An approach to epistemic emotions in physics’ teaching-learning. The case of pre-service teachers

It is well established that emotions play a key role in the teaching-learning process and cognitive and affective factors should receive especial consideration. This fact becomes even more important when dealing with pre-service teachers, since their emotions towards science will be projected into their future practice as early-childhood teachers. It has been also stated the influence of the instructional approach in which the teaching-learning process is based on the emotions of students towards science. In this line, the current study aims to monitor and interpret the emotions of pre-service teachers when addressing physics content learning, namely forces, from two different instructional approaches with increasing experimentality degree and implication of students. The considered instructional approaches consisted on a theoretical problem solving one and a practical one designed in the form of inquiry-based hands-on activities. A sample size of 118 students was considered and a questionnaire was employed for in situ emotions monitorization. A decrease from 30% to 12% in negative emotions and an increase from 85% to 91% in positive emotions was detected when considering the transition from instructional approach 1 (classroom approach) to instructional approach 2 (inquiry-based hands-on approach). The whole dataset was analyzed by means of principal component analysis (PCA). PCA reveals the importance of emotions’ valence, but also their activating/deactivating character. An approach to epistemic emotions is achieved from this perspective. It has been demonstrated that the implementation of inquiry-based hand-on activities results in increased occurrence of security and trust among the students, in comparison with occurring emotions after receiving more theoretical interventions.