Epistemic emotions and beliefs

How do students think and feel about scientific findings on the subject of education?

Epistemic emotions are those emotions that arise in connection with the acquisition, evaluation, and application of knowledge. These include curiosity, confusion, and surprise, among others. These emotions accompany the learning process by motivating individuals to expand their own knowledge or reflect on what they have learned.

Epistemic beliefs, on the other hand, refer to individual ideas and assumptions about what knowledge is and how it is acquired. They include, for example, beliefs about the stability of knowledge (are there eternal truths?) or its origin (is knowledge gained through scientific methods and empirical data, or through experience?). These beliefs influence how people process information, i.e., how they learn.

In this project, we explore epistemic emotions and beliefs among prospective teachers. We focus in particular on the interaction between emotional processes and the willingness of teacher training students to revise misconceptions, i.e., erroneous parts of their knowledge. Our results show that students reacted both emotionally positively (surprised, curious) and negatively (confused, annoyed) when they realized that their supposedly certain knowledge about educational topics was incorrect. However, a negative emotion such as confusion does not have to be detrimental to learning: it can also lead learners to want to know more about a topic.

Cooperation partners: Belinda Berweger & Prof. Dr. Bärbel Kracke (Jena), Florentine Diersch (Leipzig)

Duration: since 2022

Publications

Berweger, B., Kracke, B., & Dietrich, J. (2023). Preservice teachers’ epistemic and achievement emotions when confronted with common misconceptions about education. Journal of Educational Psychology, 115, 951–968. https://doi.org/10.1037/edu0000792