Emotions - A Crucial Part of the Learning Process
We only think about things we care about - Mary Immordino-Yang
Learning environments are emotional places. For example, students can feel pride in their accomplishments, be surprised at discovering a new solution, experience anxiety about tests and performance, or feel bored when attempting to learn required but dull material. While most emotions originate within an academic setting, students also bring emotions to their learning environments from outside, including those resulting from financial, health or family-related issues.
The literature suggests that there are four groups of academic emotions that are particularly relevant to students' learning.
Academic emotions
Achievement emotions relate to a student's success or failure in academic activities. These emotions can include enjoyment of learning, hope and pride in success, and anxiety and shame in failure.
Epistemic emotions are emotions that are triggered by cognitive problems or obstacles. Examples of these emotions include surprise at a new task, curiosity and confusion about an obstacle, and delight when a problem is solved. Epistemic emotions are especially important in learning with new, non-routine tasks.
Content emotions pertain to the specific topics being studied. Examples of these emotions include interest, enjoyment and excitement when engaging with a subject that is personally relevant or engaging. Content emotions such as disgust and boredom can have a negative impact on students’ learning.
Finally, social emotions relate to interactions with teachers and peers in the classroom. These emotions can include compassion, admiration, envy, anger, and social anxiety. Social emotions are particularly important in student/teacher and student/student interactions.
Educators can pulse-take course climate through an open awareness of, and engaging with, academic emotions at an individual and group level. Assessing students' emotions can be challenging for educators, however, because of the potential conflict between the desire to know more about students' emotions and the students' right to privacy. Students may view their emotional experiences as personal and not want to share them, particularly if the emotions are related to self-esteem. Students often control the expression of their emotions by following social norms about when to disclose or not disclose emotions in the classroom. As a result, it may be difficult for educators to assess their students' emotions accurately.
Furthermore, it is important for educators to be realistic and open about their own limits of time, energy, and training. Often, their involvement in their students’ emotional life is limited to introducing them to wider university support services.
An emotionally-literate pedagogy?
Given this complexity and messiness, is there still a place for an emotionally-literate pedagogy in higher education, one which focuses on the role of emotions in learning and teaching? Absolutely. The brain's emotional systems are deeply intertwined with the brain's cognitive systems. Mary Immordino-Yang (2015) offers a useful visual analogy. Prior to the findings of affective social neuroscience research, emotions were viewed like toddlers in a china shop, interfering with the orderly rows of glassware [cognition] on the shelves However, based on evidence from patients with brain damage, as well as from healthy people, the view has dramatically changed, Taken as a whole, research studies show that emotions are not just messy toddlers in a china shop, running around breaking and obscuring delicate cognitive glassware. Instead, emotions are more like the shelves underlying the glassware; without them cognition has less support.
To motivate students, produce deep understanding, and transfer into real-world, emergent contexts we need to find ways to leverage the emotional aspects of learning in education. Importantly,
(c)omplex emotional feelings, such as interest, inspiration, indignation, and compassion, are active mental constructions—they pertain not to the real physical context (the immediate context that we can see) but to abstract inferences, interpretations, and ideas. They pertain, in other words, to what we think we know about the world at the current time, interpreted in light of our past experiences and our imagined possible futures, using our available skills. When I say that many emotions are “complex,” what I really mean is that they rely on subjective, cognitive interpretations of situations and their accompanying embodied reactions.
Not surprisingly, researchers have found that the two most important emotional skills for academic success are understanding emotions and managing emotions. Students who can understand emotions can accurately label their own and others’ emotions. They know what causes emotions, how emotions change and how they combine. Students who can manage emotions know how to regulate their emotions in a stressful situation, including their academic emotions.
A broader conception of relational pedagogy
Relational pedagogy is a learning and teaching approach traditionally focused on building positive and supportive relationships between teachers and students. Emotions play a key role in this approach, as they are seen as a crucial part of establishing and maintaining healthy and effective relationships. The conceptualisation of relational pedagogy can, however, be broadened to a range of other relationships as well.
Kathleen M. Quinlan (2016) identifies four relationships that can have an impact on student learning.
Relationship with Subject
It has long been acknowledged that helping students see the relevance of a subject helps them learn. When students see the value of a subject or relate it to their own experiences or goals, this connection increases motivation, curiosity and enthusiasm.
There are several ways to improve students' relationships with the subject matter, including:
Making subject matter relevant to students’ lives by inviting connections between the material and students' personal and professional goals. This can be done through authentic assessment, offering real world examples, using the language of the profession and treating students as members of a professional community.
Helping students to connect previous experiences with subject content
Providing effective scaffolding for classroom activities
Sharing enthusiasm for the subject
Getting students to talk about the "big" ideas in the field
Providing students with a sense of agency and control over their learning
Relationships Between Students and Educators
The relationship between teachers and students is another important aspect of higher education in which emotions play a key role. Learning and teaching is a human interaction, and the way educators communicate with their students can have a significant impact on their emotional well-being. When students feel heard and supported, they are more likely to have a positive learning experience. Teaching awards nominations at my institution often include references to emotions, emotional states, and emotionally satisfying experiences, indicating the importance of emotions in the teacher-student relationship.
To enhance relationships with students, educators should consider:
Facilitating and encouraging contributions from all students, and demonstrating that their contributions are valued
Using students' names and seeking feedback
Being clear and consistent in communication and expectations
Holding high expectations and conveying that you believe students can meet them
Being positive, patient and displaying enthusiasm
Making yourself accessible to students by ensuring they know how and when to connect with you
Sharing your own professional and educational journey
Relationships Between Students and Students
Peer relationships play a significant role in a student's higher education experience, as they can influence key educational outcomes, such as changes in values and attitudes. Making friends and feeling like they belong in a new community is often a top concern for students transitioning to higher education. Providing opportunities for students to form meaningful friendships and build a sense of belonging is crucial for their health and well-being. This is especially important for first-year students who may need to establish a new social network.
Educators can create opportunities for positive peer relationships to form in their classroom through a variety of strategies. These can include:
Using students' names in class and encouraging students to use each other's names
Utilising small groups that allows for connection, chat, and breaks, including the design of activities that would include more introverted and second-language students (eg think, pair, share)
Supporting students in formal team assessment tasks by developing their teamwork skills
Relationship with Self
Higher education students confront new ideas and ways of thinking as they interact with people from other backgrounds and/or study unfamiliar ideas. Developmental changes during young adulthood often involve a shift towards self-authorship and the development of a personal identity. Mature-age students may also be going through a similar process of transformative learning, where their existing beliefs and views are challenged and their identity is reconstructed.
To encourage growth through education, educators can consider:
Providing opportunities for students to stretch themselves
Providing early, low stakes formative feedback
Offering a range of opportunities for learning including industry partnered learning
Inviting students’ reflection on their learning experiences
Giving students warm, wise and supportive feedback – find what they have done well (warm), identify one key action they could take improve (wise), and where they could find co-curricular support if needed (support)
Emotions involve automatic mental and bodily reactions to situations, and some people, cultural groups, and age groups are more reactive, or differently reactive, than others. Emotions, like cognition, develop with maturity and experience. For example, we know the limbic system, which is responsible for emotion, reward, and threat detection, undergoes rapid growth during adolescence, while the areas of the brain responsible for reasoning and judgment continue to develop more slowly. This can lead to an imbalance in the brain's development, resulting in a heightened sensitivity to social rewards and peer expectations. Adolescents have a strong desire for social connection and to contribute to society, and research suggests that by providing them with appropriate scaffolded opportunities such learning can help to support their development and reduce anxiety and depression.
So while universities have often focussed on ‘cold cognition’, the physical and virtual classroom and world of practice are fundamentally places of ‘warm cognition’. It is impossible for humans to build memories, engage in complex thoughts, or make meaningful decisions without the involvement of emotions. An emotionally-literate pedagogy can help educators create more effective learning experiences for their students.