Developing an Expert and Reflexive Approach to Problem-Solving: The Place of Emotional Knowledge and Skills

Abstract

Nowadays it is widely accepted that mathematics and, especially, problemsolving tasks, are particularly concerned by the issue of emotions. Yet, educational interventions designed to improve students' problem-solving competence and performance still mainly focus on cognitive and metacognitive knowledge and skills. The main purpose of this study was to design and assess the benefit of a training program that promotes the development of not only cognitive but also emotional knowledge and skills. This benefit was assessed using four variables, namely, problem-solving performance, problem-solving competence, academic emotions and emotion regulation strategies. 428 fifth and sixth graders took part in the study, split into four conditions: 1) a "cognition" condition which received an intervention on an eight-step problemsolving process; 2) an "emotion" condition in which emotional knowledge and skills were developed through various activities; 3) an "emotion and cognition" condition overlapping the two previous ones, and 4) a "control" condition. The findings showed that the "emotion and cognition" condition and the "cognition" condition had equivalent cognitive efficiency. However, only the former reduced negative emotions, aroused the emergence of positive ones, promoted the use of adaptive emotion regulation strategies and discouraged the use of maladaptive ones. The practical implications for educational practices and possible avenues for further research are discussed.

Perceived Competence and Intrinsic Motivation in Mathematics: Exploring Latent Profiles

“…Although most research has also found that mathematics anxiety correlates negatively to perceived mathematics competence [34], there is little empirical research to date that has looked at the connection between upper elementary students' emotions and perceived competence in the mathematics context [35]. In this regard, we might assume perceived competence to negatively correlate with negative emotions and positively correlate with positive emotions [37].…”

“…Empirical evidence suggests emotions have deep, significant effects on learning and math achievement throughout students' educational careers (e.g., [33][34][35][36][37]). Considering that negative emotions experienced at early ages can affect an individual's construction of their academic identity [36], our study looks at the emotions in students in the final stages of primary education.…”

Teaching the problem-solving process in a progressive or in a simultaneous way: a question of making sense?

“…This information is critical for designing more effective training programs, as each strategy occupies a specific and central place in the problem-solving process. A study conducted with students of the same age emphasized that to increase more rapidly students' use of the "checking" and the "interpreting" strategies, it is necessary to add emotional and motivational support to the cognitive and metacognitive intervention (Hanin, & Van Nieuwenhoven, 2018b). This observation is in line with self-regulated learning theories, which postulate that motivational beliefs and emotions play a key role not only in initiating the learning process but also in sustaining the learner's efforts throughout the process (Boekaerts, 2011;Zimmerman, 2011).…”

A Multi-Dimensional Hybrid Learning Environment for Business Education: A Knowledge Dynamics Perspective

“…Such a proposition is supported by research trends in education, psychology and neuroscience fields which show that aspects of cognition are bidirectionally influenced by aspects of emotions [50][51][52][53][54][55][56]. For example, problem-solving is found to be influenced by emotions [57] and motivation is linked to learning and academic performance [50,58]. While cognition and emotions affect learning and developing business competences [59], a sense of meaning and purpose is considered essential for successful business relationships and performance (spiritual knowledge) [60,61].…”