The momentary emotions (e.g. excitement, frustration, etc.) while performing STEM-related tasks strongly correlate to a student’s performance and STEM career intentions. While the emotions of students play a major role in classrooms, not much is known about multiple emotions experienced at the same time nor the links between control, value, and those mixed emotions. In order to close these gaps, Robinson et al. (2020) investigated the momentary emotions of high school students while performing a task during science learning, and how they relate to appraisals of classroom activities (one’s control over a task and perceived importance of the task), test scores, and their interest to pursue a STEM-related career. 

In order to examine how momentary emotions during a task relate to performance and science career intentions, Robinson et al. involved 244 high school students (grades 9-12, ages 14-18) from 12 regular track science classrooms as part of a larger study. The students were asked to complete surveys over the course of 10 days which required them to describe their mood in the current activity (excited, happy, frustrated, bored) and to rate how much they felt it, how much control they felt, and the value of a task (how important and activity is), answer their science career intentions using a scale at the end of a school year, (e.g.“I’d seriously consider becoming a scientist when I finish school.”). The participants were also required to take the ACT to assess their scientific knowledge. The results suggested four momentary emotion profiles. The most prevalent type of emotion profile was the Moderate-Low Deactivated profile where students felt low levels of frustration and excitement, but moderate amounts of boredom and happiness. This is then followed by the Positive profile (high excitement and happiness, moderate boredom and frustration), the Negative Momentary profile (high frustration, mid-high boredom, low happiness, very low excitement), and the Moderate-High All (moderate happiness, excitement, frustration, and boredom). Moreover, students who have more control over their experience in science class were more likely to experience positive emotions, and students who perceived their activities in science class as important were less likely to experience negative emotions. In addition, positive emotions predicted higher science career intentions and positive or deactivated emotions predicted higher performance on the ACT science test. 

Robinson et al. 's (2020) study provides educators, specifically high school teachers an insight on adaptive appraisals of emotions and the importance of promoting positive and minimizing negative emotions to ensure success and motivation for high school students in STEM. Given that the main focus of the study is on emotions, control, value, and performance in science, which relates to EPIC’s study of helping students stay motivated and navigate through failure in STEM, EPIC’s future study can also look at whether momentary emotion is linked to students’ persistence in face of failures.

To check out more about Robinson et al.’s (2020) study, check out this link to retrieve this article: https://doi.org/10.1037/mot0000174

This post is written by Katelyn Chow. 

Reference:

Robinson, K. A., Beymer, P. N., Ranellucci, J., & Schmidt, J. A. (2020). Momentary emotion profiles in high school science and their relations to control, value, achievement, and science career intentions. Motivation Science, 6(4), 401.