ABSTRACT
When students co-construct knowledge while collaborating on a task, cognitive processes interact with motivational and emotional processes at both the individual and the group level. Important influences between motivation/emotion and cognition can be observed in both directions: Students’ individual motivation influences how deeply they are willing to engage in the joint task. Individual task commitment is also affected by volitional regulation at the group level. Higher task commitment, in turn, typically leads to more effective knowledge co-construction, which then constitutes a positive learning experience with the potential to foster students’ interest and self-efficacy in the learning domain, their positive valuing of knowledge co-construction as a worthwhile learning activity, as well as their identification with their group. Despite these important interactions, studies of collaborative learning often focus on either cognitive or motivational-affective aspects. Even worse, the role of motivation and emotion in knowledge co-construction has often been neglected in favor of cognitive aspects.
