STUDENTS’ ACHIEVEMENT EMOTIONS IN CHINESE CHEMISTRY CLASSROOMS

Abstract

Achievement emotions are critical for students’ academic performance and career choices. The previous literature has focused on one specific type of achievement emotions – test anxiety – in Western contexts and neglected other various emotions experienced in different occasions such as attending classes. The present study aims to address the research gap by examining students’ achievement emotions in a specific cultural and subject context – Chinese high school chemistry classrooms. Subjects were 103 16 or 17-year-old eleventh-grade students (45 female and 58 male) from two chemistry classes in the same high school in China. The qualitative and quantitative data was collected from four sources: pre- and post- surveys, open-response questions, classroom observations and teacher/student interviews. This dissertation examined Chinese students’ achievement emotions from both theoretical and practical perspectives. First, it theoretically investigated the dimensions of Chinese students’ achievement emotions in traditional chemistry classrooms and how these dimensions were related to its antecedent (i.e., chemistry self-efficacy) and effect (i.e., classroom engagement). The factor analysis indicated two distinct factors emerged from Chinese students’ emotions: positive emotions and shame (one specific type of negative emotions). The structural equation modeling showed that both chemistry self-efficacy and positive emotions were significant and positive predictors of students’ classroom engagement. Chemistry self-efficacy also significantly and positively predicted students’ positive emotions while predicting students’ perceptions of shame negatively. However, the path from shame to classroom engagement was not significant after controlling for positive emotions. Second, it practically explored how one specific pedagogical strategy of integrating the computer simulation – a visualization tool to review content knowledge – influenced students’ perceptions of achievement emotions and related affective variables (i.e., chemistry self-efficacy and engagement). Independent sample t-tests showed that the computer simulation significantly increased students’ chemistry self-efficacy beliefs and positive emotions. In contrast, its effects on negative emotions and classroom engagement were not significant. By scrutinizing qualitative data from different sources, I provided explanations for the computer simulation’s role in influencing the above four affective variables.