ABSTRACT
Students’ academic emotions are associated with important learning outcomes, and there are likely to be cultural group differences in experiencing these emotions. For example, in Macau, anecdotal observations depict Macau students as experiencing less enjoyment and more boredom in their classes compared to Mainland Chinese students. We explore this regional difference by adopting an extension of control value theory, which assumes that achievement goals direct students’ attentional focus either to learning task or outcome as they frame control and value appraisals that underlie academic emotions. Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) confirmed differences in enjoyment, pride, shame, hopelessness and boredom between Macau and Mainland Chinese students. Applying the unpackaging approach in cross-cultural research, regression analysis indicated that some differences in academic emotions were explained by group differences in achievement goals. The results are discussed in terms of how individual and sociocultural differences regarding how learning tasks are construed may partly explain group differences in academic emotions.
