Emotions in learning

Aims of the tool

This tool aims to rise awareness about the role that emotions can play in learning process and how it can be transferred to practice of running trainings.

Description of the tool

As this is tool that deals with emotions (or their expressions, what in psychology is called “affects”), make sure the setting is nice, there is nice music in behind and warm welcome. If possible also arrange nice chairs or blankets/mattresses on the floor, maybe some positive pictures / smiley faces / happy Loesje sentences etc. on one of the walls. This will support the process with positive flows.

First comes the individual reflection. Each participant get piece of paper and pen. The person has to reflect individually and write down (just for him/herself, the language does not matter as nobody will read the papers) 3 strong memories that they remember from their past (5 min.). Next the facilitator adds 3 questions to the reflection: remember your first kissing (pleasure), where have you been and what you did at 11th September 2001 (so the World Trade Centre attack) (fear/interest), first negative note / failure in school (angry/shy). Add few minutes for reflection upon them (5 min.). If anybody wants to share any of the situations there can be space for few (10 min.). Debrief it shortly – why do we remember such things? You might write down key words on flipchart for later reflection.

Next comes sharing part. Split the group into smaller subgroups of 4-5 people each (use something more “emotional” than one-two-three! For example, you can surprise people and before everything starts stick to the bottom of chairs small pictures of animals in number of the group you need. So if you will need 4 groups of 5 people, prepare 5 little pictures of i.e. monkey, dog, snake and donkey. Participants need to find own group just by reproducing the voices of the animals). Present to participants some of the selected following statements from Robert B. Zajonc (Polish born, American social psychologist) essay called “Feeling and thinking; Preferences need no inferences” (you might also remake those statements to make them English-easy):

* Feelings are precedent to intellectual qualities and elements of experience, and they are nearer to its essence: they are nearer to an inner “truth”.
* We have no difficulty in identifying emotions expressed by members of unknown cultures speaking unknown languages.
* We evaluate each other constantly. We evaluate each others’ behaviour, and we evaluate the motives and the consequences of their behaviour (and you already made up your mind about this workshop).
* Feeling is not free of thought, nor is thought free of feelings.
* One might be able to control the expression of emotion, but not the experience of it itself.
* Emotions always accompany thoughts, whereas thoughts not always accompany emotions.
* The direct emotional impact of the situation(…) very generally governs the directions taken by subsequent relations with the environment. I sets the motivational tone and delimits the kinds of experiences one expects and seeks.
* Cognitive consistency focuses not on consistency of content but on consistency of emotions.
* Because emotional judgements are inescapable, they can not be focused as easily as perceptual or cognitive process. They are much more influenced by the context of the surround.
* Emotions strongly participate in information processing.
* Emotions can be communicated much more efficiently and accurately than thought in spite the fact that its vocabulary is quite limited.

Place the statements in different parts of the walls. Ask groups to make a “tour” through the statements and to spend some time on each, having discussion in the subgroup if they agree or disagree with the sentence. The more statements you have introduced, the more time you need for the “tour”, but it should not take more than 45 min.

Finally the debriefing cycle. Ask the groups to come back to plenary. Ask the how do they feel after the “tour”, concentrate on feeling as people tend to start discussing the statements already. Continue the debriefing with some reflection about the statements, do they agree or disagree? Link the activity with the peoples experience: do they see in their training/seminar situations where emotions helped in learning? What situations? Why those emotions where helpful? What is particular that helps to strengthen emotions to make the learning better? (actually you can build a full next step on this element – ask people to come back to the subgroups and thru sharing their work experience about situations where emotions helped in learning ask people to identify the ways, how the trainer / facilitator can enhance such situations, so the learning is even more intensive and multidimensional).

You can finalise the activity giving each participants something nice. For example a sweet, chocolates especially makes people happy :)