Developmental Delays (Discussion)

4 The Brain’s Emotional Processing Systems

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Learning Objectives

After reading this chapter, you should be able to:

• Describe the autonomic nervous system and its functions.

• Understand the role of the amygdala in getting information to the prefrontal cortex.

• Identify potential stressors in the context of learning and the effects stress can have on learning outcomes.

• Define fixed mindset and explain how it interferes with learning.

• Discuss the importance of a creating a positive emotional climate in learning environments and methods for fostering that kind of climate.

• Understand the components of a video game that make it intrinsically motivating.

• Explain the concept of scaffolding and the difference between the zone of actual development and the zone of proximal development.

• Appraise strategies for integrating the video game model into educational contexts.

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Section 4.1 Rewind—Fast Forward

A public high school, where dropping out and low attendance were problematic, instituted a guitar instruction class during the last period of the day. The class was open to students who attended all the day’s classes. The result, for those students who attended the class, was a significant increase in school attendance and graduation rates. When the school dropped the class, there was a significant dip in these students’ school attendance and graduation rates. This decline was attributed, at least in part, to disengagement by the students who had maintained attendance and passing grades in their other classes to enjoy the pleasure of the guitar class.

What is particularly distressing is that the reduction in the subjects, activities, and clubs that students find most appealing is taking place at a time when the dropout rate in the United States hovers near 40% in large cities. When surveyed about reasons for dropping out, the most frequent reason given is that school is “boring.” When asked for further detail about what makes school boring, students indicated that the information they were taught was not interesting or relevant to their lives (Yazzie Mintz, 2010, p. 7).

As you will discover in this chapter, positive, personally relevant learning experiences increase engagement and serve as powerful motivators for sustained effort and persevering through challenges. Even when various stressors and negativity are reducing students’ engagement and success in school, their motivation can be resuscitated when they are presented with gratifying learning experiences that can correlate with achievement of personal goals.

This chapter explores the neuroscience of emotions and of school-related stressors, including boredom and frustration, followed by strategies that promote the positive emotional state needed for successful learning. These strategies help students build personal connections to topics of study so they value the acquisition of the knowledge.

4.1 Rewind—Fast Forward As you read in the preceding chapters, emotion influences how information is accepted into the brain and processed into learning. Chapter 2 revealed that the RAS, the attention intake filter, gives priority to changes perceived in the expected pattern of the environment. Highest priority goes to perceived threat and that sensory intake is directed into the lower, reactive brain. Chapter 3 further revealed the sensitivity of the neural processing of information to the neurotransmitter dopamine. We saw that with increased levels of dopamine, there is greater intrinsic motivation, attention, perseverance, and responsiveness to learning.

In this chapter we will once again see the influence of emotion on the brain and how the brain learns. Emotion can impact learning in both positive and negative ways. It affects the amygdala, which is the part of the brain to which incoming information will be directed. If sensory information successfully passes through the initial attention filter, it must go through the amygdala, which serves as another type of filter.

The amygdala is like a switching station that responds to the emotional state of mammals, including humans. It determines if information will continue up to the higher brain for cogni- tive processing, or if it will be routed to the lower, reactive brain. In the neutral or positive emotional state, the amygdala passes information into and out of the prefrontal cortex, the

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Section 4.2 The Reactive Nervous System

highest cognitive and reflective region of the brain. However, when the amygdala is faced with environmental stressors, it will be more likely to send information to the lower, more reactive brain. Here more instinctive and animalistic behaviors will be produced in response to the information. The amygdala in positive or neutral emotional states, therefore, is conducive to better engagement and learning. We will begin the chapter with a look at different parts of the nervous system, so that you can understand how emotional information affects the body and is transmitted throughout the nervous system and brain.

4.2 The Reactive Nervous System The autonomic nervous system (ANS) is a branch of the nervous system that is primarily concerned with completing automatic functions (hence, the name autonomic). It is a control network that communicates between the brain and the body, especially related to uncon- scious processing and emotional reactivity. The ANS is important for emotional processing in that as the brain processes information on emotion, it sends feedback to the body and influ- ences the functioning of the ANS. These influences further change how the brain interprets emotion.

For example, according to the James-Lange theory of emotion, feelings of emotion are pro- duced by feedback from behaviors and responses that are elicited from situations. You might think of a time when someone insulted you. You then felt your blood pressure rise, your temperature increase, and your muscles clench. As you experi- ence these changes in your body, you experience feelings of anger (Carlson, 2004). Other theories of emotion discuss the occurrence of brain activation and ANS activation in different order (for a com- plete review, see Klein & Thorne, 2000); however, the important piece here is that feedback from the body (i.e., changes in blood pressure, heart rate, temperature) influence how we interpret the way we are feeling.

It is also important to note that changes in facial expressions can change the way the ANS functions and can change the way we feel. Ekman and col- leagues (Ekman, Levenson, & Friesen, 1983; Leven- son, Ekman, & Friesen, 1990) asked participants to move their facial muscles in ways that would pro- duce facial expressions of fear, happiness, anger, surprise, disgust, and sadness. The experiments illustrated that stimulating different facial expres- sions altered the activity of the ANS and that differ- ent facial expressions produced different patterns of activity. For example, increased heart rate and skin temperature were found with expressions of anger.

Cordelia Molloy/Photo Researchers, Inc.

Which four of the six emotional expres- sions identified by Ekman and col- leagues is this man showing?

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Section 4.2 The Reactive Nervous System

Also of relevance here is that when we see a facial expression, we tend to imitate it. This imita- tion is perhaps something that helps us experience the same emotion that others are feeling (Carlson, 2004). As we change our facial expressions, we experience changes in ANS activity that produce different emotions. In the classroom or workplace, this is important because our students and co-workers and their ANS will be attuned to the emotions that we convey while teaching or working. In the next section, we will continue to see how emotions are processed by examining the amygdala and its connection to the ANS.

The Amygdala: Emotional Switching Station

Some of the cues that the ANS receives from the brain are based on sensory information that is passed through the RAS attention filter (see Chapter 2). We know sen- sory intake that is immediately interpreted as threat is sent to the lower reactive brain and impacts the ANS reactions. However, even sensory input that makes it through the RAS into the next highest level of the brain may still be diverted to the reactive processing systems.

Input that reaches the next highest level of brain neural processing now faces the hurdle of the amygdala with regard to which cerebral architecture it is next granted access to. The amygdala is part of the brain’s emotional core, a connection of neural centers deep in the brain near the temporal lobes. The amygdala is part of the limbic system, which includes the medial temporal lobe, thalamus, hippocampus, amygdala, and part of the frontal lobes. The limbic system is a processing center of emotional intake and response, including stress. All components of the limbic system are duplicated on both sides of the brain.

The metabolic state of the amygdala influences the destination to which incoming informa- tion will be directed. In the neutral or positive emotional state, the metabolic state of the amygdala is not unusually high. In this neutral state, without high fear, high stress, or the per- ception of imminent threat, the amygdala allows information to flow up into the prefrontal cortex and also down from the prefrontal cortex to the lower brain. When a person experi- ences high stress, however, the metabolic demands on the amygdala are such that it won’t allow information clear passage to the prefrontal cortex for higher-level processing. Learning, therefore, is impeded.

Humans are the only creatures that have the higher brain capacity to analyze our thoughts and reflect on our emotions and then act in accordance with interpretation of these experi- ences to achieve goals. This includes our unique ability to experience an emotionally stressful event and choose to ignore it or resist acting out in favor of a thoughtfully considered appro- priate response. This ability is largely controlled by the prefrontal cortex.

The prefrontal cortex includes specialized neural networks that communicate with almost all the other parts of the brain. It is in the prefrontal cortex where long-term memory circuits

Ask Yourself Describe an occasion on which you found yourself influencing or being influenced by another person’s mood. What do you think was the primary reason for such a change, and how drastic was it? How much of an influence do you think the mood of an educator has on the overall emotional climate of a class?

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Section 4.2 The Reactive Nervous System

are constructed and emotions can be evaluated reflectively and consciously before being acted upon. Networks in the prefrontal cortex respond to unfamiliar situations or decisions that need to be made by activating information that is already in stored memory. It then uses this memory to make informed predictions and decisions in response to the sensory input, allowing for emotional and behavioral self-control. This flow of information between the ANS, RAS, amygdala, and prefrontal cortex is important to understand because as an educator, you want to be able to get information to the prefrontal cortex. Understanding how it gets there will help you remove any roadblocks that come in the form of negative emotion or stress.

Stress-Reactive Response

Stress related to school or work comes in many forms for students. Boredom and frustration are examples of stressors that can come about when the excessive demands of overpacked curricula are addressed by extended periods of direct instruction and repetitive drills. These experiences have little personal relevance to students and do not motivate the brain to main- tain focused attention and construct understanding, just like monotonous tasks in the work- place that do not require much creativity or engagement.

Frustration, in particular, can become a stressor when students don’t understand the lesson and feel they lack the capacity to do so. This is especially stressful when students repeatedly have difficulty with topics or subjects that classmates seem to understand. In the online envi- ronment frustration can often occur with technology issues. This is also true in the work- place. Individuals will be frustrated if they do not understand what their task is or if they feel inadequate to complete it.

For other students, class discussions add to stress when they have made previous mistakes, feel confused, or know they are falling behind. The stress increases when students are called on without volunteering, as they are in constant fear of making mistakes in front of classmates. Other stressors that can impede passage of information through the amygdala to the higher brain include test-taking anxiety, fear of oral presentations, and physical and language differences.

The stress of boredom builds when students have already mastered topics still being explained and drilled in class. As the boredom builds, individuals will begin to direct their attention else- where, which can lead to negative consequences for learning. Studies indicate that when attention is withdrawn from a particular stimulus or object, it is evaluated as more nega- tive (Eastwood, Frischen, Fenske, & Smilek, 2012; Damrad-Frye & Laird, 1989). Overall, the result is that the lack of attention associated with the boredom disrupts the flow of informa- tion through the brain, creates a negative emotional evaluation of the situation, and can lead to cognitive errors. Rather than students or workers having positive emotional experiences, they end up feeling that tasks are horrible and that they are dissatisfied with the situation (Eastwood, Frischen, Fenske, & Smilek, 2012).

Ask Yourself Was there ever a time in your educational or working life when you simply gave up due to frustration? What were the circumstances that led up to this point, and what were the outcomes? Was it something you gave up on forever, or did you eventually try again, and what conditions do you think contributed to this decision?

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Section 4.2 The Reactive Nervous System

An example of how this would play out in the classroom might be as follows. A student has mastered the concept of multiplication, yet the teacher continues to practice drills associated with multiplication. As a result, the student stops attending to the drill and begins to evaluate it negatively. She begins to feel bored and angry. These feelings lead to a lack of information processing in the classroom and lead to more challenges for the student later on. She now has a negative association with learning multiplication.

Similar situations can and do exist in the workplace. Stress in the workplace can occur from a variety of factors, including changing technological environments, isolation, work hours, role ambiguity, interpersonal relationships, or job security issues. Colligan and Higgins (2005) report that workplace stress is associated with physical disorders like heart disease or chronic pain. They also note that stress in the workplace can lead to hostility in the work environment, decreased productivity, and increases in employee absenteeism. The damaging effects of stress suggest that managers and employers should work to reduce stressors in the workplace.

As in the classroom, boredom also provides another source of stress for workers. Boredom in the workplace has often been associated with monotonous tasks (Fisher, 1993); however, Matthews et al. (2000) found that employees reporting high work strain and severe stress at the end of the day reported more boredom at home and at work, indicating that boredom does not just occur when tasks are monotonous, but also when tasks are too difficult. Perhaps, then, there is an optimal level of challenge that will decrease boredom and stress in work- ers. This idea would follow with the Yerkes-Dodson law. According to the Yerkes-Dodson law, individuals perform best when they have an optimal level of stress or arousal. Too little or too much stress or arousal leads to decreased performance. Consider a competition or test tak- ing. Being a little nervous helps you prepare and perform well; however, being overly anxious interferes with your ability to perform.

When the stressors associated with boredom and frustration put the amygdala in that hyper- metabolic state, incoming information is diverted to the lower, involuntary, reactive brain (see Figure 4.1). Without access to the prefrontal cortex, there is failure to form long-term memories, and behavioral reactions are now involuntary and not mediated by judgment. This routing to the lower reactive brain makes sense for survival in mammals living in unpredict- able environments where real threats exist and survival requires quick shifts of information processing and reactions to the autonomic nervous system. However, today’s students and workers do not live in that type of precarious environment and do not benefit from having a highly reactive system that shifts control to the lower brain when stress increases. Neverthe- less, the human brain has not evolved much beyond that of other mammals regarding the stress response.

Figure 4.1: The effect of stress on information flow

An individual’s level of stress when processing information will determine where it goes next.

REACTIVE lower brain

automatic fight, flight, or freeze responseInformation enters

the amygdala

REFLECTIVE “thinking brain” (prefrontal cortex)

conscious thought, decision making, judgment

Amygdala

Prefrontal cortex

stress

no stress

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Section 4.2 The Reactive Nervous System

An example of how this would play out in the classroom might be as follows. A student has mastered the concept of multiplication, yet the teacher continues to practice drills associated with multiplication. As a result, the student stops attending to the drill and begins to evaluate it negatively. She begins to feel bored and angry. These feelings lead to a lack of information processing in the classroom and lead to more challenges for the student later on. She now has a negative association with learning multiplication.

Similar situations can and do exist in the workplace. Stress in the workplace can occur from a variety of factors, including changing technological environments, isolation, work hours, role ambiguity, interpersonal relationships, or job security issues. Colligan and Higgins (2005) report that workplace stress is associated with physical disorders like heart disease or chronic pain. They also note that stress in the workplace can lead to hostility in the work environment, decreased productivity, and increases in employee absenteeism. The damaging effects of stress suggest that managers and employers should work to reduce stressors in the workplace.

As in the classroom, boredom also provides another source of stress for workers. Boredom in the workplace has often been associated with monotonous tasks (Fisher, 1993); however, Matthews et al. (2000) found that employees reporting high work strain and severe stress at the end of the day reported more boredom at home and at work, indicating that boredom does not just occur when tasks are monotonous, but also when tasks are too difficult. Perhaps, then, there is an optimal level of challenge that will decrease boredom and stress in work- ers. This idea would follow with the Yerkes-Dodson law. According to the Yerkes-Dodson law, individuals perform best when they have an optimal level of stress or arousal. Too little or too much stress or arousal leads to decreased performance. Consider a competition or test tak- ing. Being a little nervous helps you prepare and perform well; however, being overly anxious interferes with your ability to perform.

When the stressors associated with boredom and frustration put the amygdala in that hyper- metabolic state, incoming information is diverted to the lower, involuntary, reactive brain (see Figure 4.1). Without access to the prefrontal cortex, there is failure to form long-term memories, and behavioral reactions are now involuntary and not mediated by judgment. This routing to the lower reactive brain makes sense for survival in mammals living in unpredict- able environments where real threats exist and survival requires quick shifts of information processing and reactions to the autonomic nervous system. However, today’s students and workers do not live in that type of precarious environment and do not benefit from having a highly reactive system that shifts control to the lower brain when stress increases. Neverthe- less, the human brain has not evolved much beyond that of other mammals regarding the stress response.

Figure 4.1: The effect of stress on information flow

An individual’s level of stress when processing information will determine where it goes next.

REACTIVE lower brain

automatic fight, flight, or freeze responseInformation enters

the amygdala

REFLECTIVE “thinking brain” (prefrontal cortex)

conscious thought, decision making, judgment

Amygdala

Prefrontal cortex

stress

no stress

Learning requires students to take risks as they are stretched beyond the comfort zone of things they already know. The brain needs to expend effort to manage attention and develop understanding of new information. In contrast to the example of boredom and attention above, when individuals successfully manage attention, fluent information processing can occur. This might refer to a state called “flow.” When flow occurs, an individual is absorbed in the activity and experiences positive affect and intrinsic reward (Nakamura & Csikszentmi- haly, 2002). When students or workers don’t have opportunities to build positive connections to new learning, they are more susceptible to shifting into the stress-reactive state. As you’ll read in the following sections, their brains will then often seek ways to escape from the stress of frustration or search for other sources of stimulation.

Stressors and the Fixed Mindset

One of the ways the brain seeks to escape from stress is to shut down. The brain conserves its resources. The expenditure of its voluntary effort is linked to the expectation of positive out- comes such as the pleasure reward of the dopamine response. Its response to repeated effort without positive outcomes prompts subsequent withholding of effort for similar endeavors in the future.

REACTIVE lower brain

automatic fight, flight, or freeze responseInformation enters

the amygdala

REFLECTIVE “thinking brain” (prefrontal cortex)

conscious thought, decision making, judgment

Amygdala

Prefrontal cortex

stress

no stress

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Section 4.2 The Reactive Nervous System

The human brain has a similar survival mandate as that of the fox we met in Chapter 2. In survival terms, effort is withheld when past experiences predict failure. This is a beneficial response for survival of our fox that lives in a region where prey is limited. Recall that his den is surrounded by two hills to which prey escape. One of those hills is particularly steep and covered by dense underbrush in which the prey hides such that the fox’s pursuits of prey up that hill generally fail. It would not be to his survival benefit for the fox to repeatedly chase prey up that hill. To do so is to exert effort, in this case energy, without likelihood of achieving the goal of an energy-restoring meal. It is in the interest of his survival that his brain ulti- mately develops a mindset that deters him from chasing prey up that hill.

Some students have economic, familial, psychological, or physical hardships and come to school already burdened by these stressors. This further reduces their resilience in response to overcoming school stressors. For other students, past experiences of embarrassment or mistakes due to difficulties with language, speech, or learning that have inhibited their suc- cess present school stressors that heighten their susceptibility to the stress reaction.

Student negativity grows progressively year after year with repeated failures or frequent or sustained boredom or frustration. Their stress reactions become more frequent, and their effort, as well as their knowledge acquisition, diminishes. Through the work of Carol Dweck and her colleagues (Dweck, 2007), this problem is identified as a fixed mindset of beliefs that students acquire when their efforts toward goal success repeatedly fail. As expectations of failure increase, students develop the belief that their intelligence and skills are predeter- mined, limited, and unchangeable; they come to believe effort is fruitless. Their brains become less likely to extend the effort necessary to persevere, and they fall behind in knowledge acquisition. Without the needed foundation of knowledge to understand subsequent instruc- tion, the gap widens further and they become even more susceptible to the onset of the stress- related blockade.

The fixed mindset is similar to learned helplessness that was investigated by Overmier and Seligman (1967). In their experiment dogs were subjected to repeated shocks without the opportunity to escape. Later the dogs were put in a similar situation; however, this time the dogs had the opportunity to successfully escape. Rather than escape, though, the dogs gave up and accepted the shock, suggesting that the exposure to the inescapable event taught the dogs to give up; they learned to stop trying. Your students or workers may go through a simi- lar experience if they experience repeated failures.

A later experiment by Seligman, Maier, and Greer (1968), though, found that learned helplessness in dogs can be alleviated by physically manipulating dogs. In

this experiment the dogs were first exposed to the inescapable shock. Later, when they were exposed to the condition where they could escape the shocks and did not, the experimenters pulled the dogs out of the shock area and into a safe area. Once the dogs discovered that they could escape the shocks, they began escaping on their own. This experiment would seem to suggest that learned helplessness and fixed mindsets are changeable. By showing individuals

Ask Yourself Most people have a fixed mindset about something; some people believe they are horrible at math, or that they can’t dance or play sports, and so they simply stop trying to get better at those things. What have you developed a fixed mindset about? What were the circumstances that led to this mindset? What circumstances would need to change in order for you to feel that you could succeed?

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Section 4.2 The Reactive Nervous System

that they have the power to improve and providing opportunities for them to succeed you can reduce the feelings of helplessness they may have.

Fixed mindsets or learned helplessness can exist for individuals across the lifespan and are not classroom specific. They generally begin to develop when people are exposed to events that are unpredictable, inescapable, or uncontrollable (as evidenced in the study on dogs and shock). This is because these types of events leave an individual feeling like they have no con- trol over outcomes. As a result, fixed mindsets may develop in students at any point during the school years, or they may develop at any point during an individual’s career. Recognizing this type of mindset in learners or employees is important. When you recognize a fixed mind- set, you can provide experiences that are predictable and controllable and begin to change an individual’s mindset.

Meeting the Needs of Individual Learners: Emotional Issues

In the best of circumstances, children and adolescents would be surrounded by love, nurturance, good friends, intact families, stellar genetics, and, well, good luck. Too often, however, this is not the case. Children and adolescents are faced with many internal and external stressors while they are developing, such as divorce, moving, or death or illness in the family, just to name a few. When these stressors are coupled with genetic predispositions to mental illness, various medical disorders, and poor coping styles, managing life can become difficult. Even with all the positive experiences a child might have, situations may become overwhelming such that depression, anxiety, thoughts of suicide, addiction, eating disorders, and mental illness can set in.

It is estimated that approximately 3–5% of children and adolescents are affected by depression, and recent evidence has found clinical depression in children as young as 3 years old (Bhatia & Bhatia, 2007; Luby, 2009). According to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), approximately 8% of teens 13–18 years old have an anxiety disorder with symptoms evident around the age of 6. Additionally, eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia, substance abuse, and suicidal thoughts and tendencies are generally more common in individuals with anxiety and depressive disorders.

Academic performance and cognitive functioning are impacted in children who are depressed and anxious. Children with depressive symptomatology often display decreased attention span, fatigue, difficulty concentrating, and poor memory. Additionally, children displaying anxious, depressed, and withdrawn symptoms can demonstrate a decrease in general intellectual functioning for both verbal and nonverbal abilities, language, visual construction skills, attention and processing speed, executive functioning, verbal learning and memory, and psychomotor speed (Lundy, 2010). Generally speaking, children who demonstrate symptoms of depression and anxiety may have difficulty learning new information and require additional attention, care, and consideration in the classroom.

Educators and professionals working with individuals who may have mental health issues should understand the warning signs and presenting symptoms. Depression often presents as a change in appetite, mood, and sleep as well as fatigue, guilt, lack of interest, and feelings of worthlessness. In adolescents, depression might present with additional symptoms such as increased anger, agitation, and acting out behaviors (substance use, running away, or stealing). Oftentimes, children who are acting out and experiencing significant issues are

(continued)

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Section 4.3 Emotional Climate

“crying out for help.” Try to get to know these children and develop a relationship with them. These children are often looking for someone to care about them and talk to them. Children or adolescents with anxiety may show excessive worry or fear, significant distress over school or social situations, and somatic complaints such as stomachaches or headaches.

Professionals must understand their needs and symptoms and make appropriate referrals and recommendations. This may include referrals to the school psychologist, clinical psychologist, social worker, or other mental health providers in the community. Be flexible. Given the research above, sometimes these children or adolescents may need extra time to finish an assignment or take a test. Without compromising your standards, allow for modifications. Provide these students with education about their symptoms. They might not know what they are experiencing. Discuss healthy lifestyle choices and offer some positive coping and problem-solving strategies. Work on setting goals with these students and find what motivates them. Positively reinforce any action these individuals are taking toward improvement. These children and adolescents need to know that they have support to get through their difficult times—that support can start with you.

Joanna Savarese, Ph.D.

Meeting the Needs of Individual Learners (continued)

4.3 Emotional Climate A positive emotional state is essential to sustain successful learning and performance. Fred- rickson (1998) proposed that positive emotions broaden an individual’s thoughts and actions, and help build personal resources for individuals. In a review on how positive emotion can influence cognition, Ashby, Isen, and Turken (1999) report that positive emotion has the abil- ity to increase cognitive flexibility. Thus, increasing positive emotion in your classroom or workplace can help individuals think about problems they face in different ways. Ashby et al. (1999) also report that in many studies examining positive emotion and cognition, positive emotion is induced in ways that individuals can experience every day—for example, through humor, receiving an unexpected gift, or having success on a small task. The following sec- tions will focus on interventions and strategies that can promote a positive climate and build internal emotional resources to prevent or reduce the stress blockade that interferes with learning and behavior.

Community

A supportive class community is one with trust between the educator and the students and among the students. Students in a supportive class community do not harbor the fear that their instructor or classmates could harm their emotions, property, or bodies. Students in these classrooms are more self-confident, participate even when mistakes are possible, and collaborate successfully. In a study examining the relationship between classroom environ- ment and student outcomes in geography and math classes, higher student achievement was associated with greater classroom cohesiveness. Additionally, the research illustrated that

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Section 4.3 Emotional Climate

teacher support, task orientation, and equity in the classroom was associated with more posi- tive attitudes and self-esteem (Chionh & Fraser, 2009). Enhanced student learning and the ability to translate knowledge into practice are associated with the development of learning communities in higher education (Cross, 1998; Shapiro, 1998). In positive classroom climates students are able to exchange ideas, are motivated by interest and relevance to acquire the available knowledge, and actively participate in learning.

The findings that positive environments are associated with better learning and performance are not limited to the traditional classroom. Research in online learn- ing suggests that a consistent course structure, a valued and dynamic discussion in the course, and an instructor who frequently interacts with students in a construc- tive way can all increase course success (Swan, 2001). Additionally, as previously noted, research has illus- trated that stress in the workplace is associated with decreased performance (Fairbrother & Wern, 2003). However, Bono, Foldes, Vinson, and Muros (2007) found that transformational leadership in the workplace produced more optimism, happi- ness, and enthusiasm in employees. Transformational leadership is a leadership style that encourages creativity, offers support, and provides motivation. It would appear, then, that positive interactions with supervisors can promote positive emotions and perhaps influence overall work climate and customer satisfaction (Bono et al., 2007). Similarly, these same types of positive interactions with educators could also promote more success in the classroom. Strategies for building classroom community include beginning-of-the-year peer interviews, interest and expert charts, and the development of student mindfulness. With some adapta- tion, these strategies can also be applied in the workplace.

Peer Interviews Peer interviews, usually held at the beginning of the year, are appropriate for all grade lev- els and subjects. They provide a unique opportunity for students in the class to get to know each other. In general, the peer interview occurs between students who did not previously know each other, or did not know each other well. Pairs interview each other and spend time together discovering one another’s interests, talents, and travel experiences, as well as favor- ite things, from foods to films. Allowing students to meet in pairs helps reduce some of the fears that they might have interacting with a larger group of individuals. It also promotes community by teaching students to take the time to get to know each other.

For younger students, peer interview presentations would be done as short introductions of partners to the class. Older students would also “introduce” partners to the class and use subject-related tools or topics of study in their introductions. In math class, introductions could include pie graphs to illustrate the amount of time partners spend in a typical day on each activity (sleeping, eating, listening to music, doing homework, playing sports, check- ing Facebook, and practicing a musical instrument). In history class, interests and cultural background or customs could be represented as if illustrations for the coat of arms that rep- resented families during medieval times.

Ask Yourself What was the best class you’ve ever had? Describe the emotional climate. Conversely, think of the worst class you’ve ever had, and its emotional climate. How big of a role do you think this played in your fondness or dislike for these particular classes?

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Section 4.3 Emotional Climate

Online class discussion boards can be used to complete the peer interview process. Students can be placed into groups of two or more and can be instructed to interview each other. After the initial interview is conducted, students could “introduce” their partner or partners to the entire class in a larger group discussion. The peer interview process can also be made more in-depth by completing class interest charts.

Class Interest and Expert Charts Class interest charts are similar to the interview in terms of building individual student com- fort and starting off the year promoting student bonding. The goals of forming these class interest charts include creating the opportunity for students to be recognized for expertise and to find classmates with whom they share common interests, and providing a springboard for follow-up conversations and friendships.