Emotions are fundamental in the learning process and can be leveraged to promote engagement, motivation, and bring about student success. A plethora of research has shown that emotion influences how individuals perceive and process information. Specifically, positive emotions encourage global processing styles (i.e., focusing on the “big picture”), which should promote knowledge transfer by enabling learners to make associative and relational connections between relevant learning events.
Positive Emotions
While it might seem like an odd thing to do, a good teacher is often able to harness the power of positive emotions to enhance students’ coping and academic skills. Positive emotions such as enjoyment, joy, hope, excitement, pride, and more can help students focus in class and cope with life’s ups and downs.
Interestingly, two distinct types of positive emotions—mild joy and contentment—share the ability to undo the aftereffects of negative events on the cardiovascular system (Fredrickson & Branigan, 2000). The broadening theory of positive emotion suggests that these positive emotions expand the scope of thought and action repertoires so that students are prompted to seek out new experiences that build resources such as knowledge, friendships, self-awareness, and more (Fredrickson, 2001).
As teachers, we can embed strategies in our classrooms that encourage students to develop the skills of positive emotions so they can become productive members of society. This can help students cope with the ups and downs of their lives and become more responsible for their own learning and well-being.
Negative Emotions
Emotions are a major influence on learning, both positive and negative. Negative emotions can negatively affect the learning process and lead to poor academic outcomes.
There is a wide range of negative emotions that can be displayed in a classroom, including anger, fear, anxiety, sadness, disinterest, and disengagement. These feelings can interfere with the learner’s ability to focus on learning and also affect their motivation, which can impede their performance.
In addition to emotional responses and actions, individuals express their emotions through facial expressions, body language, speech, and posture. The way in which an individual shows their emotions can differ significantly from one person to another.
There are a number of person-centered studies that have identified emotion profiles (or clusters) in students, which can be related to relevant academic outcomes. The findings have been repeated in various settings, ranging from laboratory studies to research in schools and universities.
Self-Confidence
Self-confidence is an emotion that enables someone to believe in themselves and their abilities. Having high self-confidence helps people set realistic goals and expectations, communicate assertively, and handle criticism.
It can also help someone feel more resilient to adversity and stress in life. Confident people also take risks and are open to trying new things.
A confident person is more likely to accept criticism politely and constructively. They are also more likely to seek out additional information when they need it.
In teaching and learning, emotions have important effects on learners’ motivation, performance, and cognitive processes. They influence whether they seek out and use other sources of information and their perceptions of their education (Frijda, 2013).
Attributing Value
Emotions have a role to play in learning and teaching, as well as in the cognitive processes that underpin them. They are a key factor in attention, memory, decision-making, critical thinking, and problem-solving.
Positive emotions such as joy, pride, and excitement increase interest and intrinsic motivation in a task, whereas negative emotions such as anger, anxiety, and embarrassment decrease interest and extrinsic motivation. In a classroom, educators can help learners deal with their emotional state by using the right tone, non-verbal cues, and language to promote understanding.
Attribute value mapping (AVM) is another tool educators can use to encourage students to be more value-conscious about their learning experience. This is a useful strategy to foster a student-centered approach to learning and can be applied to various types of tasks, such as discussion-based activities, short quizzes, or practical applications of ideas.
