Situational Specificity Of Academic Emotional Expression Strategies In Junior-High School Students

Learning is a rather complicated process of understanding knowledge,improving cognitive abilities and promoting wisdom through multiple approaches.In the process,the students' interaction with teachers,parents,classmates and other knowledge communication carriers led them to experience a variety of academic emotions.Previous research has shown that academic emotions not only affect students' learning behavior and learning outcomes,but also have a close relationship with academic emotional expression strategies.Different academic emotions require corresponding emotional expression strategies to achieve effective regulation,and further result in adaptive learning-related outcomes.Besides,based on the relevant empirical research results and emotion regulation theory,situation may play a central role in the using tendency and outcomes of emotional expression strategies.Especially in the process of learning,junior-high school students may experience various emotionally evocative situations everyday,thus they also face different academic emotional regulation situations.Then in contexts where learning is a priority,little is known about the specific academic emotional expression strategies that are used in different academic situations,and it is also not clear whether specific strategies are most effective in junior-high school students' academic emotional experiences and social outcome among these academic situations.Thus,the purpose of the present study was to address the above questions through five parts: On the basis of developing the academic emotion regulation questionnaire for junior-high school students and investigating the relations between academic emotional expression strategies and academic emotions,the present study aimed to explore the tendency to use academic emotional expression strategies,and its relation with academic emotions and peer acceptance in different academic situations(competition/non-competition situation,superior/inferior situation,the presence of others).In the first part,Study 1 was conducted to develop and validate the academic emotion regulation questionnaire for junior-high school students.In the second part,Study 2 was conducted to examine the characteristics of academic emotions and academic emotional expression strategies in different gender and grade,and the relations between academic emotions and academic emotional expression strategies.In the third part,two studies were conducted in competition and non-competition situation.Study 3 investigated the differences in the tendency to use academic emotional expression strategies between competitive and non-competitive situation.Study 4a used emotion reactivity and regulation task to investigate the relations between academic emotional expression strategies and academic emotions in competitive and non-competitive situation.Study 4b investigated the relations between academic emotional expression strategies and peer acceptance in competitive and non-competitive situation through situational arousal.The fourth part further subdivided the competitive situation into superior situation and inferior situation,and two studies were conducted in these two situations.Study 5 used recall method to investigate the differences in the tendency to use academic emotional expression strategies between superior and inferior situation.Study 6a used emotion reactivity and regulation task to investigate the relations between academic emotional expression strategies and academic emotions in superior and inferior situation.Study 6b examined the relations between academic emotional expression strategies and peer acceptance in superior and inferior situation through situational arousal.The fifth part introduced the presence of others into the competitive situation,and two studies were conducted in the presence of others.Study 7 adopted experience-sampling method to investigate the differences in the tendency to use academic emotional expression strategies when others are present.Study 8a used questionnaire method to investigate the relations between academic emotional expression strategies and academic emotions when others are present.Study 8b used situational arousal to investigate the relations between academic emotional expression strategies and peer acceptance when others are present.The results showed that:First,Academic Emotion Regulation Questionnaire for Junior-high School Students is reliable and valid enough to be applicable to measure high school students' academic emotion regulation(Study 1).Second,the characteristics of academic emotions and academic emotional expression strategies in different gender and grade:(1)Compared to high school students,junior school students reported higher positive academic emotions and lower negative academic emotions.(2)Compared to boys,girls reported more expressive suppression when experiencing positive academic emotions,less expressive suppression and expressive venting when experiencing negative academic emotions.(3)The development trends of expression suppression and expression venting in different grade were different(Study 2).Third,the relations between academic emotions and academic emotional expression strategies: positive academic emotions were positively predicted expression suppression and expression venting.Negative academic emotions were positively predicted expression venting,not expression suppression(Study 2).Fourth,the tendency to use academic emotional expression strategies in different academic situations:(1)There were significant differences in the tendency to use academic emotional expression strategies between competitive and non-competitive situation.Compared to non-competitive situation,students reported more expression suppression and less expression venting in competitive situation.Besides,they used more expression venting when experiencing positive academic emotions in competitive situation,and used more expression venting whether they experienced positive or negative academic emotions in non-competitive situation(Study 3).(2)Whether in superior and inferior situation or in the presence of others,there were no significant differences in the tendency to use academic emotional expression strategies(Study 5 and 7).Fifth,overall,the relations between academic emotional expression strategies and academic emotions tend to stability across the situation: expression suppression reduced the intensity of positive academic emotion,and expression venting reduced the intensity of negative academic emotion(Study 4a,6a and 8a).Sixth,the difference between situation existed in the relations between academic emotional expression strategies and peer acceptance:(1)Compared to cooperation situation,students received higher peer acceptance when using expression suppression and lower peer acceptance when using expression venting in competitive situation(Study 4b).(2)Compared to superior situation,students received higher peer acceptance when using expression venting in inferior situation(Study 6b).(3)Compared to in front of close friends,students received higher peer acceptance when using expression suppression and lower peer acceptance when using expression venting in front of classmates(Study 8b).Overall,the eight studies examined and discussed the question of what is academic emotions and academic emotional expression strategies(Study 1 and 2),how do students use academic emotional expression strategies in different situations(Study 3,5 and 7),and why do they use the corresponding academic emotional expression strategy(Study 4,6 and 8)?These results indicated that compared to expression suppression,expression venting may be more adaptive in academic emotional experience.However,in terms of the effect on peer acceptance,the using of expression suppression or expression venting depends on the specific situation.These results emphasized the necessity and importance of studying academic emotional expression strategies in different situations.