Emotions at primary school: Negative achievement emotions and their relation with emotional competencies in ethnic minority and majority students

Abstract

Scarce attention has been paid to ethnic minority students' emotions and related competencies at school. Nevertheless, theoretical frameworks such as the control–value theory underline the importance of achievement emotions for students' performance and well‐being. We involved minority (n = 63) and majority (n = 103) students attending the first, third, and fifth grade of primary school. We assessed negative achievement emotions (anxiety, anger, embarrassment, boredom, and hopelessness), emotion understanding, and emotion regulation. Factorial analyses supported the goodness of the structure of a questionnaire measuring the five achievement emotions in Italian and mathematics and its invariance across minority and majority students. Analyses of variance indicated that minority students felt more intense anger, embarrassment, and boredom for Italian and anxiety and embarrassment for mathematics. Path analyses revealed that emotion understanding and emotion regulation were significantly related to achievement emotions. Findings are discussed for their theoretical and applied relevance in promoting well‐being at school among minority and majority students.

A Rasch Analysis of the School-Related Well-Being (SRW) Scale: Measuring Well-Being in the Transition from Primary to Secondary School

“…To assess school-related achievement emotions, we used a brief version of the Achievement Emotions Adjective List, AEAL [19,[58][59][60][61][62][63][64][65]. The AEAL is a 30-item self-report questionnaire measuring ten achievement emotions: three positive activating emotions (enjoyment, pride, hope), two positive deactivating emotions (relief, relaxation), three negative activating emotions (anxiety, anger, shame), and two negative deactivating emotions (boredom, hopelessness).…”

“…To avoid students' cognitive overload due to the length of the questionnaire, we used a reduced version of the AEAL comprising ten adjectives, one for each achievement emotion. We had already used this version with students of the same age [19,64,65]. We administered the AEAL twice, separately for two settings, i.e., lessons and tests (oral or written evaluations).…”

Language Ability Accounts for Ethnic Difference in Mathematics Achievement

“…Previous cross-ethnic studies have focused on social issues, such as social relationships (including neighborhood, e.g., Matlasz et al, 2020), school characteristics (Shin, 2012;Raccanello et al, 2020), classmate relationships (Stark et al, 2015), mental health (Richter et al, 2011;Bhui et al, 2012;Priest et al, 2014), friendship (Munniksma and Juvonen, 2012;Chen and Graham, 2015), medical care and nutrition (including dental care, Vitamins, obesity, and inflammation, Gorelick et al, 2011;Kant and Graubard, 2011;Özel et al, 2020;Scheidell et al, 2020), parental activity (Ali and Frederickson, 2010;Wilson et al, 2011;Cardel et al, 2012), and addiction (including drug, alcohol, and tobacco, e.g., Cummings et al, 2011;Bares and Andrade, 2012;Cook and Caetano, 2014;Greene et al, 2014;Greene and Maggs, 2020). However, past cross-ethnic studies have paid little attention to problems related to academic achievement.…”

Desregulación emocional en la formación inicial de profesores de Pedagogía en Educación Física (Emotional dysregulation in the initial teacher training of Physical Education Pedagogy)

“…Cohen (2006) afirma que la educación de las dimensiones socio-emocionales, éticas y académicas, son consideradas como un derecho humano para los estudiantes, por lo tanto, ignorar ello equivale a una injusticia social dentro de la educación escolar. En relación a esto, educar las emociones de los estudiantes se hace de suma importancia, dada su influencia en el proceso de enseñanza y aprendizaje (Bermúdez & Saenz-López, 2019;Raccanello et al, 2020;Soriano & Osorio, 2008). Al respecto, tradicionalmente la educación escolar se ha encargado de transmitir conocimientos que contribuyan al desarrollo racional de los estudiantes, minimizando la importancia de la educación emocional o afectiva pese a estar de manera explícita en la normativa chile-na e internacional (Fernández-García & Fernández-Río, 2019;Naranjo, 2007).…”