Abstract

Among the wide variety of experiences linked to academic work, there are some intense affective experiences that are more directly related to the conceptual development that the learners will achieve because they are intrinsically linked to the activity displayed during the acquisition of knowledge, such is the case of curiosity, confusion and surprise. These epistemic emotions that occur during learning activities are aimed at the conceptual content of the individual's beliefs. The objective of this work is to theoretically explore the idea that the conceptual development that occurs in educational contexts depends on the development of an affective tendency with an intersubjective base that serves as a background to the advent of epistemic emotions in social learning situations. The confidence with which a learning situation is faced is a general tendency (an epistemic attitude) fruit of the individual's trajectory that functions as a background for the activities in which knowledge is acquired. An adequate understanding of the relationships between epistemic emotions, confidence and knowledge can generate ideas that promote the consolidation of this attitude as a facet of learning in school. As pedagogical implications of this conceptual model, some common epistemic emotional patterns are presented in asymmetrical relationships between teachers and children.