Students’ Emotional Expressivity and Academic Achievement
Emotional intelligence, the understanding of one’s own emotions and the ability to effectively manage them, is just as important for students as any academic skill. There has been a reported increase in mental health and academic challenges since the COVID-19 pandemic, and building student’s emotional skills may be key to addressing these challenges.
Grow X research has examined how student’s emotion expressivity is related to their academic performance. That is, the relationship between what kinds of emotions students are expressing outwardly and how well they are doing in the classroom.
On I-TokTok, an online learning platform used in Gyeongsangnam-do province in South Korea, students can reflect and record their emotions when they log on to the platform or complete an assignment. Grow X compared what students reported on the Emotion Check activity and their performance in mathematics.
We found that students who reported both positive emotions (such as happy or proud) and negative emotions(such as angry or sad) When compared to students who were only choosing positive or only choosing negative emotions, these students had higher scores in math.
There were three distinct patterns of activity on I-TokTok’s Emotion Check. Students who (1) never completed the Emotion Check, (2) only expressed positive emotions (such as happy or proud), and (3) expressed both positive and negative emotions. Students in the third group, who expressed a range of emotions, showed the best performance in math compared to the other groups.
This suggests an interesting connection between emotional expressivity and students’ academic performance. Students who are able to reflect on their emotions and express how they are truly feeling may be in the best mindset for academic success. As students develop emotional intelligence skills, they may be more able to understand how the way they are feeling is connected to the world. For example, a student who can accurately determine they are feeling angry or frustrated can allow themselves to calm that emotion before continuing to engage in a homework assignment.
Future Grow X research hopes to deepen our understanding of how students emotions affect their academic performance. In doing so, we can find the best way to support all students.
Average math rankings compared to Emotion Check activity. There is a significant(*) difference in math scores between each group.