Emotion May Be Key Driver of Learning, Studies Show
Scholar sees passion
as m in d ’s ‘ru d d e r’
By Sarah D. Sparks
D esp ite w hat Star Trek’s Dr.
Spock would have you think, emo­
tions are not the enemy of reason.
Rather, new research su ggests
emotions underpin how students
learn in the classroom.
“People think of em otion g et­
ting in the way of cognition, but
it d oesn ’t. Em otion steers our
thin k in g; it ’s th e rudder th a t
d ir e c ts our m in d and o r g a ­
nizes w hat we need to do,” said
Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, an
associate professor of education,
psychology, and neuroscience at
the U niversity of Southern Cali­
fornia, in an interview with Edu­
cation Week.
In a new book, Emotions, Learn­
ing, and the Brain, Immordino-
Yang and her colleagues at USC’s
Brain Creativity Institute found
that as students learn new rules
during a task, such as the most ef­
ficient way to answer a math prob­
lem or the best deck to choose in
a card game, they show emotional
and physical responses long before
they became consciously aware of
the rules or are able to articulate
them.
Gut C h e c k
This emotional response—think
of a stud en t having a “gut fee l­
ing” that a particular answer was
right—was the first sign of a stu­
dent learning from her experience
w ith the task. In fact, separate
studies found that people w ith a
particular type of brain damage—
to a part of the brain th at con­
nects areas associated with feeling
em otions w ith those associated
with developing cognitive strate­
g ies—do not learn from failure
and continue to choose inappropri­
ate strategies for solving a problem
even if they consciously “know” the
rules.
“W hat happens when thinking
is devoid of emotion is you don’t
remember it or think deeply about
it,” Immordino-Yang said.
In a classroom con tex t, Im ­
mordino-Yang said, that m eans
students who feel no meaningful
emotional connection to the mate­
rial they learn will have a harder
time both remembering and apply­
ing it.
W hile educators have long dis­
cussed the role of music or art in
en gagin g stu d en ts em otionally
w ith learning, Immordino-Yang
and her colleagues have found that
even abstract academic concepts
can inspire an emotional connec­
tion if people understand their con­
text. For example, mathematicians
show the same pleasure response
in the brain when they see an ef­
ficient equation as others have
shown when viewing a beautiful
piece of art.
“The ability to feel passionate
about som ething is a skill. What
loji
P rocesses
re la te d to
th e body
FROM THINKING
TO FEELING AND BACK
Emotions, logical reasoning, and body
sensations are not so much opposites as the
joint infrastructure that supports students’ thoughts,
according to research by the University of Southern
California’s Brain Creativity Institute.
source : Emotions, Learning, and the Brain
we need to teach kids is that feel­
ing passionate about som ething
doesn’t just fall into your lap,” said
Immordino-Yang. Rather, students
can learn how to take interest in
subjects that aren’t immediately
entertaining.
By th e sam e token, separate
studies help endorse Dr. Spock’s
point of view: They suggest that
negative emotions can interfere
with learning in part because they
compete with normal engagement
with new concepts.
F e e d b a c k C ycles
As important as emotion seems
to be for learning, schools may not
do enough to support stu d en ts’
emotional development as a tool
for learning, some experts argue.
Prior stu d ies have shown ch il­
dren become less positive over the
course of elem entary school, and
new German studies suggest aca­
demic engagem ent and achieve­
ment—or the lack of them—could
create feedback loops for young
students.
Stephanie Lichtenfeld, a senior
psychology lecturer at the U ni­
versity of Munich, tracked 520
students in 31 schools from the be­
ginning of 2nd grade through the
end of 4th grade. She recorded the
students’ levels of enjoyment, anxi­
ety, and boredom in math classes,
as well as their end-of-year math-
achievement levels.
“The emotional pattern gets in­
creasingly negative over the school
years,” Lichtenfeld said. “Enjoy­
ment really drops over elementary
% High re a s o n /
and creativity, both in social
Body,
sensations,
actual or simulated,
contribute to feelings
which can in turn
influence
thought.
school years, and negative emo­
tions like test anxiety and bore­
dom increase.”
Why? Lichtenfeld found each of
the emotions created a feedback
loop with academic achievement. A
student who was anxious in math
class in 2nd grade was likelier to
have lower math achievement at the
end of the year; lower math achieve­
ment at the end of 2nd grade made
it likelier that the student would be
even more anxious in 3rd grade, in­
creasing the risk of even lower math
performance, and so on through el­
ementary school. Boredom also pro­
duced a negative cycle, while early
enjoyment in math created a posi­
tive feedback cycle.
“These built on themselves over
tim e,” L ichtenfeld said during
a symposium on emotion at the
American Educational Research
Association meeting in Washing­
ton this month. “That’s really a
pattern where we should think
about interventions to make stu­
dents feel better in school” in the
early grades as a way to improve
performance.
Moreover, in a separate Ger­
man study also presented at the
m eeting, Philipp Forster of the
Ludwig Maximillian University in
Munich, found negative emotions
can spread among classm ates in
school.
F o rster and h is c o lle a g u e s
tracked 411 students in 16 high
school math classes in Bavaria.
Through surveys, the researcher
identified which students were
friends and also profiled each stu­
dent’s levels of school engagement,
ra tio n a l tho ug h t
EMOTIONAL
THOUGHT
The platform for learning,
memory, decision-making,
and non-social contexts.
Rational
evidence informs
emotional decisions;
for example, this is how
people make most
moral choices.
Thoughts can
trigger emotions,
which play out in the
mind and on the
body.
motivation, achievement, and dis­
ruptive behavior.
While students did not initially
select friends with the same per­
sonality profiles, Forster found
th a t s tu d e n ts ’ n e g a tiv e em o­
tions—anger, anxiety, and hope­ &&
lessness—became more similar to
those of their friends over time. By
contrast, students did not seem to
What happens
become more like their friends in
positive emotions like enjoyment
when thinking
or pride.
Immordino-Yang recommended
is devoid of
four strategies for teachers to im­ emotion is you
prove students’ emotional basis for
learning:
• Give students open-ended prob­
don’t remember
lems that force them to dig into the
definition of the task itself.
it or think deeply
• Encourage students to recog­
nize and use their own academic
about it.”
“in tu ition s” w hile learning—for MARY HELEN
example, to notice when they feel
IMMORDINO-YANG
uneasy about an answer and look
University of Southern
back later to see if it was incorrect.
California
• When trying to improve stu ­
dents’ emotions in the classroom,
focus on adding m eaning to con­
ten t the stu d en ts are working
with, rather than positive distrac­
tions, like telling a joke or giving
prizes.
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Coverage o f social and emotional
learning is supported in part by
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at www.novofoundation.org. Education
Week retains sole editorial control over
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