Work

Reciprocal cognitive and emotional interaction in STEMM university learning and teaching

Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: University learning and teaching involves contrasting and interacting emotional experiences. Even in disciplines considered as objective as Science and Engineering, emotion plays a significant role in catalysing and sustaining learning. Although emotions are individually felt, they are socially constructed between people. This is especially relevant in group-based learning evident in much contemporary higher education. This paper applies the concept of emotion socialization to illustrate how groups of students and teachers cope and succeed in cognitively and emotionally challenging learning settings. The study is based on qualitative data collected across six STEMM university departments, from 280 students via in-situ questionnaires and from 20 teachers via group and follow-up interviews. Two key findings offer insight into processes of reciprocal influence on cognition and emotion. The first relates to ways in which students' and teachers' differing knowledge-related goals and relationships with knowledge influenced cognition and emotion, uncovering previously unacknowledged connections. The second relates to how students' comparisons of progress towards academic goals with peers contributed considerably to their emotional experiences in cognitively and emotionally helpful and unhelpful ways. Practical implications are presented, including possibilities for capitalising on existing emotion socialization processes and enhancing how they influence cognition and emotional well-being.
Language: English
Field: Psychology
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $2,590
OpenAlex ID: W4402583923
FWCI: 3.687
Cites: 40
Cited by: 9
Related to: 10