Evolution of the academic emotions of academically low-achieving students in knowledge building

Abstract

Knowledge Building is a pedagogical approach that emphasizes students’ collective responsibility to continuously improve their community knowledge. Advancing the frontiers of community knowledge is an exciting but challenging process, especially for low-achieving students, because it involves a continuous experience of cognitive disequilibrium and equilibrium. This knowledge generation process triggers various emotions (e.g., curiosity, surprise, and confusion) that may promote or hinder Knowledge Building. This study investigated the types and evolution of emotions experienced by academically low-achieving students in the Knowledge Building process supported by Knowledge Forum. The participants were 120 students from two Grade 9 classes and two Grade 11 classes in a Band 3 secondary school in Hong Kong. This school enrolls students performing at the 10th percentile on a pre-admission government examination at the end of elementary school. The participants built knowledge around Visual Arts. The emotions reflected in the digital Knowledge Forum notes and the evolution patterns of emotions in inquiry threads were both analyzed using content analysis and sequential pattern analysis. The participants demonstrated a high percentage of joy and relatively low percentages of frustration and boredom. Emotions were likely to maintain consistency (e.g., joy to joy) or transition between similar emotions (e.g., boredom to frustration) in the inquiry threads. By synthesizing the emotion transitions and subsequences manifested in the inquiry threads of different classes, we constructed a model of the evolution of emotions of academically low-achieving students during Knowledge Building. This model has implications for designing scaffolding or interventions to facilitate low-achieving students' learning and promote favorable emotions.