Quality of dialogue and emotion regulation in contentious discussions in higher education

This study set out to enhance our understanding of emotions and their regulation in educational dialogues. One hundred and ten undergraduate students participated in small-group computer-mediated contentious discussions and reported on emotional experiences during discussions in a reflection task. Sixteen discussions were analyzed using the Scheme for Educational Dialogue Analysis (Hennessy et al., 2016) to investigate the impact of emotional intensity on the quality of dialogue. Ninety-four reflections were analyzed qualitatively to investigate the reasons discussions were reported as emotionally significant, and the extent to which these emotions were shared by other group members. We found that strong emotions did not impair the quality of dialogue. The discussion topic and the participation at the individual and group levels were the key factors for identifying discussions as emotionally significant. Moreover, moments reported as emotionally significant were often shared, yet shared intensity was not always accompanied by shared emotional valence. We interpret this discrepancy considering participants' emotion regulation processes and the quality of the discussion. We conclude by stressing the importance of emotionally-loaded moments in contentious discussions as a context for practicing emotion regulation and the role of the moderator in cases where participation and emotional regulation are sub-optimal.