What is an Academic Emotion? Insights from Filipino

National Academy of Psychology (NAOP) India

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Psychological Studies (March 2009) 54:28–37 28

Psychological Studies (March 2009) 54:28–37

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

What is an Academic Emotion? Insights from Filipino Bilingual Students’ Emotion Words Associated with Learning Allan B. I. Bernardo, Jerome A. Ouano, Maria Guadalupe C. Salanga

Received: 16 January 2009 / Accepted: 25 February 2009

We explored Filipino learners’ concept of academic emotions by studying the words they use to describe their emotional experiences associated with learning. Two main theoretical frames were used as reference in the analysis: Clore, Ortony, & Foss’ (1978) taxonomy of emotion words, and Pekrun’s (2006) dimensions of academic emotions. We asked Filipino learners to describe the positive and negative emotions that they associate with their learning experiences using an open ended questionnaire. The 676 students used 1337 words which were classied into root word categories; 38 categories which were mentioned by at least 1% of the participants were included in the analysis. The interpretive analysis suggested that Filipino learners’ concept of academic emotions includes appraisals of cognitive and even physical conditions, beyond the typical affective conditions assumed in theories of emotions and academic emotions. Moreover, Filipino learners’ concepts of academic emotions include a wider range of emotion concepts, and may require additional characteristic dimensions, compared to what is being studied in current academic emotions research. Keywords: Academic emotions, Emotion lexicon, Philippines, Learning and emotions

In the past decade, there has been a heightened interest in the psychological study of students’ emotional experiences related to learning and achievement. This intensication of research interest on academic emotions is reected in the publication of a number of special issues on emotions and learning in important journals of educational psychology, such as Educational Psychologist (2002), Learning and Instruction (2005); Educational Psychology Review (2006), and the publication of the volume, Emotions in education (Schutz & Pekrun, 2007). The rise in psychological investigations related to academic emotions is largely due to the publications of Pekrun’s control-value theory of academic emotions (Pekrun, 2006; Pekrun, Goetz, Titz, & A. B. I. Bernardo • J. A. Ouano • M. G. C. Salanga Counseling and Educational Psychology Department, Rm 1609 Br Andrew Gonzalez Hall, De La Salle University, 2401 Taft Avenue, Manila 1004, Philippines e-mail: [email protected], [email protected]

Perry, 2002) which proposed an integrated framework for studying the antecedents and consequences of emotional experiences of students related to learning, achievement, and other activities in the educational setting. The basic proposals of control-value theory include the denition and dimensions of academic emotions or achievement emotions (note, in this paper we only use the term academic emotions). The theory denes achievement emotions as “emotions directly tied to achievement activities or achievement outcome” (Pekrun, Frenzel, Goetz, & Perry, 2007, pp. 15). The denition also hints at the rst important dimension of academic emotions, which relates to the object focus of the theory, which may be either the learning activities or the learning outcomes (Pekrun, 2006). The other key dimensions of academic emotions, valence (positive or negative) and activation (activating or deactivating), are proposed to be the more important dimensions to understand the relationship between academic emotions and academic performance (Pekrun et al., 2007). Thus, the theory denes four basic categories of academic emotions: positive activating emotions (e.g., enjoyment,


hope, pride), positive deactivating emotions (e.g., relief, relaxation), negative activating emotions (e.g., anger, anxiety, shame), and negative deactivating emotions (e.g., boredom, hopelessness). In quantitative studies of controlvalue theory that use the Academic Emotions Questionnaire (AEQ, Pekrun et al., 2002), only eight emotions are typically assessed: anger, anxiety, boredom, enjoyment, hope, hopelessness, pride, and shame. In this paper, we take a few steps back and re-examine the denition of what is an academic emotion by studying the words and concepts used by Filipino learners to describe their emotional experiences associated with learning. There have been many previous studies on general emotions that referred to the emotion lexicon (see e.g., Clore, Ortony, & Foss, 1987; Russell, 1991), including at least one study on the Filipino emotion lexicon (Church, Katigbak, Reyes, & Jensen, 1998). These studies have varied specic aims, and many of these seem to be premised on the problem that many psychological studies on emotions rely on using emotion words as stimuli. Indeed, most quantitative research on academic emotions relies on a questionnaire with items that use various emotion words. The problem is that different languages have different emotion lexicons, which vary not only in range but also in the specic emotional experiences encoded (see review of Russell, 1991). Moreover, as Russell (1991) noted, the problem extends to the word “emotion” itself. This problem is manifest in the various Philippine languages. There is no direct translation of the word emotion the Filipino language. The closest terms are “damdamin” and “nararamdaman” which are translated as “feeling” in English. Of course, not all feelings are emotions, which invites the question of how Filipinos circumscribe the concept of “emotions.” (Note that the absence of words that directly translate the English concept of emotions is actually true for many other languages e.g., Howell, 1981; Lutz, 1982; Poole, 1985). In this paper, we attempt to answer a specic variant of this question: How do Filipino learners dene the concept of academic emotions? Unfortunately, cross-cultural research on different lexicons (see Russell, 1991, for review) indicates that the relationship between emotion lexicons and emotional phenomena, in general, are multifaceted, and in many ways, unclear. Thus, by focusing on the words for academic emotions, we realize that we cannot make explicit inferences about the psychological structure of academic emotions in the manner that control-value theory does. However, we assume that the words used to describe emotional experiences associated with learning reect particular components of emotion as dened in most cognitive

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models of emotions (Frijda, 1988; Lazarus, 1991; Ortony, Clore, & Collins, 1988; Scherer, 1984). Mesquita & Frijda (1992) asserted that cultural differences in emotion lexicons may reect differences in how attributes of emotions are categorized, or how the events coded are categorized. In the case of academic emotions, the range of events in the learning domain would presumably overlap across different educational systems, but would still feature events that may be specic to particular educational environment. Moreover, the salience or importance of specic events and of specic types of events, as well as the relevant attributes of emotions associated with these events have to be dened within the particular educational context. Thus, we anticipate that the emotion words used by the Filipino learners would reect some attributes of emotions that are emphasized in the existing taxonomy of academic emotions, but also other attributes that are not. In particular, we expect that the concept of academic emotions would most likely represent a different but overlapping range of prototypes or exemplars of psychological conditions compared to those dened in control-value theory. Moreover, we also expect that the attributes of emotions (i.e., dimensions of appraisals and of action tendencies) would generally overlap, but would also contain distinct elements that could be traced to specic nature of the events coded and appraised in the context of Philippine educational experiences. To study the attributes of emotions that are represented in the words used by Filipino learners to describe their academic emotions, we refer primarily to the three dimensions emphasized in control-value theory (Pekrun, 2006): object focus (learning activities or learning outcomes), valence (positive or negative), and activation (activating or deactivating). But in addition, we refer to a more basic set of dimensions identied in an earlier study of the psychological dimensions of general emotion words. Studying emotion words in the English language, Clore et al. (1987) identied 585 English words that have been used in relation to emotions, and found that people (a) distinguish between internal and external dimensions in these words, (b) distinguish between physical and mental dimensions of the internal emotion-related words, and (c) recognize affective, cognitive, and behavioral dimensions in these mental emotion-related words. They categorized all the English words into a taxonomic system with eight main components derived from the above dimensions: (1) external objective descriptions, (2) external subjective evaluations, (3) internal physical states, (4) internal pure affective states, (5) internal affective-behavioral conditions, (6) internal affectivecognitive conditions, (7) internal pure cognitive states, and

30 (8) internal behavioral-cognitive conditions. They proposed that words that refer to internal condition with a strong affective component (i.e., categories 4, 5, and 6) are the best exemplars of emotion words. Thus, within the English language lexicon, English speakers have a prototypical concept of emotion that can be inferred from the range and dimensions of the emotion words they use. Church et al. (1998) referred to Clore et al.’s (1987) taxonomy to study Filipinos’ emotional lexicon. They found that even as there is no direct translation of “emotion” in Filipino, Filipino mental terms that were identied as having a pure affective or at least a strong affective component were more likely to be considered appropriate emotion terms by Filipino speakers. Do the same conceptual limits or boundaries shown to apply to general emotions apply to the more specic concept of academic emotions? Seven out of the eight academic emotions identied in control value theory (Pekrun, 2006) fall under the pure affective category of words (anger, anxiety, enjoyment, hope, hopelessness, pride, and shame). The eighth emotion, boredom, falls under the affectivecognitive conditions category. On the whole, the academic emotions dened in the current research literature are represented by lexical units that fall within the dimensions emphasized in Clore et al.’s (1987) taxonomy of general emotion words. In this study, we address the basic question of how Filipino learners dene the concept of academic emotions by exploring their academic emotions lexicon. To answer our research question, we rst examine whether the words that the students use to describe their academic emotions refer to psychological states that involve mainly affective conditions (Clore et al., 1987; Church et al., 1998). Then we examine the range of emotion concepts represented in the academic emotions lexicon feature the same eight core emotion concepts dened in control-value theory, as well as the three dimensions of emotional attributes emphasized in the theory (Pekrun, 2006). Our analysis is mainly interpretive, using concepts and frames dened in the theories mentioned earlier. In cases when our data cannot be interpreted within these conceptual frames, we make conjectures framed within the general assumptions of how emotion lexicons may reect culturally-dened processes of representing dimensions of the cognitive processes that underlie emotional experiences (Mesquita & Frijda, 1992; Shweder, 1991). At this point we want to highlight an interesting characteristic of Filipino learners. All Filipino learners in school are at least bilingual, and most are actually multilingual. Recent surveys (e.g., Grimes, 2002) indicate that most Filipinos speak one of at least 163 distinct


languages spoken in the Philippines and one of 12 major languages (e.g., Cebuano, Hiligaynon, Filipino/Tagalog, etc.) as a second language. The Philippines has adopted a bilingual education policy since 1974 (Bernardo, 2004), which mandates the use of Filipino (a lingua franca derived from Tagalog) and English in instruction at all levels. Filipino has also been adopted as the language of discourse in most forms of popular media in almost all parts of the country (Gonzalez, Bernardo, Bautista, & Pascasio, 2000). As a consequence of these developments, Filipino has become widely spoken in all regions and among all ethnolinguistic groups in the Philippines. Estimates indicate that 96.4% of Filipino households speak Filipino either as a rst or second language (National Statistics , 2000). A recent survey indicates that 76% of Filipinos report that they can understand spoken English, 75% can read English, 61% can write in English, and 46% can speak in English as a second or third language (Social Weather Stations, 2008). The percentages are similar for the sample of respondents who had some high school education (the gures are 74%, 73%, 52%, 32%, respectively), and higher for those who had some college education (the gures are 83%, 81%, 74%, and 70%, respectively). The participants in our study are drawn from these two subsectors of the Philippine population. Thus, when Filipino learners talk about their academic emotions, they could use the lexicon of their rst, second, and other languages. Church et al. (1998) found that Filipino emotion lexicon is smaller than in English, and we expect that Filipino learners will use English words quite often in describing their academic emotions. For the current study, we will treat the bilingual Filipino learners’ academic emotion lexicon as comprising of all the words they produce to describe their relevant emotional experiences,whatever language these words might be. However, citing ethnographic studies of emotions with bilingual populations (e.g., Davitz, 1969; Levy, 1973), Russell (1991) suggested that bilinguals may actually be inuenced by emotion lexicon in their rst language when constructing the meaning of and using the emotion lexicon in their second language. Thus, we cannot and will not assume that the English emotion words used by the participants in this study to describe the emotional experiences associated with learning carry the same meaning as when it is used by native English speakers.

Method Participants The respondents were 696 students (320 females) from seven high schools and ve colleges and universities in ve cities

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in the Luzon region, one city in the Visayas region, and two cities in the Mindanao region. However, 20 students did not provide any answer to the question, and so data come from only 676 participants whose ages ranged from 11 to 21 years (M=16.09 years; SD=2.36 years). There were 406 students (172 females, 234 males) in high school and 270 students (145 females, 125 males) in college or university. The students came from 86 different cities and municipalities in various regions of the country. Procedure The instrument used for the study was an open-ended survey questionnaire which included the questions: “What feelings and emotions do you associate with learning? What positive and negative emotions do you associate with learning?” The questions were written in English, and followed by Filipino translation below the English questions. The students were asked to answer the questions as part of a class requirement, and were given no time limit to answer the question. They were told that they could answer in any language they felt comfortable in, as long as they wrote what was in their minds. Most students answered in English, although a signicant proportion also answered in Filipino, Cebuano, Hiligaynon, or gave code-switched responses that included English, Filipino and/or one other Philippine language.

Results and Discussion All the students’ responses were encoded verbatim, then two researchers independently identied all the words used by the participants to refer to their emotional experiences related to learning. There was no preset denition of academic emotions used to identify the words. Instead, the researchers identied all the words used by the students in their descriptions of their emotions experiences, whether these words seemed to be emotions or not. A total of 1337 words were identied, which were then classied by the two researchers into root word categories based on those dened in control-value theory and additional categories that were found in the responses. The root word categories were intended to group together very close synonyms and inections of the root word, and Filipino translations of these. For example, “enjoyment,” “fun,” and “masaya” (Filipino) were grouped in the root word category “enjoy” (which corresponds to the enjoyment category in controlvalue theory). Similarly, the terms “boring,” “boredom,” “bored,” and “nakakalagot” (Hiligaynon) were categorized in the root word category “bore”. Note that most of the

root word categories in English are in the verb form, but should not be interpreted as verbs. On the other hand, the Filipino translation of the root word categories are mostly in the noun form, but should also not be interpreted as nouns. The basic analysis in the study did not consider the form of the root word category, as most of the actual words used by the participants to describe their emotional experiences in learning involved inections added to the root word (e.g., “boredom” is a noun, “boring” is an adjective). The researchers also decided to include close synonyms that represented different intensities of the emotion in the same category. For example, the Filipino word for “angry” is “galit,” but a less intense version is “inis,” which was coded under the same category. There was 92.07% agreement between the two researchers’ categorization; the researchers later discussed the discrepant items and resolved all the differences. Among the different root word categories identied, only 38 were mentioned by at least 1% of the participants. However, the 38 categories actually represent a much larger number of actual words used by the participants. Interestingly, two of the academic emotions identied in control-value theory were not among these 38. Both “hopeless” and “shame” were mentioned by only four participants (or 0.59% of the participants). The 38 emotion word categories are shown in Table 1. Three root words were mentioned by a sizeable proportion of the participants or by at least 13% of them: happy, bore, and enjoy. Six root words were mentioned by around 6% to 9% of the participants: lazy, excite, sad, proud, tire, and angry. The remaining 29 root words were mentioned by about 1% to 4% of the participants. The following analyses and discussions refer only to the 38 emotions words in Table 1. We should emphasize that although the participants were told that they could respond using whatever language they knew and wanted to express their ideas, an overwhelming majority (73.52%) of the participants responded in English. Only 22.34% responded in one of the Philippine languages (Filipino, Cebuano, or Hiligaynon), and 4.14% responded using a combination of English and one or two of the Philippine languages. Thus, most of the words coded were in English. Even the participants who responded using one of the Philippine languages sometimes used English words. The following are examples of Filipino responses that code-switch to use the emotion words in English: •

“but if it’s something na kailangan kung basahin, na bo-bore ako” [but it’s something that I have to read, I get bored].

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Table 1 Summary of root words used in reports of emotional experiences associated with learning Root word in English

Root word in Filipino

Examples

%

happy

saya

happiness, happy, masaya, kasiyahan

37.72

bore

--

boredom, boring, bored, nakaka-boring,

15.98

enjoy

tuwa

enjoyable, enjoyment, joyful, nag-eenjoy, nakakatuwa

13.31

lazy

tamad

laziness, tinatamad, nakakatamad

9.02

excite

--

excitement, exciting, excited

8.73

sad

lungkot

sadness, malungkot, nakakalungkot, nakakalungkot

7.84

proud

pagmalaki

pride, may pagmamalaki, mayabang

7.69

tire

pagod

tired, tiredness, tiring, nakakapagod, kapoy

6.80

angry

galit, inis

anger, angry, mad, galit, naiinis

6.66

condent

kumpiyansa*

condent, condence

3.99

fulll

--

fullled, fulllment, fullling

3.99

frustrate

--

frustrated, frustrating

3.70

satisfy

--

satisfaction, satised

3.55

good

sarap

good, great, masarap

3.11

stress

--

stressed, stressful

2.81

challenge

--

challenging

2.66

fear

takot

fear, afraid, scared, natatakot, takot

2.66

eager

gana, sabik

eagerness, ginaganahan, ganado, nananabik

2.51

content

kuntento

contented, contentment, kuntento, pagkakuntento

2.37

interest

interes

interested, interesting, interesado

2.22

pressure

--

pressured, pressure

2.22

confuse

lito

confused, confusion, confusing, nalilito, pagkalito

2.07

curious

--

curious, curiosity

2.07

determined

determinado

determined, determination, determinasyon

1.92

love

ibig, mahal*

love

1.78

anxiety

ngamba

anxious, nangangamba

1.63

depress

--

depressed, depression, nade-depress

1.63

hurt

sakit*

hurt, pain

1.48

inspire

inspirado*

inspired, inspiration

1.48

persevere

pursige

perseverance, pagpupursige

1.48

disappoint

bigo*

disappointed, disappointing

1.18

hope

pag-asa

hopeful, hope, pag-asa

1.18

nervous

nerbyos

nervousness, pagkanerbyos

1.18

patience

pasensiya*

patience

1.18

willing

--

willing, willingness

1.18

enthusiasm

sigla

enthusiastic, masigla

1.18

“hard work”

sipag

hardwork† (sic), hardworking, masipag

1.04

hate

muhi*

hatred, hate

1.04

These Filipino words are translations of the English root word, but were not used by the participants. †A number of Filipino participants wrote “hardwork” as one word, the usage of which comes very close to the English word, “diligence”

*


•

“Sa akin maiuugnay ko ang emosyon na kasiyahan at frustrated…” [I can associate the emotions of enjoyment and being frustrated…].

•

“Happy kasi pag may natutuhan ka na, tapos sad kasi mayroong bagay na kahit anong pilit mo hindi mo matutuhan…” [Happy when you learn something, then sad because there are things you can’t learn no matter how hard you try…].

As indicated in Table 1, some of the root word categories had no exemplars in the Philippine languages, which explains the need to code-switch. But even when there were Filipino words that corresponded to the root words in English, in some cases, the participants never used these Filipino words, and used the English words exclusively. Thus, the range of root word categories was actually wider among those who responded in English compared to those who responded using one of the Philippine languages. We discuss how these results answer the research question in the following sections. Academic emotions reect affective and cognitive conditions Earlier studies of emotion lexicon (Clore et al., 1987) suggest that emotion words are those that describe psychological states that have a strong affective dimension, and this position was afrmed in a study on the Filipino emotion lexicon (Church et al., 1999). Seven of the eight academic emotions identied in control-value theory (Pekrun, 2006) were all purely affective in nature, and the other (boredom) expressed a combination of the affective and cognitive conditions. But the words used by the Filipino learners in this study to describe their emotional experience describe psychological conditions beyond the affective domain. Almost half (17 out of 38) the root words listed in Table 1 can be classied under the pure affective category in Clore et al.’s (1987) taxonomy, and another three (bore, eager, determined) are classied under the combined affective-cognitive conditions. These 20 words t the earlier prescriptions regarding appropriate emotion words. However, a signicant number of other words used by the participants clearly do not fall within the prescription. Seven words (condent, confuse, curious, inspire, interest, lazy, patient) are classied as purely cognitive conditions in Clore et al.’s study. Two words used by the participants did not even refer to mental states. “Tired” is a word that refers to an internal physical state, and “good” is a word that refers to a subjective evaluation of an external state. Another six words (challenge, “hard work”, perseverance, pressure, stress, willing) were not even included in the original lexicon of English affect terms in Clore et al.’s study. (“Hard work”

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is not actually one word, but a number of Filipino learners wrote it as one word: “hardwork.” Based on the usage, the word seems to mean “diligence.”) But words like “stress” and “pressure” seem to describe a predominantly affective condition similar to being anxious and nervous. The words “willing” and “challenged” may describe a combination of affective and cognitive conditions similar to being eager. On the other hand, “hard work” and “persevere” may have cognitive and behavioral components. Although most of the words used seem to have some affective component, a signicant proportion of the words also have a cognitive component. Ordinarily, words such as “lazy,” “condent, ” “confused, ” “curious, ” “inspired, ” and “tired” would not be considered emotion terms. A person may feel lazy, feel condent, feel confused, feel tired among others, but these would still not be typically considered as indicative of emotional experiences. However, the Filipino learners in this study used these words that are commonly thought to describe cognitive and physical conditions to describe their emotional experiences related to learning. We believe that this pattern of responses reects how the Filipino learners’ conception of academic emotion is constructed within the context of the academic activities of school. In particular, these academic activities dene a set of events, event types, and closely linked appraisals that have strong cognitive components, aside from the affective components. We propose that the event types that are associated with these purely cognitive emotion words are those that involve the engagement of a complex cognitive task, which requires the investment of affective, cognitive and behavioral resources. The specic events may be coded in terms of event types or categories that are meaningful within the academic context. For example, these events may be coded in terms of different achievement orientations, such as demonstration of ability, learning for mastery and personal development, learning for practical application, and so on, each of which may involve appraisals that are not only affective, but also cognitive, and sometimes even physical. We believe that this particular set of results require that the notion of academic emotions ought to be extended to include psychological states that may ordinarily be considered cognitive conditions. In a sense, we are arguing that the prototype of the conceptual category of “academic emotions” should be dened differently from the prototype of the conceptual category of (general) “emotions.” The exemplars of academic emotions are fewer compared to general emotions because learners are not likely to experience the full range of possible human emotions in their learning experiences. In this regard, the range of academic emotions is narrower than that of general emotions.

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However, we propose that there are psychological states that are considered exemplars of academic emotions by the Filipino learners, but that are not exemplars of general emotions. Thus academic emotions should not be construed as a mere subset of the general conceptual category of emotions. Instead, academic emotions comprise an overlapping but distinct conceptual category of psychological states relative to general emotions. Expanding the range of core what are the academic emotions Control-value theory (Pekrun, 2006) identied eight academic emotions, which were distinguished in terms of three dimensions (object focus, valence, and activation). The Filipino learners in the current study mentioned all eight of the emotions, but two of the emotions were mentioned rather infrequently; hopelessness and shame were mentioned by less than 1% of the participants. The root words corresponding to two academic emotions (hope and anxiety) were mentioned by less than 2% of the participants, and another two (anger and pride) were mentioned by less than 8% of the participants. Only the root words corresponding to boredom and enjoyment were mentioned by more than 10% of the participants. The frequency of mention was obviously inuenced by whether the learners own emotional experiences related to learning, and may thus under-represent their actual lexicon of academic emotions. Nevertheless, the Filipino learners in this study clearly described a wider range of psychological conditions as representing their emotional experiences during learning compare to the eight currently referred to in control-value theory (Pekrun, 2006). All the 38 words listed in Table 1 could also be characterized in terms of the value and control dimensions of the controlvalue theory. For example, the word categories that refer to excitement, condence, interest, eagerness, inspired, perseverance, patience, willingness, and enthusiasm may all be interpreted as being positive activating emotions; whereas, being fullled, satised, and content may be exemplars of positive deactivating emotions. On the other hand, the word categories that refer to laziness, tiredness, frustration, fear, confusion, disappointment among others, may be considered negative deactivating emotions. There are no clear candidates for negative activating emotions other than anger and anxiety, which were both identied in control-value theory. However, one can conceive of the negative feeling of being pressured and stressed as possibly being activating (similar to anxiety), but the same could also be conceived as being deactivating (similar to fear). Although all words used could be characterized in

terms of the valence dimension, not all words had a clear activation classication. The action readiness of the root words associated with happiness, good, and love are not easily interpretable. Although, most of the participants who used love, used the word in the context of “love of learning,” and may thus be considered an activating emotion. Finally, we should also note that in the case of the word “pride,” a number of respondents tended to appraise this emotion negatively. In particular, these learners referred to pride in relation to being boastful about one’s academic achievements compared to one’s classmates. For example, one respondent wrote, “…masaya, may pagmamalaki pero minsan kapag masyado ka nagmamalaki nagiging mayabang ka” […happy, proud, but if you are too proud, you become haughty]. The specic valence and activation of these few problematic words can be ascertained using systematic empirical techniques. Generally, however, the range of emotions words can be characterized using two of the core dimensions of control-value theory. The application of the third dimension, object focus is not as tidy. Many of the emotions have a clear outcome focus. For example, the root words that refer to sad, frustration, depressed, disappointment, satised, content, and fullled all have a clear outcome focus. But the words that seem to indicate an activity focus do not all converge with the original conceptualization within control-value theory (Pekrun, 2006), which seems to limit the task-focused emotions to those that are related to intrinsic qualities of the on-going achievement related activity (i.e., enjoyment and boredom). There were some root words that refer to the achievement related activity but in an anticipatory mode; for example, the root words the describe excitement, eagerness, curiosity, and willingness seem to be positive anticipatory emotions related to the learning activities. As with the activity-focused emotions dened in controlvalue theory, these anticipatory activity-focused emotions may also have an effect on self-regulatory behaviors and allocation of cognitive resources (Pekrun, 2006). There are still other root words that seem to be somewhat focused on the on-going achievement activities, but the words do not refer to qualities of the activity itself. Instead the root words that refer to laziness, tiredness, condence, determination, inspiration, perseverance, patience, and “hard work” seem to describe the psychological state of the learner as he/she engages the learning task. These root words describing academic emotions may correspond to what Pekrun et al. (2002) referred to as extrinsic emotions, which include emotions related to the setting, other people, and the person or learner. The term extrinsic was used with reference to the task or activity (i.e., extrinsic to the task). In contrast,


intrinsic emotions, such as enjoyment and boredom, relate to inherent characteristics of the learning activities. In much of the theoretical writings on the control-value theory of academic emotions, the extrinsic emotions were not included among the core set of academic emotions, perhaps because they do not fall within the two types of object focus (task and activity). But the Filipino learners’ responses indicate that some of these extrinsic emotions were particularly salient in their learning experiences. Thus, there may be a need to extend the facets of the object focus dimension, and thus also the range of academic emotions that may be relevant to study. Note that all these root words that may be considered extrinsic motivations seem to describe a cognitive condition, although some may have a combination of affective and behavioral conditions, as well. And the root word related to tiredness describes a physical or bodily state. Therefore, the need to consider other facets of the object focus of academic emotions may be related to our earlier proposal to reconceptualize the prototype of academic emotions to include cognitive psychological conditions. It may be that salience of these extrinsic emotions in the Filipino learners’ learning experiences is a contributory factor to the inclusion of cognitive and even physical conditions to the prototypical concept of academic emotions, in addition to the usual affective features.

Conclusion We explored the denition of academic emotions by studying the range and characteristics of the words used by Filipino learners to described the emotional experiences associated with learning. We employed interpretive analysis of the words and their features using conceptual and taxonomic categories dened in earlier research on emotion lexicons (i.e., Clore et al., 1987) and in the control-value theory of academic emotions (Pekrun, 2006; Pekrun et al., 2007). Our interpretive analysis indicates that Filipino learners’ conception of academic emotions goes beyond the existing conceptualization in control-value theory, and even beyond conventional conceptualizations of what emotions are. Based on the Filipino learners’ academic emotions lexicon, the prototypical concept academic emotions seems to include cognitive and even physical conditions, in addition to affective states. Thus, academic emotions are not construed as a subset of the general category of emotions; instead academic emotions may be construed as a distinct but overlapping prototypical concept that reects the range of value and control appraisal related to the highly cognitive events that may be coded in the academic domain. Our

35

analysis also indicated that the most important academic emotions for the Filipino learners may be different from that which is dened in control-value theory. Not only was there a wider range of emotion concepts referred to in the various descriptions of emotional experiences; more importantly, these emotion concepts do not neatly t within the dimensions dened in control-value theory. It seems that the value and control dimensions can be used to make meaningful distinctions among the academic emotions, but the object focus dimension may not adequate capture the range of academic emotions described by the Filipino learners. We suggest the need to consider the category of anticipatory activity focused and of extrinsic activity focused academic emotions for characterizing the Filipino learners’ academic emotions. In our discussion, we were careful to limit our inferences and assertions to the nature of academic emotions as a conceptual category that represents a psychological construct. We refrained from making inferences about the antecedents and consequences of, or the psychological structure and mechanism of academic emotions, given the limited focus of our inquiry on the academic emotions lexicon. But even our interpretive analysis is limited in important ways, as many of our assertions are merely intelligent speculations that still must be validated in systematic empirical studies on how Filipino learners actually use and understand their academic emotions lexicon. For example, our assertions regarding the distinct prototypical categories of academic emotions and general emotions should be tested by gathering actual prototypicality ratings of the various academic emotion words. Likewise, our proposals regarding the characterization of the various academic emotions words in terms of valence, activation, and focus should be validated using established research paradigms for dening the dimensions and distances among psychological concepts. These limitations in our analysis notwithstanding, we believe that our exploratory study that combined features of emic and etic research approaches points to some possible limits in the current conceptualization of academic emotions, which seems to have merely assumed that academic emotions and general emotions have the same conceptual boundaries. Recall that in Church et al.’s (1998) study of the Filipino emotion lexicon, Filipino participants rated the words describing affective conditions as being more appropriate emotion concepts compared to words the describe more cognitive and behavioral conditions. But in our study, Filipino learners used several words that describe cognitive conditions and even a word that describes a physical condition to express their emotional experiences associated to learning. The distinct conceptualization of

36 academic emotions does not seem to be an artifact of the emotion lexicon in Filipino. Instead, the conceptualization is more likely associated with the types of events experienced and encoded in the academic domain in the Philippines. Mesquita and Frijda (1992) proposed that cultural differences in the emotion lexicon actually reect differences in such features of the emotional experiences, and not the structure of the emotions themselves; and we can apply this argument to understanding the distinct range of words used by the Filipino learners to describe their academic emotions. Even as more systematic empirical research needs to be done to further validate our conjectures, we wish to briey consider the possible implications of this broader conceptualization of academic emotions research and theorizing about academic emotions in the Philippines. We focus our discussion on the implications of including a wider range of academic emotions that may describe more cognitive and even physical conditions, such as feeling lazy, satised, or content, and also being tired. We will need to begin exploring how these different types of academic emotions inuence the learners’ motivation, self-regulatory behaviors, use of learning strategies, and allocation of cognitive and physical resources, and ultimately their academic achievement. The results of such studies may reveal more complete and holistic accounts of how various forms of affective psychological states inuence achievement related behaviors, at least in the Philippine educational context. Directing the inquiry towards the cultural and social antecedents of these different types of academic emotions, we might discover practices in the classrooms, schools, and families that shape control and value appraisals related to these more cognitive and physical psychological states. It was quite interesting to note the signicant number of participants who mentioned feeling lazy and tired; and we can pose the question of what social and cultural practices shape the value appraisals of these academic emotions. Thus, even within the theoretical parameters of control-value theory, there can be interesting lines of inquiry that may be pursued in relation to our proposed conceptualization of academic emotions for Filipino learners.

Acknowledgement This research was supported in part by grant from the University Research Coordinating Ofce of De La Salle University. We thank the ofcers of De La Salle Philippines and De La Salle University’s College of Education, especially Barbara Wong-Fernandez, John Addy Garcia, Mila Antiqueño, and Sr. Joy Luz for coordinating the


data-gathering activities across the different regions, the various administrators and teachers for facilitating the datagathering in their schools, and Wainwright Yu, Arriane Bernardo, and Arriele Bernardo for their assistance in encoding the data.

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