Influências entre os estados emocionais e motivacionais dos alunose os resultados de testes de Física

Abstract

Our goal in this work was to investigate the predictive power of affectivefactors, specifically the motivation and emotion, for the results of an assessment of basic knowledge about Physics and, also, the reciprocal relations between emotional state and performance in the test. We assessed a sample of 217 high school students, from a federal public school, controlling the demographic factors and cognitive ability.We adopted a quantitative methodology, using multivariate data analysis strategies with result in the assessment as the dependent variable and motivational, emotional and demographic factors as explanatory variables. Motivational variables used were the beliefs of self-efficacy and value, goal orientation, engagement, importance attributed tointelligence and interest in Physics. The emotional variables were test anxiety, expectation, satisfaction and composite depressed/irritated. The collection of data was done using three questionnaires: the first, with questions about demographic data and relation of the student with Physics; in second and third, questions involving Physics knowledge and emotional state in three moments: before, during and after the test. Alldata collected was stored in SPSS, which resources we used in all analysis. As a result of this study, we concluded that self-efficacy and test expectation were, among the motivational and emotional variables, the explanatory variables for performance, controlling the demographic and cognitive ability. These variables also mediated the effect of other motivational and demographic variables and also the cognitive ability.About reciprocal relations between emotional state and performance in the test, we did not identify causal relations but correlations between results and emotional valence.