Control and value appraisals, emotions, and online multiple-document comprehension in primary school

Nowadays, great attention has been devoted to the role played by emotions within school contexts, given its relevance for students’ wellbeing and performance (Pekrun & Perry, 2014). Notwithstanding the large amount of studies on achievement emotions’ antecedents and outcomes, only recently has attention been paid to primary school students, focusing on domains such as mathematics or native language (Lichtenfeld, Pekrun, Stupnisky, Reiss, & Murayama, 2012; Raccanello, Brondino, Moè, & Lichtenfeld, 2017). However, attention on specific abilities such as online multiple-document comprehension has been limited (e.g., Mason, Scrimin, Tornatora, & Zaccoletti, 2017). Therefore, our main aim was to investigate the relations between reading-related control and value appraisals, reading-related achievement emotions, and online multiple-document comprehension in primary school students. The sample included 335 fourth and fifth-graders who filled in self-report questionnaires on self-efficacy and task-value, and achievement emotions, and underwent some tests on online multiple-document comprehension and other reading-related skills. Preliminary confirmatory factor analyses supported the goodness of the factorial structure of the measures. A series of path analyses indicated the predictive role of self-efficacy and task-value on achievement emotions. Moreover, they showed the predictive role of some achievement emotions, namely homework-related enjoyment and test-related boredom, on online multiple-document comprehension. From a theoretical perspective, our findings enabled to extend the generalizability of the control-value theory to primary school students’ specific abilities to comprehend online multiple-documents. From an applied perspective, this knowledge could be useful in planning intervention programs to promote critical literacy skills in the 21st century, focusing on their antecedents.