Abstract
This study adopts a dynamic systems approach to investigate how individuals successfully manage contextual complexity. To that end, we tracked individuals' emotional trajectories during a challenging training course, seeking qualitative changes–turning points—and we tested their relationship with the perceived complexity of the training. The research context was a 5-day higher education course based on process-oriented experiential learning, and the sample consisted of 17 students. The students used a five-point Likert scale to rate the intensity of 16 emotions and the complexity of the training on 8 measurement points. Monte Carlo permutation tests enabled to identify 30 turning points in the 272 emotional trajectories analyzed (17 students * 16 emotions each). 83% of the turning points indicated a change of pattern in the emotional trajectories that consisted of: (a) increasingly intense positive emotions or (b) decreasingly intense negative emotions. These turning points also coincided with particularly complex periods in the training as perceived by the participants (p = 0.003, and p = 0.001 respectively). The relationship between positively-trended turning points in the students' emotional trajectories and the complexity of the training may be interpreted as evidence of a successful management of the cognitive conflict arising from the clash between the students' prior ways of meaning-making and the challenging demands of the training. One of the strengths of this study is that it provides a relatively simple procedure for identifying turning points in developmental trajectories, which can be applied to various longitudinal experiences that are very common in educational and developmental contexts. Additionally, the findings contribute to sustaining that the assumption that complex contextual demands lead unfailingly to individuals' learning is incomplete. Instead, it is how individuals manage complexity which may or may not lead to learning. Finally, this study can also be considered a first step in research on the developmental potential of process-oriented experiential learning training.
Highlights
This study is based on two assumptions: first, that learning and development occur in response to contextual demands that challenge individuals’ ways of meaning-making and lead to the creation of more adapted ones (Piaget, 1975/1985); second, that individuals’ encounters with conflicting contextual demands are usually associated with the experience of negative emotions (Frijda, 1986; Carver and Scheier, 1990; Inzlicht et al, 2015)
The predominant emotional trajectory among our participants had a positive orientation, as evidenced by the two most frequent types of turning points: pre-increase turning points in positive emotion trajectories, and pre-decrease turning points in negative emotion trajectories. These turning points indicated that an initial response consisting of either increasingly intense negative emotions or decreasingly intense positive emotions was replaced by a pattern that consisted of decreasingly intense negative emotions or increasingly intense positive emotions
Using a dynamic systems approach, this study examined the emotional trajectories of the participants in an experiential learning course in order to investigate how these individuals managed conflicting training demands
Summary
This study is based on two assumptions: first, that learning and development occur in response to contextual demands that challenge individuals’ ways of meaning-making and lead to the creation of more adapted ones (Piaget, 1975/1985); second, that individuals’ encounters with conflicting contextual demands are usually associated with the experience of negative emotions (Frijda, 1986; Carver and Scheier, 1990; Inzlicht et al, 2015) Within this framework, we find that a promising way to grasp individuals’ successful management of challenging environmental demands is to track their emotional experience over time from a Dynamic Systems perspective (Thelen, 1989; Van Geert, 1994; Kunnen, 2012). We assume that a complex contextual input may be a trigger for the successful management of complexity
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