In a recent post, learning author Annie Murphy Paul claims that one of the reasons why one-to-one tutoring so effectively promotes ‘deep and lasting learning’ is the time tutors allow for the managing of their pupils’ emotions.
‘Studies show that tutors spend about half their time dealing with pupils’ feelings about what and how they’re learning,’ a fact borne out, she says, by the exploratory emotion-aware designs of a number of ‘computerised tutoring systems’, which in making ‘sensing and responding to emotions a key part of the process’ are ‘finding that their users learn more as a result.’
To explain: Recent work on feelings and learning find that key emotions felt in ‘educational settings’ – any academic learning situation – differ from those of the wider world. In the classroom our ‘basic emotions’ of anger, disgust, fear, joy, sadness and surprise are supplanted by the less survivalist-based emotions, by the so-called ‘academic emotions’ of ‘curiosity, delight, flow, engagement, confusion, frustration and boredom’. Appropriating the research, the new computer-based tutoring systems adapt to, compensate for and actively ride off learners’ feelings, the purpose being to curry positive and negative academic emotions, the former crucial, it is argued, to solving problems creatively, the latter to thinking in ways that are ‘focussed, detail-orientated and analytical.’
Most interestingly, ‘the feeling of confusion turns out to be the best predictor of learning’ as ‘students show the lowest levels of enjoyment during learning under the conditions in which they learn the most’, the caveat being, of course, that without the reward of understanding, of mastering a problem, of curiosity, delight, engagement and, eventually, flow, then confusion translates into frustration, and frustration into boredom, a spiral that, when repeated again and again, seemingly without hope, ends in ‘minimal learning’. So, confusion is good, as is a bit of frustration, but only if both are predicators for a final sense of achievement.
So far, and following on from our last discussion on happiness and learning, there’s a lot here that, from a teaching point of view, is instinctually commonsensical. If we take, for the moment, this identified bundle of academic emotions as indicative of a mix of pleasure and of a sense of meaning - and of engagement in that meaning, of a commitment to and participation in the learning experience - then the happy learner is not to be confused with the ecstatic learner. Better put, the happy learner is not the permanently satiated learner. Rather, the happy learner is, intimates Paul, the learner whose curiosity is such that he or she is prepared to fall into ‘cognitive disequilibrium’, into a state of confusion, a learner that knows, consequently, how to deal with frustration, and that has experienced time and again the benefits of accepting not understanding as vital to understanding.
None of this should surprise - except, perhaps, the stats around confusion: Good teachers have always, as Paul says, made ‘students’ feelings part of the lesson.’ Good teachers are all about achieving flow, of enabling so-called intrinsic learning, of getting learners to the point of positively enjoying learning for learning’s sake – and know very well that the task of getting there requires enormous skill with regards the importance of feelings, of positive reinforcement, of striking every day the balance between the doable and the challenging. The research reinforces much of what would be considered good practice.
However, a couple of points, one housekeeping, the others exploratory: First, the studies - vis-a-vis tutors and time spent on students’ emotions - to which Paul refers are 21 years old, which is fine, so long as nothing research-wise’s changed in the interim.
Second, while the slightly rarefied setting that is one-to-one tutoring (human and certainly machine) may indeed identify in the learner the aforementioned academic emotions, I can’t see how or why more basic emotions aren’t considered as part and parcel of the learning experience. Surely tutors aren’t spending the quoted half of their teaching time dealing with feelings limited to confusion, frustration and boredom? Indeed, not everyone agrees that something like ‘frustration’ is an emotion, preferring to see it as emotion related – to anger. Transfer the setting to a standard sized classroom, factor in the social complexities of thirty odd personalities, some of whom may or may not have specific emotional and behavioural needs, and we know that teachers are managing behaviour governed by emotions that precede or are sparked by confusion, frustration and boredom. I hope I’m not splitting hairs.
Third and finally, while I really like the findings with regards to the importance of confusion, and the value of teaching concentrating therein on the importance of effort, I’d like to see much more on the adaptive learning brought on by our capacity for curiosity, which for my money is the mother upon which the whole caboodle dotes.
Next week: Part III: Mother of All Learning
Read Part I: Pleasure Principles
