Investigating the interrelationship among academic emotions, classroom engagement, and self-efficacy in the context of EFL learning in smart classrooms in China

ABSTRACT

Objective

This study aims to fill in the gap by exploring the interrelationship among academic emotions, classroom engagement and self-efficacy in EFL learning among Chinese non-English majors in smart classrooms.

Methods

A total of 409 non-English majors in their first year from a Chinese university completed the revised version of the academic emotions scale, classroom engagement scale and self-efficacy scale and their interrelationship has been analysed by Structural Equation Modelling.

Results

Positive emotion significantly enhances classroom engagement, while negative emotion does not. Classroom engagement has a significant effect on promoting self-efficacy, which is influenced by both positive and negative emotions, with positive emotions having a greater impact. Specifically, classroom engagement mediates the relationship between positive emotion and self-efficacy, whereas it does not mediate between negative emotion and self-efficacy.

Conclusion

Smart classrooms can stimulate students’ positive academic emotions, increase their engagement in learning so as to enhance their self-efficacy.

KEY POINTS

What is already known about this topic:

1. Academic emotion, engagement and self-efficacy have significant influence on learning.

2. Self-efficacy plays a mediating role between students’ engagement and academic emotion.

3. Academic emotion is situational and influenced by such factors as classroom atmosphere.

What this topic adds:

1. The relationship among academic emotion, engagement, and self-efficacy in smart classrooms has been explored.

2. It has investigated the mediating role of classroom engagement between positive emotion and self-efficacy.

3. This study focuses on the academic emotions, engagement, and self-efficacy of Chinese English learners, offering a unique perspective in different cultural contexts.

KEYWORDS:

• Academic emotions
• classroom engagement
• self-efficacy
• structural equation modeling
• EFL learning

Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge people who participated in this study by filling in the questionnaires.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The authors confirm that the data supporting the findings of this study are available within the article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was in part funded by the Teaching Reform Program of Research on the Integration of Online and Offline Blended Teaching in the Context of Informatization of AIIT [Grant No. 2021×jjyjxzd02] and in part funded by Anhui Provincial University Teaching Quality and Teaching Reform Project [Grant No. 2021jyxm0647].