Emotion Expressions as Negotiations of Critical Technology Tool Use in Small Group Collaborative Design

In a technology-rich learning environment where children collaboratively designed games from scratch, the learning processes are mediated by the technology tools and the socioemotional interactions. This study focuses on the group conflict around sharing the critical tool of iPad and examines the roles that emotional expressions play in mediating the interactions during the conflicts. Findings revealed that both negatively and positively activated and expressed emotions could hinder individual members from equally participating in the group design process, which indicated that to develop children's socioemotional competence, facilitators need to observe beyond the displayed behavior such as dominance and disengagement and understand the emotional experience of learners to better support students' reflection on emotional experiences.