Cognition and Affect

I wanted to pick up on the conversation that started at last week's seminar about the role of emotions in learning.  i think its no accident that we wound up at this place, given the focus of the two speakers on issues of community building in educational contexts.

To begin, I wanted to clarify some of the terminology we were using because, for some, it is new territory. The term "affective" is used (particularly in the fields of psychology, education) as an adjective that means: "pertaining to or exciting emotion." "Affect" refers to feeling or emotion.

To give you an idea of the degree to which interest in the role of the affective in learning is being investigated at the institutional level, I point your attention to JCAL, The Journal of Cognitive Affective Learning, a peer reviewed journal published out of Oxford College at Emory University.

I also wanted to direct your attention to this article, "Affective Learning--a manifesto," (linked here) from the October 04 issue of BT Technology Journal, a special issue published in collaboration with the MIT Media Lab. In some ways it is a bizarre piece of literature in that it has, as one of its goals, the development of a theory of affective learning that would enable/support the design of "intelligent" "teaching" computers that could respond to learner's affective responses and needs as well as their cognitive responses and needs.

At this time, I don't want to even begin to say what I think about that project, (I'm some combination of appalled, bemused, and intrigued) BUT, that said, I like this article very much in the ways that it clearly lays out the established importance of affect in learning as well as some of the challenges, terminologies, and theories. I also like it because it is written by and for scientists and I feel therefore that it may help to bridge the humanities/sciences dualism that sometimes colors our conversations about the role of emotion/affect in learning--where the affective is characterized by some as that "touchy feely" stuff that's fine in English classes but has no place in the  rigorous realm of the sciences.

I would like to invite all of you to read this article with me and to continue, here on the blog, the conversation we started in the seminar last Friday.

Another issue of interest that was raised, (by Peter) but not yet fully explored was the degree to which we are prone to speak and think of emotion and learning (cognition and affect) as separate things--and even as at odds with each other, rather than interdependent. This issue is addressed some in the article and would bear further exploration here as well.

--Belle

Comments

[Susan Lambert]

Along these lines, I think the work of linguist Stephen Krashen may be of interest. He is responsible for popularizing the "affective filter hypothesis" which has had huge influence on foreign language acquisition pedagogy (even though, to my knowledge it has not been proven and has also been hotly debated. The affective filter is thought of as a barrier to learning that is brought on by negative emotions such as low self-esteem, stress, etc. One of its problems for me is its seeming disavowal of the inter-relatedness between reason/emotion - or perhaps what I mean is that the binary itself is troublesome.
For me personally, the line between reason & feeling has always been blurry, if it existed at all. I remember using the words thinking-feeling together (though I didn't utter the phrase out loud)from an early age. Feelings seemed like thoughts and vice versa...perhaps I'd be a good test subject. This perception informs my teaching practice and I ought to reflect on that.
What I'm grateful about is that the work of Krashen and others helped facilitate a more holistic approach to education that considers the well-being of the learner.

[Susan Lambert]

I wanted to add that I think "negative" emotions can be very important to the learning process - more later on this....

Susan

[Peter Gray]

I'm rereading the article by the MIT group right now and want to jot some notes that echo some of what Susan mentions above:

I'm struck by a quote on p254 at the top by Marvin Minsky: "when we change what we call our 'emotional states' we're switching between different ways to think." I don't know what to think of this, but I think I like it. LOL. It does move toward a more "holistic" sense of learning, but I'm not sure right now what to do with that....Anecdotally, I recognize how my own shifting emotional states "make" me more or less ready to learn certain things over others...

Ok, so this article is aimed toward making machines that can respond to human emotional states in the context of learning. Yikes. But cool. But yikes. Bottom of page 255: "With skills of affect perception a computer that detects the learner making a mistake while appearing curious and engaged could leave the learner alone since making mistakes can be important for facilitating learning and exploration..." If learner is displaying other outward signs of a more negative emotional state, the computer my intervene to encourage "a different strategy".

I can't help but think of how as teachers we do or don't respond to emotional cues from our students...I'm thinking now I need to really reexamine my own responses to students' bodies that are in front of me (am I doing a knee-jerk response when I see many of them slumped in their desks, "reading" that posture as one thing only (say, lack of interest or motivation rather than, say, the desks SUCK and are uncomfortable?)

[Arancha]

Hello,

I think Susan is suggesting, and I agree with her, that since the rational and the affective are indivisible, we are all the time emiting both and responding to both. In this sense, there is no introducing the affective element in the classroom, but only becoming more aware of it and acting on it to get different "affective effects".

Both bell hooks and Ron Scapp have made me pay more attention to the affective-thinking dynamics (to borrow Susan's terminology) going on in the classroom. There is a matter of bodies (corporality) which includes smell, movement, style, tone of voice, etc. These are all factors speaking to the intellect and to the heart at the same time once we enter a classroom. There is also the degree to which we as teachers expose ourselves and our personal lives. When I do it, I notice that students perk up immediately. They want to know all about me: from whether I watch TV to whether I am married, and if I say "no", they will ask why.
I like these moments of opening up, but I don't always feel a hundred percent comfortable, and sometimes I blush, which they notice and, ocassionally, remark upon. This makes me blush even more. Yet, I haven't stopped exposing my personal life to a certain extent, always in relation to some class matter, and I have noticed that it has an impact on students' general disposition towards the class.
I have often talked about my past (in ways where I express affect) to my students with the intention to do something that Pedro Noguera mentioned in his talk: to demistify the path to "achievement" or "sucess". I now feel that doing so is a question of principle: it is important that my students know that there is no magic.
Affect has come from my students often in class and outside of class. Some students hug me and kiss me when the semester ends, or when they see me on campus after they have taken my class. Some don't.
Sometimes they have expressed painful feelings to me, either in my office or in their journals, or when participating in a Blackboard Forum, as was the case of a student from El Salvador who had lost 3 uncles during the dirty war. Only one student responded to his forum entry. Students, like ourselves, don't know sometime how to respond to affect in the classroom or in classroom related situations.
In general, the classes that I have taught and found more effective, where those where a strong affectionate bond grew between the students and myself, and this not always happens. I remember one such class in which a student told me, at the end, that she hoped I would always keep "that intimate atmosphere" in all my classes. I think she was referring to an environment in which the group really cared for each other. It was a very small class. The learning, according to the students, was very sucessful. Of course, it has been difficult to replicate just such atmosphere.

[Megan Elias]

This reminds me of a conversation that I heard of several years ago and kept thinking about. It was a comment made by a student to his professor--not me. She was a vibrant woman in her 60s who taught literature and late in her career had decided to open up to her students. One student said "You're the most naked professor I've ever had," which he meant and she took as a compliment. SO far from that myself, but I like to keep my eye on it as a possible direction to head in.

[Pete Gray]

I was going to go a totally different direction and try to bring the article that Belle linked us to back into the conversation, but I find myself identifying the strange bwapbwap feeling in my stomach (how's that for naming an affective state?) as I try to take up what you all have been writing: about being "naked", about naming the affective, about "opening" up, or about students opening up about their emotional lives/lived experience.

Clearly, allowing for (or recognizing) these levels of interaction can aid learning, right? They make us feel variously safe, embraced, attended to, more or differently committed to the work at hand.

....

So my uggy feeling comes from, I've finally identified, the kinds of reactions that I've seen in the WAC work I do with faculty colleagues and an almost across the board rejection of writing, including journals (maybe particularly journals), because often students will write about themselves, reveal themselves, etc. There is, maybe, a lack of comfort (I'm speaking generally here, and maybe therefore, rather aimlessly) for many of us when students approach territory that is visibly distinct from the disciplinary work we engage in in the classroom. But, as Arancha says above, the affective may appear to be separated, but really it's being sublimated or set to the side, backgrounded...

Pete