The Effect of Academic Emotion Management Training on Motivation and Academic Performance of Female Junior Students of High School

Emotions are among the personality dimensions of students they experience in the entire learning process and different educational situations. Academic emotions are the ups and downs students experience in the classroom and concerning academic subjects. These emotions can affect the quality of people's performance and contribute to their success or failure in education–related matters. On the other hand, in educational systems, raising students who can manage their academic emotions is necessary to prevent the waste of material resources, energy, and inefficiency of human capital. This goal is possible through academic excitement management packages. Given the vital role of academic emotions in students' lives, motivation, and academic performance, the present study was conducted to investigate the effect of educational emotion management training on the motivation and academic performance of female junior high school students. ‎

This research method was quasi–experimental with a pretest–posttest and follow–up (one month after the implementation of the training package for managing academic emotions) design with a control group. The statistical population of the research included all female junior students studying in District 2, Tehran City, Iran, in the academic year 2021–2022. According to the minimum number of subjects in each group of quasi–experimental studies, the statistical sample size of the research was estimated at 30 female students of seventh, eighth, and ninth grades. Therefore, among the statistical population, 30 students were first identified based on the inclusion criteria, and then randomly, in groups of 15, an experimental group and a control group were replaced. The inclusion criteria that were considered in the present study were as follows: being a junior student in the high school, a lack of simultaneous use of psychological counseling, aged 13–16 years, written parental consent, weakness in academic performance and motivation (based on scoring lower than average [<120] in the Academic Performance Questionnaire [EPT] and in Academic Motivation Questionnaire (AMS) [< 70]), obtaining a higher than average score (>225) in negative emotions, school counselor or psychologist approval to participate in the research. The exclusion criteria included the absence of more than two training sessions and the occurrence of a specific accident or disease. The experimental group was trained in academic emotion management for 9 sessions of 50 minutes each (twice a week), and no training was provided to the control group during this period. Two questionnaires (EPT and AMS) were used to collect data in the pretest, posttest, and follow–up stages. The tools used to measure variables in this research were two standard questionnaires: the Academic Motivation Questionnaire (AMS) (Vallerand et al., 1992) and the Academic Performance Questionnaire (EPT) (Pham and Taylor, 1999). To analyze the collected data, descriptive statistics (mean and standard deviation) and inferential statistics (analysis of variance with repeated measurements and Bonferroni post hoc test) were used. The analyses were performed using SPSS version 25 software. All tests were done at the significance level of p>0.05.

The research results showed that the average components of academic motivation and academic performance were significantly different between the experimental and control groups in the posttest and follow–up stages (p<0.05). In the experimental group, there was a significant difference between the average components of academic motivation and academic performance in the pretest and posttest stages, as well as the pretest and follow–up stages (p<0.05). However, no significant difference was observed between the average variables in the posttest and follow–up stages, indicating the stable effect of the academic emotion management training package in the follow–up stage.

According to the research results, the educational package of managing academic excitement affects the components of academic performance and academic motivation of students, and this effect is preserved over time. Hence, it is possible to use the training of academic emotion management as a useful tool to increase academic motivation and academic performance in female junior high school students, thereby reducing academic demotivation.