Home Publications Research Data Research Grants Equipment Inventions & Patents Awards Additional Research Activities Faculties & Institutions Research Areas

Primary school students' achievement emotions in writing acquisition: Development of the AEQ-WEES and links to students' writing competencies and social integration over time

Schlesier J, Meyer S, Lichtenfeld S, Jungmann T, Pekrun R (2026)

---

Publication Type: Journal article

Publication year: 2026

Journal

Original Authors: Juliane Schlesier, Simon Meyer, Stephanie Lichtenfeld, Tanja Jungmann, Reinhard Pekrun

Article Number: bjep.70118

DOI: 10.1111/bjep.70118

Abstract

Background

Acquiring writing skills poses not only cognitive but also emotional challenges for many primary school students. Although achievement emotions have received increasing research attention in recent years, little is known about how these emotions unfold during the process of writing acquisition and how they relate to both academic and social outcomes in early schooling.

Aims

To address this gap, the present study introduces the newly developed Achievement Emotions Questionnaire—Writing in Early Elementary School (AEQ-WEES), which is designed to assess students' emotions in early writing acquisition and validates the instrument. Utilizing a longitudinal design with two assessment points over the course of one school term, we further examined the extent to which students' emotions are associated with their achievement (alphabetic, grapheme-related and orthographic writing competencies) as well as with their social integration at school, controlling for gender, socioeconomic status and grade level.

Sample

The sample comprised 535 primary school children (Mage = 7.18 years, SD = 2.50; 48.6% boys).

Methods

Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were conducted for scale validation and latent structural equation models (LSEMs) were calculated to investigate associations over time.

Results

The AEQ-WEES exhibits excellent psychometric properties. The LSEMs further show that both anger and anxiety are negatively related to almost all of students' writing competencies over time when adjusting standard errors for schools, whereas only anxiety in writing acquisition is negatively related to social integration. Additionally, SES emerged as a significant factor associated with students' writing skills. Several relationships were significant when standard errors were corrected for school-level clustering; however, these relationships were no longer significant when standard errors were adjusted for class-level clustering.

Conclusion

The findings highlight the close links between students' emotions, social integration and writing competencies.

Authors with CRIS profile

Related research project(s)

Involved external institutions

How to cite

APA:

Schlesier, J., Meyer, S., Lichtenfeld, S., Jungmann, T., & Pekrun, R. (2026). Primary school students' achievement emotions in writing acquisition: Development of the AEQ-WEES and links to students' writing competencies and social integration over time. British Journal of Educational Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjep.70118

MLA:

Schlesier, Juliane, et al. "Primary school students' achievement emotions in writing acquisition: Development of the AEQ-WEES and links to students' writing competencies and social integration over time." British Journal of Educational Psychology (2026).

BibTeX: Download