Preservice teachers’ epistemic and achievement emotions when confronted with common misconceptions about education

Kurzfassung/Abstract

Learning processes that involve cognitive incongruity are closely tied to emotional experiences such as curiosity or confusion. The present study examined how discovering that a confidently held misconception is incorrect influences emotions and in turn the motivation to seek additional information. We asked 275 preservice teachers to judge if common statements about education were true or false and provided feedback about whether these statements were supported by scientific evidence. Following feedback, we assessed study participants' real-time (i.e., state level) epistemic emotions (surprise, curiosity, enjoyment, confusion, frustration, anxiety) and achievement emotions (anger, pride) produced by high-confidence errors (i.e., incorrect answers a person was confident in). We further examined whether providing additional information helped participants to resolve their discrepancy and to what extent emotions promoted participants' subsequent knowledge exploration. Our findings showed that participants were more surprised, curious, confused, and angry in situations where they found out a confidently held misconception was incorrect (i.e., after a high-confidence error) compared to misconceptions held with low confidence. Furthermore, participants reported more enjoyment in situations where they could resolve the discrepancy, and they were frustrated when the resolution of a discrepancy seemed impossible. In contrast to achievement-related anger and pride, participants' surprise, curiosity, confusion, and anxiety were associated with the exploration of knowledge. Finally, we tested whether the intraindividual effects would differ across individuals, but we found no evidence for such interindividual differences. Directions for future research and practical implications are discussed.