Design instructional environments to foster positive academic emotions: improve instruction quality, grant calibrated autonomy, match expectations to capabilities, increase success opportunities, and foster cooperative interaction structures¶

Strategy · All strategies
Evidence · 5 claims (5 for) · 5 studies (4 review, 1 associational), q1–q2 · 0 of 5 report an effect size · 4 claims rest on one study

Description¶

From control-value theory the authors infer general guidelines for designing instruction and educational environments: "(a) improve the quality of academic instruction; (b) give students autonomy, but only to the extent that they are able to self-regulate their learning; (c) convey high values of academic mastery, but adjust social expectations for achievement so that they match students' capabilities; (d) increase opportunities for success...; and (e) create flexible interaction structures that foster affiliation, cooperation, and support without denying the role of competition." Individual prevention can also target control and value appraisals, e.g., via attributional retraining.

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• Guidelines presuppose shaping students' control- and value-related appraisals through the instructional and social environment

Constraints¶

• Autonomy should be given only to the extent students can self-regulate their learning

Target Learners¶

• school students
• university students

Target Learning Goals¶

• fostering positive academic emotions and helping students cope with negative emotions

Affordances¶

• Control Value Theory Academic Emotions

Claims¶

• Positive academic emotions correlate positively with interest, effort, flexible learning strategies, and perceived self-regulation, while boredom and hopelessness correlate negatively with all of these motivational variables [+W]
• Emotions measured early in the semester longitudinally predict cumulative grades and exam scores, with negative deactivating emotions (hopelessness, boredom) showing stronger coefficients than activating negative emotions [+W]
• Instruction should present the learning task as engaging and meaningful and promote positive expectations of success, because effort requires that learners value the task and believe they can succeed [+W]
• Formative assessment is theorized to foster motivation by supporting autonomy, competence, and relatedness [+W]
• Learners' task-specific self-efficacy beliefs predict whether they initiate, persist through, and recover from difficulty on academic tasks. [+W]

Related Strategies¶

• Build Relationships with Each Student
• Establish Group Norms
• Design programs that foster students' positive emotions and reduce negative emotions to support subsequent relationship quality and achievement
• Calibrate academic task design to individual students and strengthen self-efficacy and peer support as malleable protective factors for momentary engagement

Examples¶

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Key Sources¶

• Reinhard Pekrun, Thomas Goetz, Wolfram Titz, & Raymond P. Perry. (2002). Academic Emotions in Students' Self-Regulated Learning and Achievement: A Program of Qualitative and Quantitative Research. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15326985ep3702_4