One evening, as I sat in my clinic seeing my regular OPD patients, one kids’ T-Shirt grabbed my attention. It was not the colour or trendy style, but what was printed on its
front that caught on my eyes. In big bold letters it was written....
‘I LOVE MY SCHOOL.’
I was thrilled for a moment to see one of the kids in early teens flaunting publicly his
probable feelings for his school, a refreshingly rare sight to find in this education unfriendly
environment. But alas! My excitement was short lived as my eyes spotted the next line ...
written in a smaller not so bold script...
‘WHEN IT IS CLOSED’
Jokes apart, for some time after this episode I was brooding over these questions...What
would make kids love school (in spite of it being open!!!)? Why is it that only a few are really motivated but so many children are neither interested, nor are they very attentive in school? Does the problem lie with the child or the school system for not creating the right climate? I began reflecting on these issues and the possible solutions.
Later on, as I was researching about this issue, I came across some alarming statistics about kids all over world not just ‘Not Loving School’ but going as far as ‘Leaving School’ in their early years. These vast number of school dropouts were apparently not for reasons of financial inability to sustain schooling but shockingly for more grave reasons related to Feeling of Disinterest, Feeling left alone, Feeling afraid and anxious, Feeling bored , Feeling threatened etc which was sadly the cause of their early plight from the agony of schooling.
Focus on Feelings
The obvious question that crops up here is “Are we giving enough attention to kids’ Emotional States in schools as much as we are giving to their Academic Learning?” And the answer you will agree with me, is an assertive ‘NO’. Feelings experienced by children in context to their schooling more aptly termed as Academic Emotions, have so much to impact on their actual learning. But unfortunately all over the world in a typical classroom setup we hardly give attention to this close connection between Learning and Emotions.
The reasons might be many ranging from, teachers not having sufficient time to address these issues, being bogged down by more pressing demands to complete the syllabus, or to attend to many children in a class, or to not being sufficiently equipped themselves to deal with the emotional states of children. It is because we do not have time and energy to attend to academic emotions, we end up either ignoring them altogether, or by denying their very existence or by convincing ourselves that
emotions are ‘irrelevant’ to be pushed aside for the more important work of study and exam preparation. Kids, as a result end up being treated somehow as Robots who come to
school to fill their brains with academic matters, and are the unintended victims of this attitude
suffer the most at the end.
For one thing, if we do not acknowledge and accept the power of emotions in the learning process, we risk pouring much of our teaching energy down the drain. As the Research has amply proven that the Academic Emotions influence a wide range of student outcomes such as Motivation, Cognition, Achievement and most importantly Physical and Psychological health. Although all these are fundamental phenomena that form the basis of all school learning, we somehow treat them as separate entities, though in reality they are inseparable. For example, a child who is withdrawn in a class, resistant to learning, or simply labeled ‘Hyper’ or ‘Aggressive’ in the class may have been driven to these behaviors due to his underlying basic emotions of anger, guilt, shame, sadness etc which are never even acknowledged in the class, leave alone being accepted. This leads to his being unable to learn, poorly motivated and hence with poor achievement. This starts as a vicious cycle the
culmination of which is of school agony. The world-renowned psychologist and neuroscientist Antonio Damasio, in one of his papers had made a very strong point regarding Emotions and Learning, he said,
“Instead of looking at emotion as toddler who upsets the glassware in a shop, we should be looking at it as the shelf upon which the glassware rests!!”
Damasio also mentions in his research findings that learning and reasoning involves Emotion Processing System in the brain, which truly is an eye-opener for all of the educators & child care givers for giving Emotions their due importance in school settings.
Let us take our cue from what Damasio has pointed out about ‘Making Emotions the Shelves” and do a small exercise to start with. You may pen down a list of Academic Emotions children typically experience in different school settings e.g. while doing school activity, attending class, studying, doing homework, facing exam, facing peer group or facing exam results, etc. Now after having done that, mark those emotions which are purely related classroom activity (Learning) and those related
to performance, tests, achievement etc.. What do you notice? Which emotion is predominant?
In a study done by psychologist Reinhard Pekrun and his colleagues in schools in Germany. Students were asked to describe emotions during various school settings. Following were the emotions typically described by students Anxiety, Boredom, Frustration, Shame, Guilt, Hopelessness, Anger, Enjoyment, Hope, Pride, Relief, Excitement.
An enormous number of studies have been done (as shown in the following figure) to find the links between Academic Emotions and Learning & Achievement.
Two interesting findings were revealed from all these studies... Firstly, Anxiety is the emotion with the commonest (around 15-25%) occurrence in school settings and secondly most strikingly many of the emotions generated in children were related to performance, achievement and competition in school and not to learning!! This provides perfect evidence of the fact that school has become a place of performance more than learning.
Rest of this article having been sensitized to this problem we will now focus mainly on “How we
can create optimal learning environment so that all kids will enjoy the learning process”.
Let us first see what is the link between academic emotions and optimal learning?
Role of ACADEMIC EMOTIONS in MOTIVATION & OPTIMAL LEARNING
Researchers have found that the sense of engagement in any activity in school, more recently termed as ‘Feeling of Flow’ is an important ingredient of optimal learning experience. This feeling where the child enjoys the learning process from within, is self-motivated and absolutely focused on what he is doing, is essential for a quality learning experience. Now the question is what contributes to this ‘Feeling of Flow’ in children? Academic Emotions like Enjoyment, Frustration, Boredom Anxiety-- are also extremely important as they are deeply connected with feelings of involvement and engagement in learning. How? To answer this let us see four different scenarios for child’s learning experience and Academic Emotions in any classroom activity.
Apathy
As seen in the lower left quadrant, if the challenges faced are Low and Skills of the child are also low, the child will experience a feeling of apathy.
Anxiety
As against this, in the left upper quadrant, if challenges are High but the skills are low the child experiences a feeling of Anxiety. For example, this can happen in a child who is having low Maths skills and faces higher challenges of doing some maths exercise, he will feel anxious or even feel scared of the Maths class.
Boredom
Now if we take the right Lower quadrant, if the challenges are low and skills are high, the child will feel Bored, as happens when a smart boy is given very ordinary non-challenging exercise.
Engagement
As against that if we see the right upper quadrant, the challenges faced by the child doing the task are high and his skills are also high. In such scenarios challenges match with the skills, the child is fully engaged and experiences what is called as ‘State of Flow’. Essentially, learning is most enjoyed when there is a match between individual’s skills level and the challenge level of the activity. As a corollary, this implies that children at all ability levels can enjoy learning!! So our challenge as care givers and educators is to explore novel strategies to give more students with this ‘Right Match' between ability and challenge.
The Space for Learning
As we discern the important link between Academic Emotions and Optimal learning, the next question is how can we can create an effective, supportive educational environment which will address the issues of Academic Emotions in schools in a more holistic way? Many schools across the world are taking this mission of bringing Emotions to Schools literally ‘Schooling The Emotions’. One of the programmes that we found truly fascinating is Self-Science. It is one of the pioneering
Emotional Intelligence curricula, designed by Six Seconds, and being implemented for almost
three decades with amazing results. We were inspired by this programme and have started infusing EQ skills through our institute called ‘Equipkids’ (www.equipkids.net ) in India.
The key objectives of all these interventions are:
- To foster Emotional Literacy in children so that they become more aware and competent to deal with Emotions (Including academic emotions). This will help children make these emotions work for them rather than against them.
- To Infuse Emotional Intelligence skills like Emotional Self awareness, Empathy, Emotion Management ,Impulse control and Relationship skills in children through the EQ curriculum or SEL (Social-Emotional Learning sessions) which runs parallel to the Academic Curriculum. These Emotional Lessons help children become better equipped to face the daily challenges of life and in turn become more resilient.
- To build caring school community where cooperative learning and caring relationships take precedence over competition and performance evaluation.
- To integrate the NEW 3 R's OF EDUCATION-- Reflection, Relationships and Resilience. This helps foster Emotional Health in children.
- To enhance skills of children for dealing with school-related stressors. Teaching them Relaxation techniques, Meditation, Imagery to counter the effects of stress.
- To train teachers, parents and school leaders in the concept of Emotional Intelligence. This helps create a school climate where children thrive well emotionally and physically too!!
Team Equipkids has been getting encouraging results from these EQ interventions in school.
We strongly feel that bringing EQ to schools and families with these objectives will address kids’ emotions in a more holistic way. The time is ripe for us to start acting now to ensure that the generations to come emerge better equipped to face the challenges of life.
I end with a quote from Mahatma Gandhi:
“You may never know what results come of your action, but if you do nothing there will be no result”
By-
Dr. Sandeep Kelkar.
Pediatrician & EQ consultant.
