Abstract

Academic engagement means the interaction of a person with the academic environment and the active, enthusiastic and knowledge-based participation of the learner in learning activities. According to the opinion of the experts in this field, academic engagement is a multidimensional structure and consists of four cognitive, emotional, behavioral and agency components. This variable is one of the important constructs related to the academic progress of students, and therefore, investigating the factors affecting the quality of academic engagement has always been one of the favorite research fields of researchers. Academic emotions refer to a broad category of positive and negative emotions that students experience specifically in the fields of learning, classroom, and exams, which are directly related to the activities or outcomes of academic progress. Henceinvestigating these emotions has become one of the important concerns of educational research nowadays. The "control-value" theory of academic emotions as the theoretical basis of these emotions states that the occurrence of these emotions in educational situations are mediated by two categories of "personal" and "social" antecedents.

In this regard, the activities of the teacher and his teaching methods are one of the social antecedents ? effective in the emotional state and academic engagement of the learners, and the use of active and innovative teaching strategies in the classroom can be one of the important factors affecting the emotional output and academic engagement of students. The previous research has also shown that the teacher's teaching style has a significant effect on the level of students’ involvement in academic activities in terms of supporting students' sense of independence, competence, and communication, and therefore, it can be considered as one of the important external factors affecting the prediction of students' perceived academic emotions.

One of the active approaches of science teaching is the STSE integrated approach, which is based on the experts in this field. Its goal is to teach scientific concepts by focusing on issues in the real world with social, environmental or technological aspects. In other words, learning knowledge and matching it with the surrounding environment, through emphasizing on the three fields of society, technology and environment, is the main feature of this approach. The research results confirm the positive effects of science teaching through this approach on various educational variables, and based on this, these studies recommend the implementation of science teaching courses through this approach in order to encourage teachers toapply this approach in their classrooms and facilitate effective science teaching. However, studies on the effectiveness of this approach in science classes on academic variables have rarely been conducted. No study has ever been carried out this field in Iran. In addition, the current research is innovative in terms of examining the academic emotions of elementary school students. Based on this, the present study aims to examine the following two research hypotheses:

1. Teaching science with the STSE approach has a significant effect on improving the academic engagement of students in the classroom.

2. Teaching science with the STSE approach has a significant effect on improving students' academic emotions in the classroom.

The research method is a semi-experimental pre-test-post-test design with a control group. The statistical population included sixth grade male students of public schools in Sanandaj in academic year 2022-2023. A multi-stage cluster random method was used to select the sample, and finally, one class with 32 students as the experimental group and another class with 34 students as the control group were selected using the random replacement method. The research tools included Rio and Tseng's academic engagement scale (2011) and academic emotions scale (AEQ-ES), which students answered as a pre-test. Then, by teaching and practicing the design of the learning and teaching unit with the STSE approach in 12 sessions to the teacher of the experimental group, teaching based on this approach was implemented in the experimental class for 5 months, and during this time, the control group did not receive relevant training. At the end, the research tools were implemented as a post-test for the students and the data were statistically analyzed by multivariate covariance analysis with the help of SPSS22 software.

The results of this research showed that science teaching with the help of STSE approach is effective in increasing students' academic engagement in the dimensions of agent engagement, behavioral engagement and cognitive engagement. Specifically, 63% of post-test changes in agency involvement, 59% of behavioral involvement changes, and 67% of cognitive involvement changes were due to the effect of STSE approach training. Another finding of the research indicates the effect of education with the STSE approach on strengthening the positive emotions of pleasure and reducing the negative emotions of anxiety and fatigue. Specifically, 61% of post-test changes in class enjoyment, 44% of class anxiety changes, and 58% of class fatigue changes were caused by the effect of teaching with the STSE approach.

To explain the findings, it can be said that the STSE approach, as one of these integrated and innovative student-centered approaches, can make students build concepts in their cognitive structures based on what they have already learned and what they have experienced by engaging in activities related to society, technology and their living environment. The STSE model can open the individual insights of learners about the nature of science and education based on society and environment issues by examining the role of technology in general, and while increasing the level of motivation of learners, it can increase participation and involvement of students and encourage their conscious choice in related activities. As the experimental findings have also shown, the use of student-centered teaching approaches with high levels of structuring of activities result in an increase in the cognitive perception of control as well as the internal value of the activity in the students, and in accordance with the control-value theory, it is positively related to the improvement of their emotional perception.

Based on the findings, it is suggested that in addition to the need to update the knowledge and skills of elementary teachers from new teaching approaches in science classrooms, effective awareness should be given to the teachers with effective methods about students' academic emotions in the classroom and the importance of this emotions in the academic status of learners, including their involvement in academic activities. further studies are suggested to be conducted in order to investigate the state of Iranian teachers' emotions and their relationships with students' academic emotions.