Visualising undergraduate students’ achievement emotions: family, technology and aesthetics.

Abstract

In the educational context, achievement emotions are the range of emotions that a student may experience during and use for the purposes of academic achievement and outcome-oriented activities (e.g., studying for a test, writing a test, and obtaining the results on a test). Achievement emotions can therefore be understood as important mediators that, if recognised and managed appropriately, could transform a student’s educational efforts and outcomes. Grounded in Pekrun’s Control Value Theory of achievement emotions, this dissertation explores achievement emotions among university students, and presents these emotions as individually and socio-culturally mediated processes which add depth to conceptualising the ways in which students can achieve at university. Using Photovoice as a participant driven and empowering data production strategy and reflexive thematic analysis to analyse the data produced, the researcher explores the subjective meanings that six students gave to the variety of achievement emotions they experienced in their learning journeys. Three main themes suggest that family, technology, and an aesthetic learning space underpin and facilitate the students’ achievement emotions of enjoyment, excitement, hope frustration, defeat, and anxiety. The findings indicate that photovoice as a data production strategy conscientised participants to their achievement emotions, speaking to the emancipatory nature of this method.