EXPLORING ACHIEVEMENT EMOTION IN UNDERGRADUATE MEDICAL STUDENTS: A QUALITATIVE STUDY

Abstract

This study explores achievement emotion experienced by undergraduate medical students. It aims to provide understanding of the relationships between achievement emotion, learning experience, and
academic performance. Qualitative inquiry approach was chosen to allow the exploration and understanding of under-expressed emotions in undergraduate medical students. Purposive sampling identified 12 thirdyear
students from an Indonesian medical school. Face-to-face semi-structured interviews were conducted with questions that explores students’ achievement emotions, self-regulated learning, education environment, cognitive appraisal, and academic performance. The interviews were transcribed and analyzed thematically. Identified themes are ‘Factors influencing achievement emotion’, ‘Impact of achievement emotion towards self-regulated learning’, and ‘Impact of achievement emotion towards
academic performance’. Findings revealed how different components of the educational environment, namely teaching quality and curriculum, affect achievement emotion. Although findings concur with
Pekrun’s control value theory of achievement emotions in which positive and activating emotion generate self-regulatory behavior, there are insufficient data that suggest the relationship of emotions towards academic performance. This study highlights the importance of an emotionally aware educational environments as it seems to generate a desirable learning behavior. Medical faculty might benefit to consider the factors activating students’ emotion when designing teaching quality development programs.

Keywords: achievement, emotion, medical students