Geoff Johnson, former superintendent of schools, has written an excellent article: Emotion has a big impact on learning.
Several studies have found that positive emotions facilitate learning and contribute to academic achievement. Some highlights from the article:
Researchers quoted in a multi-authored piece entitled ”The Influences of Emotion on Learning and Memory”, published in the online Frontiers of Psychology, suggest that emotion has a substantial influence on cognitive processes in humans, including perception, attention, learning, memory, reasoning and problem-solving.
A paper published by the Baylor University Academy for Teaching and Learning addresses the question ofl the impact of emotion on learning. Reinhard Pekrun, an educational researcher and professor at the University of Essex in England, suggests that the most relevant emotions in the classroom are achievement or academic emotions, including anger, pride, enjoyment, anxiety and hopelessness.
In his book New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education, BD Perry, an American psychiatrist currently asenior fellow of the Child Trauma Academy in Houston, Texas, writes that emotion affects the mind biologically. “A traumatized person in a state of alarm is less capable of concentrating, more anxious, and more attentive to nonverbal cues such as tone of voice, body posture, and facial expressions.”
While we accept that a spectrum of emotional experiences pervade every aspect of our lives, research now identifies emotion as an important and perhaps even critical element in academic settings.
A question asked in the article – But what are these academic researchers talking about when they use the word “emotion”?
There are comments on the role of teachers. As an example, student confidence can be boosted with feedback that is timely and explicit. The atmosphere of the classroom is important. And the relationship between emotion and learning is not confined to school-aged learners.
What are these academic researchers talking about when they use the word “emotion” is addressed in the article – read on…. Emotion has a big impact on learning.