Individuals’ self-efficacy beliefs can influence cognitive, motivational, and affective processes ( Bandura and Locke, 2003). More simply, self-efficacy is a person’s belief in his or her ability to influence events that affect his or her life ( Bandura, 1994). Self-efficacy generally is associated with an individuals’ belief in his or her own proficiency to gain the targeted goals in a certain domain ( Bandura, 1994). However, as dissection is also a challenging emotional task, using the PANAS to measure the effect of treatments is appropriate. To our knowledge, the PANAS has not been used in the context of dissection. In terms of education, it was used especially for defining educational programs’ emotional outcomes, and it has been used with children and college students in many settings ( Cassady and Johnson, 2002 Pajares, 2002 Lane et al., 2004 Koutsis et al., 2007 Alivernini and Lucidi, 2011). The PANAS is widely used by psychologists and in medical settings. While PA represents the extent to which an individual experiences pleasurable engagement, NA represents subjective distress and unpleasant engagement with the environment ( Watson and Clark, 1984). It was developed to provide a reliable estimate of two broad and largely independent factors implicated in emotional experience: positive and negative affect (PA and NA Watson et al., 1988 Rossi and Pourtois, 2012). The Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) is another means to measure emotions. In light of these studies, reducing anxiety is important in mastering a task. Randler and colleagues (2012b, 2013) found a negative effect of anxiety on motivation, interest, and achievement during a dissection task. (2005) found that children who were less anxious for amphibians had significantly higher knowledge scores than more anxious ones. (2002) found inverse correlations between interest on the one side and negative emotions like anger and anxiety on the other, suggesting that negative emotions lower interest. (1970) developed a scale called the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI Spielberger et al., 1970, 1976) that is used all over the world ( Marteau and Bekker, 1992 Barnes et al., 2002). In biology education, disgust, fear, and anxiety are important emotions that can be task related because of the specificity of biology, namely the work with dissection ( Holstermann et al., 2009 Randler et al., 2012a) or when encountering living animals ( Hummel and Randler, 2012 Randler et al., 2012b).Īnxiety is conceptualized as state and trait anxiety. Emotions have an effect on students’ cognitive processes and performance ( Pekrun et al., 2002) and can be mainly categorized as positive emotions (e.g., relief, hope, pride) and negative emotions (e.g., anger, envy, sadness Linnenbrink and Pintrich, 2002 Pekrun et al., 2011). (2011) defined emotions as a set of interrelated psychological processes (affective, cognitive, physiological, and motivational). The dissection film has clear benefits-increasing PA and self-efficacy-that come at the cost of higher NA and higher STAI-S. The life history group showed no differences between the pretest and posttest 1. The dissection film group scored higher in PA, NA, and state anxiety (STAI-S) after the dissection video treatment and higher in self-efficacy after the dissection. We applied a pre/posttest treatment-comparison design and used the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS), the State–Trait–Anxiety Inventory for State (STAI-S), and a self-efficacy measure three times: before the lesson (pretest), after the film treatment (posttest 1), and after the dissection (posttest 2). Seventy received the treatment with the dissection video, and 65 viewed the life history video. The participants were 135 students studying to become biology teachers. We compared this treatment with another group that watched a life history video about the fish. We aimed at reducing negative emotions (anxiety, negative affect ) and increasing positive affect (PA) and self-efficacy by an experimental intervention using a predissection video to instruct students about fish dissection. In science education, dissections of animals are an integral part of teaching, but they often evoke negative emotions.
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