Homework completion and achievement can be affected by how students handle their emotions. An article recently published in Contemporary Educational Psychology examined the reciprocal effects of emotional regulation, homework completion, and math achievement on each other using a longitudinal design.
The study was conducted in four public schools in China, from which 1,480 8th graders participated. These schools were regular schools in contrast to key schools which select high-achieving students. When the study began, 69.4% of participating students did math homework four days or more in a week and, on average, spent 34.5 minutes on that per day. Students completed a questionnaire about homework emotion regulation, including emotion management and cognitive reappraisal and were assessed for their homework completion and math achievement first at the beginning of November and again seven and a half months later. Standardized tests guided by national math curriculum standards in China were used to access math achievements. The relationships were tested by a reciprocal model. The results showed that:
- Emotion management and math achievement were reciprocally related to each other.
- Higher achievement resulted in higher subsequent cognitive reappraisal, but prior cognitive reappraisal was not related to subsequent achievement.
- Interactions between emotion management and cognitive reappraisal significantly predict subsequent homework completion. However, neither emotion management nor cognitive reappraisal independently predicted homework completion.
The authors suggested that the reciprocal influences of emotion management and achievement indicated that promoting both simultaneously is a more beneficial way of teaching. Teachers should also pay attention to cultivating emotion management in their teaching by giving explicit advice or encouraging students to take the initiative themselves.