A valued task makes students sweat: Investigating the link between situational motivational beliefs and electrodermal activity in collaborative learning

Abstract

Current academic motivation research emphasizes the situational, contextual, and process-sensitive nature of motivation. However, evidence on changes in students’ motivational beliefs during learning situations, particularly in the context of collaborative learning, is lacking. Capturing these dynamic changes requires novel methods that can indicate students’ motivation unobtrusively throughout the learning process. This study aims to investigate if students’ situational beliefs of expectancy for success, task value, and emotional costs are reflected in their physiological arousal during collaborative learning. The participants were 95 secondary school students who performed a science task in 31 small groups. The students’ situational motivational beliefs were collected with a repeated self-report before, during, and after the task. Electrodermal activity was recorded to indicate the students’ physiological arousal throughout the task. The results revealed that the students’ situational beliefs of attainment value and emotional costs were significant predictors of physiological arousal: attainment value positively predicted arousal, while emotional costs negatively predicted arousal. While, on average, expectancy for success did not significantly predict arousal, its relationship with arousal was moderated by attainment value. When the attainment value was high, lower expectancy for success was associated with higher arousal. The results provide novel evidence on the role of students’ situation-specific motivational beliefs in their physiological responses during learning. Moreover, the study showcases the potential of physiological measures as an additional modality for helping to understand situational motivation, which is still relatively hard to capture unobtrusively during learning, contributing to methodological advancements in academic motivation research.