When confusion is productive: Emotion, regulation, and complex learning
Warmly welcome to a guest lecture by Professor Krista R. Muis from McGill University, Canada!
The lecture is open to everyone. There will be coffee and tea served after the talk. Please find the abstract of the lecture below.
Professor Krista R. Muis (McGill University, Canada) is a researcher in educational psychology and STEM education whose work focuses on epistemic cognition (beliefs about knowledge and knowing), emotion, and self-regulated learning. She directs McGill’s eMUIS Lab (eMotions, Understanding Inquiry, and Self-regulated learning), where her team studies how learners’ beliefs and emotions shape conceptual change, learning strategies, and academic performance—particularly in mathematics and science. The lab also investigates how people engage with complex and sometimes contradictory information in socio-scientific topics such as climate change and vaccination, including the role of misconceptions in learning. Alongside lab-based research, Professor Muis collaborates with teachers to design and evaluate interventions that support students’ epistemic cognition, emotion regulation during learning, and self-regulatory skills.
Professor Muis is a recipient of the James McGill Professor Award (2023-2030), a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and the American Psychological Association (APA), and serves as Co-Editor of Educational Psychologist.
For more information on the guest lecture, please be in touch with Prof. Johanna Kaakinen at the Department of Psychology and Speech-Language Pathology (johkaa@utu.fi).
Selected publications
Muis, K. R., Bendixen, L. D., & Haerle, F. C. (2006). Domain-generality and domain-specificity in personal epistemology research: Philosophical and empirical reflections in the development of a theoretical framework. Educational Psychology Review, 18(1), 3-54.
Muis, K. R., Chevrier, M., Denton, C. A., & Losenno, K. M. (2021). Epistemic emotions and epistemic cognition predict critical thinking about socio-scientific issues. Frontiers in Education: Educational Psychology, 6, 1-18.
Muis, R. R., Chevrier, M., & Singh, C. (2018). The role of epistemic emotions in personal epistemology and self-regulated learning. Educational Psychologist, 53, 165-184.
Muis, K. R., Pekrun, R., Sinatra, G. M., Azevedo, R., Trevors, G., Meier, E., & Heddy, B. C. (2015). The curious case of climate change: Testing a theoretical model of epistemic beliefs, epistemic emotions, and complex learning. Learning and Instruction, 39, 168-183.
Schutz, P. A., & Muis, K. R. (Eds.). (2023). Handbook of educational psychology. Taylor & Francis.
When confusion is productive: Emotion, regulation, and complex learning
(Lecture abstract)
Emotions are ubiquitous during learning but are often treated as consequences rather than integral components of the learning process itself. For this guest lecture, I draw on my program of research to examine the dynamic relations among emotions, self-regulated learning, and achievement, with particular attention to confusion during complex learning.
My research with children solving complex mathematics problems illustrates a central paradox: confusion can signal an important learning opportunity, prompting learners to monitor their understanding, reconsider strategies, seek information, and resolve discrepancies. However, when confusion persists without resolution, it can transition to frustration, decrease perceptions of control, and lead to disengagement.
I extend this argument to conceptual change and demonstrate how emotions can initiate and shape the epistemic and regulatory processes through which learners evaluate evidence, detect inconsistencies, and revise prior knowledge. I then describe my intervention research designed to help learners recognize and regulate their emotions while simultaneously fostering more effective self-regulated learning.
I highlight methodological approaches for capturing the dynamic nature of emotions during learning, including think-aloud and emote-aloud protocols, behavioural and multimodal measures, and more recent applications of epistemic network analysis. Collectively, this work suggests that the goal of instruction should not be to eliminate emotions such as confusion, but to help learners interpret and regulate them productively.