Second solo task

Name: Ricardo E. Devai

1. PLANNING PHASE
In this task, Im going to work on these articles:

Emotions and Emotion Regulation in Academic Settings

Motivational Sources and Outcomes of Self-Regulated Learning and Performance
Regulation of Motivation: Evaluating an Underemphasized Aspect of Self-Regulated
Learning
Motivation in self-regulation learning was my top choice when we discussed in class our
personal interests. The choice has to do with two aspects: Im personally very interested
about emotions and motivation since these are quite relevant topics in the Brazilian
culture. A great deal of students demonstrate difficulty in dealing with these, and
consequently they develop poor learning skills, they look a lot like the Filipino student in
the YouTube video. A second aspect is that it is quite a new area and I do believe therell
be a growing interest in the coming years, in educational and professional fields, so this is
a good time to begin exploring the subject.
So, I expect to have it done in 2 days and I feel confident about completing the task.

2. ARTICLES AND ICE NOTES

Keywords (at least 9): achievement emotions, epistemic emotions, social emotions,
interest and SRL, future time perspective and SRL, volition and SRL, self-consequating,
interest enhancement, emotion regulation

Concept definitions
Paper 1: (Boekaerts & Pekrun, 2015)
Since these two researchers are key in emotion regulation topic, I became very interested
to learn more about it. I always believed in the good class atmosphere, but honestly I
hadnt studied carefully what makes this atmosphere good or not.
Concept 1: [achievement emotions]
Page 77: Achievement emotions are related either to an ongoing activity or to an
outcome. I remember that while teaching one of my English classes, I could see students
very excited when it came to singing a song in class; however, they felt a bit bored when
learning pure grammar (that was 20 years ago, language teaching has improved quite a
lot). Outcome emotions are also related to predictive and retrospective aspects: I can feel
very excited as I get close to a result; I can also recall those sweet memories when
achieving something.

Concept 2: [epistemic emotions]

Page 77: Epistemic emotions are related to the process of comprehension itself. These
emotions may be expressed in the form of surprise, curiosity, excitement, frustration.
These feelings are generated when there is a type of confrontation, when new or
controversial knowledge is introduced and caught learners higher level of attention.

Concept 3: [social emotions]

Page 77: As social learning has been present as a fundamental concept in education,
people are more attentive to this aspect of learning. Social emotions take place either
between teacher-student and student-student. The mood of a teacher can make a class
boring. Feelings such as empathy, gratitude, and compassion are also very important in
class, to reduce competition or negative feelings such as envy and contempt.

Paper 2: (Zimmerman, 2011)

My choice for task solo 1 was Zimmermans articles. So, Im interested in learning more
about Zimmermans studies regarding motivation and emotions.
Concept 1: [interest and SRL]
Page 51: Interest is a psychological pre-disposition to engage and re-engage in classes of
objects, activities and ideas. Interest can be placed in different classes. For example,
interest can be situational or individual. Situational interest may be related to an aspect
of an activity. For example, I enjoy playing driving games in arcades, but Im not a game
addict. Im not reading about it, playing different games etc. So, I love a particular game
in a particular place. Individual interest is more of an addiction. The person has a
tremendous willpower to sustain interest for periods of time. Regarding SRL, the stronger
the individual interest, the higher regulation skills are developed, because the learner no
longer depends on a certain situation or social group to be motivated (it might have
started in a group and got encouragement from that, but now it has become an individual
interest).

Concept 2: [future time perspective and SRL]

Page 54: Future time perspective (FTP) focuses on outcomes from a current activity.
Theorists consider FTP as a conflict between immediate and delayed outcomes. A student
who has a party to go at night might do some homework partially due to higher interest
in the party. However, a feeling of guilty may hold the student for a longer period, but not
necessarily with a concentration level appropriated for the task. Self-regulation should
help this student balance his/her academic goals with certain interests. Besides the
delay, the content of the outcomes should be considered. A wide range of self-regulatory
characteristics were found in students who see the relevance of a task for the present.
Students who consider theyre doing something only to be applied/used in the future
demonstrated fewer self-regulatory characteristics.

Concept 3: [volition and SRL]

Page 54. 55: Volition is the capacity of controlling a planned action the degree a learner
can protect his/her plans from distractions. In relation to SRL, this is a critical aspect to
connect plans and performance. Kuhl (1985) calls an action control more effective that
an emotional state volition orientation, which may lead to feelings of discouragement,
ruminations, and vacillation. A positive volition strategy would be an escalation, in which
success and failure are focused rather than feelings.

Paper 3: (Wolters, 2003)

In his article, Wolters details some aspects regarding strategies for the regulation of
motivation. I believe these strategies are relevant to put these concepts into practice.
Concept 1: [self-consequating]
Page 194: It is a strategy to punish or reward oneself during a plan execution. If I do well,
I deserve a prize; if I dont follow a plan, a price shall be paid. In earlier studies, this was
considered to be self-conditioning (behavioral approach). However, recent studies have
shown this to be a self-regulation strategy (Corno & Kanfer, 1993; Kuhl, 1985;
Zimmerman & Martinez-Pons, 1986, 1990). Verbal statements can also be an example of
self-consequating, as a student encourages himself/herself to move forward after
completing a section or pointing to the direction to follow.

Concept 2: [interest enhancement]

Page 195: While doing a repetitive or boring activity, a student may add something to
make it more enjoyable and interesting. Sansone and her colleagues (Sansone, Weir,
Harpster, & Morgan, 1992; Sansone, Wiebe, & Morgan, 1999) studied groups of students
applying these strategies. For example, some students listen to music while doing
repetitive tasks, other make minor changes in the order to avoid routine and boredom.
Few studies (Sansone et al, 1999; Rosenthal, 2000) show that this strategy leads to more
persistent efforts during a task.

Concept 3: [emotion regulation]

Page 199: Emotion regulation is the ability to monitor, evaluate, and change the
occurrence, intensity, or duration of a particular emotional experience (Eisenberg et al.,
2001; Thompson, 1994; Walden & Smith, 1997). There are some strategies to deal with
these emotional states: attention shifting (looking at something else), attention focusing
(thinking of something else), tactile self-soothing (thumb sucking), and avoidance
(leaving or avoiding particular situations; Rothbart, Ziaie, & OBoyle, 1992; Thompson,
1994). This concept brings the importance of emotional control or emotional intelligence.
In the past, we could hardly see an approach to monitor, evaluate, and change. A student
would typically hear a sermon from teachers, saying that the behaviour was wrong and
the student should immediately stop it. Instead of monitor, evaluate and change, it was
more like stop it because I said it.
ICE notes
ICE note 1: [interest and SRL]
When thinking about this topic, I reflect upon how much interest comes from genetics and
how much it is awakened or created throughout life. That is to say, is everything already
in our genes and we simply find out similar or networked things that interest us or can we
actually enjoy something that is totally different from our interest mainstream? This is
something we often hear at school: youre here to learn everything from Math to
Language, from Chemistry to Physics, and one day you choose whatever youre
interested in. I know this is something that has been changing in some Finnish schools
since last August. Students can learn from phenomena and can find or reveal their
interests and try to connect interest with school subjects. As a matter of fact, Pintrich
(2000) argued that achievement goals should be seen as representing goals that are
between task-specific goals and general life goals. (cited in Ainley, Hidi, & Berndorff,
2002)
Ainley, Hidi, & Berndorff (2002) emphasizes that within the broader domain of schooling,
students have not just one individual interest but a network or system of individual
interests, some closely related to the goals of classroom learning, others antithetical to
classroom learning. Considering these two aspects, I would say it is quite important to
connect schools goals and life goals since these two will naturally be shown. As for
individual interest, theres also an interesting aspect that has to do with curiosity. Some
people want to learn how things work and they are curious about several fields other than
a single subject. It is also important to consider group interests. I think about my
experience and I remember sharing interests within the group, such as sports and travel,
which I didnt have on individual level. All things considered, I understand that somehow
interest could be a powerful strategy if somehow connected to individual, group or broad
life goals. Regarding interest and SRL, I found very interesting the fact that some
situational (group or event-related) interest should become an individual interest to be
enduring. So, the earlier we can find out students interests, the better we can help them
find their ways in academic and professional settings. It reminds me of a thought: do not
try to motivate people, try to find what already motivates them.
In real classroom settings, I think interest can be raised in students depending on the
teachers involvement and interest for a certain topic. Whenever we see a passionate
teacher, we kind of feel infected by his energy and enthusiasm. I mean, a teacher can
ignite interest in their students while putting soul in everything he/she does and the way
he/she communicates with students. Mazer (2014) presents several studies on the
importance of positive teaching. He mentions that "several groups of researchers have
explored how teachers communication behaviors are linked to the emotions students
experience in the classroom, reasoning that such experiences have potential positive
effects on students affective engagement and subsequent learning (e.g., Titsworth,
Quinlan, & Mazer,2010). Scholars adopting this perspective have observed that when
teachers engage in effective communication behaviors, students tend to perceive the
classroom environment as more positive (Titsworth et al.,2010), and report higher levels
of cognitive, behavioral, and emotional engagement (Zhang& Zhang,2013)". Therefore,
interest is not seen just as a genetical feature, but a cultural, situational, and teacher-led
as well.
ICE note 2: [emotion regulation]
Ive been working in corporate settings for the past 15 years and the topic of emotional
intelligence, particularly as presented by Gardner, has been a constant training request
from companies around the world. There are some cultures that are more introspective
and emotion regulation has been presented as means to be more open, outgoing and
express feelings in front of the people. As for Latin American and African countries,
emotion regulation is often related to holding bursts of anger and trying to manage it in a
positive way. Assertiveness is also emphasized as a desired professional skill, just
because people often bend in extremes: being quiet and suffering or shouting and
regretting later. Then, when I first saw the concept of emotion regulation, it opened a
broader perspective and raised my interest on that. Although I have learned that we can
control our emotions, very often that is the only thing said to people: you should refrain
from shouting and acting aggressively. Period. As I consider emotion regulation, I can see
how to do it.
Keeping that in mind, I found particularly relevant the strategies to emotion regulation,
such as attention shifting, attention focusing, tactile self-soothing, avoidance, slowly
counting to 10, purposefully controlling their breathing, inner speech, wishful thinking
(Wolters, 2003). Curiously, Ive never learned these strategies in school. I learned them
in public speaking courses, teaching courses, meditation. So, I do believe that these
things should be introduced in practical forms in schools. Although, there is no evidence
of clear connection between emotion regulation and academic performance, since studies
have produced opposing results (Zeidner, 1998), clearly emotion regulation can help
students in cognitive and metacognitive aspects, such as test anxiety (Spielberger &
Vagg, 1995; Zeidner, 1998), persistence, and effort. (Sansone et al., 1999). However, as
Wolters (2003) mentions, more research examining the relation between emotional
control as a regulation of motivation strategy and students choice, effort, and
persistence is needed.

Now, looking more carefully at attention issues, we find how relevant these strategies can
be. Attention shifting regulation voluntarily can moderate the experience of negative
affect, while involuntary orientation to negative affect may limit attentional capacity
(Posner, 2000). In addition, Easterbrook (1959) proposed that negative states
particularly high arousal ones like anxiety and fearnarrow the scope of attention.
Therefore, I would think about practical activities in which teacher assistants (or people
not so familiar to students) in a school could scare students with strong reprimands and
immediately ask them to do some classwork under that pressure. That is to say, attention
shifting and focusing has to be practiced instead of lecturing on that. Another way of
practicing could be that, during a class activity, the teacher interrupts students to tell
jokes, to talk about other issues, thus delaying their work and affecting these capacities.
These activities could be done over and over to help children cope with these feelings. Of
course, it has to be done in different settings and with different actors to avoid children
predicting and mentally organizing oneself to keep the mind away from that
performance.
References

Ainley, Mary, Suzanne Hidi, and Dagmar Berndorff. "Interest, learning, and the psychological processes that
mediate their relationship." Journal of educational psychology 94.3 (2002): 545.

Boekaerts, Monique, and Reinhard Pekrun. "Emotions and Emotion Regulation in Academic
Settings." Handbook of Educational Psychology(2015): 76.

Easterbrook, James A. "The effect of emotion on cue utilization and the organization of behavior." Psychological
review 66.3 (1959): 183.

Mazer, Joseph P., et al. "The dark side of emotion in the classroom: Emotional processes as mediators of
teacher communication behaviors and student negative emotions." Communication Education 63.3 (2014): 149-
168.

Pintrich, Paul R. "An achievement goal theory perspective on issues in motivation terminology, theory, and
research." Contemporary educational psychology 25.1 (2000): 92-104.

Posner, Michael I., and Mary K. Rothbart. "Developing mechanisms of self-regulation." Development and
psychopathology 12.03 (2000): 427-441.

Sansone, Carol, Deborah J. Wiebe, and Carolyn Morgan. "Selfregulating interest: The moderating role of
hardiness and conscientiousness." Journal of personality 67.4 (1999): 701-733.

Spielberger, Charles Donald. Test anxiety: Theory, assessment, and treatment. Taylor & Francis, 1995.

Wolters, Christopher A. "Regulation of motivation: Evaluating an underemphasized aspect of self-regulated

learning." Educational psychologist38.4 (2003): 189-205.

Zeidner, Moshe. Test anxiety: The state of the art. Springer Science & Business Media, 1998.

Zimmerman, Barry J., and D. H. Schunk. "Motivational sources and outcomes of self-regulated learning and
performance." Handbook of self-regulation of learning and performance (2011): 49-64.

3. REFLECTION
Considering initial planning, I followed it through since I had the experience from Task
Solo 1. Feedback we received in class also helped me to focus on certain topics and
explore it from more perspectives.
As for time completion, I expected to do it in two days, but I needed three days. Again, I
decided to work early morning since it is a better time for me, both for attention and
disposition.
As for a particular challenge, I first decided working with different attention strategies,
but finally decided to focus on attention focusing and shifting since these topics raised
my attention and I havent seen practical exercises on that. So, narrowing topics helped
me focus and consider this topic more carefully, since it is related to emotions, which is
our theme for workshop.