The Influence of Emotion-Regulation Training on Achievement Emotions: Dyadic and Group Peer-to-Peer Tutoring Interventions in Secondary Education-Contexts

Self-regulation and emotion-regulation largely contribute to educational and professional achievement and social and emotional stability and thus eventually to well-being and mental health. Emotions in school-contexts, achievement as well as social emotions, and their effects on cognition, motivation, and social functioning as moderators of achievement and well-being, have been studied increasingly in pedagogic psychology in the last three decades (Pekrun & Linnebrink-Garcia, 2014). It has also been found that achievement emotions and self- and emotion-regulation correlate. A correlational study conducted by the author is presented in this work and confirms these findings. Positive achievement emotions significantly correlate positively with self-regulation, and negative achievement emotions significantly correlate negatively with self-regulation. These associations depend, among other factors, on the emotion-regulation strategies that are employed. Reappraisal has proven to be an adaptive strategy in view of the above-mentioned goals of achievement and well-being. The same is valid for peer-to-peer tutoring formats, especially in dyadic conditions. Their positive effects in cognitive, motivational, and social regards are largely documented, as well as the fact that the social benefits, especially the construct of social support, function as moderators of the overall positive effects of peer-to-peer tutoring. In view of these findings, and a rising awareness for the need of prevention and the promotion of health, increasingly mental health, in primary and secondary education (which manifests itself in the German federal states´ curricula´s leading perspectives and school quality programs) the centre of the present work is an interventional study training emotion-regulation in secondary education in peer-to-peer tutoring dyadic and group conditions. Tutors were recruited from grades 10 and 11 (M = 16,4 years) and tutees from grades 7 and 8 (M = 13,1 years). The study uses a 2 factorial within-subject pre-post design with the between-participants factor “training condition”. The intervention is based on a semi-standardized training material developed by the author, with the help of which tutees employ cognitive reappraisal in school-context situations in which they identify a negative achievement emotion as impeding achievement or social aims and/or well-being. If-Then-Plans – Implementation Intentions with Mental Contrasting – were formed to be employed in the six weeks in between T1 and T2, the dependent variable being the manifestation of the negative achievement emotion chosen in tutees´ plans. The intervention is a quasi-experimental pre-post-test of change hypotheses. Results did not confirm hypotheses on a statistically significant level, and they are ambiguous in so far as not all of them take the hypothesized direction. The results for hypothesis 5 are significantly opposite of what was assumed. Hypotheses were that tutees would employ the emotion-regulation strategy of reappraisal more frequently at T2 than at T1 (1), and that this was associated with lower scores for negative achievement emotions at T2 than at T1 (2). Furthermore, we hypothesized that relations between scores for the employment of reappraisal between T1 and T2 were moderated by social support as tutees perceived themselves receiving from tutors, and tutors´ empathy (3). Next, we hypothesized a possible decline of values for negative achievement emotions from T1 to T2 independent of the employment of reappraisal, and this again to be moderated by social support and empathy (4). It was then hypothesized that in dyadic conditions the moderating effects of both were higher than in group conditions, firstly, related to values for the employment of reappraisal as assumed in hypothesis 1 (5), and secondly, to scores for negative achievement emotions as assumed in hypothesis 4 (6). Last, it was hypothesized that tutees would (increasingly) apply the emotion-regulation strategy they practiced with tutees by means of implicit learning, and this to result in higher scores for tutors´ employment of reappraisal at T2 compared to T1 (7). The findings indicate that, even if being below statistical relevance, the intervention can be effective in contexts of secondary education. It is discussed how it could be adapted to be more effective, and how it could practically be implemented in every-day school environments with a special focus on the role of dyadic structures in peer-to-peer tutoring settings.Dissertation ist gesperrt bis zum 17.12.2023 !