The academic emotions experienced when preparing for students’ first university exams: Where do they come from and what do students think about them and their regulation?
Confronting emotions in learning and knowing how to regulate them is a challenge for all learners, including university students that must prepare for their first exams. Within this period, this article investigates a) what triggered academic emotions in the 23 newly arrived students who were interviewed and b) their personal theories about these emotions and their regulation. The content analysis conducted suggests that (a) the Scherer (2001) model is relevant as a means to understand the source of academic emotions generated during this period; b) students differ in their view of emotions as being functional or non-functional for learning. Moreover, they consider that the regulation of these emotions is learned and depends on the context.