Designing interventions to scaffold emotional awareness, beliefs and action tendencies

TL;DR

A new intervention helps students better understand and manage their emotions, improving how they approach learning.

Contribution

A novel intervention combining emotional contrasting cases and expressive writing is introduced to enhance emotional awareness in students.

Findings

Students improved in identifying and articulating emotions after the intervention.

The intervention encouraged a more balanced view of both positive and negative emotions.

Students showed reduced avoidance behaviors but little change in accepting unpleasant emotions.

Abstract

I demonstrate – via a novel intervention comprising evaluation of emotional contrasting cases and expressive writing – improvements in emotional awareness, beliefs and action tendencies among lower secondary students (N = 71). Relative to their pre-intervention profiles, students were able to better identify and articulate emotions, as well as showcase a more nuanced understanding of both positive and negative emotions and their respective roles in learning. While the intervention successfully reduced avoidance behaviors towards unpleasant emotions and encouraged a more balanced appraisal of emotional experiences, it also highlighted certain limitations – for instance, students showed little change in their acceptance of unpleasant emotions, suggesting further support may be needed to fully utilize emotions as learning tools.

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