Investigating the reciprocity between daily emotions and perceived learning progress in self-directed learning

Control-value theory suggests there is reciprocity between learners' emotions and academic performance. However, previous studies are traditionally limited to the school context and emotions are usually measured across long intervals. What remains unknown is the extent to which these results generalise to self-directed learning and the short-term dynamics between emotions and learning progress. Using dynamic structural equation modelling, this study addresses these gaps by examining longitudinal data gathered from 321 adolescents engaging in a ∼10-week self-directed learning project. We found that positive emotions, negative emotions and perceived learning progress all demonstrated daily autoregressive effects, and there is a reciprocal association between daily positive emotions and perceived daily learning progress. Furthermore, changes in daily negative emotions negatively predicted next-day positive emotions. Adolescents with stronger positive emotion autoregression were more likely to show stronger autoregressive effects in perceived learning progress. These findings suggest the importance of fostering students' positive emotions during self-directed learning opportunities.