Learning and Instruction 15 (2005) 497e506 www.elsevier.

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Commentary

Progress and open problems in educational emotion research

Reinhard Pekrun*
Department of Psychology, University of Munich, Leopoldstrasse 13, 80802 Munich, Germany

Until recently, educational research paid little attention to students academic emotions, with just two notable exceptions. First, students achievement-related anxiety has been a subject of intensive research since the 1930s. Specically, anxiety relating to tests and exams has been investigated in more than 1000 empirical studies (Hembree, 1988; Zeidner, 1998). Second, in the 1970s Bernard Weiner started his program of research on the attributional antecedents of emotions relating to success and failure (Weiner, 1985). Beyond test anxiety and attributional antecedents, however, our knowledge about students emotions remained rather limited. Traditional theories of achievement motivation posited emotions such as pride and shame to be central components of achievement-related agency. Typically, however, these emotions were regarded as elements of summary constructs of achievement motives, but were rarely analyzed empirically (Elliot, 2005; Heckhausen, 1991). A search for studies linking emotions to learning and achievement revealed that studies on emotions other than test anxiety were few and far between throughout the 20th century, attributional research being the only major exception (Pekrun & Frese, 1992; Pekrun, Goetz, Titz, & Perry, 2002). This held not only for the domain of education, but also for related elds like occupational and sports psychology. Following calls for more research on emotions in learning and achievement (e.g., Pekrun & Frese, 1992), the situation slowly started to change in the 1990s. In the past 10 years, educational research has begun to pay attention to the growing importance of emotion research in basic disciplines of psychology and in the neurosciences (Haviland-Jones & Lewis, 2000). A number of research groups from Europe, the
* Tel.: C49 89 2180 5149; fax: C49 89 2180 5250. E-mail address: pekrun@edupsy.uni-muenchen.de 0959-4752/$ - see front matter 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.learninstruc.2005.07.014

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USA, and Australia have begun to analyze multiple dimensions of students and teachers emotions, their sources and development, and their functional importance for learning, achievement, personality, and health (see Schutz & Lanehart, 2002). This special issue represents recent advances in this emergent eld of educational research. It brings together scholars from a number of European countries and from Australia. The seven papers of the issue address three basic questions on students emotions and related phenomena like interest and metacognitive experiences: (1) Which emotions are experienced by students in learning and achievement settings, and what is their phenomenology (Ja rvenoja & Ja rvela ; Wosnitza & Volet)? (2) What is the functional importance of emotions for students interest, metacognition, problem solving, and performance (Efklides & Petkaki; Ainley, Corrigan, & Richardson; Krapp)? (3) How do students emotions develop, what are their social and instructional antecedents, and can student emotions be fostered by modifying instruction and teacher behavior (Assor, Kaplan, Kanat-Maymon, & Roth; Gla ser-Zikuda, Fuss, Lankenmann, Metz, & Randler)? The studies reported address these questions by exploring dierent dimensions of emotions and using a variety of methodologies. The papers (a) discuss multiple facets of students aective life, including positive and negative academic emotions, mood, interest, and metacognitive experiences; (b) address emotions from both a trait perspective and a situated, process-oriented perspective; (c) present ndings pertaining to dierent student populations and dierent educational settings (e.g., computerbased collaborative learning, traditional vocational training, and mathematical problem solving); (d) are based on dierent, complementary methodologies (quantitative vs. qualitative; experimental vs. non-experimental; cross-sectional vs. longitudinal). As a set, the studies reported indicate that dierent theoretical and methodological perspectives should be regarded as complementary, rather than as mutually exclusive, in educational emotion research.

1. Exploring and assessing dimensions of students emotions: the case of computer-based collaborative learning We still lack base-rate knowledge about the occurrence, frequencies, and phenomenology of dierent emotions in dierent kinds of learning environments. This holds for traditional learning situations (like individual and face-to-face learning), but even more so for computer-based learning approaches. With the exception of computer anxiety (Maurer, 1994), it seems that the emotions experienced by students in computer-based learning have not yet been analyzed. The studies reported by Wosnitza and Volet and by Ja rvenoja and Ja rvela are innovative endeavors exploring the emotions that students experience in computerbased collaborative learning.

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M. Wosnitza and S. Volet discuss dierent methodologies available to analyze students emotions, including self-report methods, observation of facial expression, and analysis of the emotional contents of verbal interaction. In contrast to selfreport methods, observation and interaction analysis allow a more direct, processoriented analysis of emergent emotions. However, as argued by the authors, one limitation of all of these methods is that they have to rely on participants willingness to disclose their emotions. This is dierent with a fourth group of methods, namely, psychophysiological measures. Psychophysiological methods cannot provide direct evidence of emotional experiences, but they do give us indicators of emotion-related patterns of central and peripheral arousal, and are much less limited by participants willingness for self-disclosure. Research on emotions in education might prot from the rapid progress that has been made in psychophysiological and neuroscientic research with regard to psychophysiological approaches (Scherer & Davidson, 2003). In their own empirical research, Wosnitza and Volet used self-report methods and transcripts of interactions to analyze secondary school and university students emotions in social online learning. The evidence presented suggests that social emotions play a major role in collaborative learning. These emotions can relate to other individual students or to a group of other students (Ies/he and Iethem emotions). They may also be shared by a group, and directed towards another group of students (usethem emotions). The case studies reported imply that a wide range of positive and negative social emotions pertaining to these categories can play a role in computer-based collaborative learning, and that emotions have a major impact on students motivation to engage in collaborative learning tasks. The study reported by H. Jarvenoja and S. Jarvela pertained to a computer-based inquiry project in secondary school. Having interviewed participants repeatedly over the course of the project, the authors analyzed the sources of the emotions as perceived by the students, and categorized them as self, task, performance, context (including technology), and social. The case descriptions from this study provide a wealth of material for generating hypotheses on the origins and functions of students emotions. Many of these descriptions seem to be compatible with assumptions of control-value theory (Pekrun, 2000; Pekrun et al., 2002) implying that academic emotions are shaped by students perceived control and academic values relating to learning and achievement. Furthermore, examples for many students unwillingness to disclose their emotions are given, thus corroborating the assumptions of Wosnitza and Volet. Finally, as in the Wosnitza and Volet data, the evidence reported suggests that students emotions are of critical importance for their willingness to learn, and their volitional control of learning processes. Taken together, the ndings reported in these two papers conrm the multiplicity of students emotional experiences, as well as their relevance for learning. Furthermore, they allow us to derive assumptions on the nature of these experiences and their functional mechanisms. Quantitative studies on the occurrence and functions of emotions in computer-based learning will be needed to test the validity of these assumptions. Furthermore, research is needed to explore to which extent the ndings are specic to computer-based learning, or typical of students learning more generally. How is collaborative learning using computers dierent from, or

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similar to, other kinds of cooperative learning? For example, is unwillingness to disclose emotions specic to computer-based learning, or is it typical for any kind of formal learning situations beyond elementary school? Answers to this question will be needed to determine whether general principles for dealing with academic emotions will suce to foster positive emotional attitudes to computer-based learning, or whether principles specically relating to this kind of learning will have to be developed.

2. Relevance of emotions for interest, metacognition, and performance Three papers in this issue focus on the functional relevance of mood and emotions (Ainley, Corrigan, & Richardson; Efklides & Petkaki; Krapp). All three discuss the importance of mood and emotions for the genesis of interest. Furthermore, the study by Efklides and Petkaki provides an analysis of the impact of mood on metacognitive processes and performance, and the article by Krapp discusses the ontogenetic development of students interest. In contrast to the exploratory case studies presented by Wosnitza and Volet and by Ja rvenoja and Ja rvela , the ndings reported in these three articles are based on quantitative, sample-based methodology, including both experimental (Ainley et al.; Efklides & Petkaki) and nonexperimental approaches (Krapp). In their experimental study of secondary school students, M. Ainley, M. Corrigan, and N. Richardson analyzed the development of emotions and interest experienced during voluntary reading of texts. Findings provide compelling evidence for a causal chain from individual interest to decisions to continue reading. Individual interest in specic domains predicted topic interest in a text, topic interest predicted the intensity of situational interest triggered by reading the text, and situational interest was signicantly related to decisions to continue reading. Furthermore, topic interest negatively predicted boredom, and boredom preceded decisions to quit reading. Individual and topic interest alone, however, did not guarantee that interest was sustained during reading. Results indicate that emotions triggered by the texts (e.g., happiness, sadness, disgust, or surprise) may also have been critical for the arousal and maintenance of interest, and for decisions to continue reading. Specically, analyzing patterns of transitions between sections of one text (Dolphins), the authors found that emotions triggered by a text section were replaced by subsequent interest in continued reading. This is a fascinating nding, suggesting that situational emotions were transformed into interest. Future research should explore the mechanisms underlying this type of transformation, the feedback loops linking situational emotions and interest, the separate and joint eects of emotions and interest on motivation to continue working on tasks, as well as the antecedents of emotions having the capacity to elicit and hold students interest. The research reported by A. Efklides and C. Petkaki is of specic value because it brings together the tradition of experimental mood studies with research on metacognition, thus paving the way for a fruitful integration of perspectives. The authors report an experiment in which they analyzed the eects of experimentally

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induced mood on 5th graders metacognition, eort, and performance in a mathematics task. Negative mood predicted students estimates of task diculty, a result that is in line with the mood-as-information assumption that negative mood and emotions alert learners to potential problems and lead to a more cautious assessment of situational demands on individual capabilities. Positive mood experienced before the task predicted interest, suggesting that mood contributes to situational interest in a mathematics task. This nding converges with the Ainley et al. data demonstrating that emotions may contribute to the maintenance of interest. Furthermore, positive mood before the task also predicted self-reported ontask eort. Positive mood after task-completion, however, was negatively associated with eort, suggesting that positive mood helps learners to invest eort, but may be consumed over time by eort investment. Findings thus suggest that positive and negative mood may signicantly aect task-related metacognition, interest, and resulting on-task eort. These variables can in turn be important for task performance. There may be dierent reasons why mood nevertheless was no signicant predictor of performance in this experiment after prior ability had been partialed out. First, the association between ability (measured in terms of performance in computation tasks) and performance in the target task two weeks later (which also involved computation) was rather strong, meaning that not much variance was left to be explained. Second, mood induced in laboratory experiments may be relatively weak, implying that eects may be weak as well. It remains an open question to which extent the results of experimental mood research can be generalized to more intense emotions experienced in real-life academic situations outside the laboratory. Another open question to be addressed in future studies is how specic, qualitatively dierent moods, beyond the dichotomous distinction of positive vs. negative mood, aect students metacognitive processes, motivation, and eort (for assumptions on dierential eects, see Pekrun et al., 2002). The paper by A. Krapp, nally, broadens the perspective by addressing the ontogenetic development of students individual interest, and the emotional antecedents of this development. The author rst outlines basic assumptions of his Person-Object Theory of Interest dening interest as being content- or objectspecic and containing both cognitive and emotional components (e.g., feelingrelated and value-related components; Pekrun, 1988; Schiefele, 2001). Both cognitive and emotional regulation systems are assumed to be important for the development of interest. Specically, A. Krapp posits that fullling the basic needs of competency, autonomy, and relatedness e as addressed by self-determination theory e is essential for the development of interest in a content, object, or activity. Need-related emotions are assumed to be particularly important to this interest-shaping process, although dicult to measure because of their partly unconscious nature. Some of these assumptions were tested using data from a longitudinal eld study on the development of students enrolled in a vocational training program. Using self-report methods, the study produced compelling evidence that experiences of competence and autonomy predict the development of interest-oriented intrinsic motivation to learn, thus corroborating Krapps assumption that need-related experiences may contribute to interest development. The nding that respondent

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self-report methods (questionnaires, experience sampling) and operant methods (open-ended interviews) led to converging results is especially impressive. A. Krapps program of research provokes a number of theoretical and empirical questions to be addressed by future studies. For example, how should we dene the conceptual relation between psychological needs and interest? It seems reasonable to assume that being interested in contents, objects, and activities is a basic, universal capacity of human beings, that being interested can contribute to positive emotional states, and that being unable to experience interest in a situation can lead to aversive boredom. Given universality and the emotional implications of fulllment vs. nonfulllment, should interest be considered a basic psychological need? Alternatively, might (individual) interest be seen as a crystallized variant of basic needs which are uid to begin with, but can become attached to various contents during the course of development? As to emotions, precisely which emotions can be assumed to be triggered by the fulllment or non-fulllment of students needs, and how do these dierent emotions (enjoyment, pride, satisfaction, anger, sadness, etc.) contribute to the development of interest? Are non-fulllment emotions necessarily counterproductive to interest development, and in which ways do the eects of fulllment and non-fulllment emotions interact? Finally, what about reciprocal linkages of needs, emotions, and interest over time? Does interest contribute to the development of students need-related emotions? As a set, the three papers provide compelling arguments and evidence for the functional relevance of moods and emotions in academic contexts. Specically, all three papers suggest that emotions may be central to the short- and long-term development of students interest. Furthermore, as shown by the Efklides and Petkaki experiment, emotions may also be relevant to students metacognition and investment of eort. Interest, metacognition, and eort mediate students performance, implying that emotions may also be of fundamental importance for students acquisition of knowledge, as empirically shown in test anxiety research and in recent studies on academic emotions other than anxiety (Pekrun et al., 2002; Turner & Schallert, 2001; Zeidner, 1998).

3. How do students academic emotions develop, and how can we foster this development? To date, research on students emotions has focused on the interrelations of emotions with academic learning and achievement. The impact of classroom instruction, learning environments, and social contexts on the development of emotions has been analyzed less frequently. The papers by Assor et al. and by Gla ser-Zikuda et al. deal with teacher behavior and instructional antecedents of students emotions from the perspectives of basic and intervention-oriented research. A. Assor, H. Kaplan, Y. Kanat-Maymon, and G. Roth focus on the aective impact of directly controlling teacher behavior, that is, attempts to enforce desired types of student behavior by giving instructions or not letting students behave the way they want to. Building on assumptions of self-determination theory, the authors present

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convincing arguments that students may perceive such behavior as unfair and as a threat to their academic success, resulting in negative emotions like anger and anxiety. In turn, negative emotions are assumed to be detrimental for students academic motivation. In the eld study reported, controlling teacher behavior did in fact correlate positively with elementary school students negative emotions, a-motivation, extrinsic motivation, and restricted engagement, and negatively with eort and persistence. Using path and regression analysis, the authors were also able to conrm that negative emotions may have mediated motivation and behavior. Findings are thus in line with the assumption that teacher behavior contributes to the development of students emotions and motivation. As mentioned by the authors, however, it remains an open question whether cross-sectional relations of this kind do in fact reect teacher eects on student emotions or, conversely, eects of students negative emotions and behavior on teachers attempts to control their students academic engagement. In all likelihood, both causal directions are involved, linking teacher and student behavior by reciprocal causation to be disentangled in future longitudinal research. A second open question is whether teacher behavior aects dierent emotions (e.g., anger vs. anxiety) in dierent ways, as suggested by appraisal theories of discrete emotions implying assumptions about dierential antecedents (Pekrun, 2000). Finally, it would be worth constructing conceptual models and conducting empirical studies relating controlling teacher behavior to classroom instruction more generally, and to control in parental rearing styles as analyzed by parentechild interaction research. In their innovative, quasi-experimental intervention study, M. Glaser-Zikuda, S. Fuss, M. Lankenmann, K. Metz, and C. Randler attempted to modify secondary school teachers instruction in physics, biology, and German to enhance students positive emotions, motivation, and achievement, and to reduce their anxiety and boredom. Student-centered instruction, self-regulated learning, and cooperative activities were used in the experimental group, and traditional teacher-centered instruction in the control group. Relative to the control group, students in the treatment group showed a signicant improvement in achievement. Eects on emotions and motivation, however, were small and non-signicant, with few exceptions. There may be a number of explanations for this lack of eects on aective variables. For some of the variables, the treatment probably was too short to induce signicant change. For example, motivational variables like self-concept of ability and interest in a domain typically develop over years, and may be crystallized to a considerable extent by the end of secondary school. Furthermore, the teachers may have lacked experience with non-traditional instruction, and may have failed to fully adopt instructional behaviors thought to foster students positive situational emotions. Similarly, instruction requiring self-regulation may have been unfamiliar to the students, such that they could not derive sucient emotional benet from it. Finally, as pointed out by the authors, students academic emotions may be determined only in part by the structural features of instruction. A second relevant factor is teachers own emotions as displayed during lessons (e.g., expressed enthusiasm). Since emotions are contagious, teachers emotions may be of primary

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importance for students feelings and motivation. A third group of emotion-relevant factors comprises the achievement-related and social behaviors of teachers, classmates, and parents, such as their expectations concerning achievement, feedback and social reactions following achievement, or the social acceptance of the student. Future intervention studies should make an explicit attempt to derive assumptions about teacher eects on specic student emotions from emotion theories, and to design principles of intervention such that critical behavioral variables are addressed (Astleitner, 2000; Pekrun, 2000).

4. Conclusions: progress and open problems in educational emotion research Taken together, it seems that the seven papers in this special issue provide answers to the three basic questions of educational emotion research mentioned at the outset, even if most of these answers are preliminary in nature. (1) The evidence presented indicates that students emotions are manifold and much richer in nature than traditional views seemed to suggest. It no longer seems justiable to conceptually reduce students emotional life to anxiety (as implied by many studies on test anxiety), or to the four emotions of pride, shame, hope, and fear, as addressed by traditional achievement motivation theories. All kinds of human emotions may play a role in learning and achievement, including self- and task-related emotions as well as social emotions, and any kinds of discrete emotions (even emotions like disgust may be important; see Ainley et al., this issue). (2) The ndings presented also imply that emotions may be central to the situational and ontogenetic development of students interest, motivation, volition, and eort. (3) Finally, the evidence suggests that teachers can inuence their students emotions, although it may be dicult to make teachers change their instructional behavior such that student emotions are fostered. In sum, this set of papers provides compelling evidence for the multiplicity and functional relevance of students academic emotions, and for the importance of their instructional and social antecedents. However, the concepts and ndings presented also imply that educational emotion research still has to tackle a number of major problems. First, the boundaries of concepts such as emotions, interest, well-being, and feelings still remain unclear. For example, should interest be regarded as an emotion (as implied by many traditional taxonomies of emotions, and by the Ainley et al. paper in this issue), or as being comprised of component structures including both emotional and nonemotional components? Similarly, is well-being an emotion (as implied by the Gla ser-Zikuda et al. approach to aective processes), or rather a state based on more than one emotion? Second, academic emotions can be assessed by a number of dierent empirical indicators. However, the relative conceptual and measurementrelated value of these indicators is still unclear (e.g., self-report vs. psychophysiological measures), and they often deliver divergent information that is dicult to integrate. Third, dierent academic emotions may be experienced simultaneously. The structural composition, temporal dynamics, and antecedents and eects of these patterns have yet to be explored (see the discussion by Sansone & Thoman, this issue).

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Furthermore, emotions may be linked to cognitive, motivational, and behavioral processes by feedback loops that may be typical both for situational links between these processes and for ontogenetic development (Pekrun et al., 2002). How should we conceptualize these feedback loops? Clearly, unidirectional models of causation still preferred by many emotion studies in the eld of education seem to be insufcient. Also, how should we analyze reciprocal causation empirically? Experimental approaches can give us insights into isolated segments of causation, but given the unidirectional limitations of experimental designs (implying that independent variables aect dependent variables), single experiments cannot give us a more complete picture. Non-experimental approaches, on the other hand, often have to struggle with disentangling too many causal eects operating simultaneously, and doing so at too many points of time. Finally, while it seems clear that students emotions develop in social contexts, we do not yet know how this process can be fostered such that enjoyment of learning is enhanced, and that negative emotions hampering learning are prevented and/or put to productive use. Even for the well-researched emotion of test anxiety, little is known about how it can be prevented (Zeidner, 1998). Therefore, while continuing to analyze the links between emotions and learning processes, future educational emotion research should conduct more intervention studies, providing educators, administrators, and parents with vital information on how schools, classroom instruction, and social interaction with students can be modied such that students emotional development is fostered.

References
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Schiefele, U. (2001). The role of interest in motivation and learning. In J. M. Collins, & S. Messick (Eds.), Intelligence and personality (pp. 163e194). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Schutz, P. A., & Lanehart, S. L. (Eds.). (2002). Emotions in education [Special issue]. Educational Psychologist, 37, 67e134. Turner, J. E., & Schallert, D. (2001). Expectancy-value relationships of shame reactions and shame resiliency. Journal of Educational Psychology, 93, 320e329. Weiner, B. (1985). An attributional theory of achievement motivation and emotion. Psychological Review, 92, 548e573. Zeidner, M. (1998). Test anxiety: The state of the art. New York: Plenum.