The Critical Role of Group Affect in Engineering Design Tasks in High School Biology (Fundamental)

This paper examines how student perception of group affect relates to learning during three small group activities in engineering design in high school biology. Taking into account the “triple problem solving space” in which content, social/relational, and affective components of collaborative work are developed and maintained, we use a mixed methods approach to evaluate connections between various forms of affect and learning during the tasks. Preliminary quantitative findings suggest that minimal levels of psychological safety are correlated with stronger learning outcomes, and qualitative analysis of video data show that groups experience a wide range of emotions during engineering design tasks, not all of which are likely to support learning.