Week 6 Objectives - The Introduction

First draft introduction


 Everyday you might work hard preparing the lesson to give a right information to students, to draw attention of them, to make a theme fun and to make your explanation excellent. All things you care about is important for effective learning in class. However you missed one of the most important factor for your class. When planning teaching for learning, our task as teachers, is to focus on the mood of learners. How do you feel today? The answer will differ; sad, happy, delightful, excited, or etc. The day depends on your mood. For example, if you fought with your spouse at this morning and you became too angry to assume that you are normal, you could not do your tasks and treat others well.  Not only your feeling has an effect on the day, but students' mood has a great effects on the class. Then, are you noticing your students' feelings? You could catch the mood of the class like depressed, cool, noisy, or calm. The effect of learning depends on the mood of students. It will be better to know the students feeling because it affects your lesson. Emotion is important in education because it drives attention, which in turn drives learning and memory. There have been a lot of researches on the mood and learning and most teachers can capture the mood of students well. Then, how can we, teachers, can use them appropriately in the class? The topic of this essay is that 'How students' various emotions affect the lesson and how teachers lead the best feeling for effective learning?' . And the reason why I decided the topic like this is that although there are lots of studies about feeling and learning as I mentioned before, there is not enough information or instructions about how to use them properly in class. 

Research 2

Source
http://www.education.com/reference/article/student-emotions/

My topic
How do the students' emotion affect the lesson and how can we use them properly in class? 

What I hope to learn from this source:
Are student emotions important for academic learning and performance? Do student emotions affect the class?



Notes

IMPORTANCE OF STUDENT EMOTIONS FOR ACADEMIC LEARNING AND PERFORMANCE

Two lines of evidence suggest that students' emotions profoundly affect their learning and performance. The first line of evidence originates in experimental mood research, the second in situated field studies directly analyzing students' emotions. Experimental mood research has shown that mood and emotions facilitate mood-congruent memory processes, such that positive self-related information is more easily stored and retrieved when in a positive mood and negative information when in a negative mood (e.g., Olafson & Ferraro, 2001). By implication, a positive mood can enhance students' motivation to approach learning tasks, whereas a negative mood can trigger mood-congruent avoidance motivation. Furthermore, the findings indicate that positive versus negative mood can promote different styles of information processing. Whereas creative, flexible, and holistic ways of thinking are facilitated by a positive mood, more analytical, rigid, and detailed ways of processing of information can be enhanced by a negative mood (Lewis & Haviland-Jones, 2000).

The ecological validity of these experimental findings, however, may be limited due to differences between the laboratory and real-life classroom situations, including ethical constraints preventing an induction of more intense emotions in the laboratory. Therefore, field studies have directly addressed the effects of students' emotions as experienced in classroom situations. Most of these studies focused on students' test anxiety (summaries in Zeidner, 1998, 2007). Research on test anxiety has shown that anxiety impairs performance on complex or difficult tasks that demand cognitive resources (e.g., difficult mathematical tasks). Performance on easy and less complex tasks is not impaired or enhanced. Interference and attentional deficit models have been proposed to explain negative performance effects of anxiety. These models assume that anxiety involves task-irrelevant thinking which reduces task-related attention thus interfers with performance on tasks requiring attentional resources: Students who worry about possible failure cannot focus their attention on learning.

In line with findings on task-related effects, test anxiety correlates negatively with students' academic achievement, typically explaining about 10% of the variance in achievement scores (Hembree, 1988). However, these correlations should be interpreted cautiously. First, they may be due to effects of failure on the development of students' anxiety, rather than effects of anxiety on achievement. Second, correlations were not uniformly negative across studies and individuals. Zero and positive relationships were found as well. One reason may be the ambiguous motivational effects which anxiety can exert: Anxiety reduces students' interest and intrinsic motivation, but it can also motivate students to invest extra effort to avoid failure. In individual cases, these motivating effects can be so strong that negative effects on attention and intrinsic motivation are compensated. From an educator's perspective, however, any positive effect of anxiety in an individual student is certainly outweighed by the negative effect on subject-matter interest and academic performance in the majority of students.

The available evidence for effects of student emotions other than anxiety is limited. For positive emotions such as enjoyment of learning, positive correlations with academic achievement have been reported (Pekrun et al., 2002). For anger and shame, findings suggest that overall relationships with students' achievement are negative. As with anxiety, however, the effects need not uniformly be negative. For example, in students who believe in their capabilities, shame about failure on an exam can fuel motivation to invest more effort in the future (Turner & Schallert, 2001). In contrast, findings on boredom and hopelessness suggest that these two emotions are just detrimental by exerting negative effects on cognitive resources, motivation, information processing, and any kind of academic performance (Pekrun et al., 2002).

In sum, the available evidence implies that it would be inappropriate to assume that positive emotions always exert positive effects and negative emotions always negative effects. Rather, the effects depend on the mediating processes and specific task demands under consideration. More specifically, positive activating emotions such as enjoyment of learning likely are beneficial for students' learning and performance under most task conditions. Conversely, negative deactivating emotions such as hopelessness and boredom can be assumed to be devastative to any kind of academic performance. The effects of positive deactivating emotions such as relief and relaxation, however, probably are more ambiguous. Similarly, negative activating emotions such as anxiety, shame, and anger can exert ambiguous effects by reducing attention and interest, but also by being able to strengthen extrinsic motivation as well as more rigid modes of information processing such as simple rehearsal of learning material. Therefore, negative activating emotions can enhance performance in specific cases, although their average affects across students are negative.

Final Thoughts
The part which is affected by emotion is different according  to the emotion type. So, I can guess that it is important not to overlook the influence of negative emotion because it also play a role in learning.

Research 1

Source
http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/oct94/vol52/num02/How-Emotions-Affect-Learning.aspx

My topic
How students' various emotions affect the lesson and how teachers lead the best feeling for effective learning?  

What I hope to learn from this source:
The evidence that emotions affect the class

Notes

How Emotions Affect Learning

Robert Sylwester

New developments in cognitive science are unraveling the mysteries of emotions; the findings have much to teach us about how students do—or do not—learn.

John Dewey began this century with an eloquent plea for the education of thewhole child. If we get around to that kind of education by the end of the century, emotion research may well provide the catalyst we need.

Our profession pays lip service to the whole student, but school activities tend to focus on measurable rational qualities. We measure spelling accuracy, not emotional well-being. And when the budget gets tight, we cut curricular areas like the arts, expressive subjects that are difficult to measure.

We know emotion is important in education—it drives attention, which in turn drives learning and memory. But because we don't fully understand our emotional system, we don't know exactly how to regulate it in school, beyond defining too much or too little emotion as misbehavior. We have rarely incorporated emotion comfortably into the curriculum and classroom. Further, our profession hasn't fully addressed the important relationship between a stimulating and emotionally positive classroom experience and the overall health of both students and staff.

Recent developments in the cognitive sciences are unlocking the mysteries of how and where our body/brain processes emotion. This unique melding of the biology and psychology of emotion promises to suggest powerful educational applications. Current emotion theory and research bring up more questions than answers. Still, educators should develop a basic understanding of the psychobiology of emotion to enable them to evaluate emerging educational applications.

Following is a basic introduction to the role our emotional system plays in learning, and the potential classroom applications of this research.

Classroom Applications

Although the educational applications of emotion research are still quite tentative, several general themes are emerging—and they tend to support a perspective that many educators have long advocated. This isn't surprising, since we're continually learning what does and doesn't work when dealing with students' emotions. What this research may provide, however, is biological support for the profession's beliefs.

Here are some general principles and their applications to the classroom:

1. Emotions simply exist; we don't learn them in the same way we learn telephone numbers, and we can't easily change them. But we should not ignore them. Students can learn how and when to use rational processes to override their emotions, or to hold them in check. We should seek to develop forms of self-control among students and staff that encourage nonjudgmental, nondisruptive (and perhaps even inefficient) venting of emotion that generally must occur before reason can take over. We all can recall past incidents that still anger us because we were not allowed to freely express our feelings before a decision was imposed on us.
   Integrating emotional expression in classroom life is not difficult. Try drawing a class into a tension-releasing circle (after a playground fight, for example) and playing a game of circle tag before talking out the problem. Once the students' collective limbic systems have had their say, rational cortical processes can settle the issue. If that doesn't work, sing a song. (As British playwright William Congreve suggested, “Music hath charms to soothe a savage breast.”) In other words, when trying to solve a problem, continue the dialogue with continuous emotional input.
2. Most students already know quite a bit about the complexity of emotions and the ways they and others experience them (Saarni and Harris 1991), although they may not be able to articulate what they know. Schools should focus more on metacognitive activities that encourage students to talk about their emotions, listen to their classmates' feelings, and think about the motivations of people who enter their curricular world. For example, the simple use of why in a question turns the discussion away from bare facts and toward motivations and emotions. Why did the pioneers settle where the two rivers came together? is a much more emotionally loaded question than Where did the pioneers settle?
3. Activities that emphasize social interaction and that engage the entire body tend to provide the most emotional support. Games, discussions, field trips, interactive projects, cooperative learning, physical education, and the arts are examples. Although we've long known that such activities enhance student learning, we tend to think of them as special rewards, and so withdraw them when students misbehave, or when budgets are tight, eliminate them altogether.
4. Memories are contextual. School activities that draw out emotions—simulations, role playing, and cooperative projects, for example—may provide important contextual memory prompts that will help students recall the information during closely related events in the real world. This is why we tend to practice fire drills in an unannounced, emotionally charged setting: in the event of a real fire, students will have to perform in that kind of setting.
5. Emotionally stressful school environments are counterproductive because they can reduce students' ability to learn. Self-esteem and a sense of control over one's environment are important in managing stress. Highly evaluative and authoritarian schools may promote institutional economy, efficiency, and accountability, but also heighten nonproductive stress in students and staff.

In short, we need to think of students as more than mere brain tissue and bodies. Powerful peptides convert that body and brain tissue into a vibrant life force—the whole child that John Dewey urged us to educate.

Final Thoughts

Now I know the emotion affects learning. I will find more information about the various effect of different emotions.

Week 2 Objectives - Research proposal

What is my current topic?

How students' various emotions affect the lesson and how teachers lead the best feeling for effective learning?  

Students sometimes react according to their emotions and it is difficult to catch it because their emotions are so various and change so quickly. And, of course it affects the class; environment of the class is different according to the students' state. There are many examples that the students' emotion affect learning. So, I wonder that what if teachers can catch students' feeling and use it in class? Then it might be more effective and easier to manage the course.



What are my guiding questions?

At first, I want to know teachers' opinion about the influence of students' emotion in class. There will be both negative side and positive side of the effect. Then, I can weigh up the degree of my research that will be going on. In addition, teacher is the important member of the class  and teachers should lead the course which is planned. Therefore, knowing the change of teachers' mood which is affected by students' feeling can also be an important part of my research. 

But, there are so many students in one class(about 25 to 40 in Korea). It means that each students in a class have various feelings and I cannot assure that which one is the most influential. And can 'some' students affect the whole class? ( what is the enough size of a group of students who have same emotion to affect the class?) It is important because the environment of the school in Korean is different to other countries. The class that has less students may be affected by students more easily.


What are my current thoughts?

Students' feeling affects the class. Mood is relevant to concentration which is important in learning. Actually,  one research said that emotion is important in education because it drives attention, which in turn drives learning  and memory. There are many studies indicating the facts that affect the effective classroom learning, but the research on the way to use it effectively is not enough until now. Therefore, I think my research will be useful to teachers or someone engaged in education. I want to allow people to know the way in which one should react as a leader of a class depending on the mood of the class.


What is the opposition?

*What will your opponents say? What is the common belief that you are arguing against? What counterarguments do you anticipate?*

Some people can say that to control other people's feeling is impossible. Although one can control the feeling, there are too many students in each class to care each of them.  

I changed my topic. +Reasons

I changed my topic from 'Should teachers reveal their emotion while teaching or not?' to 'How can we catch student's emotion and use them in class?' because their were so many difficulties in researching the first one. First, lack of information. There aren't enough articles, thesis or even expert's opinion. Second, most thesis about teacher's emotion are charged. Like...

 

   

So, I thought in reverse. I experienced that my feeling affects the class ; when I felt bad, the course was so boring and passive whereas same course is fun and active when I feel good. Like this, I thought that students' emotion may affect the course and It would be great if teachers can know it and use it appropriately. 

Week 1 Objectives - First research question

Question
1. Should teachers reveal their emotion while teaching or not?
2. Is to control adolescent's impulse is good for them or not?
3. How can we catch student's emotion and access to them using their emotion?
4. Is human rational or emotional?
5. Can we read other's mind with technology?