Pixel International Conferences

Students experience a great diversity of emotions in academic settings: there is virtually no major human emotion not experienced in a classroom. These emotions are expected to have important effects on students’ learning outcomes since control their attention, influence their motivation to learn and modify their learning strategies. Due to affective domain and cognition are integrated in the brain in critical areas for regulating the flow of information between regions, academic emotions and science learning are reciprocally conditioned. Therefore it is important to simultaneously look into affective and cognitive aspects in teaching-learning processes. This is particularly important in future Primary teachers, since the interplay between emotions and learning can determine their future professional performance. To deepen these interactions, in this contribution we analyse the relationships between the emotions experienced by a sample of 159 students of the Degree in Primary Education (University of Extremadura), before and after the implementation of an active practical intervention of Biology (based on guided research); and their level of Biology knowledge, both previous and acquired with the performed intervention. Emotions are assessed using a simple and quantitative self-report test which was validated in a previous research through factor analysis. This questionnaire measure ten academic emotions (5 positive emotions and 5 negative emotions), rated on a Likert scale from 1 “not experienced” to 5 “intensely experienced”. Meanwhile Biology fundamental concepts are assessed through multiple-choice questions about common misconceptions in Secondary school as well questions extracted from TIMSS (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study), which is designed to estimate science achievement in Secondary Education. Results reveal positive associations between the intensity of joy, enthusiasm, satisfaction and fun experienced during the practice and learning outcomes, as well as negative associations between them and the intensities of frustration and worry. Likewise, results indicate that low levels of previous Biology knowledge of Secondary Education are predictors of high intensities of boredom, frustration and worry, as well as that the previous intensity of enthusiasm can have predictive value in relation to learning.

Keywords: Emotions, learning, initial teacher training, Primary Education, guided research