples. Implications for research on achievement emotions and educational practice are discussed.     

The Control-Value Theory of Achievement Emotions: Assumptions, Corollaries, and Implications for Educational Research and Practice

This article describes the control-value theory of achievement emotions and its implications for educational research and practice. The theory provides an integrative framework for analyzing the antecedents and effects of emotions experienced in achievement and academic settings. It is based on the premise that appraisals of control and values are central to the arousal of achievement emotions, including activity-related emotions such as enjoyment, frustration, and boredom experienced at learning, as well as outcome emotions such as joy, hope, pride, anxiety, hopelessness, shame, and anger relating to success or failure. Corollaries of the theory pertain to the multiplicity and domain specificity of achievement emotions; to their more distal individual and social antecedents, their effects on engagement and achievement, and the reciprocal linkages between emotions, antecedents and effects; to the regulation and development of these emotions; and to their relative universality across genders and cultures. Implications addressed concern the conceptual integration of emotion, motivation, and cognition, and the need to advance mixed-method paradigms. In closing, implications for educational practice are discussed.

The effects of achievement goals and self-regulated learning behaviors on reading comprehension in technology-enhanced learning environments

Studies examining students’ achievement goals, cognitive engagement strategies and performance have found that achievement goals tend to predict classes of cognitive strategy use which predict performance on measures of learning. These studies have led to deeper theoretical understanding, but their reliance on self-report data limit the conclusions that can be drawn. We employed a behavioral approach instead and assessed learning processes by logging learners’ behaviors as they used educational technology. We examined the relationship between achievement goals, strategy use, and comprehension scores of 160 undergraduates who studied a hypertext passage in a technology-enhanced learning environment (TELE) equipped with tools that support learning behaviors including highlighting, taking notes, review of annotations, seeking additional information and monitoring understanding. Results of a path analysis indicated that higher mastery goals predicted more information-seeking and note-taking and marginally more monitoring of learning. Performance avoidance goals negatively predicted note-taking and information-seeking. Performance approach goals did not predict the behaviors we traced. Of the behaviors we traced, highlighting and monitoring predicted increases in comprehension scores. A behavioral approach to assessing learning processes confirmed only a subset of paths from achievement goals to learning processes to learning outcomes originally discovered with self-report data.     

Development and evaluation of the organic chemistry-specific achievement emotions questionnaire (AEQ-OCHEM)

Affect is associated with success and persistence in STEM courses and degree programs. Measurement tools that produce valid and reliable data are essential to capturing the impact of evidenced-based instructional practices and reformed curricula on learning. We report the development of the Achievement Emotions Questionnaire for use in postsecondary organic chemistry courses (AEQ-OCHEM). Instrument development was based on the control-value theory of achievement emotions and included a revision of the seminal Achievement Emotions Questionnaire (AEQ) used to measure institutional-level learning. A thorough psychometric evaluation of the AEQ-OCHEM was conducted including alternative measurement models and an extensive investigation of the nomological framework. All AEQ-OCHEM subscales were determined to be coherent and distinct. Implications for future research using the AEQ-OCHEM are offered. A call for the development of more discipline- and course-based instruments is made. Finally, tools that measure achievement emotions in the context of instructional laboratories and undergraduate research are needed for more robust considerations of affect in STEM contexts.     

Student engagement with science in early adolescence: The contribution of enjoyment to students’ continuing interest in learning about science

Recent research has expanded understanding of the contribution of emotions to student engagement and achievement. Achievement emotions can be conceptualized as general ways of responding to achievement settings or specific emotional states aroused during a specific learning activity. Emotion processes can be distinguished as positive or negative, activating or deactivating. Using data from an international survey of science achievement (PISA 2006; N > 400,000 15-year-old students from 57 countries), relations between the positive, activating achievement emotion of enjoyment and a number of variables that combine with enjoyment to define students’ engagement with learning science are examined. Previously, we reported that enjoyment is central to relations between interest in science, value and knowledge, and students’ reported current and future engagement. The embedded attitudinal items from PISA 2006 allow testing of how enjoyment contributes to a more direct measure of engagement with science by assessing students’ interest in finding out more about the specific topics used to measure their science achievement. In this investigation, structural equation modeling is used to test predictions based on Hidi and Renninger’s (2006) four-phase model of interest development, and Pekrun’s (2006) control-value theory of achievement emotions.     

Understanding STEM-focused high school students’ perceptions of task importance: The role of “standing out” and “fitting in” in mathematics class

One theoretical extension of Optimal Distinctiveness Theory (ODT;  and ) is that individuals will work toward the satisfaction of their own social identity needs for differentiation (standing out) and assimilation (fitting in). Because these needs serve as driving forces behind the attitudes people adopt, and the behaviors they enact, the motivational properties of these needs are likely to be manifest in achievement contexts. Bridging ODT and Expectancy-Value Theory, this article examines the prediction that academic tasks are seen by students as more important when they contribute to students’ ability to stand out (task differentiation) from and fit in (task assimilation) with their classmates. This prediction was supported among an ethnically diverse sample of STEM-focused high school students who rated the importance of 18 mathematics-related academic tasks. Additional analyses demonstrated that the association between task assimilation and task importance was stronger for students who perceived their academic learning environment to be performance-focused (performance goal structure). There also was a significant interaction between task differentiation and task assimilation, such that the association between task assimilation and task importance attenuated at higher levels of task differentiation. The present study is one of the few investigations to assess how students’ valuing within a single academic domain might fluctuate from one academic task to the next (e.g., taking notes versus working out problems on the board). The Discussion addresses the theoretical and practical significance of acknowledging differentiation and assimilation as vehicles for motivating students in the classroom.     

Emphasis on emotions in student learning: Analyzing relationships between overexcitabilities and the learning approach using Bayesian MIMIC modeling

The aim of this study is to investigate interrelationships between overexcitability and learning patterns from the perspective of personality development according to Dabrowski’s theory of positive disintegration. To this end, Bayesian structural equation modeling (BSEM) is applied which allows for the simultaneous inclusion in the measurement model of all, approximate zero cross-loadings and residual covariances based on zero-mean, small-variance priors, and represents substantive theory better. Our BSEM analysis with a sample of 516 students in higher education yields positive results regarding the validity of the model, in contrast to a frequentist approach to validation, and reveals that overexcitability – the degree and nature of which is characteristic of the potential for advanced personality development, according to Dabrowski’s theory – is substantially related to the way in which information is processed, as well as to the regulation strategies that are used for this purpose and to study motivation. Overexcitability is able to explain variations in learning patterns to varying degrees, ranging from weakly (3.3% for reproduction-directed learning for the female group) to rather strongly (46.1% for meaning-directed learning for males), with intellectual overexcitability representing the strongest indicator of deep learning. This study further argues for the relevance of including emotion dynamics – taking into account their multilevelness – in the study of the learning process.     

Example-based learning: Effects of different types of examples on student performance,cognitive load and self-efficacy in a statistical learning task

Previous research has indicated the disconnect between example-based research focusing on worked examples (WEs) and that focusing on modeling examples. The purpose of this study was to examine and compare the effect of four different types of examples from the two separate lines of research, including standard WEs, erroneous WEs, expert (masterly) modeling examples, and peer (coping) modeling examples, on student performance (knowledge retention, near transfer, and far transfer), cognitive load, and self-efficacy. One hundred and sixteen students participated in the study by undergoing computer-based instruction in one of the four versions differing in how examples were provided. The results showed that, overall, expert modeling examples were most effective in promoting knowledge retention, near transfer, and far transfer, while peer modeling examples were shown to be superior in fostering self-efficacy among the four different types of examples.     

The effects and side-effects of statistics education: Psychology students’ (mis-)conceptions of probability

In three studies we looked at two typical misconceptions of probability: the representativeness heuristic, and the equiprobability bias. The literature on statistics education predicts that some typical errors and biases (e.g., the equiprobability bias) increase with education, whereas others decrease. This is in contrast with reasoning theorists’ prediction who propose that education reduces misconceptions in general. They also predict that students with higher cognitive ability and higher need for cognition are less susceptible to biases. In Experiments 1 and 2 we found that the equiprobability bias increased with statistics education, and it was negatively correlated with students’ cognitive abilities. The representativeness heuristic was mostly unaffected by education, and it was also unrelated to cognitive abilities. In Experiment 3 we demonstrated through an instruction manipulation (by asking participants to think logically vs. rely on their intuitions) that the reason for these differences was that these biases originated in different cognitive processes.     

Teacher Responses to Anxiety in Children Questionnaire (TRAC): psychometric properties and relationship with teaching staff characteristics

This study describes the development and evaluation of a new measure, the Teacher Responses to Anxiety in Children (TRAC) questionnaire in 74 primary school teachers. TRAC presents 9 hypothetical scenarios in which a child displays generalized anxiety/worry, social anxiety or separation anxiety symptoms. Teachers rate each scenario on six subscales that reflect different ways of responding to child anxiety. Overall, TRAC showed good internal reliability, with factor analytic results suggesting that it assesses three factors: Autonomy-Promoting, Anxiety-Promoting and Reward responses. Male teachers were significantly more likely than female teachers to use Anxiety-Promoting responses. More experienced teachers reported significantly more reinforcement of anxious avoidance than less experienced teachers, and teaching assistants reported significantly fewer overprotective responses. Teaching staff reported significantly more Autonomy-Promoting responses in social anxiety or generalised anxiety/worry scenarios compared to separation anxiety scenarios. Findings are discussed in terms of their implications for teacher training in the management of child anxiety.     

The political dimension in ESE: the construction of a political moment model for analyzing bodily anchored political emotions in teaching and learning of the political dimension

This article departures from the understanding of environmental sustainable education (ESE) as a political project that consists of dissonant and conflicting voices. The aim of the article is to understand how affection, i.e. bodily sensations, transform into political emotions in teaching and learning settings. The article offers a philosophical and empirically based model called the ‘political moment model’ for analyzing bodily anchored political emotions in teaching and learning of the political dimension. The model was developed in response to an empirical case study where the data were somewhat confusing. In order understand the empirical data, we used parts of Mouffe’s theory of the political and various scholars’ work on political emotions and placed these aspects in a pragmatist standpoint of experience, emotions and meaning making. The model helped to investigate students’ experiences of the political dimension in situations where they experienced affection, i.e. bodily sensation, and emotions in connection with reflections and discussions about how to handle public issues of sustainable development. The article ends with a theoretical discussion of the findings in order to understand the political dimension in teaching and learning activities and to discern possible directions for future research on political moments in ESE.     

High school students’ scientific epistemological beliefs,motivation in learning science,and their relationships: A comparative study within the Chinese culture

This study explored the differences in high school students’ scientific epistemological beliefs (SEBs), motivation in learning science (MLS), and the different relationships between them in Taiwan and China. 310 Taiwanese and 302 Chinese high school students’ SEBs and MLS were assessed quantitatively. Taiwanese students generally were more prone to believe that scientific reality is invented, the development of scientific knowledge is culture-dependent, and scientific knowledge is always changing and its status is tentative than the Chinese students were. Yet, the Taiwanese students perceived higher test anxiety in science than the Chinese students did. Moreover, Chinese students who have a stronger belief that science knowledge is changing and tentative are more likely to perceive themselves as having higher test anxiety in science. The results suggest that the role of culture might have an impact on students’ SEBs and their MLS.