# 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.

## Key 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.