Using Multiple and Mixed Methods to Investigate Emotions in Educational Contexts

Paper Presentation at the American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting.

The emotions in educational settings tend to be multidimensional and situated within social historical contexts. As such, emotions have personal and social meanings as well as having the potential to influence educational outcomes such as learning and motivation (Pekrun & Linnenbrink-Garcia, 2014; Schutz & Pekrun, 2007; Schutz & Zembylas, 2009). Thus, the research methods and methodologies used to investigate emotions in education need to match those levels of complexities. In this paper we discuss the usefulness of approaching emotions in educational contexts from a problem solving perspective that engages the use of multiple and/or mixed methods research. In essence, the goal of useful mixed methods research is to investigate the transactions among process, meaning (i.e., qualitative research methods), and the explanation of variance (i.e., quantitative research methods) related to a problem of interest. Thus, the focus is to integrate the data collected qualitatively with the data collected quantitatively to create deeper understandings that may not be accomplished with either type of data separately. For example, Greene, Caracelli, & Graham (1989) suggest there are at least five purposes for conducting mixed methods research: triangulation (using quantitative and qualitative methods to demonstrate convergence or explain a lack of convergence), complementarity (using qualitative and quantitative methods to examine overlapping but different aspects), development (using quantitative and qualitative methods sequentially with one method informing the other method), initiation (using one method to discover or explore contradictory findings that resulted from the other method), and expansion (using one method to extend a study). We will use data from our investigations of emotional regulation during testing to illustrate how mixed methods approaches can be used to examine emotions in educational contexts (Schutz, Davis, DeCuir-Gunby, & Tillman, 2014). In addition, we will explicate our current theoretical and mixed methodological approaches for examining emotions in education. Finally, we will discuss the strengths and challenges of approaching emotions in education from multiple and mixed methods perspectives.