Factors affecting the academic emotion of female students of the first secondary school: A qualitative study

Emotions are one of the personality dimensions of students that they experience in the entire learning process and different educational situations. Academic emotions are the ups and downs that students experience in the classroom and relation to academic subjects. These emotions can affect the quality of a person's performance and provide reasons for his success or failure in matters related to education. The purpose of the current research was to identify the factors affecting the academic emotion of female students of first secondary school. The research population included 7th, 8th, and 9th-grade female students in the two cities of Tehran in the academic year of   2021-2022. Sampling was done purposefully and according to the criteria of entering and exiting the research, and 12 students were selected as participants in the research based on reaching the criterion of data saturation with positive and negative educational emotions. The research method was qualitative and grounded theory, by Strauss and Corbin's version, with systematic analysis, and semi-structured interviews were used to collect data. The findings identified three individual, environmental, and educational factors affecting academic emotion. Factors affecting academic emotion are coded into three main categories, each of which has other subcategories. The main categories obtained are 1- individual factors, 2- environmental factors, 3- educational factors and sub-categories, individual factors include fit of value and goal, controllability, and recognition; Environmental factors include internal school factors, external factors, social factors, and educational factors, including the subcategories of the curriculum, teacher, and classmates. Therefore, in general, academic emotion is affected by several factors such as individual, environmental, and educational.