Student engagement with science in early adolescence : the contribution of enjoyment to students' continuing interest in learning about science

Abstract Recent research has expanded understanding of the contribution of emotions to student engagement and achievement. Achievement emotions can be conceptualized as general ways of responding to achievement settings or specific emotional states aroused during a specific learning activity. Emotion processes can be distinguished as positive or negative, activating or deactivating. Using data from an international survey of science achievement (PISA 2006; N  > 400,000 15-year-old students from 57 countries), relations between the positive, activating achievement emotion of enjoyment and a number of variables that combine with enjoyment to define students’ engagement with learning science are examined. Previously, we reported that enjoyment is central to relations between interest in science, value and knowledge, and students’ reported current and future engagement. The embedded attitudinal items from PISA 2006 allow testing of how enjoyment contributes to a more direct measure of engagement with science by assessing students’ interest in finding out more about the specific topics used to measure their science achievement. In this investigation, structural equation modeling is used to test predictions based on Hidi and Renninger’s (2006) four-phase model of interest development, and Pekrun’s (2006) control-value theory of achievement emotions.

[1]  C. Welzel,et al.  Modernization, Cultural Change, and Democracy: The Human Development Sequence , 2005 .

[2]  Andrew J. Elliot,et al.  Short-term and long-term consequences of achievement goals: Predicting interest and performance over time. , 2000 .

[3]  J. Dewey,et al.  How We Think , 2009 .

[4]  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi,et al.  Undivided interest and the growth of talent: A longitudinal study of adolescents , 1993 .

[5]  Suzanne Hidi,et al.  Interest: A unique motivational variable , 2006 .

[6]  U. Bronfenbrenner.  Ecological systems theory. , 1992 .

[7]  J. Ainley,et al.  Attitudes, intentions and participation. , 2005 .

[8]  R. Inglehart,et al.  Modernization, Cultural Change, and the Persistence of Traditional Values , 2000, American Sociological Review.

[9]  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi,et al.  The Positive Psychology of Interested Adolescents , 2003 .

[10]  L. Pessoa,et al.  Positive emotions broaden the scope of attention and thought‐action repertoires , 2005, Cognition & emotion.

[11]  John Cresswell,et al.  Assessing scientific, reading and mathematical literacy : a framework for PISA 2006 , 2006 .

[12]  John Ainley,et al.  A Cultural Perspective on the Structure of Student Interest in Science , 2011 .

[13]  Barbara M. Byrne,et al.  Structural equation modeling with AMOS , 2010 .

[14]  R. Pekrun.  The Control-Value Theory of Achievement Emotions: Assumptions, Corollaries, and Implications for Educational Research and Practice , 2006 .

[15]  Reinhard Pekrun,et al.  Positive emotions in education. , 2002 .

[16]  Reinhard Pekrun,et al.  The Domain Specificity of Academic Emotional Experiences , 2006 .

[17]  Andreas Schleicher,et al.  PISA 2006: Science Competencies for Tomorrow's World , 2007 .

[18]  Mary Ainley,et al.  Students, tasks and emotions: Identifying the contribution of emotions to students' reading of popular culture and popular science texts , 2005 .

[19]  Ann L. Brown,et al.  How people learn: Brain, mind, experience, and school. , 1999 .

[20]  M. Lepper,et al.  Intrinsic motivation and the process of learning: Beneficial effects of contextualization, personalization, and choice. , 1996 .

[21]  B. Fredrickson.  The role of positive emotions in positive psychology. The broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions. , 2001, The American psychologist.

[22]  C. Izard.  Basic Emotions, Natural Kinds, Emotion Schemas, and a New Paradigm , 2007, Perspectives on psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

[23]  Jeffrey J. Kuenzi,et al.  Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (Stem) Education Issues and Legislative Options , 2013 .

[24]  T. Goetz,et al.  Academic Emotions in Students' Self-Regulated Learning and Achievement: A Program of Qualitative and Quantitative Research , 2002 .

[25]  M. Lepper,et al.  Children and computers. Approaching the twenty-first century. , 1989, The American psychologist.

[26]  S. Hidi,et al.  The Four-Phase Model of Interest Development , 2006 .

[27]  J. Harackiewicz,et al.  Different Strokes for Different Folks: How Individual Interest Moderates the Effects of Situational Factors on Task Interest. , 2007 .

[28]  T. Kindermann,et al.  Engagement and Disaffection in the Classroom: Part of a Larger Motivational Dynamic? , 2008 .

[29]  M. Csíkszentmihályi,et al.  Positive psychology. An introduction. , 2000, The American psychologist.