The Struggle is Real: An Intervention to Regulate and Resolve Confusion During Complex Statistics Problem Solving

The purpose of this study was to develop a cognitive-emotive strategy training intervention (CEST) to help university students regulate and resolve confusion during complex statistics problem solving. One hundred sixty-eight university students from Canada, the United States, and England participated. Measures of academic control, epistemic emotions, and confusion regulation strategies were collected. Audio-recordings of the sessions were transcribed and coded to investigate learning and confusion regulation strategies used. Results revealed that the intervention was not effective in helping students better regulate their confusion during problem solving. Students in the intervention group did not increase their perception of control after problem solving, did not increase their learning or confusion regulation strategy use, and did not experience more positive and less negative emotions. Although the intervention had no positive effect, this was the first study to consider emotion regulation skills that are particular to the self-regulated learning processes students must engage to regulate and resolve confusion. To develop more effective interventions, future research should provide more opportunities for students to practice confusion regulation skills over longer periods of time, and ideally to conduct research in natural learning environments.