Barbara Balaž

The aim of this study was to test the impact of the type of learning material and the level of prior knowledge on students’ success in learning and their epistemic emotions. We have conducted two online experimental studies in which half of the participants, university students, were randomly assigned either a video or a textual material condition. In Study 1 (N = 165) all the materials were in Croatian; in Study 2 (N = 107) they were in English. Croatian was the mother tongue of all participants, and English was the foreign language. The participants were queried about their prior knowledge of the topic they were assigned and their epistemic emotions and were asked to fill out a knowledge exam. The results showed that in both studies students who learned from text and with higher level of prior knowledge scored better at the exam, while interaction effect was not significant. Regarding epistemic emotions, in both studies the type of learning material and the interaction effect were not significant. Only in Study 1, prior knowledge significantly affected epistemic emotions, i.e., students with higher prior knowledge reported higher intensity of enjoyment and curiosity, and lower intensity of negative epistemic emotions. The research gives important insights in the role of the learning material on students’ academic outcomes, especially epistemic emotions.

Epistemic emotions are typically assessed as a momentary state related to a specific task, while in this study, the aim was to develop a new trait-oriented instruction in the Epistemically-Related Emotion Scales in the context of physics. The Scale m...

The present study examined the mediating role of emotional exhaustion in the relationship between work-family conflicts and commitment to the profession and the moderating role of psychological capital in explaining the proposed mediating mechanism. The study was based on a cross-sectional design and was conducted in Spring 2020 on a convenience sample of 1655 Croatian teachers. The moderated mediation analysis revealed that work-family and family-work conflicts were related to emotional exhaustion (β = .645, p < .001 and β = .353, p < .001, respectively), which, in turn, was related to commitment to the profession (β = −.319, p < .001 and β = −.353, p < .001, respectively). Also, work-family conflicts were directly related to commitment to profession (β = −.133, p < .001 and β = −.149, p < .001, respectively). Finally, the relationship between family-work conflict and emotional exhaustion was stronger among teachers with greater psychological capital.

Objective: The main purpose of this study was to examine the assumptions of the control-value theory of achievement emotions in the explanation of the relationship between positive achievement emotions and academic success. Method: The study was conducted among 513 high school students (341 female) from two high schools in Zagreb, Croatia. Participants’ academic control, positive class- and learning-related achievement emotions (enjoyment, hope, pride), elaboration and rehearsal as learning strategies, and academic success were assessed in the research. Results: Results showed that academic control directly and indirectly predicted academic success. Indirect paths via class-related enjoyment and elaboration, class-related pride and elaboration, and elaboration alone were significant, while in the context of learning-related emotions only the indirect path via learning-related pride was significant. These results suggest that learning strategies represent weak mediators in the relationship between class-related emotions and academic success. However, they are not mediators in the relationship between learning-related emotions and academic success, which is not in line with the theoretical assumptions. Conclusion: The study showed some beneficial effects of positive achievement emotions for academic outcomes and therefore pointed to their importance in the academic setting.