• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.38 no.2
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• pp.171-186
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• 2018

Recent research has shown that elementary school students can experience epistemic affect -emotions and feelings experienced within epistemic practices, such as the enjoyment of having a wonderful idea or uncomfortable feeling of at a cognitive dissonance- during modeling process. This study explores how an introverted elementary student could participate in the modeling process by constructing an epistemic affect. Based on the theory of constructed emotion, we analyzed one elementary student's constructed epistemic affect using data resources such as emotion diaries, video recordings, and post interviews. We selected one introverted student (a fifth grader), showing peripheral and full participation during modeling. Specifically, we explored which emotions were constructed when she participated in modeling peripherally -and which epistemic affect was constructed when she participated fully- during the construction, evaluation, and revision processes. The research results showed, first, that the introverted elementary student came to participate in the model construction process by constructing the epistemic affect called aha. Second, the results showed that she came to participate in the model revision process by constructing the epistemic affect called feeling that the reasoning was wrong when confronting the rebuttals of the other student. Finally, she came to participate in the model evaluation process by constructing the epistemic affect called dislike of another student's idea. Through our exploration of the constructed epistemic affect of the introverted elementary student, we deduced that it is important to help each student to construct an epistemic affect that facilitates his or her participation in modeling. Also, we discussed that it is important to understand the impact of the emotional load that can occur for each student, depending on the constructed past, present, and future emotions.