In
education
Education is a purposeful activity directed at achieving certain aims, such as transmitting knowledge or fostering skills and character traits. These aims may include the development of understanding, rationality, kindness, and honesty. Va ...
, affect is broadly defined as the attitudes,
emotion
Emotions are mental states brought on by neurophysiological changes, variously associated with thoughts, feelings, behavioral responses, and a degree of pleasure or displeasure. There is currently no scientific consensus on a definition. ...
s, and values present in an educational environment. The two main types of affect are professional affect and student affect. Professional affect refers to the emotions and values presented by the
teacher
A teacher, also called a schoolteacher or formally an educator, is a person who helps students to acquire knowledge, competence, or virtue, via the practice of teaching.
''Informally'' the role of teacher may be taken on by anyone (e.g. whe ...
which are picked up by the
student
A student is a person enrolled in a school or other educational institution.
In the United Kingdom and most commonwealth countries, a "student" attends a secondary school or higher (e.g., college or university); those in primary or elementar ...
, while student affect refers to the attitudes, interests, and values acquired in the educational environment. While there is the possibility of overlap between student and professional affect, the terms are rarely used interchangeably by educational professionals, with student affect being reserved primarily for use to describe developmental activities present in a school which are not presented by the teacher.
The importance of affect in education has become a topic of increasing interest in the fields of
psychology
Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries betwe ...
and education. It is a commonly held opinion that curriculum and
emotional literacy The term ''emotional literacy'' has often been used in parallel to, and sometimes interchangeably with, the term ''emotional intelligence''. However, there are important differences between the two. Emotional literacy was noted as part of a project ...
should be interwoven. Examples of such curriculum include using English language to increase emotional vocabulary (see
affect labeling
Affect labeling is an implicit emotional regulation strategy that can be simply described as "putting feelings into words". Specifically, it refers to the idea that explicitly labeling one's, typically negative, emotional state results in a reduct ...
), and writing about the self and history to discuss emotion in major events such as
genocide
Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people—usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group—in whole or in part. Raphael Lemkin coined the term in 1944, combining the Greek word (, "race, people") with the Latin ...
.
This type of curriculum is also known as therapeutic education. According to Ecclestone and Hayes, therapeutic education focuses on the emotional over the intellectual.
Educator attitudes
In order for such curriculum to be implemented, it is essential that educators be aware of the importance emotional literacy. Examination of educator and student attitudes towards emotional literacy is a common topic of research. Researchers have found that staff have conceptions of what constitutes emotional literacy, including being
self-aware
In philosophy of self, self-awareness is the experience of one's own personality or individuality. It is not to be confused with consciousness in the sense of qualia. While consciousness is being aware of one's environment and body and lifesty ...
of one's own feelings, using emotional language, and being cognizant that children have feelings that need to be taken into account. In addition, staff discussed the necessity of having all educators dedicated to creating an emotionally literate school, and the detrimental effects of even one educator not supporting this initiative.
School attitudes
Roffey
Horsham is a market town on the upper reaches of the River Arun on the fringe of the Weald in West Sussex, England. The town is south south-west of London, north-west of Brighton and north-east of the county town of Chichester. Nearby to ...
(2008) examined the influence of emotional literacy on the school as a whole using
ecological analysis. It was found that positive change was gradual, and involved multiple elements. For instance, teachers who felt as though they were genuinely valued and were consulted about policy felt
happier
Happier may refer to:
*Happiness, an emotional state
Music
* "Happier" (Ed Sheeran song), 2018
* "Happier" (Marshmello and Bastille song), 2018
* "Happier" (Olivia Rodrigo song), 2021
*''Happier'', an album by Kid606, 2014
*"Happier", a song by G ...
at work. In turn, these teachers felt better prepared to handle conflicts that arose inside the classroom, and when students experienced this positive approach they were more cooperative (see
cooperative learning
Cooperative learning is an educational approach which aims to organize classroom activities into academic and social learning experiences. There is much more to cooperative learning than merely arranging students into groups, and it has been desc ...
). This shows how incorporating emotional literacy into a child's education is a school-wide collaborative effort.
Funding
Examples of government funding of emotional literacy include
Every Child Matters
Every Child Matters (ECM) is a UK government initiative for England and Wales, that was launched in 2003, at least partly in response to the death of Victoria Climbié. It is one of the most important policy initiatives which has been introduce ...
.
Criticisms
Criticisms of emotional literacy in curriculum revolves around the idea that it although well intended, it is designed to disempower students.
See also
*
Affect (psychology)
Affect, in psychology, refers to the underlying experience of feeling, emotion or mood.
History
The modern conception of affect developed in the 19th century with Wilhelm Wundt. The word comes from the German ''Gefühl'', meaning "feeling."
...
References
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Emotion
Educational psychology