Unpacking changing emotions in multiple contexts: idiodynamic study of college students’ academic emotions

Abstract Under the guidance of complex dynamic systems theory, the present study explored four college students’ academic emotions when learning academic English in a blended language class, consisting of face-to-face classroom instruction, and asynchronous and synchronous online instructions. An idiodynamic approach was used to capture the participants’ emotional fluctuations on a per-second timescale. With reference to the bitmap exported, follow-up interviews were conducted to probe into the potential factors triggering their emotional fluctuations. The findings revealed that, although the four students’ academic emotions demonstrated distinctive fluctuations across three teaching modes, they all experienced more arousal emotions during the face-to-face class, while their emotional experiences during the online classes, especially during the synchronous online class, tended to be deactivating. And during asynchronous online class, their academic emotions oscillated between positive and negative most frequently. Three broad groups of factors related to learner agency, learning environment and teaching practice have been found to exert varied degrees of influence on their academic emotional fluctuations in different teaching modes.