Affectivity and Learning: Bridging the Gap Between Neurosciences, Cultural and Cognitive Psychology [1st ed. 2023] 3031317084, 9783031317088
This book presents an interdisciplinary approach to the study of affectivity and human learning by bridging the gap betw
102 94 23MB
English Pages 822 [793] Year 2023
Contents
About the Editors
About the Contributors
Chapter 1: Why Affectivity in Learning? Toward an Affectively Guided Learning
1.1 About This Book
References
Part I: Affectivity in Learning Process
Chapter 2: Strengths of Character in Well-Being and University Learning: A View from Educational Counseling
2.1 The Strengths of Educational Character, Well-being, Learning, and Counseling
2.2 Empirical Evidence About Character Strengths in the Well-Being and Learning of College Students
2.2.1 Identification
2.2.2 Selection
2.2.3 Eligibility
2.2.4 Procedure for the Analysis of Articles
2.3 Inclusion and Systematization of Information for the Extraction of Information
2.4 Bibliometric Analysis of Research on Character Strengths in College Students
2.5 Empirical Evidence of Research on Character Strengths Associated with Well-Being and Psychoeducational Variables in University Students
2.6 Good Practices Implemented by Universities in Latin America
2.7 Guidelines Based on Character Strengths for Improving Well-Being and Promoting University Learning
2.8 Sensitization in the Use of Strengths
2.8.1 Putting the Strengths of Character into Practice
2.8.2 Enhancing University Learning
2.8.3 Positive Linkages: Promoting Gender Inclusion and Equity
2.8.4 Systematization and Evaluation of Strengths
2.9 Final Thoughts
Appendix 2.1 General Matrix of Articles
References
Chapter 3: Adults’ Professional Education: Experiences and Expectations of Online Chilean Students
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Definition
3.3 Affectivity
3.4 Methods
3.4.1 Participants
3.4.2 Data Management and Analysis
3.5 Results
3.5.1 Technological Aspects
3.6 Virtuality vs. Presentiality
3.6.1 Teacher Skills
3.6.2 Affectivity and Emotionality
3.6.3 Recommendations
3.7 Conclusions
Bibliography
Chapter 4: Affective Movement: An Educative and Intuitive Adventure as a Catalyst for Development
4.1 Making the Dynamic Static: Unseeing
4.2 Static Inquiry into My Affectivity
4.2.1 The Process Involved
4.3 The Form of the Experience: The Grids of Disguise
4.4 Dynamic Inquiry into Affectivity
4.4.1 Epistemological Considerations
4.5 Seeing Myself Intuitively
4.6 Conclusion
References
Chapter 5: Dialogical Co-Zone of Proximal Development and Affectivity: Individually and Collectively Overcoming Intellectual Limits
5.1 Intuitive Inquiry in My Affective Experience: Synthesis of the Theoretical Avenues
5.2 ZPD as Motion: A Synthesis
5.3 Overcoming the Intellect
5.4 Affectivity as the Realm of Potentiality
5.4.1 From Potential to Potentialization
5.4.2 “Poetization” of Life
5.5 Affectivity in ZPD as Motion: Toward Ideological Repositioning
5.5.1 Dynamics of Disguise Amid Content and Form
5.6 Ideological Limitations and Overcoming
5.7 Conclusion
References
Chapter 6: Effects of Early Childhood Education on Academic Performance and Social-Emotional Development During Adolescence
6.1 Introduction
6.2 Theoretical Background
6.2.1 Relevance of Early Childhood Education Programs
6.2.1.1 International Evidence
6.2.1.2 National Evidence
6.2.2 Early Childhood Education: The Chilean Context
6.2.2.1 Development of a Regulatory Framework for Early Childhood Education
6.3 Methodology
6.3.1 Design
6.3.2 Participants
6.3.3 Measures for Analysis
6.3.3.1 Participation in Early Childhood Education
6.3.3.2 Sociodemographic Information
6.3.3.3 Academic Results (High School SIMCE)
6.3.3.4 Socio-Emotional Development
6.3.4 Data Analysis
6.4 Results
6.4.1 Sample Description
6.4.2 Academic Performance Results
6.4.2.1 Attends Public Early Childhood Education v/s Does Not Attend any Early Childhood Education System
6.4.2.2 Attends Public Early Childhood Education v/s Attends Another (Private) Early Childhood Education System
6.4.3 Socio-Emotional Development Results
6.4.3.1 Attends Public Early Childhood Education v/s Does Not Attend any Early Childhood Education System
6.4.3.2 Attends Public Early Childhood Education v/s Attends Another (Private) Early Childhood Education System
6.5 Discussion
6.5.1 Academic Performance
6.5.2 Socio-emotional Development
References
Chapter 7: The Writer’s Affectivity When Writing to Learn
7.1 Introduction
7.2 Writing as an Epistemic Process
7.3 Revitalising Old Foundations: Reading Between the Lines of Affectivity
7.3.1 The First Four Pillars: Flower y Hayes (1981b)
7.3.2 Motivation in Writing: Hayes (1996)
7.3.3 The Resurgence of the Void: Hayes (2012)
7.4 A New Look at Affectivity
References
Chapter 8: Affectivity from the Dialogical Perspective of Cultural Psychology: Educational Implications
8.1 Psychology and Affectivity: Historic Notes and Key Concepts
8.2 Emotions
8.3 Emotions Versus Cognition
8.4 The Phenomenology of Emotions and Affectivity
8.5 The Wholeness Nature of Affectivity
8.6 Affectivity from a Semiotic Cultural Psychology Perspective
8.6.1 Cultural Semiotic Dynamics of Affectivity
8.6.2 Meaning-Making Processes
8.7 Affective Semiosis
8.8 Affective-Semiotic Regulation, Co-Construction of Trust Relations, and Students’ Motivation in the Classroom
8.9 Communication and Metacommunication
8.10 Trust Relations and Students’ Development, Learning, and Motivation
8.11 Learning and Affectivity in School Settings: An Empirical Example
8.12 Conclusion
References
Chapter 9: Learning in Nature About Nature: Two Types of Affective Orientation
9.1 Introduction
9.2 Learning as a Relational and Situated Phenomenon
9.3 Affect as Assemblage
9.4 Data
9.5 Assemblages
9.6 Analyzing Affect and Learning as Assemblages Through Social Practice
9.7 Discussion: Methodological Assemblages
9.8 Affect and Learning in Nature
9.9 Conclusion
9.10 Postscript
References
Chapter 10: Learning and Affectivity: Pedagogical and Cultural Dimensions in the Inclusion of Diversity in University Education
10.1 Normative Frameworks and Inclusive Educational Cultures
10.2 Inclusion and Diversity: Pedagogical and Affective Dimensions
10.3 Inclusive Pedagogy: Cultural and Affective Considerations in Learning
References
Chapter 11: Usefulness of the Perezhivanie Construct in Affectivity and Learning: A Systematic Review
11.1 Introduction
11.2 Theoretical Foundations
11.3 Methodological Framework
11.3.1 General Description
11.3.2 Search Strategy
11.3.3 Phases of the Systematic Review
11.4 Results Synthesis Strategy
11.5 Findings
11.5.1 Studies Included
11.5.2 Results of Syntheses
11.6 Discussion
11.7 Conclusions
References
Chapter 12: Processes of Social Subjectivity and Pedagogical Action: Developments to Understanding Learning Difficulties in the School Environment
12.1 Introduction
12.2 Methodology
12.3 Analysis and Construction of Information
12.3.1 A Model School: Pedagogical Action Focused on Content
12.3.2 Social Subjectivity of School and the Pathologization of Learning
12.4 Conclusion
References
Chapter 13: The Unity of Affectivity and Learning: Characteristics in Vocalized Responses of Adolescents and Adults
13.1 Introduction
13.2 Mainstream Psychological Definitions of Affectivity and Learning
13.3 Approaching Affectivity and Learning as Variables
13.4 Rationales for Studying Affectivity and Learning
13.5 Dialectical Critique
13.6 Structural-Systemic Epistemological Understanding of Affectivity and Learning
13.7 Structural-Systemic Development
13.8 The Social Situation or the General Law of Development
13.8.1 Role of Language
13.9 Structural-Systemic Understanding of Development
13.10 Methodology
13.10.1 The First Study
13.10.2 The Second Study
13.10.3 Both Studies
13.11 Settings
13.11.1 The First Study
13.11.2 The Second Study
13.12 Participants
13.12.1 The First Study
13.12.2 The Second Study
13.13 Coding and Analysis
13.14 Results
13.14.1 The First Study
13.14.2 The Second Study
13.15 Discussion and Implications
13.16 Conclusion
References
Chapter 14: Culturally-Based Interpretations of Motivation and Learning Strategies Between the United States and South Korea
14.1 Culture in Education
14.1.1 Hofstede’s Model
14.2 Goal Orientation
14.3 Expectancy
14.4 Self-Efficacy
14.5 Control of Learning
14.6 Learning Strategies
14.7 Purpose of the Present Study
14.8 Methods
14.8.1 Participants
14.8.2 Instruments
14.8.3 Procedures
14.8.4 Data Analytic Approach
14.9 Results
14.10 Discussion
14.10.1 Limitations
14.11 Conclusion
References
Chapter 15: Educate Emotions: Notes for a Critical Examination of Emotional Education Proposals
15.1 Introduction
15.2 Neoliberalism and Education: The Company as a Metaphor
15.3 Emotions and Emotional Capitalism
15.4 Emotional Education
15.5 Critical Approaches to Emotional Education
15.6 Reflections by Way of Synthesis
References
Chapter 16: Trust in Schools in Chile
16.1 Introduction
16.2 Theoretical Framework
16.3 Country Context
16.4 Methods
16.4.1 Sample and Analysis
16.5 Results
16.5.1 Identification of Higher and Lower Areas of Institutional Trust
16.5.1.1 Government and Unions
16.5.1.2 School Leaders
16.5.2 Context: Social Turmoil and Pandemic
16.6 Discussion
References
Chapter 17: Socioemotional Styles: When Affectivity Meets Learning
17.1 Introduction
17.2 Basic Architecture of Human Experience I: Segregation of Motivation/Affect and the Social Bias of the Human Mind
17.3 Basic Architecture of Human Experience II: The Structure of Emotions and the Continuous Strive Toward Social Homeostasis
17.3.1 The Basic Structure of Emotion
17.3.2 The Psychological Content of Emotions
17.4 Principles in the Development of Emotion, Emotion Regulation, and Social Cognition
17.5 Developmental Trajectories Toward the Configuration of Socioemotional Style I: Temperament
17.5.1 Inhibited Temperament
17.5.2 Exuberant Temperament
17.6 Developmental Trajectories Toward the Configuration of the Socioemotional Style II: Attachment and Exploration
17.7 Socioemotional Styles: A Theoretical Proposal on the Organization of Affective Functioning Throughout Life
17.7.1 Socioemotional Style I: The Cautious Style
17.7.1.1 Cautious Style and Learning
17.7.2 Socioemotional Style II: The Curious Style
17.7.2.1 Curious Style and Learning
17.8 Socioemotional Styles and Learning: Practical Consequences for Educators
17.9 Conclusion
References
Part II: Affectivity in Teachers’ Learning
Chapter 18: A Sociocultural Perspective on the Relationship Between Educators’ Emotional Experiences and Professional Learning
18.1 Introduction
18.2 Research Background
18.2.1 Understanding Emotions and Teachers’ Emotions
18.2.2 Teachers’ Emotions from Vygotsky’s Theoretical Lens of Perezhivanie
18.3 Methodology
18.4 Findings
18.4.1 Daisy, the Novice: Prioritising the Majority of Students in the Class
18.4.2 Grace, the Mid-Career: Transformation and Positive Emotions
18.4.3 Heidi, the Senior: Developing Emotional Capacities with Experiences
18.5 Discussion and Conclusion
18.5.1 Teacher Emotions as Cultural and Historical Products
18.5.2 Relationship Between Teachers’ Emotion and Professional Learning
18.5.3 Accounting for Individual Differences Among the Educators
18.6 Conclusion
References
Chapter 19: Teachers’ Emotions: Their Origin and Influence on the Teaching-Learning Process
19.1 Introduction
19.2 Teachers’ Emotions and Their Relevance for Teaching and Learning
19.3 Conceptual Considerations About Teachers’ Emotions
19.4 Theoretical Models of Antecedents and the Regulation of Teachers’ Emotions
19.5 Antecedents of Teachers’ Emotions Related to the Teaching and Learning Process
19.5.1 Pekrun’s Model: The Control-Value Theory of Achievement Emotions
19.5.2 Frenzel et al.’ s Model: The Reciprocal Model on Causes and Effects of Teachers’ Emotions
19.5.3 Spilt et al. (2011): The Relevance of Teachers’ Internalized Representations of Their Relationship with Their Students
19.6 Models of Emotion Regulation in School
19.6.1 Metcalfe’s Model: The Hot-Cool Model of Emotions
19.6.2 Gross’s Model: The Complex Processes Model
19.6.3 Hochschild’s Theory: Emotional Labor
19.7 Teachers’ Emotions in the Educational Context: Effects on Teachers’ Mental Health, Instructional Behavior, and Students’ Emotions and Outcomes
19.7.1 Teachers’ Emotions and Mental Health
19.7.2 Teachers’ Emotions and Teachers’ Instructional Behavior
19.7.3 Coping Strategies and Emotional Labor
19.7.4 Teachers’ Emotions and Students’ Outcomes
19.8 Conclusion
19.9 Challenges for Research on Teachers’ Emotions
References
Chapter 20: How Are Socioemotional Competencies Taught in Initial Teacher Education? Affectivity, Learning, and Didactics of Emotions in the University Classroom
20.1 Introduction
20.2 Theoretical Framework
20.2.1 Current Status of Socioemotional Competencies and Related Educational Policies
20.2.2 SEC and Professional Identity
20.2.3 Specific Didactics and the Formation of Emotions in Teachers
20.3 Methodology
20.4 Results
20.4.1 Actions Related to Teaching
20.4.1.1 Initiatives for SEL (Socioemotional Learning)
20.4.1.2 SEC Development Platform
20.4.2 Actions Related to Learning
20.4.3 Actions Constructed Between Teacher Educators and Preservice Teachers
20.5 Discussion
20.6 Conclusion
References
Chapter 21: Affectivity in Science Education: Lived Perceptions
21.1 Introduction
21.2 Emotions in Science Education Learning
21.3 Emotions in Science Education Teaching
21.4 Study Context
21.5 Methodology
21.6 Data Analysis
21.7 Results
21.7.1 Survey: Part 1
21.7.2 Survey: Part 2
21.7.2.1 Emotional Connections: Affectivity and Caring
21.7.2.2 Practical Connections: Affectivity and Teaching Styles
21.8 Discussion
21.9 Recommendations
21.10 Conclusion
References
Chapter 22: Learning the Teaching Profession in the Practicum: The Role of the Other, Modalities of Appropriation, and Professional Knowledge
22.1 Introduction
22.2 Theoretical Framework
22.2.1 The Role of the Other in Learning About the Teaching Profession
22.2.2 Modalities of Appropriation and Mobilization of Professional Knowledge
22.2.3 Regarding the Objects of Professional Learning
22.3 Conceptual References
22.3.1 Situated Learning: Participating and Learning with the Other
22.3.2 Learning with the Other: Engagement, Affordance, and Intentionality
22.3.3 From Learning with the Other to the Resulting Professional Knowledge
22.4 Methodology
22.4.1 Access to the Site and Characteristics of the Participants
22.4.2 Processing and Analysis of the Data
22.5 Results
22.5.1 The Other as a Source of Professional Knowledge
22.5.2 Interactions in the Classroom: The Guiding Teacher and the Students as the Other
22.5.3 Interactions in Other Places in the School: Practicum Peers and Other Members of the School Community
22.5.4 Interactions Outside the School: Supervising Teachers
22.6 Modalities of Appropriation of Professional Knowledge
22.6.1 Mimesis as a Modality of Appropriating Professional Knowledge
22.6.2 Advice as a Modality of Knowledge Appropriation
22.6.3 Collaboration as a Modality of Knowledge Appropriation
22.6.4 Verification as a Modality of Knowledge Appropriation
22.6.5 The Professional Knowledge Involved and Its Mobilization
22.7 Discussion
22.8 Conclusions
References
Chapter 23: Teaching Excellence, Affectivity and Learning
23.1 Introduction
23.2 Teaching Competencies from an Emotional Perspective
23.3 Emotions and Teaching Effectiveness
23.3.1 Another Major Challenge Is the Teacher Refresher Towards Emotional Competence
23.3.2 Emotional Competence in Promoting Student Learning
23.4 Emotional Education at School
23.4.1 Emotional Education: The Role of Teachers
23.5 From Teaching Competencies to Teaching Effectiveness
23.6 Conclusions
References
Chapter 24: LGBTIQ+ Inclusive Education: The Interplay of Emotions and Cognition in Graduate Teachers’ Narratives of Becoming
24.1 Introduction
24.2 Understanding Perezhivanie
24.3 Literature Review
24.4 Situating Perezhivanie in the Literature
24.5 Participants and Context
24.6 Ethical Considerations
24.7 Data Analysis
24.8 Findings/Discussion
24.9 Transitions into High School
24.10 Strategies for Inclusion of LGBTIQ+ Students
24.11 Conclusion
References
Part III: Affectivity and Learning from Cognitive Neuroscience’s Perspectives
Chapter 25: Neuroscience of Learning and Emotional Processing
25.1 Introduction
25.2 Neurophysiological Bases of Learning
25.3 Basic Assumptions of Learning: Behaviorism, Cognitivism, and Socio-cognitive Theory
25.4 The Main Cognitive Processes Associated with Learning: Memory and Attention
25.5 Attention
25.5.1 Alertness Network
25.5.2 Orientation Network
25.5.3 Executive Control Network
25.6 Learning and Emotion
25.7 Meaningful Learning
25.7.1 Significant Learning: Classification of Subtypes
25.7.2 Criteria or Requirements for Meaningful Learning
25.7.3 Benefits of Meaningful Learning
25.7.4 Brain-Based Learning (BBL) as a Mechanism for Meaningful Learning
25.7.4.1 The Brain Is a Living System
25.7.4.2 The Brain Is Social
25.7.4.3 The Search for Meaning Is Innate and Occurs Through Patterns
25.7.4.4 Emotions Are Fundamental to the Configuration
25.7.4.5 Perception, Attention, and Memory Are Fed by Emotion
25.7.4.6 Each Brain Is Uniquely Organized
25.8 Conclusion
References
Chapter 26: Emotional Salience and Learning
26.1 Introduction
26.2 Attentional Bottom-Up and Top-Down Processes
26.3 Salience and Emotional Salience
26.4 Emotional Stimuli and Cognitive Processes
26.4.1 Attention
26.4.2 Memory
26.4.3 Executive Functions
26.4.4 Inhibitory Control
26.4.5 Working Memory
26.4.6 Cognitive Flexibility
26.5 Emotional Salience as an Advantage or Disadvantage in Learning
26.6 Discussion and Future Directions
References
Chapter 27: Memory Distortions: An Interdisciplinary Framework for Cognitive-Affective Bias
27.1 Introduction
27.2 False Memories
27.2.1 Suggestibility: The Misinformation Effect
27.2.2 Predicting the Past: The Hindsight Bias
27.2.3 Internal False Memory Triggers: The Case of the Consistency Bias
27.2.4 Autobiographical and Third-Party Source Misattribution: Unconscious Plagiarism and Unconscious Transference
27.2.5 Other Memory Distortion–Inducing Biases
27.3 Affectivity in False Memory Research
27.4 Conclusion
References
Chapter 28: Echoes of Early Experiences on the Learning Process: Implications in Interoceptive Development and Emotional Self-Regulation
28.1 Introduction
28.2 Interoception and Its Development During Infancy
28.3 Interoception and Emotional Learning: Emotion Recognition and Regulation
28.4 Interoception and the Relationship with Another: Empathy and Prosocial and Planned Decision-Making
28.5 Discussion and Conclusions
References
Chapter 29: The Somatic Roots of Affect: Toward a Body-Centered Education
29.1 Introduction
29.2 Affective Experience Plays a Fundamental Role in Learning
29.2.1 Introducing Affect
29.2.2 Influence of Affect on Learning at a General Level
29.2.3 Affect Shapes Perception
29.2.4 Affect Directs Attention
29.2.5 Affect Impacts Memory
29.2.6 Affect and Motivation
29.3 Affective Experience Is Rooted in the Homeostatic Self-/Co-regulation of Living Bodies
29.3.1 Interoception and Body Homeostasis
29.3.2 Interoception and the Homeostatic Role of Affect
29.3.3 Interoceptive Phenomenology and Affective Experience
29.3.4 The Social Dimension of Interoception, Homeostatic Regulation, and Affect
29.4 Conclusions
References
Part IV: Affectivity and Learning in the Therapeutic and Clinical Context
Chapter 30: Historical Foundations of Affectivity and Learning Research: C.G. Jung’s Word-Association Experiments
30.1 Jung Before 1904
30.2 Word-Association at the Burghölzli: Discovery of the Complex
30.3 Affectivity and Learning: Perseveration, Reaction Time, and Memory
30.4 The Rise of Complex Psychology
References
Chapter 31: Impact of Transference on the Training of TFP Therapist: A Proposal on the Affective Echo as a Foundation of Learning
31.1 Transference and Psychotherapy Supervisory Processes
31.1.1 Transference
31.1.2 Supervision in Psychotherapy
31.1.3 Where Transference and Supervision Meet: Parallel Processes
31.2 Transference-Focused Psychotherapy
31.3 First Research Design Proposal for Supervisions in TFP
31.4 Preliminary Results and Some Insights
31.5 On Clinical Work in the Encounter with the Patient
31.6 Essential Elements of the TFP: Macro and Micro Processes
31.7 The Learning of the Technique: Supervisions in TFP
31.8 Apprehensions About Parallel Process-Based Learning
31.9 Proposal of Minimum Necessary Characteristics for the Development of a TFP Therapist
31.10 Vignette of a Supervision in TFP
31.11 Conclusions
References
Chapter 32: Affective Processes in the Supervisor-Supervisee Relationship as Enhancers of the Therapist Training: Reflections from a Scoping Review of the Psychoanalytic Approach
32.1 A Personal Experience of Our Learning in Psychoanalysis
32.2 Research on Training in Psychotherapy
32.3 Psychoanalytic Orientation Training
32.4 Fundamentals for a Proposal About the Intangibles in TFP Psychotherapists
32.4.1 Search Method
32.5 Results
32.6 From Parallel Process to Transference-Focused Psychotherapy
32.7 Supervision Vignette
32.8 Final Considerations
References
Chapter 33: Meaningful Social Interactions as a Foundation for Affection and Learning for Autistic Individuals
33.1 Introduction
33.2 Autistic Sociality
33.3 Affectivity in the Context of Autism
33.4 Learning Being Autistic
33.5 Conclusion Remarks
References
Part V: Affectivity and Learning in Everyday Life
Chapter 34: Affectivity and Learning at the End of Life: Expressive Art Therapy in Palliative Patients
34.1 Introduction
34.2 Method
34.3 Results
34.3.1 Descriptive Analysis
34.3.2 Comprehensive Analysis
34.4 Discussion
34.5 Conclusion
References
Chapter 35: Impact of Affectivity and Learning in the Construction of Occupational Identity Throughout the Course of Life and Its Influence on Old Age
35.1 Introduction
35.2 Childhood: Exploration of Occupational Identity Based on Significant Learning
35.3 Adolescence: Consolidation of the Foundations of Occupational Identity
35.4 Adulthood: Stage of Achievement of Occupational Identity
35.5 Old Age
35.6 Discussion
References
Chapter 36: Affective Bonding and Organizational Learning
36.1 Introduction
36.2 Group Linkages in Organizational Learning Processes
36.3 Exploration Devices and Results
36.4 Conclusion
References
Chapter 37: Learning Affects, Gender Roles, and the Case of Care Work
37.1 Introduction
37.2 Privatization of Affects: A Critique
37.3 Gender Socialization and Affects
37.4 Gendered Affects
37.5 Care Work, Gender, and Affect
37.6 Concluding Remarks
References
Chapter 38: Acculturation Learning Process: Affective Quality in Immigrant Women
38.1 Introduction
38.2 Objective
38.3 Methodology
38.3.1 Design
38.3.2 Participants
38.3.3 Sociodemographic Characteristics of the Participants
38.3.4 Measurements
38.3.5 Procedure
38.3.6 Data Analysis
38.3.7 Ethical Considerations
38.4 Results
38.4.1 Resilience in Immigrant Women
38.4.1.1 Subjective Well-Being
38.4.1.2 Social Support
38.4.1.3 Coping Strategies
38.4.1.4 Protective Factors
38.4.2 Increased Disappointment Over Time
38.4.2.1 Subjective Well-Being
38.4.2.2 Social Support
38.4.2.3 Coping Strategies
38.4.2.4 Protective Factors
38.5 Discussion and Conclusion
38.5.1 Limitations
38.5.2 Future Research Directions
References
Chapter 39: Humorous Actions and Coexistence
39.1 Introduction
39.2 Bergson’s Theoretical Proposal and Semiotic-Cultural Constructivism as Disquieting Experiences
39.3 Intersubjective Matrix for the Understanding of Humour in SCC
39.4 Alterity and Its Possibilities to Approach Humour
39.5 Humorous Actions: An Experience with Games with Rules
39.6 Discussion
References
Part VI: Final Remarks
Chapter 40: Affectivity and Learning: Why We Need an Interdisciplinary, a Multilevel, and a First-Third-Person Approach?
References
Index
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Pablo Fossa Cristian Cortés-Rivera Editors
Affectivity and Learning Bridging the Gap Between Neurosciences, Cultural and Cognitive Psychology
Affectivity and Learning
Pablo Fossa • Cristian Cortés-Rivera Editors
Affectivity and Learning Bridging the Gap Between Neurosciences, Cultural and Cognitive Psychology
Editors Pablo Fossa Faculty of Psychology Universidad del Desarrollo Las Condes, Santiago de Chile, Chile
Cristian Cortés-Rivera Faculty of Health Sciences Universidad Católica del Maule Talca, Región del Maule, Chile
ISBN 978-3-031-31708-8 ISBN 978-3-031-31709-5 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31709-5 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Contents
1
Why Affectivity in Learning? Toward an Affectively Guided Learning�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 1 Pablo Fossa and Cristian Cortés-Rivera
Part I Affectivity in Learning Process 2
Strengths of Character in Well-Being and University Learning: A View from Educational Counseling���������������������������������������������������� 11 Rubia Cobo-Rendón and Diego García-Álvarez
3
Adults’ Professional Education: Experiences and Expectations of Online Chilean Students �������������������������������������������������������������������� 53 Rodrigo Flores Guerrero and Carola Naranjo Inostroza
4
Affective Movement: An Educative and Intuitive Adventure as a Catalyst for Development���������������������������������������������������������������� 71 Dany Boulanger
5
Dialogical Co-Zone of Proximal Development and Affectivity: Individually and Collectively Overcoming Intellectual Limits������������ 87 Dany Boulanger
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Effects of Early Childhood Education on Academic Performance and Social-Emotional Development During Adolescence�������������������� 101 Alejandra Manosalva González and Alejandra Cortázar Valdés
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The Writer’s Affectivity When Writing to Learn �������������������������������� 129 Amparo Galdames-Fermandois
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Affectivity from the Dialogical Perspective of Cultural Psychology: Educational Implications������������������������������������������������������������������������ 151 Luciana Dantas de Paula, Isabella Alves Alencar de Araujo, Maria Cláudia Lopes de Oliveira, and Angela Uchoa Branco
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Learning in Nature About Nature: Two Types of Affective Orientation������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 175 Pirkko Raudaskoski
10 Learning and Affectivity: Pedagogical and Cultural Dimensions in the Inclusion of Diversity in University Education�������������������������� 193 Cristóbal Sepulveda and Rodrigo Vera 11 U sefulness of the Perezhivanie Construct in Affectivity and Learning: A Systematic Review������������������������������������������������������ 207 Luis Alberto Taype-Huarca, Allison Liseth Zavalaga-del Carpio, and Svieta Valia Fernández-González 12 Processes of Social Subjectivity and Pedagogical Action: Developments to Understanding Learning Difficulties in the School Environment���������������������������������������������������������������������� 221 Marília dos Santos Bezerra, Valéria Deusdará Mori, and Luciana de Oliveira Campolina 13 The Unity of Affectivity and Learning: Characteristics in Vocalized Responses of Adolescents and Adults�������������������������������� 231 Adam Scott LeRoy 14 Culturally-Based Interpretations of Motivation and Learning Strategies Between the United States and South Korea�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 247 Hyun Sung Jang, Yan Dai, and Jill Salisbury-Glennon 15 Educate Emotions: Notes for a Critical Examination of Emotional Education Proposals �������������������������������������������������������� 267 Alejandro Álvarez Espinoza 16 Trust in Schools in Chile�������������������������������������������������������������������������� 287 Magdalena Fernández Hermosilla, Mauricio Bravo Rojas, and Isaac Fierro 17 Socioemotional Styles: When Affectivity Meets Learning ������������������ 305 Jaime R. Silva and Franco Medina Part II Affectivity in Teachers’ Learning 18 A Sociocultural Perspective on the Relationship Between Educators’ Emotional Experiences and Professional Learning������������������������������ 335 Ngo Cong-Lem, Minh Hue Nguyen, and Marianne Turner 19 Teachers’ Emotions: Their Origin and Influence on the Teaching-Learning Process���������������������������������������������������������� 351 Francisca Romo-Escudero, Paulina Guzmán, and Javiera Romo
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20 H ow Are Socioemotional Competencies Taught in Initial Teacher Education? Affectivity, Learning, and Didactics of Emotions in the University Classroom���������������������� 377 Enrique Sologuren, Gilda Bilbao, Bárbara Echard, Francesca Grez, Marcia Valenzuela, María Paz Beltrán, and Dangelo Luna 21 Affectivity in Science Education: Lived Perceptions���������������������������� 395 Benjamin Ett, Maria Impedovo, and Aspasia Dania 22 Learning the Teaching Profession in the Practicum: The Role of the Other, Modalities of Appropriation, and Professional Knowledge ������������������������������������������������������������������ 411 César Maldonado Díaz, Javier Núñez-Moscoso, Catalina Núñez Díaz, and Pablo Rupin Gutiérrez 23 Teaching Excellence, Affectivity and Learning ������������������������������������ 441 Amparo Jiménez Vivas and Lidia Scifo 24 LGBTIQ+ Inclusive Education: The Interplay of Emotions and Cognition in Graduate Teachers’ Narratives of Becoming���������� 455 Megan Adams, Richard Pringle, Blake Cutler, and Louise Jenkins Part III Affectivity and Learning from Cognitive Neuroscience’s Perspectives 25 Neuroscience of Learning and Emotional Processing�������������������������� 473 Claudia Pizarro and Mónica Toro 26 Emotional Salience and Learning���������������������������������������������������������� 495 Andrés Muñoz-Najar Pacheco, Manuel Montemurro Garcia, Sofía Gana Gajardo, and Francisco Ceric Garrido 27 Memory Distortions: An Interdisciplinary Framework for Cognitive-Affective Bias�������������������������������������������������������������������� 517 Nicolás González Raposo 28 Echoes of Early Experiences on the Learning Process: Implications in Interoceptive Development and Emotional Self-Regulation�������������������������������������������������������������� 539 María del Carmen Tejada, Mauricio Espinoza, and Francisco Ceric 29 The Somatic Roots of Affect: Toward a Body-Centered Education�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 555 Ignacio Cea
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Part IV Affectivity and Learning in the Therapeutic and Clinical Context 30 Historical Foundations of Affectivity and Learning Research: C.G. Jung’s Word-Association Experiments ���������������������������������������� 587 Benjamin J. Swogger and James J. Dillon 31 Impact of Transference on the Training of TFP Therapist: A Proposal on the Affective Echo as a Foundation of Learning���������� 605 Verónica Steiner, Daniela Saralegui, and Luis Valenciano 32 Affective Processes in the Supervisor-Supervisee Relationship as Enhancers of the Therapist Training: Reflections from a Scoping Review of the Psychoanalytic Approach �������������������� 627 Daniela Saralegui, Verónica Steiner, and Luis Valenciano 33 Meaningful Social Interactions as a Foundation for Affection and Learning for Autistic Individuals������������������������������ 645 Daniela Wachholtz, Veronica Vidal, Oswin Latimer, and Mariluz Jiménez Part V Affectivity and Learning in Everyday Life 34 Affectivity and Learning at the End of Life: Expressive Art Therapy in Palliative Patients���������������������������������������������������������� 665 María Isabel Sanhueza and Pablo Fossa 35 Impact of Affectivity and Learning in the Construction of Occupational Identity Throughout the Course of Life and Its Influence on Old Age������������������������������������������������������������������ 685 Antonia Echeverría, Paola Manghi, María José Acevedo, Diana León, Bernardo Barra, Claudia Prieto, and Miguel Ángel Acosta 36 Affective Bonding and Organizational Learning���������������������������������� 707 Pablo Antonio Cea González 37 Learning Affects, Gender Roles, and the Case of Care Work�������������� 723 Carolina Aspillaga, M. Isidora Bilbao-Nieva, Natassja De Mattos-Rojas, and Javiera Menchaca-Pardow 38 Acculturation Learning Process: Affective Quality in Immigrant Women������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 741 Sabine Delhey, Ramón Florenzano, Pablo Fossa, Mauricio Apablaza, Loreto Ditzel, and Marcela Aravena 39 Humorous Actions and Coexistence ������������������������������������������������������ 761 Monica Reyes Rojas, Hernan Sanchez Rios, and Livia Mathias Simão
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Part VI Final Remarks 40 Affectivity and Learning: Why We Need an Interdisciplinary, a Multilevel, and a First-Third-Person Approach?������������������������������ 779 Pablo Fossa and Cristian Cortés-Rivera Index������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 785
About the Editors
Pablo Fossa is Director of the Cognition & Culture Laboratory (C&C) of Instituto de Bienestar Socioemocional (IBEM) at the Faculty of Psychology, Universidad del Desarrollo, Chile. He received a PhD degree in Psychology from the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. His doctoral thesis dealt with the expressive dimension of inner language in human experience. He did a postdoctoral fellowship financed by the National Commission for Scientific and Technological Research (CONICYT) of Chile, with a research project on thought trajectories from a microgenetic orientation. His lines of research are related to Cognition, Cultural Psychology, and Phenomenology. He is an active member of the Society for Historical Cultural Activity Research (ISCAR), the International Society for Dialogical Self (ISDS), and the International Society for Theoretical Psychology (ISTP). He is the editor of the book Latin American Advances in Subjectivity and Development: Through Vygotsky Route (Springer, 2021), New Perspectives on Inner Speech (Springer, 2022), and the book Inner Speech, Culture & Education (Springer, 2022). Currently, he is a PhD candidate in Philosophy at the University of Navarra, Spain. Cristian Cortés-Rivera is a professor and researcher at The Neuropsychology and Cognitive Neurosciences Research Center (CINPSI Neurocog) at the Faculty of Health Sciences, Universidad Católica del Maule, Chile. He received a PhD in Developmental Sciences and Psychopathology from the Universidad del Desarrollo, Chile. His doctoral thesis addressed the role of emotion in executive functioning, at behavioral and neurophysiological levels. His lines of research address the relationship between Cognition, Affectivity, and Learning. He is also a member of the Cognition & Culture Laboratory (C&C) and the Affective Neurosciences Laboratory of the Instituto de Bienestar Socioemotional (IBEM) at the Faculty of Psychology, Universidad del Desarrollo, Chile.
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About the Contributors
María José Acevedo is an occupational therapist, University of Playa Ancha, Valparaiso, Chile. Master in Clinical Psychology, Adolfo Ibáñez University, Santiago, Chile. Diploma in Mental Health and Community Psychiatry, University of Chile. Diploma in Community Psychosocial Rehabilitation, Universidad Mayor. Diploma in Research Sciences and Research in Evidence-Based Medicine, Universidad de los Andes. Diploma in Human Occupation Model, Universidad de los Andes. Extraordinary associate professor of the School of Occupational Therapy, Faculty of Medicine, Universidad de los Andes, Santiago, Chile. Academic coordinator of the line of undergraduate training in mental health and psychosocial rehabilitation; research on issues related to mental health and its impact on occupational identity, from the Human Occupation Model, with professional practice in public and private health devices. Miguel Ángel Acosta is a medical specialist in Family and Community Medicine, Universidad Autónoma, Madrid, Spain. Doctor of Medicine, Universidad Complutense, Madrid, Spain. Master in Bioethics; Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Madrid, Spain; and Master of Health Management, Center for Financial Studies; Universidad a Distancia, Madrid, Spain. Working member of the Elderly Care group of the Spanish Society of Family and Community Medicine (semFYC) and coordinator of the preventive activities and health promotion program for the elderly (PAPPS-semFYC). Author of various communications, papers, and national and international articles. He focuses his research on care for the elderly, frailty, and dependency. Megan Adams is a graduate research lead (GRL) in the School of Curriculum, Teaching and Inclusive Education (CTI). Megan’s research interest has a focus on inclusion and diversity, and in particular she is working towards understanding ways to reduce education inequalities for marginalized groups. Mauricio Apablaza is director of research at the School of Government at the Universidad del Desarrollo (Chile), research associate at the University of Oxford (OPHI), and visiting scholar at LSE (III). Mauricio is also the academic director of xiii
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About the Contributors
the programme Conocimiento e Investigación en Personas Mayores (CIPEM). Previously, he worked as research officer and outreach coordinator at OPHI, at the University of Oxford. Mauricio has been regional director for civil society organizations and consultant to international businesses and agencies. He has published articles in PLOS ONE, World Development, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, the Review of Income and Wealth, among others. He teaches applied microeconomics and quantitative methods at Universidad del Desarrollo. Mauricio holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Nottingham and a postdoc at the University of Oxford. His research areas and publications focus on institutions, multidimensionality, and poverty dynamics. Marcela Aravena is a psychologist graduating in 1998 from Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and has a Master’s degree in Psychology of Adolescence from Universidad del Desarrollo, with postgraduate studies specializing in infant and adolescent clinic at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, and postgraduate studies in Psychotherapeutic training in behavioral, cognitive, and affective areas at Ikastola. She additionally holds a diploma in Health Psychology from Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, and she is an accredited therapist. Marcela is a member of the Comprehensive Wellness Program for Adolescents and the Cardiac Rehabilitation Program at Hospital Padre Hurtado and Universidad del Desarrollo. Lastly, she is a teacher and Director of Linkage with the environment at the Faculty of Psychology, Universidad del Desarrollo. Isabella Alves Alencar de Araujo is a PhD student in the Psychology of Development and Education Program at the University of Brasília, Brazil (PGPDE/ IP/UnB). Bachelor and Master in Psychology from UniCEUB. She has produced research related to the themes of gender studies, identity construction, discrimination, prejudice, and valuing diversity. Carolina Aspillaga is a psychologist (PhD), academic and therapist. Member of the research commission of La Rebelión del Cuerpo. Her research interests include mental health, gender and feminism, affections, and romantic love. She has published articles in academic journals and presented at international conferences, and is the author of the book: No existe una forma de amar. Bernardo Barra is a Physician, Universidad de Santiago, Santiago, Chile. Master in Advanced Medical Skills, Universidad de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain. Doctoral student in Medicine and Translational Research, Universidad de Barcelona, Spain. Psychiatrist, Psychiatric Institute José Horwitz Barak, Santiago, Chile. Diploma in Dialectical Cognitive Behavioral Psychotherapy, Universidad de Chile; Santiago, Chile. Assistant professor, Department of Psychiatry, School of Medicine, Universidad Andrés Bello, Santiago, Chile. Coordinator of the memory and psychogeriatrics program, Mental Health Service, in Clínica Universidad de los Andes; Santiago, Chile. Alzheimer’s and other dementia program coordinator, REDGESAM, Santiago, Chile. Editor and author of the book Psychogeriatrics: A Look into the
About the Contributors
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Future, and other chapters associated with psychogeriatrics. Vice-president of the Chilean Society of Mental Health of Chile. Member of the Spanish Society of Psychogeriatrics. Thematic lines in research: psychiatry and old age; psychogeriatrics in the general hospital. María Paz Beltrán is a Biologist and has a Master’s degree in Social Communication Education from the Universidad Católica de Chile. He also has a Master’s degree in Didactics of Experimental Sciences from Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso. She is currently a lecturer in the Teacher Training Program at the Universidad del Desarrollo in the courses of Didactics of Biology. Gilda Bilbao is a Philosophy teacher and holds a Master’s degree in Education from Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (PUC). She also has a Master’s degree in Educational Psychology from the University of Barcelona, Spain. She has developed research and interventions aimed at teacher improvement. In addition, she is a university lecturer in subjects related to Teaching and Teaching Education. She is currently director of the Teaching Training Program at Universidad del Desarrollo. M. Isidora Bilbao-Nieva is a community psychologist (PhD, MA). She has published articles in academic journals and presented at international conferences. Her expertise is in girlhood studies. Dany Boulanger is a professor in Special Education at the University of Quebec in Abitibi-Témiscamingue in Canada. His main endeavor is theorizing deep human processes – in terms of movement – at the boundaries of the individual and the environment. He proposed some conceptual avenues regarding intergenerationality, social representations, emptiness, space, irreversible time, and indeterminacy. He is currently working on affectivity. On the other side of the coin, he is doing action and intervention research – sustaining schools’ and community organizations’ efforts at developing their educational practices. He is also animating reflexivity groups to support volunteers and professionals. Angela Uchoa Branco is an Emeritus Professor at the University of Brasilia, working in the Graduate Program of Developmental and School Psychology. She supervises PhD students in the areas of the culture of peace, teachers-student interactions, cooperation, competition and individualism, media and human values, ethic-moral development, and development of the dialogical self. Among her publications are the books Cultural Psychology of Human Values (Branco & Valsiner, 2012), Alterity, Values and Socialization (Branco & Lopes de Oliveira, 2018), and Psychology as a Dialogical Science (Lopes de Oliveira, Branco & Freire, 2020). María del Carmen Tejada is a graduate in Psychology from the San Pablo Catholic University. Master of Science, with a mention in Clinical-Educational, Child, and Adolescent Psychology from the National University of San Agustín, Peru, and Master and PhD candidate in Developmental Sciences and Psychopathology
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About the Contributors
from the Universidad del Desarrollo, Chile (UDD). Her research area focuses on affective neuroscience, prosocial decision-making, and antisocial behavior, from a multilevel approach that includes behavioral and physiological aspects. She is a member of the Affective Neuroscience Laboratory (LaNA-UDD). She has participated as a reviewer of articles in the Chilean Journal of Neuropsychology. She is currently working on a thesis for the Regular Fondecyt 1212036 (ID: Francisco Ceric). Ignacio Cea is currently an ANID-Fondecyt postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Social and Cognitive Neuroscience, School of Psychology, Adolfo Ibanez University, Chile (grant 3210707). He is also a lecturer in Philosophy of Science and Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence at Alberto Hurtado University. He earned a Master’s degree (2014) and PhD in Philosophy (2019) at Alberto Hurtado University, Chile. His main areas of research are the philosophy of mind and philosophical problems in the cognitive and affective sciences, especially interdisciplinary issues about consciousness. Rubia Cobo-Rendón is director of the Master’s in educational psychology; academic and researcher at the Faculty of Psychology, Universidad del Desarrollo (Chile); psychologist and Magister Scientiarum in Clinical Psychology from the Universidad Rafael Urdaneta (Venezuela); specialist in Child and Adolescent Psychology from the Universidad Pedagogical Experimental Libertador (Venezuela); specialist in teaching in Higher Education from the Universidad Rafael Urdaneta (Venezuela). She has been a researcher at the Laboratory of Educational Research and Innovation (IDECLAB) of the University of Concepción. PhD in Psychology from the Universidad de Concepción (Chile). Her lines of research are psychometrics, research methodologies, protective factors of student well-being, motivational cognitive variables in university students, and adaptation to university life. She is a member of the Venezuelan Federation of Psychologists (FVP), the Venezuelan Society of Positive Psychology (SOVEPOS), and the Scientific Society of Psychology of Chile. Ngo Cong-Lem is a doctoral candidate at the Faculty of Education, Monash University, Australia. His research interests involve cultural psychology and teacher professional learning. He has published in international journals such as European Journal of Psychology of Education (SSCI, Springer), Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science (SSCI, Springer), Language Learning and Technology (SSCI), and The Educational and Developmental Psychologist (ESCI, Taylor & Francis). Blake Cutler is a researcher and PhD candidate at the Faculty of Education. His research focuses on how young people’s experiences of schooling could be more engaging, equitable, and inclusive. He is especially passionate about the use of research evidence in practice and addressing issues of social and educational injustice, with a particular focus on queer students and educators.
About the Contributors
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Yan Dai, M.Ed. M.A., is a doctoral student in the Educational Psychology program in the Department of Educational Foundations, Leadership, and Technology (EFLT) at Auburn University. Her research interests focus on motivation (particularly on self-efficacy and self-regulation), resilience, online learning, and crosscultural compassion research study. She also works under a critical theoretical framework, using ethnographic and auto-ethnographic methods. She serves as the Editorial Manager of The Professional Educator. Aspasia Dania is an assistant professor in Physical Education Teaching at the School of Physical Education and Sport Science of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece. Research interests are in game-based instruction, innovative pedagogies, teacher professional development, social and emotional learning, and qualitative research. Sabine Delhey is a social psychologist and researcher at Universidad del Desarrollo, graduating with the highest distinction in 2020. With three years of research experience in the Universidad de Chile and Universidad Diego Portales, her line of research is related to mental health in the imprisoned population. Additionally, she is experienced in interculturality, having worked with immigrants in ACNUR (the UN Refugee Agency), Integrated Migrant Assistance Center for women (IMAC, Scalabrini Foundation), and with indigenous peoples in the south of Chile through her personal project of ecological preservation and interdisciplinary research in the intersection of art and science, the Observatory. Sabine also works in the clinical field with children and adults using a humanistic approach, and is a certified mindfulness and meditation instructor. Catalina Núñez Díaz is a psychologist (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso). Master’s in Education (University of Nottingham), and Master’s in Applications of Dynamic Psychology (Universidad de Barcelona). She has worked as a research assistant and been published as a co-author on various topics in the area of educational sciences, such as initial teacher training, best practices in the classroom, and social and emotional development and wellbeing in educational contexts. In addition, she has been a lecturer and a lecture assistant in various Chilean universities. César Maldonado Díaz has a Doctorate in Education from Universidad Alberto Hurtado and Universidad Diego Portales. Master’s in Education, with specialization in Curriculum and Educational Community (Universidad de Chile), and professor of History, Geography, and Social Sciences (PUCV). Academic and researcher at the Research Center for Socio-Educational Transformation (CITSE) at Universidad Católica Silva Henríquez. He has specialized in the following lines of research: the study of co-teaching practices among teachers with diverse specialties in Chilean classrooms. He is also interested in the study of teacher collaboration, the role of pedagogical knowledge in the development of initial training, and how other actors
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About the Contributors
are involved in teacher training. He does this from a Bernsteinian sociological approach to the study of pedagogical discourse put into action. He is also a member of the Network of Researchers in Chilean Education (RIECH). James J. Dillon is professor of Psychology at the University of West Georgia where his research interests include education, human growth, parenting, spiritual discernment, and decision-making. Having received his PhD in Developmental Psychology from Clark University, he is also a certified public elementary school teacher in the state of Georgia with an educational background in philosophy, cognitive development, education, decision-making, and guidance counseling. He has written several books including Partnerships in Research, Clinical, and Educational Settings (Praeger Press, 2000); Teaching Psychology and the Socratic Method (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2016); Inside Today’s Elementary Schools (PalgraveMacmillan, 2019); and the forthcoming Joy of Duty: Ethical Obligation and Human Happiness (Ethics International), as well as many professional research articles. Loreto Ditzel is a psychologist at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, adjunct professor and researcher at the Faculty of Psychology of the Universidad del Desarrollo, and academic in the Master of Social Psychology of the Adolfo Ibañez University in Chile. PhD in Psychology, Health and Quality of Life from the University of Girona, Spain and Master in Management and Public Policies from the Adolfo Ibañez University in Chile. Specialized in the design and execution of public policies for more than two decades on issues of gender and childhood, and researcher in the line of subjective well-being and quality of life in childhood and adolescence. Bárbara Echard is a certified English language teacher from Universidad Católica Silva Henriquez. She holds an MEd in Second Language Education from the University of Toronto, Canada, and is currently studying to obtain a Master’s degree in Education Research from Universidad de Chile. She is currently a lecturer in EFL Didactics at the Teacher Training Program at Universidad del Desarrollo. Antonia Echeverría is an Occupational Therapist, University of Chile; Santiago, Chile. Master in Health Administration and Management, Universidad de los Andes, Santiago, Chile. Diploma in Human Occupation Model, Universidad de los Andes; Santiago, Chile, and in Ontologic Coach Generic Competences, Newfield Consulting and Universidad del Desarrollo, Santiago, Chile. Extraordinary assistant professor of the School of Occupational Therapy, Faculty of Medicine, Universidad de los Andes; Santiago, Chile. Academic coordinator of the occupational training and research line and member of the Centro Integral para el Envejecimiento Feliz (CIEF). Director of the FONIS SA20I0097 project, funded by the National Research and Development Agency; Santiago, Chile. Thematic lines in research: aging and old age, functional capacity, early detection of dependency, ADL. Member of the Millennium Institute for Care Research, (MICARE), Santiago, Chile.
About the Contributors
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Alejandro Álvarez Espinoza is a psychologist from Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaiso. Master’s degree in Psychology with mention in Educational Psychology (P. Universidad Católica de Chile) and doctoral student in Communication (Universidad de La Frontera and Universidad Austral de Chile). He is currently an academic at the Institute of Psychology of the Universidad Austral de Chile, Puerto Montt headquarters. His lines of work are cultural history theory, education in rural contexts, and emotional discourses in culture and their relationship with identity processes in education. Mauricio Espinoza is a graduate in Psychology, Master’s in Neuroscience, and PhD student in Developmental Sciences and Psychopathology at Universidad del Desarrollo, Chile (UDD). He has worked as a clinical psychologist in the context of programs for the protection of rights in childhood and adolescence, outpatient intervention in adolescents with problematic drug use, and community mental health and psychiatry center. He has been awarded the National Doctoral Scholarship 2020–2024 from the National Agency for Research and Development (ANID). He is a member of the Stress and Emotion Laboratory (SEL-UDD). He has participated as a reviewer of scientific articles in the Frontiers magazine and the Chilean Journal of Neuropsychology. He is currently a thesis student for Regular Fondecyt 1201513 (ID: Rodrigo Cárcamo) and participates in Regular Fondecyt 1201576 (IR: Carola Pérez Ewert). Benjamin Ett is a researcher in the ADEF Laboratory at Aix-Marseille University, France, and teaches in the Department of Physics. He obtained his PhD in classical black hole theoretical physics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. An interest in active pedagogy and epistemology when applied to the teaching of physics led him to transition research interests into novel investigations of the theory of teaching in a physical sciences context. Svieta Valia Fernández-González is a psychologist, Master in Education from the National University of San Agustín (Arequipa, Peru), Psychopedagogical Coordinator of the High Performance College of Tacna- Ministry of Education. Researcher associated with the Historical-Cultural Psychological Research Center (CIPS-HC). Editorial Committee of the journal Epistemology, Psychology and Social Sciences. His research projects are oriented towards the construction of subjectivity in community and educational spaces. Isaac Fierro holds a Master’s in Educational Research from the Autonomous University of Barcelona. Sociologist, Universidad Central de Chile. As a researcher, he specializes in organizational development and improvement of school and higher education institutions, as well as in the analysis of related public policies. Ramón Florenzano MD, MPH, has a degree of Médico Cirujano from the University of Chile (1968), where he is a full professor of Psychiatry (1992). He has a degree of Master of Public Health from the University of North Carolina at Chapel
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Hill (1975), and is a Diplomate of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology (1976). He has been a visiting professor at the Universities of Stanford, Georgetown, and the Mayo Clinic School of Medicine (2006). He is presently the vice-president of the Chilean Psychoanalytical Association and is a full member of the International Psychoanalytic Association (1998). He is a full professor of Psychiatry at the Universidad de los Andes (Chile) and clinical professor at the Department of Psychology at Universidad del Desarrollo (2010). He is an honorary member of the Academia Chilena de Medicina, and has been honored as Maestro de la Psiquiatría Chilena in 2013. His publications are available on request. Sofía Gana Gajardo is a psychologist at Universidad del Desarrollo, has a Master’s degree in Pediatric Neuropsychology from University of the Andes, and is a PhD student in the Developmental Science and Psychopathology program at Universidad del Desarrollo. Her research interests lie in mind wandering and cognitive strategies in children with ADHD. Currently she is working in the Cognitive Science Laboratory (CogSci Lab) and as undergraduate professor in the Faculty of Psychology in Universidad del Desarrollo, in Santiago, Chile. Amparo Galdames-Fermandois is a Spanish and communication teacher, with a degree in Hispanic Language and Literature and a Master in Applied Linguistics from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso. Currently, she is part of the Doctoral Program in Psychology at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. Her interest is oriented to the study of affectivity, emotions, and interaction in diverse processes related to learning, such as writing and the process of interpretation. Manuel Montemurro Garcia is a psychologist at Rafael Urdaneta University, specialist in Hospital and Health Psychology from University of Zulia, Master’s in Pediatric Neuropsychology from University of the Andes, and PhD candidate in the Developmental Science and Psychopathology program in Universidad del Desarrollo. His research interest is to understand the different factors and contexts which affect the trajectories of cognitive abilities throughout the life cycle. Likewise, he is interested in the design of evidence-based intervention protocols for these skills. He currently works as an assistant in Laboratorio de Neurociencia Afectiva (LaNA) of the Universidad del Desarrollo in Chile and as undergraduate and postgraduate professor in the Faculty of Psychology in Universidad del Desarrollo and the Universidad de los Andes, in Santiago, Chile. Diego García-Álvarez is a Doctor in Educational Sciences. He holds a degree in Education with a mention in Educational Sciences and Technologies, Universidad del Zulia (Venezuela); degree in Psychology from Universidad Rafael Urdaneta (Venezuela) and Universidad de la República (Uruguay); Masters in educational psychology from Universidad Rafael Urdaneta (Venezuela). Academic and researcher in Positive Psychology in Venezuela and Uruguay. Scientific researcher accredited by SNI ANII (Uruguay) and ONCTI (Venezuela). Member of the Venezuelan Society of Positive Psychology (SOVEPPOS), the Venezuelan
About the Contributors
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Federation of Psychologists (FVP), IPPA International Positive Psychology Association. His lines of research are: a) character, emotional, and well-being education, and b) psychological well-being in educational/organizational contexts. Author and co-author of several scientific publications and book chapters on wellbeing in educational centers. Francisco Ceric Garrido is a biologist and Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology from Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. He is currently coordinator of Psychology Research, president of the Institutional Ethics Committee, Director of Laboratorio de Neurociencia Afectiva (LaNA), and undergraduate and postgraduate professor in the Faculty of Psychology all at Universidad del Desarrollo. His area of research has focused on the neurobiological bases of cognitive processes. Specifically, his interest focuses on studying how emotions regulate behavior from the perspective of neuroscience. Alejandra Manosalva González has a Master’s in Educational Psychology from the University of Santiago of Chile. She is a psychologist from the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, with a Diploma in Quantitative Methods of Psychosocial Research from the University of Chile and is certified in Perinatal Mental Health by the European Institute of Perinatal Mental Health in Spain. She has worked as a professional in different educational institutions (such as foundations, universities, and schools), linked to the development of various projects in the design, implementation, and evaluation stages. She was in charge of the Educational Assessment Area at national level at Integra Foundation and currently works at the Faculty of Psychology of the University of Desarrollo as Curriculum Coordinator, in addition to working as a private clinical psychologist in child and adolescent area, as well as perinatal area, and a member of the Chilean Network of Perinatal Mental Health. Pablo Antonio Cea González is a psychologist at the University of Chile; doctor in Psychology. He has worked for more than 25 years in consulting and people management roles in organizations. He has taught postgraduate and undergraduate courses at different universities and is currently a research professor at the Universidad del Desarrollo. Francesca Grez is a History, Geography, and Social Sciences teacher from Universidad de Santiago de Chile and has a Master’s degree in History from the Universidad de Chile. In recent years, she has worked as a teacher at schools and university, concentrating mainly on the area of Teaching History and Teacher Education. Rodrigo Flores Guerrero is a psychologist. Master and PhD in Social Psychology. Expert in qualitative methodology. UDD Professor. He is the author of publications, studies, and research on research methodology and evaluation of public policies and social programs based on scientific evidence. He has been a researcher and evaluator of FONDECYT projects. He is currently part of the panel of evaluators of the FONDEF Program of ANID.
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Pablo Rupin Gutiérrez is a sociologist (Universidad Católica de Chile). Master’s in Management and Public Policy (Universidad de Chile) and Doctor in Educational Sciences (Universidad Sorbonne Paris Nord – ex Paris 13). Assistant professor at Universidad O’Higgins, academic at the Institute of Educational Sciences, and professor at the School of Education at the same university. He has developed research on the relationship between families and educational institutions, play and education, and early childhood, including the training of early childhood educators. He is an associate researcher at the Center for Advanced Research in Education, Universidad de Chile. Paulina Guzmán is a teacher of General Education with a Master’s degree in Curricular Innovation and Evaluation. She is currently a PhD student in Developmental Sciences and Psychopathology at Universidad del Desarrollo. Her research focus is on the psychological variables that influence teacher-student interactions in the classroom. She is currently developing two longitudinal studies with teachers and students on well-being, school engagement, and school climate. Magdalena Fernández Hermosilla holds a PhD in Educational Leadership and Policy from the University of Toronto, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE). Master of Education in Leadership Policy & Politics, Columbia UniversityTeachers College. Educational psychologist, Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. Specialization in research with mixed methodologies, systematic literature review, and international comparative studies. Maria Impedovo holds a PhD in Educational technology and is an Associate Professor at ADEF Educational Laboratory, Aix-Marseille University, France. Since 2014, she has taught Psychology of Education and Teacher Training at the School of Education. Her main research interests are collaborative learning, teacher agency, and teacher professional development. Carola Naranjo Inostroza is a psychologist. Master in Gender Equality, International Master in prevention, attention and reparation in Gender Violence. UDD Professor. She is an expert in equality pol s. She has combined her academic work with applied professional work. She has worked across the board supporting the State in its executive and legislative powers. Her contributions and experiences to the Senate and Ministries such as Women, Social Development, Education, Agriculture, Economy, Mining, National Assets, Justice, among others, stand out. Hyun Sung Jang is a doctoral candidate in Educational Psychology at Auburn University. His research focuses on the impacts of cultural and environmental factors affecting students’ motivation, specifically achievement goal theory, selfefficacy, and self-regulation. He is passionate about promoting culturally responsive teaching and individualized learning. He currently teaches undergraduate courses about child/adolescent development for preservice teachers.
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Louise Jenkins is an associate professor with a strong teacher practitioner focus and emphasis on teacher-led research, which underpins all of her work. She uses Action Research and Experiential Learning to drive flexible and contemporary teaching practice, including the combination of a Blended Learning and Experiential Learning approach in the music method classroom. Mariluz Jimenez is a clinical psychologist with training in neurodevelopment and psychopathology and a Master’s degree in Neuropsychological Rehabilitation. She has worked in the clinical field, mainly related to the autism spectrum, for 15 years. She promotes and advises the autism bill in Chile by participating in the interregional workgroup on the autism law. An active member of "Austimo Norte," she directs a collective of parents of people on the spectrum. In addition, she advises updating public policies related to Neurodivergences concerning action protocols of Public Order and security institutions. Trainer in the educational and clinical field on neurodivergence and special educational needs. Founder of the EA (autism spectrum) Femenino Chile Foundation, from where she coordinates work to support the development of self-determination and self-management in adolescents and women on the autism spectrum, promoting the empowerment of their rights and quality of life. Together with Daniela and Verónica, Mariluz is also a member of COMMAUTIS, a group of professionals, scholars, and organizations creating changes in the community and advocating for autistic individuals. Oswin Latimer is an autistic, choctaw, trans, queer activist, and educator with a long history of working against supremacism in disability justice work. Oswin has extensive experience doing policy work in education, healthcare, and employment. Oswin also acts as an autistic consultant and provides anti-ableist education and support for dismantling oppressive practices that particularly harm 2SLGBTQIA+ and BIPoC folx. Oswin has participated in many presentations, panels, documentaries, and podcasts over the last decade. Diana León is a clinical psychologist, Universidad Gabriela Mistral, Santiago, Chile. Doctor in Clinical and Health Psychology, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain. Advanced Studies Diploma, Autonomous Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain. Diploma in dementia: multidimensional approach and prevention of mistreatment of the elderly, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile. Member of the Geriatrics and Gerontology Society of Santiago, Chile. Brief Strategic Therapy Specialist of the Training Center in Psychotherapy and Coaching (MIP). Technical manager at Fundación Amanoz and clinical psychologist at REDGESAM. Research on emotions, loneliness, and older people. Adam Scott LeRoy is an assistant professor of Special Education at Saginaw Valley State University (SVSU) in University Center, Michigan, United States. His primary research interests focus on the use of early intervention for young children identified as having disabilities and epistemology in cultural-historical theory, especially structural understandings of human development. He has published articles in
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Human Arenas, the Integrative Journal of Psychological and Behavioral Sciences, and Mind, Body and Education and a book chapter on characteristics of inner speech. Prior to joining SVSU, he worked as a special education teacher, teacher consultant, and special education coordinator. He lives with his amazing wife and two children in Southeast Michigan. Dangelo Luna is a lecturer and researcher at the Teacher Training Program of Universidad del Desarrollo. He graduated as a History, Geography, and Social Sciences teacher and later obtained a Master’s degree in Education, majoring in Learning Assessment. He has 10 years of professional experience, including teaching and learning assessment consulting for secondary and higher education teachers. Paola Manghi is an occupational therapist at Universidad Mayor, Santiago, Chile. Master in Clinical Psychology, Adolfo Ibáñez University; Santiago; Diploma in Social and Educational Psychogerontology, Universidad Católica; Diploma in Neuropsychology and Psychiatry, introduction and evaluation, Universidad Católica; research in Evidence-Based Medicine, Universidad de los Andes; diploma in Human Occupation Model, Universidad de los Andes. Extraordinary assistant professor of the School of Occupational Therapy, Faculty of Medicine, Universidad de los Andes, Santiago, Chile. Academic coordinator of the line of undergraduate training in the elderly; research on the impact of roles in participation environments in the elderly in the context of ELEAM; contribution of post-rationalism to the concept of the body lived from the Model of Human Occupation. Claudia works as a clinical therapist at Universidad de los Andes. Natassja De Mattos-Rojas is a political scientist, Master in social communication, and Master in Latin American studies mention in cultural analysis; teacher, coordinator of research in art, culture, and creative economy and in charge of accreditation at IP Arcos; member of the research commission of La Rebelión del Cuerpo. Her research interests include Chilean politics, artistic, education and feminist pedagogies. Franco Medina is a PhD candidate in Developmental Science and Psychopathology at the Universidad del Desarrollo. His work focuses on the neuroscience of emotion regulation, parenting, and stress from an attachment-informed perspective. Currently, he is developing a research program in the psychoneuroendocrinology of stress and emotions which seeks to elucidate the interaction between cortisol and oxytocin in the modulation of the emotional basis of parenting sensitivity. Javiera Menchaca-Pardow is a sociologist. Co-founder and director of Studies of the Centro Interdisciplinario de las Mujeres (CIDEM), member of the research commission of La Rebelión del Cuerpo. She has presented in national and international conferences. Her research interests include mental health, feminist epistemologies, and feminist alliances.
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Valéria Deusdará Mori has a PhD in Psychology from the Universidad San Carlos de Guatemala. Master’s in Psychology from the University of Brasília. Currently a professor of the Psychology course of CEUB for the graduate and master’s degree. Her research interests are focused on psychology from the cultural historical approach of subjectivity, in the fields of subjectivity, psychotherapy, health, and development. Research group leader: health, education, and subjectivity in psychology training. Minh Hue Nguyen is a senior lecturer in TESOL Education at Monash University. She has been involved in TESOL, TESOL teacher education, curriculum development, and research in Asian and Australian institutions for about 20 years. She has published in the areas of second language teachers’ professional learning focusing on identity, emotion, agency, and collaboration with content area teachers. Her research has been recognized through a number of prizes and awards. Javier Núñez-Moscoso is a State professor of Philosophy (Universidad de Santiago de Chile). Master’s in Education and Training Sciences, Master’s in Human and Social Sciences (Université de Toulouse II), and Doctor in Education (Université de Toulouse II and Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile). Academic and professor at the Bonheurs Laboratory (Paris Cergy Université) and the Institute of Education Sciences (Universidad de O’Higgins). His lines of research are related to the learning of the teaching profession, particularly the role of experience in the appropriation of professional knowledge and the study of the cultural background of teacher training. He has published nearly 30 papers and made presentations at numerous international conferences in countries such as Canada, Chile, Spain, Mexico, France, and Switzerland. Luciana de Oliveira Campolina has a PhD in Education from the University of Brasília, Brazil (UnB) with a doctorate period at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA). She possesses a Master’s degree and a degree in Psychology from UnB. Coordinator of the Psychology course at the University Center of Brasília (CEUB). Works as a professor of the undergraduate and Master’s courses in Psychology at the same university. Research topics are subjectivity in the cultural- historical perspective, teaching and learning process, and educational innovation. Maria Cláudia Lopes de Oliveira is a full professor and senior research fellow at the University of Brasilia, working in the Program of Developmental and School Psychology. She supervises PhD students in the areas of developmental transitions in the life course, and youth developmental and educational dynamics within different institutions and facilities. She is also interested in critical, decolonial, and other counter-hegemonic psychological approaches. Her most recent international handbooks are: Psychology as a Dialogical Science (Lopes de Oliveira, Branco & Freire, 2020), Perspectivas interdisciplinares (Zamora & Lopes de Oliveira, 2017), and Processos de Desenvolvimento humano: cultura e educação (Lopes de Oliveira, Chagas Ferreira, Mieto & Beraldo, 2016).
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Andrés Muñoz-Najar Pacheco is a psychologist at Universidad Católica de Santa María, Arequipa, Peru; has a Master’s degree in Clinical-Educational Psychology from Universidad Nacional San Agustín, Arequipa, Peru, and advanced certificate in Cognitive and Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy from the Albert Ellis Institute, New York. Currently he is MSc and PhD candidate at Developmental Sciences and Psychopathology program in Universidad del Desarrollo, Chile. His research interests lie in experimental psychology, quantitative methods, and cognitive and affective neuroscience, specifically the interaction between cognition and emotion. He currently works as an assistant in Laboratorio de Neurociencia Afectiva (LaNA) and as undergraduate professor in the Faculty of Psychology in Universidad del Desarrollo, in Santiago, Chile. Luciana Dantas de Paula is a PhD student in the Psychology of Development and Education Program at the University of Brasília, Brazil. Bachelor’s in Psychology from UniCEUB and Master of the same program (PGPDE/IP/UnB). She has researched topics such as gender, diversity, education, values, and prejudice, supervised by Dr. Angela Uchoa Branco. She is an editorial assistant of Possibility Studies and Society, Sage Journals, and a visiting researcher at Dublin City University, Ireland. Claudia Pizarro is a doctoral candidate in Developmental Sciences and Psychopathology at the Universidad Del Desarrollo where her research interests include Health Psychology and Affective Neuroscience covering interoceptive, emotional, and attentional processes. Currently, the ongoing research aims to characterize at physiological and behavioral level the relationship between interoceptive attention and emotional recognition. Prior to this, she worked as a professor of Parentally and Development subjects at Universidad de Chile and a child and adolescent therapist. She holds a BS in Psychology from Universidad de Chile and an MS in Developmental Sciences and Psychopathology from Universidad del Desarrollo. Claudia Prieto is an occupational therapist, University of Chile; Master in Child Motricity, Universidad Mayor; Diploma in Human Occupation Model; Research in Evidence-Based Medicine, Pediatric Neuropsychology and University Teaching, Universidad de los Andes. Sensory Integration Training, Chilean Sensory Integration Corporation. Extraordinary associate professor of the School of Occupational Therapy, Faculty of Medicine, Universidad de los Andes, Chile. Academic coordinator of the line of undergraduate training in childhood and coordinator of the CAD Teaching Assistance Center, for fourth and fifth year students of professional training in Occupational Therapy, Universidad de los Andes. Claudia does research on issues related to the preschool and school stage, school inclusion of boys and girls with special educational needs, with vast experience in child care in private and public educational systems and private practice.
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Richard Pringle is an associate dean of Graduate Research in the Faculty of Education. The context of Richard’s research focuses on sport, education, and health and with concerns about gender, ethnicities, and sexualities. He is particularly interested in how people are shaped by the workings of power and how, in turn, power relations can be shaped by people. Nicolás González Raposo is a graduate psychologist and a PhD student in Social Complexity Sciences from Universidad del Desarrollo. He also holds a diploma in Neuropsychology and Neuropsychiatry from Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. His main areas of interest are related to the cognitive sciences and the study of strategic behavior. Pirkko Raudaskoski is a professor at the Department of Communication and Psychology, University of Aalborg, Denmark. From 2011 to 2022, she served as the leader of Mattering: Centre for Discourse & Practice. She is an interdisciplinary researcher who in 1999 gained her PhD degree from the University of Oulu, Finland. She has always been interested in how people make sense of each other and their surroundings through language and other forms of meaning-making and how they orient to and involve material surroundings in that work. Therefore, she has found strong affinity with ethnomethodology’s idea of social order being a continuous achievement in concrete practices. This has meant she has studied various types of social practices, from technology use to how people with traumatic brain injury participate in activities in institutional settings. The loss of biodiversity and climate change has turned her interest methodologically to more participatory and transparent research practices and how video technology can help in that work. Hernan Sanchez Rios is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Psychology of Universidad del Valle. His research projects are in the interfaces of cognitive development, social development, and interaction contexts from a semiotic cultural and constructivist perspective. He holds a doctorate degree in Experimental Psychology from Universidad de São Paulo, Brazil (2017). Lately, he also has a post-doctoral degree at Universidad de São Paulo Brazil (2019-2020). Monica Reyes Rojas is PhD candidate at Univalle University and Associate Professor at the Faculty of Psychology of Health sciences at the University of Magdalena. The research projects are focused on early childhood, well-being, psychology of humor, and cultural psychology of development. Mauricio Bravo Rojas holds a PhD in Higher Education from the University of Leiden, and a Master’s in Public Policy from the University of Chile. Political Scientist at the Universidad del Desarrollo. As a researcher, he specializes in Educational Policies and School Management. He has also conducted several studies and consultancies on educational management and policies in the municipal sector.
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Javiera Romo is a psychologist with a Master’s degree in Educational Psychology. She is currently a PhD student in Developmental Science and Psychopathology at Universidad del Desarrollo. His research focuses on assessment, measurement, and quantitative analysis, mainly in the areas of socioemotional development and adolescent learning. Francisca Romo-Escudero is an assistant professor at the School of Education at the University Diego Portales, in Santiago, Chile. She researches what teachers’ skills, knowledge, and predispositions are related to their interactions in the classroom. Currently, Dr. Romo is investigating how early childhood teachers’ cognitive processes and emotions interact and influence their interactions in the classroom. Jill Salisbury-Glennon received her doctorate in Educational Psychology from The Pennsylvania State University in 1996. She is an associate professor of Educational Psychology at Auburn University where she has worked since 1997. She has served as the Educational Psychology Program chair from May 2009-May 2010. Jill has taught undergraduate educational psychology courses, as well as graduate courses in educational psychology as well as motivation, learning theory, theories of life-span development, and cognition. Her research interests include: college students’ learning and study strategies, self-regulated learning, metacognition, motivation, attachment, and academic achievement, as well as creating learnercentered contexts at the university level. More recently, she has been involved in a fairly large-scale research project that investigates the effects of the COVID-19 global pandemic on college students’ parental and peer relationships and how they impact college students’ learning, motivation, resilience, and academic performance. She has been a member of AERA, APA, EERA, and MSERA. Jill originally became a member of the AERA Studying and Self-Regulated Learning Special Interest Group (SIG) in 2000. She has served as a proposal reviewer for the SIG, and has served as the SIG Program co-chair from 2000 to 2002 and 2011 to 2013 as well as the SIG Junior and Senior Chairs from 2020 to 2022. María Isabel Sanhueza is a psychologist from Universidad del Desarrollo. She has training in mindfulness and a diploma in Expressive Therapies coordinated by MOV Institute and endorsed by United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and Ibero-American Council of Art, Psychology and Education (APE). She is currently pursuing Master’s degree in Integral Psychotherapy at the Universidad de Salamanca (USAL). She works as a research assistant at the psychology faculty of the Universidad del Desarrollo, where her main lines of study are art therapy, symbolization, and temporality. She has publications in the international journals such as Culture and Education (2022), Current Psychology (2022), and Behavioral Sciences (2023). Marília dos Santos Bezerra is a psychologist from the University Center of Brasilia (CEUB). Master’s and doctorate in Education from the University of Brasília (FE-Unb). Currently, she teaches undergraduate cousers in Psychology at
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the University Center of Brasília (CEUB), as well as at the University of Brasília (Unb). Has research and teaching experience in the areas of psychology, education, human development, subjectivity, epistemology, and qualitative methodology. Daniela Saralegui is a professor at the Faculty of Psychology and Medicine of the Universidad del Desarrollo, Chile. Master’s degree in Childhood and Adolescent Psychology and a postgraduate diploma in Severe Personality Disorders. She is a trainee therapist in Transference-Focused Psychotherapy, member of Grupo TFP Chile and the International Society of Transference-Focused Psychotherapy. In recent years, she has dedicated herself to developing a line of research focused on understanding the teaching and learning processes of clinical psychologists, specifically supervision models. Lidia Scifo holds a PhD in Psychology from the Department of Psychology, Educational Science and Human Movement at the University of Palermo. She is an adjunct professor at LUMSA University of Developmental Psychology and Observation Techniques of Typical and Atypical Development. Research fellow at the National Research Council of Italy, Institute for Educational Technologies within the different research programs. The main research interests concern the study of the processes underlying the learning of reading, writing, mathematics, and emotional in preschool school children. Furthermore, she is involved in projects concerning the design of intervention programs – based on educational technologies – aimed at developing and enhancing learning skills in the trajectories of typical and atypical development. Finally, her research topics include the mechanisms underlying learning of and the prevention of risk factors for learning disabilities. Cristobal Sepulveda has a PhD in Models and Research Areas in Social Sciences, University of the Basque Country, Spain. International Master’s in Public Policies and Territorial Development: Governance and Integration Processes, University of Deusto, Spain and Palermo, Italy. Diploma course of advanced studies (DAS) in Models and Research Areas in Social Sciences, University of the Basque Country. Social worker, University of Concepción. He has taught in various higher education institutions, and has been the author of various social inclusion projects for people with disabilities. In the context of research, he has developed multiple themes aimed at scientific production linked to processes of inclusion and human rights. Jaime R. Silva holds a PhD in Psychobiology from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. He currently holds the position of director of the Instituto de Bienestar Socioemocional (Institute of Socioemotional Well-Being) in the Faculty of Psychology, Universidad del Desarrollo in Santiago de Chile. His scientific work has focused on the psychobiology of stress and emotions, with implications on emotion regulation, interpersonal relationships, and psychopathology. He also practices as a clinical psychologist working from an Emotion Regulation Therapy framework both in a healthcare setting and in his private practice. He is the founder of the Chilean Society of Emotional Development which has served as a platform to train clinical psychologists, develop new interventions, and further communicate affective science to wider audiences.
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Lívia Mathias Simão is bachelor and psychologist (1977), master (1982), doctor (1988), and associate full professor (Livre-Docente) (2008) at the Institute of Psychology of the University of São Paulo, Brazil. From 2018, she is associate and senior professor at the same Institute, where she founded (1992) and co-coordinates the Laboratory of Verbal Interaction and Knowledge Construction. Enrique Sologuren holds a PhD in Educational Linguistics from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso. He is currently an associate professor at the Literature Institute of the Universidad de Los Andes. His research and publications focus on teaching writing, socioemotional competencies, and learning processes in higher education, didactics of the mother tongue, biliteracy, and emotions in language teaching. Verónica Steiner is a clinical psychologist, teacher, supervisor, and therapist accredited in Transference Focused Therapy by the International Society of Transference Focused Psychotherapy. Executive officer for the board of the International Society of Transference-Focused Psychotherapy. Coordinator of Grupo TFP Chile, and is an associate professor at the Department of Psychiatry, University of Valparaiso, Chile. Benjamin J. Swogger is a doctoral student in the Department of Anthropology, Psychology, and Sociology at the University of West Georgia where his research interests include historical and theoretical considerations within depth psychology, particularly the Analytical Psychology of C.G. Jung. Prior to this, he worked as an athletics coach at Carnegie Mellon University where his academic activity was highlighted by a research study and conference presentation on the effects of athletic injury on motor learning and control. He was honored in 2015 on behalf of the University of Pittsburgh School of Education as an Emma W. Locke Memorial Award nominee which recognizes high scholarship, character, leadership, and devotion to the ideals of the University of Pittsburgh. Luis Alberto Taype-Huarca is a psychologist, Master’s degree in Clinical, Educational, Child and Adolescent Psychology from the Universidad Nacional de San Agustin de Arequipa (Arequipa, Perú). Professor at the Professional School of Psychology of the Universidad Católica de Santa María (Arequipa, Perú). Researcher associated to the Centro de Estudios e Investigación en Neuropsicología (CEINPS). Founder of the Centro de Investigación Psicológica Histórico-Cultural (CIPS-HC). Editorial Committee of the journal Epistemología, Psicología y Ciencias Sociales. His research projects are oriented to child neuropsychology and the theoreticalcritical study of Vygotsky’s cultural-historical legacy. Mónica Toro is a doctoral candidate in Developmental Sciences and Psychopathology at the Universidad Del Desarrollo where her research interests include affective neurosciences, specifically the processes adjacent to the neurocognitive processing of emotions and how they modulate human behavior, from a neuroscience perspective. Currently, her research project focuses on how context
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influences emotion recognition. Prior to this, she worked in education and science, as a biology teacher and research assistant in the Laboratorio de Biotecnología Vegetal from Universidad Andrés Bello. She holds a BS in Biology from Universidad Andrés Bello, a diploma in Scientific Research and Open Knowledge Generation from Universidad Del Desarrollo, and an MS in Developmental Sciences and Psychopathology from Universidad del Desarrollo. Marianne Turner is an associate professor in Bilingual Education and TESOL at Monash University, Australia. She has published widely on the leveraging of students’ linguistic and cultural resources for learning, as well as context-sensitive approaches to the integration of language and content in English as an additional language (EAL), foreign and heritage language contexts. Alejandra Cortázar Valdés has a Doctorate in Education with a mention in Public Policies in Early Childhood Education and a Master’s in Developmental Psychology from Teachers College of Columbia University. Psychologist at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. She has worked as a researcher and consultant on issues of early childhood development, initial education, and social policies in early childhood for UNICEF, and for specialized academic and research centers such as the Microdata Center of the Faculty of Economics and Business of the University of Chile – CMD, the Center for Advanced Research in Education of the University of Chile – CIAE, the Institute of Public Policies and Center for Comparative Education Policies of the Universidad Diego Portales – IPP, and the National Center for Children and Families of Columbia University, among others. She is currently a director of the Agency for the Quality of Education and a member of the board of directors of the Fundación Educacional Oportunidad. Luis Valenciano is a psychiatrist and psychotherapist in Murcia, Spain. Professor and supervisor of the ISTFP. Coordinator for Training and Education issues of the ISTFP. Professor in TFP Course Latin America, Madrid, Barcelona, and Bilbao. He works as a day psychiatrist Hospital Murcia on leave of absence (Personality Disorders Unit, Region of Murcia. Hospital R. Alberca). Marcia Valenzuela is a psychologist. She holds a BA in Psychology and a Diploma in Neuropsychology from Universidad Católica de Chile. She is currently completing a Master’s degree in Neuropsychology from Universidad Europea del Atlántico. Marcia is a board-certified Psychotherapist and is the author of the book La Intervención psicoeducativa en la escuela. Nowadays, she is a lecturer at the Faculty of Education at Universidad del Desarrollo. Rodrigo Vera has a Master’s in Occupational Therapy with a Psychosocial mention, Master’s in Teaching for University Education, Andrés Bello University, Chile. Diploma course in Mental Health and Community Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, University of Chile. Occupational Therapist, University of Playa Ancha Educational Sciences (UPLACED). He has taught in various higher education institutions in the Biobío Region, Chile, with collaborations in educational research projects.
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Verónica Vidal is an assistant professor at the School of Speech Language Pathology, Universidad de Los Andes in Chile. She also works in the Epidemiology and Health Studies Department where she teaches graduate research courses. Her research focuses on inclusive practices for the social participation of children with communication disabilities in regular education classrooms using socio-ecological models. Currently, she is the principal investigator in several studies, including searching for acoustic patterns of speech to determine a biomarker for early diagnosis of Autism. Before joining UANDES, she completed her Master’s in Neuroscience at Universidad de Chile and her PhD in Speech and Hearing Sciences from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. During her doctoral studies, she was part of the laboratory of Dr. DeThorne, developing supportive everyday contexts for children with communication differences, with a particular focus on autism, childhood apraxia of speech, and alternative augmentative communication. She is an active member of the Chilean society of Speech-Language Pathologists and editor of the chapter on childhood communication at the Revista Chilena de Fonoaudiología. Amparo Jiménez Vivas is a full professor of Educational and Professional Diagnosis (MIDE Area – Area of Research Methods and Diagnosis in Education) at the Faculty of Education at the Pontifical University of Salamanca, Spain. PhD in Educational Sciences, Bachelor in Pedagogy from the UPSA, and Bachelor in Psychology from the USAL, Spain. Her main line of research focuses on the diagnosis of competencies in various contexts of social, educational, and labor intervention from which she has directed various competitive research projects at both national and regional or local levels, doctoral theses, taught seminars, and collaborations with Spanish, Latin American, and European universities.She is the head of the UPSA Research Group "Educational Skills and Innovation" and a member of the GRAIL Research Group of the USAL with a recognized six-year research period.She has more than 10 published books, chapters in works of other authors, didactic-pedagogical materials, and various articles in journals of scientific dissemination. Among other positions, she has for several years coordinated the Erasmus Programme and the Seneca Programme at the Faculty of Education of the Pontifical University of Salamanca, coordinated the Faculty of Pedagogy, and directed the Professional Guidance Service or coordinated the doctoral courses of that Faculty. In addition, she has also been General Coordinator of the General Foundation of the Pontifical University of Salamanca from 2012 to 2015. She is currently dean of the UPSA Faculty of Education. Daniela Wachholtz is an associate professor at the School of Occupational Therapy, Universidad de los Andes in Chile. Besides the academic lectures, she is the research coordinator and internship supervisor. Her research is focused on selfregulation in preschool children, exploring new interventions based on yoga for children with disabilities, sensory strategies related to the sensory integration framework, and executive functioning issues in children. She is currently collaborating in research with speech therapists searching for improved ways to determine an early diagnosis in autism. Before joining UANDES, she completed her master’s and her
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Clinical Doctorate degree at NYU. She created an adapted intervention program for a summer camp setting for children with disabilities. Currently, she actively participates in the Chilean Corporation for Sensory integration, where she leads the research team. Daniela is the director and one of the founders of a private center STEPS that delivers therapeutic interventions for children and his families since 2015. Allison Liseth Zavalaga-del Carpio has a degree in Psychology from the Universidad Católica de Santa María (Arequipa, Peru). Clinical psychologist of the Mental Health Strategy at the Matarani Health Center (Islay, Arequipa, Peru). Her research projects are oriented to child neuropsychology.
Chapter 1
Why Affectivity in Learning? Toward an Affectively Guided Learning Pablo Fossa
and Cristian Cortés-Rivera
There is a long body of knowledge in the human sciences that has studied affectivity and cognition as separate and independent phenomena (Forgas, 2008; Gonzalez Rey, 2011). However, in recent decades, different theories have stated that affect and cognition cannot be understood separately, but rather, on the contrary, they constitute a complex cognitive-affective integrative unit at the service of human development (Vygotsky, 1987; Duncan & Barrett, 2007; Galastri, 2009; Gonzalez Rey, 2011; Michell, 2016; Fossa, 2022, among others). A similar phenomenon has occurred with human learning. In recent decades, learning has ceased to be understood as a phenomenon of the cognitive-intellectual dimension of consciousness, but rather, due to the growing theories that have proposed the generative nature of emotions on psychological functions (Gonzalez Rey, 2011; Vygotsky, 1987), it has been thought that affectivity could play a fundamental role in human learning processes (D’Mello, 2013; Linnenbrink, 2007; Storbeck & Clore, 2008). Traditional educational processes often constitute rigid and formal places, where the transmission of knowledge takes on greater relevance than the learning experience. Changing the focus of educational processes toward an approach that includes the role of affectivity seems crucial to generate an experience of subjective well-being and an affective experience that transforms individual identity that enables meaningful learning in students. When Vygotsky (1987) talks about the generative role of emotions, he is talking about affects as a motor for the activity of consciousness. Knowledge, the emergence of new thought processes and all activity of consciousness, is born from the deepest P. Fossa (*) Faculty of Psychology, Universidad del Desarrollo, Las Condes, Santiago de Chile, Chile e-mail: [email protected] C. Cortés-Rivera Faculty of Health Sciences, Universidad Católica del Maule, Talca, Región del Maule, Chile e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. Fossa, C. Cortés-Rivera (eds.), Affectivity and Learning, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31709-5_1
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passions of subjectivity, from the affective sphere of consciousness. And, vital experiences, including educational training experiences, do not constitute true learning if they do not touch the affective-volitional sphere of consciousness. From another point of view, the deepest passions of consciousness interfere, at all times, with the display of higher psychological functions involved in learning experiences. The complex inter-functional relationship of consciousness, namely the permanent interaction between psychological functions, is what formal education must provide to foster the development of an integral mind (Vygotsky, 1987, 1994, 1997). Emotions in their permanent struggle to escape cognitive control permanently act as a basal affective matrix in psychological functioning in general and learning experiences in particular. This has been supported widely by the literature, which suggests an intimate association and implication between learning, social functioning, and affective processes (Corcoran et al., 2018; Immordino-Yang, 2011; Taylor et al., 2017). Moreover, this interrelationship is required in general to translate emotional thoughts to actions and, in particular, to transfer the competencies and knowledge learned in the educational environment to the particular circumstances of each student (Immordino-Yang & Damasio, 2007; Storbeck & Clore, 2007). One of the central theoretical developments in the work of Vygotsky (1987, 1997) is that human development occurs in two opposite directions: from the inside out and from the outside in. That is, in human development and learning, two micro(genetic) pathways intersect. On the one hand, the naturalistic perspective of development proposes that the maturation of psychological functions and learning is a correlate of biological processes, while the culturalist perspective proposes that human development is produced by the challenges posed by culture and by the ability to use cultural tools and appropriate them. From this perspective, and following a mainly Vygotskian approach, it is possible to think of learning as a critical moment of development in which affectivity emerges together with the intersection of both lines of development (naturalist and culturalist). Notwithstanding this, Vygotsky (1994) proposes that the human development process is a complex unit that cannot be separated into elements. An access way to understand this cognitive-affective relationship as a single and complex unit in a permanent relationship with the environment is the notion of perezhivanie (Adams et al. In this volume; Vygotsky, 1994). The concept of perezhivanie appears in Vygotsky’s work to understand the complex relationships between affectivity and psychological functions in the encounter with culture (Veresov & Fleer, 2016). The phenomenon of perezhivanie is explained by Vygotsky (1994) as “a concept which allows us to study the role and influence of the environment on the psychological development of children in the analysis of the laws of development” (Vygotsky, 1994, p. 343). Although the concept of perezhivanie was born with the objective of analyzing child development, it is possible to extrapolate it to all learning and human development processes. The human being experiences contact with the world and culture in which he must generate meanings to understand nature and the environment. In this process, the human being affects and is affected by the environment. This is what recent literature has called Affectivating (Cornejo et al., 2018). Affectivating is a concept
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that accounts for the affective nature and the actions involved in the process of interaction with the environment (Marsico & Valsiner, 2013). This process is a dual process of interaction: that is, from the individual to the environment and from the environment to the individual (Marsico & Valsiner, 2013; Cornejo et al., 2018). From this perspective, the affectivating and perezhivanie phenomena constitute units of analysis for the cognitive-affective learning experience in the encounter with the world. Both phenomena are characteristic of the animated nature of the human being. We seek to build meaning by facing the uncertainty and ambiguity of the uncertain future, which is an expression of the animated interiority of the human being. The process of construction of meaning in the encounter with the environment and culture leads us to endow with affectivity all the processes of vital transitions, of facing challenges, of emergencies of new knowledge and all the phenomena that imply human learning (Cornejo et al., 2018). Learning phenomena constitute ambivalence phenomena (Abbey & Valsiner, 2005). Ambivalence is central to the meaning-making process that emerges as a tension produced by two or more forces. The cognitive and affective challenges that the learning scenarios propose are a propitious field for the emergence of ambivalence and, therefore, the emergence of new meanings and learning. This idea of learning as ambivalence phenomena supposes a psyche deployed with forces of different degrees of attraction or repulsion (Abbey & Valsiner, 2005). This accounts for the affective semiotic demand that is required for academic learning phenomena and for life-course learning phenomena (Zittoun et al., 2013). The value of this book lies in systematizing current research on the teaching- learning process in the classroom and its link with the affective dimension of the human experience. In the same way, this book makes it possible to integrate both cognitive and cultural approaches with neuroscience research, all at the service of understanding and deepening the complex relationships between affectivity and human learning. This book is also valuable because it not only provides new theoretical elaborations on the role of affectivity in learning, but also allows moving from theory to practice, providing principles for teaching in the classroom. Furthermore, this book places the affective dimension involved in learning processes as the main dimension. It does not detract from intellectual cognitive variables such as language, attention, concentration, and all dimensions of thought (critical thinking, analysis and synthesis, integration, among others), but rather includes these dimensions of learning involved by a blanket of affectivity that acts as a catalyst and promoter of the other psychological functions involved in the learning process. The different contributions presented in this book move away from the idea of an educational practice devoid of theory. This is where its potential lies, since this work provides pedagogues with a solid foundation for teaching in the classroom since a permanent discussion between theory and practice is established.
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This book also shows how affectively guided learning processes transcend the classroom and are extrapolated to all vital processes, understanding ontogenetic transitions as the crossing of border zones that are experienced as vital learning charged with affectivity. This book brings together contributions from a multidisciplinary team made up of psychologists, educators, biologists, cultural psychologists, cognitive scientists, occupational therapists, psychiatrists, among others, who address issues of initial teacher training, teachers’ emotions, and students’ affective processes at all levels of training (initial training, school, adolescence, and higher education), as well as the dynamics that occur inside the classroom, and even learning and affectivity phenomena that take place in the course of general life, outside of the teaching- learning contexts. This decidedly interdisciplinary approach of this book creates an environment for learning and innovation in education. This book will be of interest to researchers, academics, professionals, and undergraduate and graduate students in the areas of psychology, philosophy, education, and neuroscience, and all who are interested in the affective processes of consciousness and their relationship to human learning. Being the first manual to comprehensively integrate affectivity and learning, this work will help educators understand how the different dimensions of affectivity (i.e., emotion, motivation, resilience) relate to and impact learning within the school context. Additionally, this work will allow us to understand that affectivity as a phenomenon does not only impact in contexts traditionally related to the teaching- learning process, such as the educational context. In this sense, this work will be a contribution for professionals from other fields who will be able to understand the importance of affectivity as a phenomenon that impacts contexts such as clinical and everyday life.
1.1 About This Book This book shows a compilation of works that seek to explore the role that affectivity plays in the human learning process. This book includes new theoretical, empirical, experimental, and neuroscientific contributions. Based on an interdisciplinary contribution, this book brings together works from cognitive psychology, developmental psychology, cultural psychology, education, and neuroscience. This book constitutes an invaluable resource for educators, teachers, researchers, undergraduate and graduate students, and anyone who wants to know more about the relationship between affectivity and human learning. In this book, the reader will find 40 theoretical and empirical contributions, grouped into five thematic parts. First of all, the reader will come across the part called Affectivity in learning process. In this part, different authors present an
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expanded perspective on the relationship between affectivity and learning that takes place during the teaching-learning process. Some contributions in this part explore the relationship between affectivity and learning in university contexts, specifically, in higher education students. Other contributions explore the phenomenon and its relationship with socioemotional development during early childhood and adolescence, while other authors work in this part on the complex theoretical– conceptual relationship between affect and human learning. Secondly, we present in this book the part called Affectivity in teachers’ learning. In this part, the different contributions explore the role of affectivity for teachers during their training as educators and during their pedagogical practice in diverse contexts and grades. The third part of this book is called Affectivity and learning from cognitive neuroscience’s perspectives. In this part, the authors allow us to understand from an integrative perspective, the neuroscientific bases of the relationship between affectivity and learning. Furthermore, they approach from a subject-centered point of view the implications of the development of interoception and emotional self- regulation in learning. The final part of this section provides an intersubjective view considering the bodily bases of affect and its role in the learning process. The fourth part of this book is called Affectivity and learning in the therapeutic and clinical context. In this part, the contributing authors show the history of research on affectivity and learning in psychoanalysis. On the other hand, other contributions explore the affectivity of learning in the relationship between the therapist and the client, as well as in the relationship between the trainee therapists and their supervisor. Finally, the fifth and last part of this book is called Affectivity and learning in everyday life. In this part, no less important, it is shown how the phenomenon of affectivity and learning transcends formal educational contexts and the teaching- learning phenomenon. Different authors explore the relationship between affectivity and learning in different contexts of life, such as in cancer work with palliative patients, affective bonds and learning in organizations, the role of affectivity and learning in the roles of genders granted by society, learning in the process of acculturation of immigrant women and the affectivity associated with this process, and, finally, the humorous actions during situations of coexistence in children. In summary, the different parts and chapters that follow provide elaborations of new theoretical approaches and key empirical applications for all students, academics, or professionals interested in the phenomenon of study that this book calls for. The chapters that the reader will find below provide new directions for research and theoretical discussion related to affectivity and human learning.
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References Abbey, E., & Valsiner, J. (2005). Emergence of meaning through ambivalence. Forum of qualitative. Social Research, 6(1), Art. 23. Available at: http://nbnresolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs0501231 Corcoran, R. P., Cheung, A. C., Kim, E., & Xie, C. (2018). Effective universal school-based social and emotional learning programs for improving academic achievement: A systematic review and meta-analysis of 50 years of research. Educational Research Review, 25, 56–72. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.edurev.2017.12.001 Cornejo, C., Marsico, G., & Valsiner, J. (2018). I activate you to affect me. IAP. D’Mello, S. (2013). A selective meta-analysis on the relative incidence of discrete affective states during learning with technology. Journal of Educational Psychology, 105(4), 1082. https://doi. org/10.1037/a0032674 Duncan, S., & Barrett, L. F. (2007). Affect is a form of cognition: A neurobiological analysis. Cognition and Emotion, 21(6), 1184–1211. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699930701437931 Forgas, J. P. (2008). Affect and cognition. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 3(2), 94–101. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-6916.2008.00067.x Fossa, P. (2022). The role of inner speech in educational processes. In P. Fossa (Ed.), Inner speech, culture & education. Springer. Galastri, A. L. (2009, November). Cognition and affectivity: Its influences in teacher-student relation and in the teaching-learning process. In 2009 ninth international conference on intelligent systems design and applications (pp. 862–866). IEEE. Gonzalez Rey, F. (2011). A re-examination of defining moments in Vygotsky’s work and their implications for his continuing legacy. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 18(3), 257–275. https://doi. org/10.1080/10749030903338517 Immordino-Yang, M. H. (2011). Implications of affective and social neuroscience for educational theory. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 43(1), 98–103. https://doi. org/10.1111/j.1469-5812.2010.00713.x Immordino-Yang, M. H., & Damasio, A. (2007). We feel, therefore we learn: The relevance of affective and social neuroscience to education. Mind, Brain, and Education, 1(1), 3–10. https:// doi.org/10.36510/learnland.v5i1.535 Linnenbrink, E. A. (2007). The role of affect in student learning: A multi-dimensional approach to considering the interaction of affect, motivation, and engagement. In P. A. Schutz & R. Pekrun (Eds.), Emotion in education (pp. 107–124). Academic Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-01 2372545-5/50008-3 Marsico, G., & Valsiner, J. (2013). Mind the borders! Experiencing the present and reconstructing the past through the boundaries. In R. Säljö, P. Linell, & Å. Mäkitalo (Eds.), Memory practices and learning: Experiential, institutional, and sociocultural perspectives (pp. 1–14). Information Age Publishing. Michell, M. (2016). Finding the “prism”: Understanding Vygotsky’s perezhivanie as an ontogenetic unit of child consciousness. International Research in Early Childhood Education, 7(1), 5–33. https://doi.org/10.4225/03/580ff5fe07f08 Storbeck, J., & Clore, G. L. (2007). On the interdependence of cognition and emotion. Cognition and Emotion, 21(6), 1212–1237. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699930701438020 Storbeck, J., & Clore, G. L. (2008). Affective arousal as information: How affective arousal influences judgments, learning, and memory. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 2(5), 1824–1843. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1751-9004.2008.00138.x Taylor, R. D., Oberle, E., Durlak, J. A., & Weissberg, R. P. (2017). Promoting positive youth development through school-based social and emotional learning interventions: A meta-analysis of follow-up effects. Child Development, 88(4), 1156–1171. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.12864 Veresov, N., & Fleer, M. (2016). Perezhivanie as a theoretical concept for researching young Children’s development. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 23(4), 325–335.
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Vygotsky, L. S. (1987). Thinking and speech. In R. W. Rieber & A. S. Carton (Eds.), The collected works of L. S. Vygotsky (Vol. 1, pp. 37–285). Plenum Press. Vygotsky, L. S. (1994). The problem of the environment. In R. van der Veer & J. Valsiner (Eds.), The Vygotsky reader (pp. 338–354). Blackwell. Vygotsky, L. S. (1997). Problems of the theory and methods of psychology. In R. W. Rieber & J. Wollock (Eds.), The collected works of L. S. Vygotsky (Vol. 3, pp. 35–144). Plenum Press. Zittoun, T., Valsiner, J., Vedeler, D., Salgado, J., Gonçalves, M., & Ferring, D. (2013). Human development in the life course. Cambridge University Press.
Part I
Affectivity in Learning Process
Chapter 2
Strengths of Character in Well-Being and University Learning: A View from Educational Counseling Rubia Cobo-Rendón and Diego García-Álvarez
2.1 The Strengths of Educational Character, Well-being, Learning, and Counseling From positive psychology, finding protective factors such as character strengths can help students in admission, adjustment, and permanence in university education (Grinhauz et al., 2022; Owens et al., 2021). The strengths of character are multidimensional constructs that were theoretically formulated by Peterson and Seligman (2002) because of the human virtues of wisdom, courage, humanity, justice, temperance, and transcendence. Strengths are the operational traits in which virtues are expressed, defined as “morally valuable styles of thinking, feeling and acting, which contribute to a life in fullness” (Peterson & Seligman, 2004, p. 13). Strengths are psychological mechanisms that derive from human virtues. In total, 24 personal strengths have been identified so each of the six virtues is expressed and identified in practice through the personal strengths that characterize it. Previous research has shown the relationships between character strengths, well-being, and satisfaction in adult samples (Harzer, 2016; Park et al., 2004, 2006; Sirgy, 2021). The strengths of character according to the classification proposed by Peterson and Seligman (2004) are described in Table 2.1.
R. Cobo-Rendón (*) Maestría en Psicología Educacional, Facultad de Psicología, Universidad del Desarrollo, Concepción, Chile e-mail: [email protected] D. García-Álvarez Departamento de Ciencias del Comportamiento, Universidad Metropolitana, Caracas, Venezuela Centro de Estudios de Psicología, Universidad de Montevideo, Montevideo, Uruguay e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. Fossa, C. Cortés-Rivera (eds.), Affectivity and Learning, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31709-5_2
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Table 2.1 Theoretical description of the character strengths Virtue Wisdom Courage Love Justice Temperance
Description It refers to the use of the mind, thought, and cognition Emotional strengths that drive us to stay on track despite obstacles Interpersonal strengths that allow us to bond with others Strengths that allow us to integrate and function harmoniously in the community Strengths that protect us from excesses
Associated strength Creativity, curiosity, critical thinking, love of learning, and perspective Bravery, persistence, authenticity, and vitality Intimacy, kindness, and social intelligence Citizenship, fairness, and leadership
Forgiveness, humility, prudence, and self-regulation Transcendence They allow us to break individuality and Appreciation of beauty and connect with something bigger than excellence, gratitude, hope, humor, ourselves and spirituality Note: based on Peterson and Seligman (2004), Character strengths and virtues: A handbook and classification
Concerning well-being, it has been studied in two great currents: hedonic (subjective) and eudaimonic (psychological). The first perspective includes concepts such as vital satisfaction; in this perspective of subjective well-being, the balance of positive and negative affections in specific domains is also included. This current contemplates the evaluation of each component’s specific aspects, such as the case of university satisfaction, in which we share the vision of Lent and Brown (2008) as a state that involves the enjoyment of academic experiences in the university context. The second current, eudaimonic or psychological well-being, has strong philosophical roots that integrate advances in psychology in its different branches, such as development, clinical, cultural, humanistic, and others that impact the explanation of the construct of psychological well-being. One of the most important models in this approach is the multidimensional psychological well-being model formulated by Ryff (1989), in which psychological well-being emerges singularly in coherence with the context, age, and other factors concerning the dimensions of self-acceptance, positive relationship with others, environmental mastery, autonomy, purpose in life, and personal growth, where the subjective construction of these dimensions would indicate or not adequate psychosocial functioning. More recently, Seligman (2011) formulated an integrative model in which well-being is built with hedonic elements such as positive emotions and eudaimonic elements such as engagement, interpersonal relationships, meaning, and achievement. As a common point, we find that university experience and learning will be an important element that would influence the cognitive balance of vitality and university satisfaction, since the latter precedes general satisfaction, in the evolution of the evaluation of what has been achieved or not in life, that is, a subjective evaluation of university experience (Medrano & Pérez, 2010; Vergara-Morales et al., 2018). From the multidimensional models, the university life, experiences, and learning generated at this stage will be a vital space for subjective construction, with purpose and meaning of the well-being of the different dimensions of it, whether it is
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interpersonal, engagement, environmental mastery, autonomy, purpose in life, or achievement, the university context being a situational issue for the implementation of the strengths of the character in service, will be improving the experience and the learning in university, as well as avoiding the abandonment of careers and life projects, as well as promoting mental health. We share the reflection of van Nieuwerburgh and Green (2022) on the fact that “Positive Psychology in Education” is a tool to achieve the aims and purposes of education, in contrast to the idea of “Positive Education” proposed by Seligman (2002), because we consider that education is a system that inherently includes changes, development, and positive growth, while we consider university education promotes training for life, professional training, and a healthy life with well-being, which are functions attached to counseling (Ghilardi et al., 2017). Hence, university counseling is a vital space for the mental health care of students, and the prevention of risks can become more severe from agreements to pre-existing conditions or characteristics of vulnerable groups. It can also be a curricular space connected with the educational community to generate conditions of the context that promotes health, but that certainly must assume new and agile work policies to respond to the current challenges both in the increase in students who require assistance and in the complex care issues that range from psychoeducational indicators and personal and professional growth to psychopathology (Broglia et al., 2018; Prince, 2015). The area of university counseling fulfills the functions of helping students to adapt to the demands of the different stages of university life and to help them continue advancing in their career despite the multiple obstacles that may arise in the career path and of course promoting the development of the personality and character of students who enter the university very young. The area of counseling is becoming more and more necessary every day because university students are exposed to multiple psychosocial risks. Previously, the scientific literature has shown that the university stage is a challenging evolutionary moment that has implications for mental health (Franzoi et al., 2022; McLafferty et al., 2017; Sheldon et al., 2021), usually the problems that are addressed in university counseling are as follows: interpersonal relationships, emotional issues, academic stress, academic self-efficacy, confidence in one’s own intelligence, career development, regulatory strategies, motivation and goals, neurosis and Internet addiction (Pace et al., 2022; Yang et al., 2015), frequency of states of loneliness, anxiety, depression (Moeller & Seehuus, 2019), and even suicide (Wolitzky-Taylor et al., 2020). The aforementioned also together with the psychosocial havoc that the COVID-19 pandemic is leaving (Elharake et al., 2022; Kohls et al., 2021), such as violent situations even in armed camps in the world (Ganson et al., 2022; Riad et al., 2022). In addition, university counseling includes activities aimed at students to develop to the maximum their abilities, potentialities, values, and personality. It also seeks to promote fundamental competencies for the continuation of life projects and personal and professional fulfillment, also called competencies or skills for life. The research shows an important and bidirectional relationship between student well- being and dimensions of university learning; for example, academic performance enhanced cognitive and psychological functioning, academic self-efficacy,
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creativity, retention in university, and career advancement. It also showed that a low level of well-being shows an inverse relationship with academic satisfaction, student experience, and achievement (Brewster et al., 2022). This chapter is justified in promoting effective practices based on the sciences of education and psychology, and it seeks to deepen the theoretical, practical, and technical dimensions of university learning and to also generate guiding instruments of psychoeducational knowledge to be used in the design of strategies and intervention programs for the improvement of educational practices. From a theoretical perspective, it seeks to contribute to some of the dimensions that influence university learning, namely the motivational and emotional spheres. This chapter is directly linked to the sustainable development goals proposed by the United Nations Organization (ONU, 2015), specifically with the goal of 4.3: by 2030, which alludes to ensuring equal access for all to quality technical, vocational, and higher education, including university education, and 4.5: by 2030, which refers to eliminating gender disparities in education and ensuring equal access to all levels of education and vocational training for vulnerable people. This chapter seeks to promote sustainable development through the objective of 8.6: by 2030, considerably reduce the proportion of young people who are not in employment, and do not study or receive training because it seeks to reduce risk factors that endanger the educational trajectory of men and women and promote factors that help them stay in the educational system. For this reason, the main objectives of this chapter are as follows: first, to carry out a characterization of the research published in the international literature on character strengths, their link with well-being, and psychoeducational variables in universities; second, to carry out an analysis of the good practices implemented by universities in Latin America to develop a healthy character with implications for the well-being and training of their students; and finally, as a third objective, it proposes guidelines based on character strengths for the improvement of well-being and promotion of university learning, in order to expand the explanation of success in the university career beyond intellectual factors and contribute to providing information that enhances the educational and training experience of young people who transit through the university.
2.2 Empirical Evidence About Character Strengths in the Well-Being and Learning of College Students To respond to the objective of characterizing the research published in the international literature on character strengths, their link with well-being, and psychoeducational variables in university students, the methodology of systematic reviews of the scientific literature was used (Page et al., 2021a). Systematic reviews seek to integrate and systematize the results found in a set of research selected by a previous criterion (Sánchez-Meca, 2010). In this case, the guidelines of the PRISMA declaration for systematic reviews were considered (Page et al., 2021b). The steps and actions taken for the development of the research are described below.
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2.2.1 Identification Exhaustive research on the strengths of character was conducted in university students. The Web of Science™, Scopus®, and SciELO® scientific search engines were used. Additionally, the research papers published on the website of https:// www.viacharacter.org/research/findings were reviewed, since they are a reference in international research on strengths of character. Temporarily, the search was carried out from the beginning of the records in the databases until the date of July 10, 2022. The following syntax is used (TITLE-ABS-KEY (“character strengths”) AND TITLE-ABS-KEY (“university students”)). The languages used in the search process were English, Portuguese, and Spanish. For the systematization of information, we used the online bibliographic management software RefWorks. In total, 250 works were identified in the selected databases and 27 works were associated with the research topics from the website of https://www.viacharacter.org/research/ findings. The steps taken for the systematic review are described in Fig. 2.1.
2.2.2 Selection After identification, duplicate records were removed to retain only one version of each, and a total of 136 records were removed. Subsequently, the authors carried out the reading of titles and summaries to confirm the congruence of the descriptions, and in this process, 16 records were eliminated, leaving a total of 125 records to which the complete texts would be searched.
2.2.3 Eligibility Subsequently, the search for complete research articles began. In this process, it was not be possible to identify the documents of 15 records, so a total of 110 research articles generated in the search were evaluated (see Fig. 2.1). These research papers were selected considering the following criteria: (1) published articles that evaluated the strengths of character in university students; (2) that linked the strengths with some psychoeducational and/or well-being variables, and (3) empirical papers, developed in samples of university students. The following exclusion criteria were used: (1) documents such as revisions, book chapters, or letters to the editor; (2) language other than Spanish, Portuguese, and English; (3) research from a context other than that of the university students (teachers, patients, workers, older adults, and general population); and (4) research that was at an educational level other than university (kindergarten, primary, secondary, and postgraduate/doctoral students).
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Records or citations identified n=277 Records identified from databases n= 250 Records identified from web page n= 27
Record Screened n=141
Recovered publications n=125
Record of eliminates prior to screening n=136 Duplicate records n=136 Records ineligible for systematization tools n=0
Excluded records n=16 During title and summary reading n= 16
Not available full text n=15
Excluded publications n=66 Publications evaluated n=110
They do not relate the variables or are psychometric studies n= 32
Other educational level or context n=13 Language other than Spanish, Portuguese or English n=8 Theoretical articles, qualitative book chapters or letters to the editor n= 13 Total, of studies included in the review n=44
Fig. 2.1 Search flowchart and inclusion of the analyzed sources presented in accordance with the PRISMA declaration
2.2.4 Procedure for the Analysis of Articles Each author reviewed and read the complete articles, after which, the information they reported was compared. To evaluate the congruence in the selection process, consistency analysis was performed using the kappa index, obtaining a result of 0.98, which indicates high consistency in the selection of the evaluators. Articles that did not match were analyzed together to decide whether to include them in the analysis. This process generated a total of 44 research articles, which were included in the final analysis (see Appendix 2.1).
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2.3 Inclusion and Systematization of Information for the Extraction of Information The authors individually completed the full reading of the remaining 44 papers. Once the final database of articles to be analyzed had been compiled, the information was systematized (see Appendix 2.1). The authors read and analyzed the articles independently, creating summary tables with data from each work. Table 2.2 describes the elements extracted from the selected documents. In this case, the information on the source, title, country, and participants of the studies was used as a resource to perform the bibliometric analysis of the information analyzed. In this case, bibliometrics is considered a valuable approach for mapping a large amount of research from various available research disciplines and for describing their development and status trends in a comprehensive, systematic, and replicable manner (Linnenluecke et al., 2020). The research method analysis was divided into two categories: scope or design, and temporality. The studies were first evaluated according to the scope or design. For this, the classification presented by Hernández et al. (2014) was used, who propose four types of research according to the scope: exploratory studies (they investigate topics little studied or from an innovative perspective), descriptive studies (those that measure the concept, define its variables, and consider the component of the phenomenon studied), associative studies (those that offer predictions and explain and quantify the relationship between the variables), and finally explanatory studies (those that by design can determine the causes of the phenomenon, are structured, and seek to generate a sense of understanding about the behavior of the variables) (Hernández et al., 2014). Concerning temporality, two categories of analysis were used: cross-sectional studies (involving a single measurement of the variables and normally exploratory, descriptive, and associative) and longitudinal studies, which consider more than one measurement of the variables, analyzing possible changes over time (Hernández et al., 2014).
Table 2.2 Criteria for the extraction of the information obtained in the selected articles Element extracted Source Post title Country Layout Temporality Participants Variables Results
Description Reference on authors and year of publication of the article The official title of the selected article Country where the investigation was carried out Identification of the method used in the investigation is presented in the method section Type of investigation according to the moments of measurement Total number of students participating in the study Variables that were associated with the strengths and that were stated in the method and in the results of the investigations Main results obtained in the investigations and associated with the objectives
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The description of the variables made it possible to organize the results obtained during the analysis of the selected articles according to the topics of interest. To this end, the works were grouped according to research on strengths of character associated with variables of well-being, psychological functioning, or mental health, and a second category of research on strengths of character in psychoeducational topics. The analysis of the overall results of each research allowed us to evaluate the progress of these studies in the selected topics. The advantage of categorizing these results allows highlighting the importance of the role that systematic literature reviews in their ability to show the state of existing knowledge on a topic and examine the state of a field (Linnenluecke et al., 2020).
2.4 Bibliometric Analysis of Research on Character Strengths in College Students Research on character strengths in college students is growing. From 2009 to July 2022, the number of scientific publications shows an increase over the years. In the first decade (2009–2019), 45.45% of the publications on this topic are located, and for the last 2 years (2020–2022), a significant increase in publications on character strengths in university students (54.54%) is identified. Figure 2.2 shows the distribution of publications by year, where it can be seen that from 2020 to date the largest number of publications (n = 8, 18.18%) was identified, respectively. It is important to note that the publications of the year 2022 present a frequency of publications similar to that of the last 2 years; however, only the publications of the first 6 months of the year are recorded. The studies analyzed to describe the analysis of the responses of a total of 18,156 university students showed that the country with the highest production in this type of research was the United States (n = 11, 25.00%), followed by Spain (n = 6, 13.64%), the United Kingdom (n = 4, 09.09%), Brazil (n = 4, 09.09%), and Pakistan (n = 3, 6.82%). In the case of countries such as Austria, China, and Israel, two
Year of Publication 10 8 6 4 2 0
2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022
Fig. 2.2 Distribution of publications on character strengths by year of publication
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Fig. 2.3 Distribution of publications on character strengths by country of publication
investigations (4.55%) were identified for each country, respectively, and finally, for the countries of Argentina, Canada, the United Arab Emirates, Indonesia, Iran, Italy, Portugal, Russia, Thailand, Turkey, and Venezuela, one publication (1.89%) was identified. Figure 2.3 shows the publications analyzed considering the country of production. Regarding the proposed research designs, it was possible to identify that most of the studies analyzed reported an explanatory scope (n = 34, 72.27%), followed by a lower number of associative investigations (n = 10, 22.73%). It is important to note that, according to the criteria established in the selection process of the systematic review, only research that associated the strengths of character with the well-being or psychoeducational variables would be included; therefore, it would only be possible to identify these two types of scope. In terms of the temporality of the research, it was found that most of them were transversal (n = 32, 72.73%), that is, with a single measurement of the variables of interest in university students. It is relevant to note that despite this, a significant number of longitudinal investigations were identified (n = 12, 27.27%).
2.5 Empirical Evidence of Research on Character Strengths Associated with Well-Being and Psychoeducational Variables in University Students Regarding the empirical evidence of research on character strengths and well-being in university students, a total of 26 (59.09%) publications were identified that evaluated the association of these variables. These authors evaluated the strengths of
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character with respect to different aspects of well-being. Eleven research articles that focused solely on psychoeducational aspects were identified (25.00%), and seven studies associated character strengths with both mental health variables and psychoeducational variables were identified (15.90%). Concerning the study of the strengths of character in the well-being of students, the research considers both philosophies of well-being. Some studies corroborate the positive relationship between the elements of subjective well-being (happiness, satisfaction with life, and presence of positive affections) with the strengths of character in this context (Allan et al., 2021; Anjum & Amjad, 2021; Bachik, 2020; Dolev-Amit et al., 2021; Douglass & Duffy, 2015; Huber et al., 2017; Koch et al., 2020; Lounsbury et al., 2009; Macaskill & Denovan, 2014; Magnano et al., 2021; Oliveira et al., 2016; Petkari & Ortiz-Tallo, 2018; Porto Noronha & Martins, 2016; Proctor et al., 2011). In the case of psychological well-being, research is also identified that considers this philosophy of well-being within the analyzed research. They corroborate the positive relationships of character strengths with the dimensions of psychological well-being related to personal growth and positive functioning (Chan et al., 2022; de la Fuente et al., 2022; García-Álvarez et al., 2020; Green, 2022; Jafari, 2020; Kachel et al., 2020; Koydemir & Sun-Selışık, 2016; Magnano et al., 2021; Smith et al., 2021; Wingert et al., 2022; Zhang & Chen, 2018). Likewise, the researchers showed associations of character strengths with positive variables or associated with human development, such as evaluation with personality traits (Anjum & Amjad, 2021; Kachel et al., 2020; Neto et al., 2022; Noronha & Campos, 2018), resilience (Bachik, 2020; de la Fuente et al., 2022), evaluation of health perception (Bachik, 2020; Petkari & Ortiz-Tallo, 2018; Uliaszek et al., 2022), management of coping strategies (Canedo et al., 2021; Gustems- Carnicer & Calderón, 2016), emotional self-regulation (Noronha & Batista, 2020), and the linkage of character strengths with self-esteem (Dolev-Amit et al., 2021; Douglass & Duffy, 2015; García-Álvarez et al., 2020; Huber et al., 2017; Macaskill & Denovan, 2013). From the focus on the evaluation of mental health and risk behaviors, the researchers associated character strengths with depressive and anxiety symptoms (Bachik, 2020), eating problems (Bachik, 2020), alcohol and drug consumption (Bachik, 2020; Logan et al., 2010), psychological discomfort (Dolev-Amit et al., 2021), stress (Huber et al., 2017), and post-traumatic growth (Yu et al., 2022). As mentioned in previous paragraphs, the association of character strengths with psychoeducational variables was presented to a lesser extent than research associated with well-being and health issues. Within the variables of the educational context, we find in the present review the linkage of the strengths of character with academic performance (Bachik, 2020; Cosentino & Solano, 2012; Lounsbury et al., 2009; Smith et al., 2021; Villacís et al., 2021), academic satisfaction, learning (Allan et al., 2021; Koydemir & Sun-Selışık, 2016; Littman-Ovadia & Freidlin, 2022; Lounsbury et al., 2009; Owens et al., 2021; Ramadhanu et al., 2019), student persistence (Browning et al., 2018), beliefs of self-efficacy (García-Álvarez et al., 2020; Macaskill & Denovan, 2013), student motivation (Golding et al., 2018), autonomous
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learning (Macaskill & Denovan, 2013), student self-determination (Golding et al., 2018), social competence, relationship with peers (Zubair et al., 2018), adaptability of career and professional preparation (Magnano et al., 2021), assessment methods (Neto et al., 2022), and environmental education (Merino et al., 2020).
2.6 Good Practices Implemented by Universities in Latin America In addition to the evidence presented of the implications of character strengths in psychoeducational variables related to university learning, mental health, and well- being in students, it can be shown that in Latin America there are examples of higher education institutions that implement good practices based on strengths of character and well-being. The TecMilenio University in Mexico, estimated as the first positive university in the world, proposes well-being and purpose of life as the core of its management in three key scenarios: staff and teachers, physical environments and services, and academic programs and student life. In this context, character strengths are proposed as psychological traits that enable well-being, achievement, positivity, involvement, positive relationships, and mindfulness. Character strengths are developed with personal, curricular, professional, and community activities; for this purpose, the model has four key curricular moments: (a) the introduction to the university course, (b) the principles of well-being and happiness course, (c) business semester and the positive organization’s course, and (d) student well-being and development activities (Ballesteros-Valdés & Charles-Leija, 2021). Following the TecMilenio University, the Siglo 21 University in Argentina adheres to the paradigm of positive education through the creation of well-being ecosystems based on the strengths of character and the PERMA model of well- being. Its strategic plan was also impacted by the five dimensions of the PERMA model: positive emotions, engagement, positive relationships, meaning, and accomplishment. This university also understands the strengths as facilitators of personality development, meaning, and personal and professional achievements through the promotion of character strengths in formal curricular experiences by designing and modifying curricular units for this purpose, as well as the creation of the mandatory subject: group and leadership, in which the PERMA model is completely studied, and other curricular spaces intended for practical activities such as friendship relationships, mindfulness, networking, and specific spaces for the promotion of character strengths such as workshops and other activities. In addition, other universities in Latin America have developed courses or subjects (curricular units) either electively or compulsorily focused on positive psychology, emphasizing the recognition of the strengths of character as pathways for the promotion of well-being, such as the Metropolitan University in Venezuela, the University of Palermo in Argentina (Garassini et al., 2022), and the Colombo Americana UNIQUE University Institution in Colombia (Garassini & Aldana, 2022).
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2.7 Guidelines Based on Character Strengths for Improving Well-Being and Promoting University Learning With the previous experiences described on the empirical evidence reported in the research analyses in the systematic review, and the descriptions of university institutions that have incorporated the strengths of character as psychological catalysts to promote better results in students, the approximation of these guidelines is presented. Consistent with the aforementioned universities, this proposal is conceived as an intermediate development effort instead of a final product (Coppley & Niemiec, 2021). That is, the strengths of character are understood as the means to achieve other results, whether it is learning, competencies, psychological states, or other abilities. For example, the results of the review carried out indicate the linkage of the strengths with variables of interest such as well-being and satisfaction in all its dimensions, self-esteem, personality, coping strategies, and the prevention of risky behaviors. In educational terms, we identify links with academic achievement, academic satisfaction, student persistence, beliefs of self-efficacy, student motivation, autonomous learning, student self-determination, career adaptability, and professional preparation. These guidelines are a strategic vision of interventions with means, products, and outcomes. In other words, strengths are catalysts, drivers, or psychological paths to achieve more adaptive and healthy behaviors, seeking to impact successful, meaningful, and successful educational trajectories (Niemiec, 2017). The strategic objectives of these guidelines must be integrated with the institutional philosophy and the type of center that is dedicated to counseling in the university, and these are as follows: (a) to sensitize the university teaching and student population about the personal resources that they have in their personality for the prosperous development of a university career; (b) to develop a healthy personality through the education of character strengths in university students; (c) to promote psychoeducational variables through learning situations that are based on character strengths, and (e) to promote gender equity in the educational system through the design of educational experiences based on character strengths oriented to well-being and professional academic situations in which students can find significant sources of learning. In general, it is sought that these theoretical practical guidelines contribute to the possible application of this proposal based on the strengths of the character for the promotion of well-being and other psychoeducational outcomes in university students. The intention of presenting these guidelines with these objectives and strategic purposes is to visualize their application in a structured, orderly, and feasible way in a university that has the goal of giving priority to the psychosocial dimension of students. Note that the theoretical and practical guidelines are flexible and must be adapted to the situation of the institution before a diagnosis of needs, resources, and potential. For us, it is important the component of invitation/voluntariness to the university community and not the imposition of some guidelines, especially those
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Fig. 2.4 Guidelines based on character strengths for improving well-being and promoting university learning
related to awareness campaigns; the interest, enthusiasm, and voluntariness to participate should be privileged (see Fig. 2.4). In the following section, each guideline will be explained in depth, dividing each one into strategic purposes, specific objectives, actions, and indicators of achievement.
2.8 Sensitization in the Use of Strengths Strategic purpose: to sensitize students about the personal resources they have in their personality for the prosperous development of a university career, as well as teachers about the psychosocial dimension of university learning and how to promote them in their classes and teaching interactions. Specific objective: to carry out awareness-raising sessions in two ways: one for teachers to explain the role of noncognitive factors in learning and academic success and how they can be promoted from the teaching role; and the second way are instances aimed at students to bring them closer to the focus of character strengths, agency, and personal and professional development. Actions: (a) implement awareness campaigns toward teachers through emails and short video capsules that promote the importance of character strengths, academic self-efficacy, and other psychoeducational variables of interest. These campaigns should include practical tips for incorporating them in the classroom and in the relationship with students. For example, research has shown that performing teamwork increases satisfaction and encourages the use of young people’s character strengths, specifically, teamwork, critical thinking, social intelligence,
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perseverance, and excellence during learning days (Littman-Ovadia & Freidlin, 2022); it is important that teachers use these class spaces for reflection on the use of strengths for the common good; (b) execute the student awareness campaign that can be carried out in short video capsules that are distributed to the mailing list of students, as well as in the networks of the university, emphasizing the dimension of being and its importance to leading a healthy life and committed to the university studies project. Indicators of achievement: number of videos and emails, number of practical advices sent, and campaign scope in a number of teachers and students.
2.8.1 Putting the Strengths of Character into Practice Strategic purpose: to develop a healthy personality through the education of character strengths in college students. Specific objective: to develop a yearly educational campaign consisting of the identification, recognition, and implementation of character strengths for university students. Actions: to execute the massive yearly campaign aimed at students to bring them closer to the theme of the strengths of the character. An agile, accessible, practical, and didactic format is important, such as to conceptually know the strengths and offer practical advice on behaviors related to the referred strengths in personal and university life. Although the campaign is massive, it is important to have a web link so that students have access to some of the scales to know the strengths of the character, and name those of the review. From there, each student would get their profile of character strengths and basic tips on how to apply them in life and college. In this case, the campaigns are considered a university strategy that promotes an environment that facilitates and enhances the use of strengths. It is sought that the context in this case is a reinforcer and that it mitigates the effects of the barriers that may exist for the use of strengths, for example, perceived stress, anxiety, and other mental health variables or psychoeducational variables such as vocation (Owens et al., 2021). Indicators of achievement: number of character strengths sent with advice for students, in the ideal in the year the 24 strengths must be worked, student reach measured in numbers, number of character strength profiles made by students, interactions measured in the social networks of the university, mail or means available to the university, challenges of character strengths that students must execute in the university, number of flyers or banners arranged in the institution inviting to apply the character strengths, and carrying out a weekly campaign of some character strength that has generated more interest on the campus.
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2.8.2 Enhancing University Learning Strategic purpose: to enhance university learning, adaptation, adjustment, and retention of students in their university career, as well as the promotion of mental health on campus and prevention of psychosocial risks such as abandonment of their careers. Specific objective: to design formative experiences based on the strengths of character as a means to generate psychoeducational outputs that improve the experience of university learning, such as general and academic self-efficacy, performance, academic engagement, academic satisfaction, permanence in studies, mentioning others of the review, and promoting psychological well-being on the university campus. Actions: This guideline must be carried out by the counseling department (or corresponding department in the institution) by psychologists, counselors, or psychopedagogues. These training experiences can be open to the entire community of students, but on a mandatory basis for students with difficulties in the academic career path either referred by teachers, university departments, or voluntary search by themselves in processes of looking for help, either for adaptation or for mental health. It is recommended that training experiences be based on the strategies proposed by Niemiec (2017) to intervene in strengths of character: (a) self-assessment and self-monitoring of strengths; (b) narrative strategies; (c) cognitive strategy, for example, who sees you?; (d) feedback of strengths, which includes labeling, explaining, and appreciating; (e) alignment of strengths of character with university activities; (f) apply the awareness–explore–apply model. To illustrate an example of one of the psychoeducational variables, it is proposed to link the formative experiences based on the previous strategies of the strengths of character directly with the four sources of self-efficacy formulated by Bandura (1997): domain experiences, vicarious experiences, social persuasion, and physiological and emotional activation, emphasizing in general and academic. Concerning multidimensional psychological well-being, it is recommended to strengthen the dimensions presented by Ryff (1989) or also those proposed by Seligman (2011) in its PERMA model. For activities related to the promotion of well-being, the proposals by Morgan and Simmons (2021) in their university well-being program are recommended to generate links in the university community, to present the elements of well-being as psychoeducation, and to develop strategies and resources for the mental health, resilience, and well-being of students. Indicators of achievement: number of formative experiences that are sequential emphasizing academic self-efficacy and its sources, and multidimensional well- being in a university context, and the number of students who took the training open to the whole community, as well as the number of students on a compulsory basis (for students with difficulties in the academic trajectory).
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2.8.3 Positive Linkages: Promoting Gender Inclusion and Equity Strategic purpose: to promote gender equity in the educational system by designing educational experiences based on character strengths oriented to academic self- efficacy in which anyone can find significant sources of learning. Specific objective: to include inclusive situations in the design of formative experiences that respond to gender equity in each of the character strengths that are linked as means to generate psychoeducational outputs in university students. Actions: development of character strengths such as critical thinking and open- mindedness to debate situations of gender equity, access to the same opportunities, and challenge gender stereotypes, as well as associated biases, in order to promote agency capacity for all people (Navarro Saldaña et al., 2019). Promote the agency through self-efficacy, optimism, resilience, vicarious learning, and real models that could inspire within the same university campus, for example, prominent women in science and technology, prominent men in arts, fashion, literature, and other situations to discuss the reproduction of traditional gender roles, and finally, linking these formative experiences with the subjective and singular construction of the dimensions of psychological well-being and mental health with the experiences of the students. Indicators of achievement: Number of gender-sensitive activities that account for gender equity in each of the learning experiences of character and well-being strengths. Learning experiences should include character-strengthening activities related to critical thinking and open-mindedness to discuss situations of gender equity, access to equal opportunities, and challenge gender stereotypes. Similarly, activities should be linked to specific psychoeducational situations, such as academic performance, academic self-efficacy, academic satisfaction, engagement, and others.
2.8.4 Systematization and Evaluation of Strengths Strategic purpose: to describe practical theoretical guidelines that contribute to the possible application of this proposal based on the strengths of the character for the promotion of well-being and university adaptation aimed at university students. Specific objective: to produce a document containing the theoretical and practical guidelines that make possible the application of the proposal and its continuous improvement. Actions: it will be coupled with the previously declared ones, adding in particular: alienate these theoretical and practical guidelines with other campaigns carried out by the university, as well as with transversal axes or strategic lines declared in its mission and vision, make prudent adaptations to the corresponding university institution, formalize a department of student care, orientation, or well-being, and
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have instruments for the collection of data that may arise to evaluate the proposal as a process and as a result. Indicators of achievement: document with possible adaptations of the practical theoretical guidelines that have been generated in the progress of the application as lessons learned, the specific number of links with other campaigns or transversal axes of the institution, consolidation of the guidelines described in the proposal through the specialized department (university counseling or its equivalent), number of instruments designed to collect data throughout the application, number of qualitative or quantitative evidence that account for the evaluation, and qualitative or quantitative evidence of the operation or impact of the guidelines.
2.9 Final Thoughts In accordance with the intentionality of this chapter, the research on the strengths of character and its link with well-being and psychoeducational variables linked to university learning was characterized. It was found that there are trends in research that can be summarized as follows: (a) strengths of character in relation to the experience of well-being both from the hedonic approach and the eudaimonic approach, (b) a research trend referring to the strengths of character concerning psychoeducational variables in university students, (c) to a lesser extent research that includes in their designs variables of health, well-being, and psychopathology to psychoeducational aspects in universities, and (d) an important trend in recent years in the development of longitudinal studies to evaluate interventions based on strengths of character as the main component or as multicomponent interventions based on positive psychology for the promotion of different psychological outputs and outcomes both at the level of health, well-being, and psychoeducation in universities. Likewise, an interesting basis of good practices was found oriented to the application of the strengths of character in connection with well-being and university learning in universities in Latin America. Among the theoretical and practical implications derived from the systematic review carried out in this chapter, a series of guidelines based on character strengths are proposed for the improvement of well-being and promotion of university learning. They have the purpose of universal promotion of health in a university context with implications of prevention of the main psychosocial risks that may affect the educational trajectory of young people; therefore, they also have psychoeducational implications in improving the experience, adjustment, and permanence in university studies. These guidelines should focus on an educational and health policy in the university community, focused on both comprehensive prevention and health promotion and not only as a reaction to an event on campus, and these interventions should be carried out in the early formative university stages that also promote belonging and bonding with the university community. Hence, one of the main challenges that university education has as a social system is the implementation of intersectional public policies with other sectors of
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the government and the private sector. It is important to understand the importance of healthy university life as a source for the subjective construction of mental health and well-being, as well as a space for personal and professional development that links it with the adequate insertion of work into society. Among the main challenges that can be considered in future studies in the university context are the systematization of experiences as an important element for the communication of good practices, pointing out aspects of improvement, the evaluation of the impact and subjective experience of the interventions carried out in the university community that include the follow-up of the student who becomes a professional and how their career development has been, the development of massive interventions oriented to primary prevention through new technologies with effectiveness evaluation, and the transversal approach in formative experiences of an approach focused on diversity, equity, inclusion, and non-discrimination under conditions, such as gender, race, ethnicity, political beliefs, religion, health conditions, or disability.
Anjum and Amjad (2021)
Azañedo et al. (2020)
2
3
Authors and No. year 1 Allan et al. (2021)
Pakistan
Country United States
Social intelligence Spain and psychological distress: Subjective and psychological well-being as mediators
Title Strengths and satisfaction in first year undergraduate students: A longitudinal study Values in action inventory of strengths: Development and validation of short form-72 in Urdu Explanatory Transversal
Explanatory Transversal
Personality traits, life satisfaction, positive and negative affections
Associated variables Satisfaction with life and academic satisfaction
1407 Subjective well-being, psychological well-being
833
Layout Temporality N° Explanatory Longitudinal 194
Appendix 2.1 General Matrix of Articles
Well-being
Well-being
Thematic Well-being
Key results Those who consistently used the strengths have higher academic satisfaction over time. However, unlike the hypothesis, the use of strengths did not significantly predict life satisfaction over time All virtues scores were negatively associated with neuroticism and positively with the rest of the four dimensions of personality. Scores on VIA-72 correlated positively with positive affect and life satisfaction and negatively with negative affect The results indicated that social intelligence was positively linked to SWB and PWB. The findings supported the role of social intelligence as a contributor to mental health
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Browning et al. (2018)
Authors and No. year 4 Bachik (2020)
Title VIA character strengths among U.S. collegestudents and their associations with happiness, well-being, resiliency, academic success, and psychopathology Character strengths and first-year college students’ academic persistence attitudes: An integrative model
United States
Country United States
Explanatory Transversal
653
Layout Temporality N° Explanatory Transversal 759
Thematic Well-being and psycho educational
Student persistence Psychoe integration and ducational academic engagement
Associated variables Satisfaction with life, happiness, resilience, positive and negative affect, physical health, GPA, depression, anxiety, eating problems, alcohol, drug, and risk behaviors
Hope is positively related to student persistence. The positive benefits of hope and gratitude to the variables of academic persistence seemed to be generalizable through different cultural groups in the present study academic integration and social support mediated the associations between character strengths and institutional engagement
Key results Character strengths were most strongly related to positive measures of satisfaction and well-being, e.g., enthusiasm; the next highest relationship was with academic achievement high school GPA, college GPA, sat scores, and ACT scores, but there was only a moderate relationship with psychopathology, for example, enthusiasm and depression and very low association with physical health
Authors and No. year 6 Ferradas Canedo et al. (2021)
Title Coping flexibility and personal strengths in university students
Country Spain
Layout Temporality N° Associative Transversal 401
Associated variables Approximate and evasive coping strategies Thematic Well-being
Key results The results obtained make it possible to identify the existence of two distinct profiles of students by virtue of their flexibility in coping with everyday university demands. The first group of students would be characterized by priority recourse to evasive strategies such as self-criticism and social withdrawal. The other identified group seems to show a coping pattern that is certainly more adaptive than the previous one, as it shows high use of the four approximate strategies analyzed, this group showed significantly higher levels of personal strengths than the unproductive coping group. The results of the present study seem to corroborate the greater functionality of this second profile
Authors and No. year 7 Chan et al. (2022)
Title An innovative model of positive education with traditional Chinese moral values: An evaluation of project bridge
Country China
Layout Temporality N° Explanatory Longitudinal 950
Associated variables Psychological well-being or flourishing Thematic Well-being
Key results The effectiveness of Project Bridge in achieving its goal is confidently confirmed with a positive education program that combines traditional Chinese virtues with theoretical models of character strengths and psychological well-being. It found significant changes in all evaluation variables: students’ self-esteem, personal–social development, self-efficacy, empowerment, collective self-esteem, emotional maturity, personal responsibility, openness to diversity, and moral development. The results demonstrated a satisfactory outcome for Project Bridge, especially its effectiveness in strengthening self-reliance, bearing responsibility, and appreciating diversity. It was identified that the program promotes virtues valuable to Chinese culture and that, in turn, it promotes psychological well-being or flowering
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de la Fuente et al. (2022)
Authors and No. year 8 Cosentino and Solano (2012)
The proactive- Spain reactive resilience as a mediational variable between the character strength and the flourishing in undergraduate students
Explanatory Transversal
642
Title Country Layout Temporality N° Character Argentina Explanatory Transversal 330 strengths: A study of Argentinean soldiers
Resilience Flourishing
Associated variables Academic performance, military performance of cadets
Well-being
Thematic Psychoedu cational
Key results It was observed that military students show higher levels of various strengths, for example, spirituality than civilian students. The relationships between strengths and returns for the first and last year of military training are different. Particularly, the cadets with better adaptation to academia show higher levels of persistence strength, compared to the low-performing cadets of the same year of studies The results indicated a direct and constant predictive effect of character strengths on resilience and flowering. Resilience also showed a mediating effect on the relationship between character strengths and flowering. In addition, the results also revealed that reactive and proactive factors of resilience were explained by different character strengths, e.g., emotional/ cognitive strength, and interpersonal strengths, reinforcing the idea that the two directions are complementary and necessary
13
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García- Psychometric Venezuela Associative Transversal 967 Álvarez et al. properties of the (2020) “growing up strong” scale in university students from Maracaibo, Venezuela Golding et al. Growing character United Explanatory Longitudinal 38 (2018) strengths across States boundaries
Explanatory Transversal
Layout Temporality N° Explanatory Longitudinal 103
12
Country Israel
Douglass and Strengths use and United Duffy (2015) life satisfaction: A States moderated mediation approach
Title Is awareness of strengths intervention sufficient to cultivate wellbeing and other positive outcomes?
11
Authors and No. year 10 Dolev-Amit et al. (2021)
Perceptual evaluations of the impacts of the EduGuide program designed to foster the strength of courage show improvements in students’ levels of determination and motivation. These high scores were directly and empirically associated with academic achievement and college success
Key results Participants in the strength-focused condition were more optimistic and declared higher levels of positive affection, as well as lower levels of negative affection and less psychological distress. Interventions based on strengths of character result in more desirable psychological outcomes than interventions based on weaknesses Well-being There is a relationship between the use of strengths and satisfaction with life. This relationship is mediated by self-esteem. Positive affect moderated the link between self-esteem and satisfaction with life, so the link was stronger for individuals with low and moderate levels of positive affect Well-being The results indicate positive and psycho associations of character strengths with educational self-esteem, self-efficacy, psychological well-being, vital satisfaction, and optimism
Thematic Well-being
Motivation, Psycho self-determination, educational and academic achievement
Self-esteem, self-efficacy, psychological well-being, optimism, vital satisfaction
Self-esteem, positive affection, and satisfaction with life
Associated variables Psychological distress, positive and negative affections, self-esteem
Authors and No. year Title Country 14 Green (2022) Character Pakistan strengths intervention for nurturing well-being among Pakistan’s university students: A mixed-method study 15 Gustems- Virtues and Spain Carnicer and character Calderón strengths related (2016) to approach coping strategies of college students Explanatory Transversal
91
Layout Temporality N° Explanatory Longitudinal 182
Behavioral and cognitive coping strategies
Associated variables PERMA well-being
Well-being
Thematic Well-being
Key results Quantitative results revealed that the experimental group that participated in the Good Life program based on the 24 strengths of character, reported greater well-being after the intervention and 6 months later. Qualitative findings shed light on the role of the strengths demonstrated by the experimental group in building each PERMA dimension Strong positive correlations were found between the six virtues and three coping strategies. Specifically, wisdom presented a positive correlation with behavioral and cognitive coping. Sixteen strengths presented correlations with behavioral approach coping strategies and four strengths presented positive correlations with cognitive approach coping. Wisdom described 23% of the variance in cognitive approach coping, and transcendence along with temperance described 33.5% of the variance in behavioral approach coping
17
Jafari (2020)
Authors and No. year 16 Huber et al. (2017)
Title Country The German Austria version of the strengths use scale: The relation of using individual strengths and well-being The mediating Iran role of self- compassion in the relationship between character strengths and flourishing in college students Explanatory Transversal
376
Layout Temporality N° Associative Transversal 374
Self-compassion Flourishing
Well-being
Associated variables Thematic Stress, self-esteem, Well-being vitality, satisfaction, positive and negative affection
The character strengths of love, gratitude, and hope with the mediating role of self-compassion have an indirect effect on flourishing. The results indicate that optimizing character strengths, especially emotional strengths, help students accept themselves without judgment or self-criticism, which in turn improves personal flourishing
Key results The positive relationships of the use of strengths with positive affect, selfesteem, and vitality were confirmed, as well as negative relationships with negative affect and stress
19
Koch et al. (2020)
Authors and No. year 18 Kachel et al. (2020)
Promoting United students’ strengths States to cultivate mental well-being: Relationships betweencollege students’ character strengths, well-being, and social group participation
Title Country Development of Austria cynicism in medical students: Exploring the role of signature character strengths and well-being
Associative Transversal
253
Layout Temporality N° Explanatory Longitudinal 99
Subjective well-being and participation of social groups
Associated variables Cynicism, psychological well-being
Well-being
Thematic Well-being
Key results The results showed an increase in the cynicism dimension of burnout among medical students from the first to the last measurement as the career progresses. Two groups with different patterns of cynicism development trajectory were identified. Students with high levels of cynicism high-level group and students with changing levels of cynicism growing group perceived greater applicability of character strengths in private life compared to the study context, as well as higher levels of PWB, mastery, optimism, and relationship. In addition, the high-level group experienced significantly less psychological well-being in its early years of medical education This study found significant and positive relationships between the four key strengths of character: love, hope, enthusiasm, and curiosity; subjective well-being; and participation of the social group in a sample of university students
21
Littman- Ovadia and Freidlin (2022)
Authors and No. year 20 Koydemir and Sun-Selışık (2016)
Country Turkey
Paired learning Israel duration and character strengths use as predictors of learning satisfaction: a dyadic longitudinal study among Chevruta students in Yeshivas
Title Well-being on campus: testing the effectiveness of an online strengths-based intervention for first year college students
Explanatory Longitudinal 136
Layout Temporality N° Explanatory Longitudinal 92
Time spent studying, satisfaction with learning
Associated variables Quality of life, life satisfaction, subjective happiness, and well-being
Key results Significant improvements were observed in the measures of subjective happiness, life satisfaction, subjective happiness, ontological well-being, and psychological well-being of the participants of the program intervention group for 8 weeks, while the participants of the control group did not show a significant increase in any of these well-being variables Psycho The results of our study in this paired educational learning educational context showed that Yeshiva students were most satisfied on the days they shared time on learning together and used their Chevruta strengths, i.e., teamwork, critical thinking, social intelligence, self-regulation, perseverance, appreciation of beauty and excellence, curiosity, creativity, love of learning, and perspective, during the learning day. Most interestingly, one’s partners’ strengths used on a certain day contribute to one’s satisfaction in the evening
Thematic Well-being
Lounsbury et al. (2009)
Macaskill and Denovan (2013)
Macaskill and Denovan (2014)
23
24
25
Authors and No. year 22 Logan et al. (2010)
Title The virtuous drinker: Character virtues as correlates and moderators of college student drinking and consequences An investigation of character strengths in relation to the academic success of college students Developing autonomous learning in first year university students using perspectives from positive psychology Assessing psychological health: the contribution of psychological strengths
UK
UK
United States
Country United States
237
Explanatory Transversal
214
Explanatory Longitudinal 254
Explanatory Transversal
Layout Temporality N° Associative Transversal 425
Mental health Positive and negative affect Satisfaction with life Self-esteem
Self-efficacy, self-esteem, autonomous learning
Well-being
Hope and gratitude predicted mental health. Gratitude, hope, and curiosity predicted positive affection. Gratitude and hope predicted satisfaction with life. Hope, curiosity, and gratitude predicted self-esteem
Well-being Character strengths were associated and psycho with self-efficacy, self-esteem, and educational autonomous learning compared to the control group
Thematic Well-being
Key results Higher temperance scores were associated with abstinence, lower-risk alcohol consumption, and fewer consequences among heavy drinkers; both increased justice and transcendence were associated with abstinence; and wisdom, courage, and humanity were not associated Life satisfaction, Psycho The 24 strengths were positively and college satisfaction, educational significantly related to life satisfaction; and academic 22 of these were significantly and achievement positively related to university satisfaction; and 16 to average GPA scores
Associated variables Alcohol consumption
27
Merino et al. (2020)
Authors and No. year 26 Magnano et al. (2021)
Title Country Courage, career Italy adaptability, and readiness as resources to improve well-being during the university-to- work transition in Italy Connectedness is Spain in my character: the relationship between nature relatedness and character strengths Associative Transversal
967
Layout Temporality N° Explanatory Transversal 352
Relationship with nature environmental education
Associated variables Career adaptability, professional preparation, life satisfaction, and flowering
Key results The strength of courage was identified as a mediating variable in the relationship between career adaptability with life satisfaction and flowering
Psycho The results show that the strengths of educational intellectual character, i.e., the appreciation of beauty, love of learning, and curiosity, are strongly associated with the relationship with nature. In addition, the findings show that the appreciation of beauty is the strongest covariate of the relationship with nature
Thematic Well-being and psycho educational
29
Noronha and Batista (2020)
Authors and No. year 28 Neto et al. (2022)
Country Portugal
Relations between Brazil character strengths and emotional self-regulation in Brazilian university students
Title Predictors of students’ preferences for assessment methods
Explanatory Transversal
233
Layout Temporality N° Explanatory Transversal 270
Emotional self-regulation
Associated variables Personality traits and assessment methods
Well-being
Thematic Well-being and psycho educational
Key results Neuroticism was negatively correlated with courage and transcendence. Extraversion correlated positively with wisdom, courage, love, justice, temperance, and transcendence. Openness showed a positive correlation with wisdom and temperance. Kindness was positively correlated with love, transcendence, and neuroticism. Consciousness was positively associated with courage, justice, openness, and kindness. Preference for oral examinations is positively related to openness, temperance, and transcendence. The preference for continuous evaluation was associated with those who were courageous. The preference for a thesis is negatively related to neuroticism and positively to temperance and transcendence. Extroverts with courage, love, and justice favored group work more The results indicate that the strengths of vitality and self-regulation are the ones that contribute most to reducing emotional difficulties
United States
Owens et al. (2021)
32
Strengths use, environmental factors, and academic outcomes in newly matriculated college students
Oliveira et al. Subjective Brazil (2016) well-being: Linear relationships to character strengths
Title Country Relationship Brazil between character strengths and personality traits
31
Authors and No. year 30 Noronha and Campos (2018)
Explanatory Transversal
Associative Transversal
371
237
Layout Temporality N° Explanatory Transversal 217
Thematic Well-being
Key results The results indicated that the strengths of vitality, gratitude, persistence, spirituality, kindness, humor, social intelligence, citizenship, justice, and creativity were best explained by the traits of extraversion, kindness, and neuroticism. In addition, extraversion and kindness were the traits that were most frequently associated with character strengths Subjective Well-being All strengths were significantly well-being correlated with at least one aspect of subjective well-being. Negative affect was significantly correlated with only two strengths: creativity and vitality. Life satisfaction items showed 16 significant correlations, and the overall subjective well-being factor also showed 16 significant correlations Academic Psycho Strength barriers negatively predicted satisfaction, educational academic satisfaction and academic meaning, environmental support positively and leadership, predicted academic satisfaction. The influence of use of strengths and environmental environmental support positively predicted academic moderators: the meaning, and strength barriers barriers of negatively predicted academic meaning strengths, and environmental support
Associated variables Personality dimensions
Porto Noronha and Martins (2016)
Proctor et al. (2011)
34
35
Authors and No. year 33 Petkari and Ortiz-Tallo (2018)
Title Towards youth happiness and mental health in the United Arab Emirates: The path of character strengths in a multicultural population Associations between character strengths and life satisfaction: a study with college students Strengths use as a predictor of well-being and health-related quality of life
UK
Brazil
Country United Arab Emirates
Associative Transversal
Associative Transversal
135
186
Layout Temporality N° Explanatory Transversal 242
Subjective well-being, health-related quality of life, positive and negative affect, self-esteem, and self-efficacy
Satisfaction with life
Associated variables Happiness, health
Well-being
Well-being
Thematic Well-being
The use of strengths is a predictor of subjective well-being, but not of health-related quality of life. Hope and enthusiasm were positive and significant predictors of life satisfaction. The most commonly supported strengths were as follows: love, humor, kindness, social intelligence, and open-mindedness. The use of strengths served as a predictor variable while maintaining constant self-esteem and self-efficacy
The results showed that individuals with higher scores in hope, vitality, gratitude, love, curiosity, perseverance, and social intelligence tend to live a more fulfilling life
Key results The results of the regression analyses revealed that the group of character strengths of gratitude, spirituality, zest, hope, curiosity, and love, along with being young, was associated with higher levels of happiness and better mental health, while being a man indicated better mental health
37
Smith et al. (2021)
Authors and No. year 36 Ramadhanu et al. (2019)
The effects of a United character strength States focused positive psychology course on undergraduate happiness and well-being
Explanatory Longitudinal 288
Title Country Layout Temporality N° Learning Indonesia Explanatory Transversal 367 satisfaction analysis of online learning readiness with learning culture and character strength as antecedent variables
PERMA wellness, academic achievement, and credit hours
Associated variables Learning satisfaction, e-learning readiness, and learning culture
Thematic Key results Psycho Data analysis findings with SEM educational structural equation models indicate that learning culture, character strength, and learning satisfaction can explain their effect on readiness for online learning. In addition, this study also concluded that learning culture and character strength could explain the satisfaction of learning online. In addition, the findings of this study also indicate that learning satisfaction is not able to mediate the influence of learning culture and character strength in preparing for online learning Well-being Students who attended the positive and psycho psychology course based on character educational strengths had significant improvements in all PERMA measures, and these improvements were significantly greater relative to students in other psychology courses. The GPA was positively correlated with achievement, and the number of credit hours was negatively correlated with health
Uliaszek et al. (2022)
Villacís et al. (2021)
39
40
Authors and No. year 38 Tan et al. (2018)
Canada
Country UK
Good character at Spain college: The combined role of second-order character strength factors and phronesis motivation in undergraduate academic outcomes
The role of signature strengths in treatment outcome: Initial results from a large and diverse university sample
Title Students’ preferences for lecturers’ personalities
Explanatory Transversal
Explanatory Transversal
Associated variables Thematic Student preferences Psycho over their teachers, educational student personality dimensions
Key results The strengths of character were associated with the personality dimensions of the students. Regression analysis showed that students’ character strengths were only significant in predicting preferences for pleasant teachers, especially for the strengths of courage, love, justice, and temperance. Preferences for conscientious lecturers were significantly positively correlated with character strengths such as wisdom, courage, humanity, and justice 2655 Mental health Well-being All strengths were negatively related to all dimensions of treatment perception. Character strengths had unique predictive power over the severity of baseline symptoms and the total number of sessions completed to predict treatment outcome, important role of strength zest, love of learning, and perseverance 183 Academic Psycho Character strengths of care, selfengagement, educational control, and curiosity showed positive professional doubt, associations with engagement and and academic academic achievement. The performance motivational dimension of the phronesis motivational character is negatively related to professional doubt. The results showed that both dimensions of character—behavioral and motivational—were related to specific academic factors
Layout Temporality N° Associative Transversal 260
Authors and No. year Title 41 Wingert et al. Mindfulness- (2022) based strengths practice improves well-being and retention in undergraduates: a preliminary randomized controlled trial 42 Yu et al. Effects of (2022) character strength-based intervention vs group counseling on post-traumatic growth, well- being, and depression among university students during the COVID-19 pandemic in Guangdong, China: A non-inferiority trial Layout Temporality N° Explanatory Longitudinal 52
Explanatory Longitudinal 124
Country United States
Thailand
Thematic Well-being and psycho educational
Post-traumatic Well-being growth, well-being, depression
Associated variables PERMA wellbeing, student retention
Intervention groups based on CSI character strengths and GC group counseling had similar baseline characteristics. Both CSI and GC experienced an increase in posttraumatic growth and well-being. Mean scores for post-traumatic growth were significantly higher in the CSI groups, while well-being scores were similar between CSI and GC. Neither CSI nor GC experienced a reduction in depression scores
Key results Intervention students had significantly greater well-being, engagement, meaning, and health after the program. Students in the intervention group also had modestly higher retention rates in the following academic year than those in the control group
44
Zubair et al. (2018)
Authors and No. year 43 Zhang and Chen (2018)
Gender differences in character strengths, social competence, and peer relations among Pakistani and Russian university students
Pakistan and Russia
Title Country Character China strengths, strengths use, future self- continuity and subjective well-being among Chinese university students
Explanatory Transversal
558
Layout Temporality N° Explanatory Transversal 225
Social competence and peer relationships
Key results He suggested that various strengths of character were correlated with subjective well-being, and the strongest correlations were found for hope, curiosity, enthusiasm, perseverance, and love. The use of strengths and future self-continuity were solidly correlated with subjective well-being. The analysis of mediation showed that the use of strengths mediates the relationship between character strengths and subjective well-being, and specifically, the indirect effects of the use of strengths vary from different character strengths Psycho The results showed that character educational strengths and social competence positively predicted peer relationships. The findings also proposed that gender significantly moderates the relationship between character strengths and peer relationships. The cross-cultural comparison revealed that Russian students scored higher on strengths of justice, temperance, and transcendence, as well as social competence compared to Pakistani students; on the contrary, nonsignificant cultural differences found themselves in the strengths of wisdom, courage, and humanity
Associated variables Thematic Strengths of Well-being character, use of strengths, future self-continuity, and subjective well-being
48
R. Cobo-Rendón and D. García-Álvarez
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Smith, B. W., Ford, C. G., Erickson, K., & Guzman, A. (2021). The effects of a character strength focused positive psychology course on undergraduate happiness and well-being. Journal of Happiness Studies, 22(1), 343–362. Tan, S., Mansi, A., & Furnham, A. (2018). Students’ preferences for lecturers’ personalities. Journal of Further and Higher Education, 42(3), 429–438. https://doi.org/10.108 0/0309877X.2017.1301406 Uliaszek, A. A., Rashid, T., & Zarowsky, Z. (2022). The role of signature strengths in treatment outcome: Initial results from a large and diverse university sample. Journal of Contemporary Psychotherapy, 52(1), 15–21. Van Nieuwerburgh, C., & Green, A. (2022). Strengths-based interventions for students and staff. Applied positive school psychology. In A. Giraldez-Hayes & J. Burke (Eds.), Applied positive school psychology (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003228158 Vergara-Morales, J., Del Valle, M., Díaz, A., & Pérez, M. V. (2018). Adaptación de la escala de satisfacción académica en estudiantes universitarios chilenos. Psicología Educativa, 24, 99–106. https://doi.org/10.5093/psed2018a15 Villacís, J. L., de la Fuente, J., & Naval, C. (2021). Good character at college: The combined role of second-order character strength factors and phronesis motivation in undergraduate academic outcomes. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18(16), 8263. Wingert, J. R., Jones, J. C., Swoap, R. A., & Wingert, H. M. (2022). Mindfulness-based strengths practice improves well-being and retention in undergraduates: A preliminary randomized controlled trial. Journal of American College Health, 70(3), 783–790. Wolitzky-Taylor, K., LeBeau, R. T., Perez, M., Gong-Guy, E., & Fong, T. (2020). Suicide prevention on college campuses: What works and what are the existing gaps? A systematic review and meta-analysis. Journal of American College Health, 68(4), 419–429. https://doi. org/10.1080/07448481.2019.1577861 Yang, W., Lin, L., Zhu, W., & Liang, S. (2015). An introduction to mental health services at universities in China. Mental Health & Prevention, 3(1–2), 11–16. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. mhp.2015.04.001 Yu, Y., Chotipanvithayakul, R., Wichaidit, W., & Cai, W. (2022). Effects of character strength- based intervention vs group counseling on post-traumatic growth, well-being, and depression among university students during the COVID-19 pandemic in Guangdong, China: A non- inferiority trial. Psychology Research and Behavior Management, 15, 1517–1529. https://doi. org/10.2147/PRBM.S359073 Zhang, Y., & Chen, M. (2018). Character strengths, strengths use, future self-continuity and subjective well-being among Chinese university students. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 1040. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01040 Zubair, A., Kamal, A., & Artemeva, V. (2018). Gender differences in character strengths, social competence, and peer relations among Pakistani and Russian university students. Pakistan Journal of Psychological Research, 33(2), 607–626.
Chapter 3
Adults’ Professional Education: Experiences and Expectations of Online Chilean Students Rodrigo Flores Guerrero
and Carola Naranjo Inostroza
3.1 Introduction In the last decades, there has been significant growth in online learning, both in the form of private for-profit online institutions and traditional non-profits, such as universities. This growth can be seen at all different types of institutions (public/private, non-profit/for-profit, traditional brick, and mortar schools/stand-alone online schools) and involve a wide range of disciplines (business, criminal justice, health administration, psychology, accounting, information technology, etc.), as well as educational levels (associates, bachelors, masters, and doctorate degrees). In the broader context of the development of information and communication technologies, online education has been suggested as a revolutionary solution to diverse educational problems of inequality (see Allen & Seaman, 2014; Contact North, 2012). Expenses related to travel time, fuel cost, and time away from work and home that would normally be associated with traditional learning are less of a factor in online learning. Therefore, many institutions nowadays view online education as a necessary part of their long-term strategy. Nevertheless, there are various opinions regarding online education versus traditional education. The most important doubts refer to the quality of the education received, the acceptance of companies and the market about online degrees, and so on. Lee (2017) mentions conflicts between current perspectives and real possibilities regarding issues such as students, technologies, and the media used. According to Adams and DeFleur (2006), critics of online education tend to believe that the education received online is inferior to traditional education. However, Joy and Garcia (as cited in Adams and DeFleur (2006)) think online learning is equivalent to education received in a traditional setting. R. F. Guerrero (*) · C. N. Inostroza Universidad del Desarrollo, Faculty of Psychology, Santiago de Chile, Chile e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. Fossa, C. Cortés-Rivera (eds.), Affectivity and Learning, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31709-5_3
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3.2 Definition In the early 1980s, emphasis in distance education research and development was placed on the separation in place and time of teachers and students. Keegan (1980) defined distance education (DE) as an emerging field of practice and area for educational research, which includes six elements: (1) the separation of teachers and learners, (2) the role and influence of the educational institution, (3) the use of media to link teachers and learners, (4) the provision of two-way communication, (5) the treatment of learners as individuals rather than as members of a group, and (6) the introduction of a new form of industrialized education. The recent forms of distance education (DE) practice, which are mediated by Web technologies, are now commonly referred to as online education (OE) and are generally conceptualized based on the distinctive features of the Internet compared to those of other previous DE media, including textbooks, radio, and television (e.g., Kanuka & Brooks, 2010; Swan, 2010). Technology has long played important roles in education (Molenda, 2008). Educational research has consistently benefited from the introduction of new technologies. When computer-based instruction became viable, it was possible to conduct research on strategies and sequences. Virtual spaces have significantly enhanced the meaning of being separated in terms of place. People from different places can meet in a common virtual space and share ideas and artifacts and work in concert on projects. Meeting in a virtual space has become a standard practice in many circumstances. Modern distance technologies have evolved to include Web 2.0 technologies that support collaborative learning, social networking, and virtual worlds. In short, modern distance technologies are emphasizing the third (media), fourth (communication), and fifth (personalization) of Keegan’s original characteristics of distance education (1980). These new technologies have increased the number of communications, making society more complex than ever. Information and communication technology, characterized by continual innovation and rapid technological change, is having a tremendous impact on society and accelerating social changes (Rodríguez et al., 2015). Several national, regional, and international associations and networks now exist to promote professional practice in continuing education, including Adult and Community Education in Australia (see also EdNA—Education Network Australia), the American Society for Continuing Education (ASCE), the European Association for the Education of Adults (EAEA), and the International Association for Continuing Education and Training (IACET). Journals dedicated to research and practice around adult and continuing education can now be found in most developed countries. Information and communication technology (ICT) has resulted in the creation of separate professional communities focused specifically on distance and technology-based education. Currently, in Chile, there is no association of professionals or educational centers that regulate the OE. OE can take practitioners to a huge resource of knowledge and authentic materials from diverse fields of knowledge and information (Pape, 2010). Online learning is
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believed to be an effective tool in combating the rising cost of post-secondary education by spreading the cost of the class in comparison with the traditional setting of teaching and learning (Tucker, 2007). Angelova (2020) postulates that online environments make students feel work easier on individual tasks, but not in team works. These accounts exhibit that online can be an effective alternative to physical classroom teaching and learning by letting learners’ individual autonomy face and pace their learning at their own place, even though it has both positive and negative consequences. In Chile, OE has increased only marginally in the past 5 years. While countries like the USA and Brazil have between 15% and 20% of their total enrollment covered by online programs, Chile only has about 3% of its programs offered online (Martínez, 2019). Adult education is called andragogy. Many researchers have demonstrated that learning at a distance requires higher metacognitive skills than learning in classroom settings (Moore, 2009); it has also been found higher dropout rates among distance learners compared with face-to-face students (Levy, 2007). The andragogical perspective regarded adult learners, by contrast with children, as autonomous subjects relatively free from dependence. It was perceived that adult situations are influenced and controlled only—or at least briefly—by sources ̳ from within (see Knowles, 1985). Adult learners were conceptualized as being internally motivated and having the ability to maintain their motivation throughout a course of study, which is initiated and led by their own needs and goals. Consequently, those who tend to benefit from OE are those individuals who are well-prepared (with high pre-existing academic skills) and well-resourced (including funds, time, and technological or cultural access) (Choi et al., 2013).
3.3 Affectivity OE becomes effective and successful when teachers and learners engage in meaningful interactions. Burns and Myhill (2004) concede that learning can be effective when discourse in the classroom is based on discussion between the teacher and students. Additionally, Muijs and Reynold (2010) force that interactions in a classroom enable the teachers to confirm that the learners understand the principles, which have been taught and help the students to practice and master target language skills and knowledge in the way they think. Regarding OE, Beauchamp (2012) suggests “speed, automation, capacity, range, provisionally and interactivity” (p. 3) as the basic features that a teacher needs to be familiar with. Galoyan (2021) developed a mixed-methods study that explores student perceptions regarding the concept of transfer (being able to apply what they have learned in one context in another similar context) and regarding educational practices in a virtual modality. The results indicate the importance of motivation, creativity, and application of learning. Regarding educational practices, aspects such as feedback, presentations, and classes by guest teachers are pointed out.
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Understanding that meaningful learning is essential in teaching, Mayende et al. (2017) carried out a comparative study between two “massive open online courses” to identify key aspects of virtual teaching methods. The main results indicated the importance of the prior organization of the course to promote individual participation and also mention motivation among peers as a key part to promote the sustainability of the course. OE requires a high speed of interactivity between teachers and students, which can be beyond the skill and knowledge of learners, their abilities, and teaching strategies for attaining expected outcomes. Moreover, OE has played an interactive and supportive role in material development and production. Online teaching and learning should try to support the learners’ needs and expectation rather than delivering the subject matter only from teachers’ perspective even if the courses are not ICT- friendly (Duraku & Hoxha, 2020). Through semi-structured interviews, Robinson et al. (2017) analyzed the perceptions of various teachers regarding collaborative learning activities in a virtual context. The main emerging themes were as follows: the importance of online communication, the challenges facing online education, and support as a center of learning. Additional time dedicated to learning and understanding with students is also mentioned as important aspect. Additionally, Palmer and Holt (2009) suggest security, level of self-satisfaction, and the time and dedication of both teachers and students needed to implement the changes as the major factors that determine the quality of online education. Studies on emotions in OE environments have increased in recent years (Loderer et al., 2018). Emotional experiences in OE are different from those in traditional courses (Butz et al., 2015; Daniels & Stupnisky, 2012; Regan et al., 2012). Emotions are thought to influence important components of learning processes, such as attention, motivation, and the use of learning strategies, as well as resulting learning outcomes (Fredrickson, 2001; Pekrun & Perry, 2014). Postulating that virtual education must stop being a cold and emotionless place, Melo-Solarte and Diaz (2018) proposed a new virtual environment that includes elements of affective learning in its design, to motivate and generate commitment in students. They carried out a case study with this design in schoolchildren, achieving a completion rate of 80% and an ascending learning curve in 59% of those involved, which would account for the effectiveness that promotes affective learning. Student’s intention to use an online learning system is determined by their beliefs and attitude toward using the online system and the perceived usefulness of the system. Consequently, when the online learning system is perceived as easy to be used, the higher will be the student’s perceived ability to use it successfully, and hence, the student will experience more positive emotions and perform better in an online course (Venkatesh & Bala, 2008). Moreover, Roorda et al. (2017) investigated whether student engagement works as a mediator in the association between an affective relationship between teachers and students with performance. The results show that commitment influences this relationship, whether it is a positive or negative affect relationship. Individual variables, such as self-efficacy, intrinsic motivation, cognitive absorption (Saadé & Bahli, 2005), and computer anxiety were
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all confirmed as determinants of the perceived ease of use (Gefen et al., 2003). External variables, such as characteristics of the learning environment, affect the perceived usefulness directly or indirectly through the perceived ease of use (Compeau et al., 1999). Frustration with a seemingly unsolvable learning task likely bears similar motivational consequences for achievement as frustration targets the technological device used for learning. Since the acceptance of online learning is related to one’s own beliefs and perceptions regarding technology, Stephan et al. (2019) studied the influence of the emotional aspect of students on their virtual learning experiences. The results indicated that online students presented greater boredom, anxiety, and anger, as well as less enjoyment. However, no significant differences were shown for emotions of hope and shame. Finally, the value associated with technology with higher levels of enjoyment is mentioned. Negative deactivating emotions such as boredom, in contrast, are expected to reduce motivation, effort, and strategic learning, thereby negatively impacting achievement (Pekrun et al., 2014; Tze et al., 2016). Research suggests that boredom and other negative emotions may be linked to motivational disengagement, as indicated by off-task behavior, or gaming the system (i.e., completing tasks by taking advantage of system properties (Sabourin & Lester, 2014). Recent work on epistemic emotions also suggests that confusion may promote complex thinking and foster learning if resolvable (D’Mello & Graesser, 2014). However, especially for emotions like anxiety or frustration, negative effects on overall learning outcomes likely outweigh any beneficial short-term effects for most learners (Pekrun et al., 2011). Nevertheless, the question of how students experience OE emotionally has not been answered sufficiently, so far.
3.4 Methods 3.4.1 Participants We carried out a non-experimental, exploratory, qualitative study (Atkinson et al., 2003; Charmaz, 2000, 2006; Flores, 2009) interviewing 25 OE students from Chile. Participants were selected by theoretical sampling, combining the criteria of homogeneity and heterogeneity (Charmaz, 2000, 2006; Flores, 2009; Strauss, 1987). We sought to maximize sampling variability to represent different types of OE courses (see Table 3.1). Demographic data are not presented to assure confidentiality. Permission to carry out the study was given by the National Fund for Research in Science and Technology of Chile (FONDECYT in Spanish). Written consent was obtained from the 25 participants, including assurance of confidentiality letters. Semi-structured interviews were conducted over a 4-week period. The instrument was a semi-structured interview protocol designed by the researchers of this study. The design of the protocol was informed by our research
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Table 3.1 Sample characteristics Number of interviews 6 (24%) 6 (24%) 7 (28%) 6 (24%) Total = 25 (100%)
Sex F = 4 (66.6%) M = 2 (33.3%) M = 3 (50%) F = 3 (50%) F = 5 (71.4%) M = 2 (28.6%) M = 1 (16.6% F = 5 (83.3%) F = 13 (52%) M = 12 (48%)
City Concepción La Serena Santiago de Chile Valparaíso
questions and our broader conceptual framework. Interviews were conducted via Zoom video conferencing and lasted approximately 45 minutes. At the beginning of the interview, participants were provided with a brief overview of the study, including research goals, interview structure, anticipated time of completion, and broad definitions of key terms, such as learning and transfer of learning.
3.4.2 Data Management and Analysis All interviews were digitally recorded and transcribed by a social science professional. Transcriptions were reviewed and checked for accuracy by at least one of the authors or a research assistant. Using the methodology of Coding Consensus, Co-occurrence, and Comparison outlined by Willms et al. (1992), and rooted in grounded theory (i.e., theory derived from data and then illustrated by characteristic examples of data) (Glaser & Strauss, 1967), interview transcripts were analyzed in the following steps. First, the empirical material contained in the interviews was independently coded by the researchers to condense the data into analyzable units. Segments of text ranging from a phrase to several paragraphs were assigned codes based on a priori (i.e., from the interview guide) or emergent themes. Disagreements in the assignment or description of codes were resolved through discussion between investigators and enhanced definitions of codes (Charmaz, 2006; Strauss, 1987; Strauss & Corbin, 2002). The final list of codes was built based on a consensus from the research team members. These codes were grouped into categories of analysis, establishing initial propositions of relationships, linking the discourse of social actors (Strauss, 1987), and supporting literature (Strauss & Corbin, 2002). Finally, we used the qualitative analysis software Atlas.ti 22.
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3.5 Results The presentation of results is organized into three sections: first, technological aspects, where it can be found that there are several authors who have pointed out the importance of technological factors in the development of OE (Kanuka & Brooks, 2010; Keegan, 1980; Molenda, 2008; Swan, 2010) and how it is related to affective and motivational variables in teaching (Molenda, 2008); secondly, the characteristics of developing an OE, which appears in comparison to face-to-face teaching. The category virtuality vs. physical attendance refers to the perception of benefits related to the execution of online education and the possible disadvantages that it could have (Levy, 2007; Moore, 2009). Lastly, the affectivity and emotionality category appear to be highly relevant to our findings. As indicated in the literature review (Burns & Myhill, 2004; Loderer et al., 2018), affectivity and emotionality play an important role in the EO process. Studies show that positive emotions are related to the effectiveness of OE processes (Fredrickson, 2001; Pekrun & Perry, 2014).
3.5.1 Technological Aspects The literature has profusely rescued the structural or technological aspects of OE (Kanuka & Brooks, 2010; Keegan, 1980; Molenda, 2008; Swan, 2010). Having them is an important element for the proper development of training activities. In this sense, in the interviews carried out, we were able to verify the importance given to having a good internet connection, since this has a direct effect on how virtual learning is perceived in conjunction with adequate technological management, which had been anticipated by Gefen et al. (2003). It is considered that this provider is more important than the quality of the device where it is accessed, due to the wide range of options that can be used. I think that the internet seems more relevant than a good computer, because finally from a phone you can also make that connection I have had classes where my connection has been very bad because I am not in a stable place, I am using a borrowed internet, who knows, and of course the experience there has been very difficult
In the same way, it appears as a fundamental element of the educational process of the OE to have good electronic devices, such as a computer, and to have adequate skills in handling them, especially in emergency situations. That he knows perfectly how to overcome any technical difficulty, that he has a plan B, because when the teacher doesn’t know how to connect or how to activate/deactivate certain things, then it’s like he doesn’t know what he’s involved in
In the same way, the development of activities in streaming format but also in asynchronous format is adequately valued, that is, having a platform that supports videos and readings that can guide the teaching–learning process. Having this type of
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platform and its positive assessment by the interviewees has been described in different studies on OE (Kanuka & Brooks, 2010; Keegan, 1980; Molenda, 2008; Swan, 2010).
3.6 Virtuality vs. Presentiality The second element of analysis by the people interviewed in our research is related to the comparison between face-to-face education (PE) and online education (OE), which had already been identified in the literature (Levy, 2007; Moore, 2009). The category virtuality vs. attendance refers to the perception of benefits related to the execution of online education and the possible disadvantages that it could have. Among the perceived benefits of carrying out an OE, the people interviewed indicate the place of execution, that is, having the possibility of attending training courses from the workplace or home. This situation allows matters such as moving around the city, use of public transport, administration of personal and family schedules, and the physical space in which training activities are carried out to be solved in a virtual environment. I think that in a practical matter, of displacement, of comfort more than everything, it is much more comfortable online I rescue the possibility of not moving from my place, to be attending
Also included is the facility to take notes, such as a screen print, for example. Along with the above, the people interviewed positively value the scope of virtual courses, for example, that they can be developed at a national level and not locally, as would be the case with face-to-face education. Along with this, many of the interviewees point out that there are no significant differences in the delivery of content and the learning process that takes place in the OE in contrast to the PE. Obviously we are not physically present, I think that the rest in general is achieved more or less the same Within that previous reflection that I had about this was that I did not notice a difference in learning
In the same way, the interviewees positively value the asynchronous media typical of online education, insofar as they have an important support role through the online tutor. The online tutor is a person, not a teacher, who provides support and helps students with respect to the online platform. Online education can even be more advantageous than face-to-face education because it allows you to be more dynamic Those courses that come in capsules are comfortable, I think it’s comfortable because you listen to the teacher when he wants and it’s as if you were there
Contrary to the positively valued aspects and dimensions, the people interviewed in our research were able to identify a set of disadvantages of OE compared to face-to-face.
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The main negatively valued aspect is related to the lack of interaction between people attending OE courses. The lack of interaction is reinforced by the fact that, on many occasions, the people participating in the courses do not turn on their computer cameras, which generates a perception of not being present in the activities carried out, generating a distance in the process. The less personal interaction between the students and between the students with the teacher would make it difficult to share experiences with other students and carry out conversations about the contents of the subjects and other aspects of subjectivity typical of the personal assessment of professors and subjects. In PE, closeness in relation to physical contact is mentioned as the most relevant aspect, pointing out that there is a three-dimensionality made up of teacher, students, and group interaction, which is different from the two-dimensionality of OE made up only of teacher and students. This dimension of expression of subjectivity by not expressing itself in an interpersonal space seems to be an element that reinforces interaction and group cohesion that is not present in OE. One cannot visualize, for example, the non-verbal language in the case of the teacher... we do not know if the student is bored for example There is something that does not replace, that is how I end up talking with someone, whether they are the presenter or the public
These elements are reinforced by the fact that class sessions usually have quick endings, considered abrupt, where there is no farewell, which is a transition between the class and its content delivery term. This situation does not allow for establishing a conversation at the end of the class.
3.6.1 Teacher Skills The teacher skills category includes those skills perceived by the students that the teacher possesses regarding the knowledge of the subjects taught, understood as theoretical knowledge of the contents, and dimensions related to the performance of the online platform and the tools of virtual teaching (Compton, 2009; Guedes & Mutti, 2010). We have called these skills “hard.” Along with this, our interviewees value a series of skills related to the pedagogical transmission of knowledge, the generation of an appropriate teaching climate, and the promotion of participation in OE, what we have called “soft” skills. Below is a description of both concepts. Regarding the first of the contents, which we have called hard skills, we describe the perceptions that our interviewees highlight regarding the theoretical management and experience that the professor of the course he teaches has. The teacher must make clear his expertise and conceptual mastery of the contents that will be delivered in the training of professionals. On many occasions, given the nature of the OE modality, the classes taught by teachers are like a master class, in which the teacher displays all his knowledge without further interaction with the participants, focused on the presentation of content. This is a dimension that is demonstrated in the OE teaching process.
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R. F. Guerrero and C. N. Inostroza Whether online or in person, theoretical management is very important
Along with the above, our interviewees value another aspect or dimension of the teacher who carries out training in OE. This dimension refers to technical or specific skills related to technology. The technology dimension has been rescued by several authors in different studies (Kanuka & Brooks, 2010; Molenda, 2008; Swan, 2010). In this way, it is indicated that the teacher who carries out training in OE must necessarily possess and demonstrate the management of the platforms and tools that make up the virtual course, such as Zoom and Moodle. A teacher requires new tools, not only knowledge, but also having the management of technology in the first place I think it is the key because, for example, if you are sent to a room that has special functions, not all of us know how to occupy them, (…) then we are not always able to take advantage of it, therefore, it suddenly makes the learning process difficult
Our interviewees value a series of skills related to the pedagogical transmission of knowledge, the generation of an appropriate teaching climate, and the promotion of participation in OE, what we have called soft skills. A second element that is considered a must for teachers by the people interviewed in our research is related to what we have called soft skills, which refers to the ability to generate an environment of trust and a good climate for learning. Within these soft skills, concepts such as the ability to transmit learning through language in a clear, simple way are mentioned, without the use of excessively complicated language, that is, being able to transmit complex concepts in a language that is understandable by the student. Another important element considered by the people interviewed is related to the fact that the teacher must generate an atmosphere of acceptance and trust in the educational process of the OE. It is pointed out that students cannot be just another number without importance. It is educating people and human beings. The interviewees point out the need to humanize the participants of an OE course. This atmosphere or climate, which is usually developed in the classroom, must be replicated in the online mode. Our interviewees indicate that they have the perception of the existence of an adequate climate in the educational process. Along with the above, it is indicated that it is important for the teacher to generate a motivational environment focused on learning. This atmosphere tolerates and allows interpersonal interaction, allowing questions from students and encouraging their active participation. Especially when it is online, in the case of classes, the teacher must achieve empathy, it is very important The teacher’s ability to motivate, to create more of a group dynamic, which is what could be missed, let’s say, when studying online Give purpose to the course and in some way generate emotional connection, personified participation, these elements I think are also the plus that the teacher should have
Despite the perception of a good learning climate, the human component of group interaction is lacking, as has already been pointed out. In this way, it was shown that activities of sharing recreational activities are missed in the absence of classmates, which can be supplied by creating a WhatsApp group.
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3.6.2 Affectivity and Emotionality An important aspect that is highlighted in our research is related to the dimension of emotionality. Several authors have rescued the emotional processes present in OE and how they model the effectiveness of teaching (Burns & Myhill, 2004; Loderer et al., 2018). Emotionality is an important element in teaching. Along with emotionality, another important concept is related to affectivity. Several authors have highlighted the importance of affective processes in learning (Beauchamp, 2012). Let us look at these two concepts. In the first place, we will account for the concept of emotionality and the relationship it establishes with learning (Fredrickson, 2001; Pekrun & Perry, 2014). The first emotion indicated by our interviewees is related to the meaning or purpose of the course held at OE. The absence or lack of a sense of purpose would affect learning transversally because it is closely related to the motivation and commitment to develop and carry out a training process. All things in life have a meaning, in this particular case the meaning of why I signed up for this particular course
Secondly, we can indicate regarding emotions before starting an online course that practically all the people who were interviewed expressed emotions valued as positive and pleasant, as Venkatesh and Bala (2008) had stated. Within the named emotions, we can indicate the desire or desire to incorporate new knowledge or skill, understood as the desire to learn. Another positive emotion indicated by the interviewees was anxiety or expectations regarding the course to be taken, understood as a positive and open disposition or attitude to incorporate new skills and knowledge on the part of the students. The positive anxiety, of what is coming, of what I am going to learn, what is this going to do for me The expectation, a positive attitude, because I signed up for the course for a reason
Finally, the emotions regarding finishing the OE course were presented as a motivation to continue learning, as Palmer and Holt (2009) had stated, to continue taking other courses in the same OE modality, as well as a positive evaluation of satisfaction when the course is done. So much that I still have to learn, so I immediately think about what the next step is going to be
Along with emotionality, another important concept analyzed in our interviews is related to affectivity. Several authors have highlighted the importance of affective processes in learning. In the case of our interviews, affectivity is not a clearly identified concept. The people interviewed indicate that they have the perception that something is missing in the development of the course, but they cannot know what it is, it is found unconsciously. It resembles the desire to have human and close contact, with treatment between people, which had been anticipated by Angelova (2020).
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When asked about the relationship that should exist between teacher and student, it is indicated that it is valued in a positive and fundamental way in the training process, since it allows for generating trust that fosters spaces for common interaction and generating questions and answers to queries that students have and for the exchange of opinions. The aforementioned allows students to generate a feeling of empathy and pleasure with the course taken. Another important aspect is autonomy, which is understood as the willingness to do things and which is presented as a relevant element when it comes to complementing learning, for example, with the asynchronous means of courses. This autonomy is also relevant to encourage student participation in classes. Research on this topic revealed the importance of pre-existing academic skills on the part of students, such as their own needs and achievements (Choi et al., 2013). In this way, motivation understood as the driver of behavior is an important element in OE processes (Saadé & Bahli, 2005). In our interviews, intrinsic motivation appears as the main reason for enrolling in a course in OE mode, understood as a fundamental concept in achieving both virtual and face-to-face learning. Our interviewees indicate that motivation should ideally be intrinsic over extrinsic, since this in turn fosters autonomy, while the compulsory nature of extrinsic motivation closes learning, the commitment is affected and participation in classes decreases. Essential, in every course, face-to-face, online, motivation is important Autonomy serves as training; it is like an element of additional training
Finally, social support is considered to help to learn since it gives importance to group cohesion and the generation of bonds. However, it is considered that this social support is not an obligation for teachers. Our interviewees indicate that social support is a dimension that adds to the educational process if it exists but does not subtract if it is not found.
3.6.3 Recommendations This category brings together all the recommendations given by the interviewees in our study to improve the OE experience. In this way, it is mainly recommended to encourage participation and interaction among students. This is a highly valued aspect. The absence of interaction and expression of subjectivity seem to be conditioning the OE process. In this same line, it is also mentioned to take advantage of the possibility of being able to meet the group of students beforehand. Finally, but just as important, it is considered that a more human value should be given to the learning experience. This refers to the aspects mentioned within soft skills and affective processes, indicating that a greater emphasis on this area would promote learning. I would make it participatory, that is, that the teacher asks, that the teacher interacts with each of the students, it seems important to me
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3.7 Conclusions In the last few years, there has been significant growth in OE in different ways. Many advantages have been named related to travel time, fuel cost, and time away from work and home that would normally be associated with traditional learning, which is less of a factor in OE. People from different places can meet in a common virtual space and share ideas and artifacts and work on projects. Meeting in a virtual space has become a standard practice in many circumstances. Keegan (1980) defined distance education (DE) as an emerging field that includes six elements: the separation of teachers and learners, the role and influence of the educational institution, the use of media to link teachers and learners, the provision of two-way communication, the treatment of learners as individuals rather than as members of a group, and the introduction of a new form of industrialized education. The recent forms of DE practice, which are mediated by Web technologies, are now commonly referred to as OE and generally conceptualized based on the distinctive features of the Internet compared to those of other previous DE media, including textbooks, radio, and television (e.g., Kanuka & Brooks, 2010; Swan, 2010). Many researchers have demonstrated that learning at a distance requires higher metacognitive skills than learning in classroom settings (Moore, 2009), while higher dropout rates among distance learners compared with face-to-face students have been known for some time (Levy, 2007). Studies have highlighted that adults’ learners were conceptualized as being internally motivated and having the ability to maintain their motivation throughout a course of study, which is initiated and led by their own needs and goals. Online teaching and learning should try to support the learners’ needs and expectations rather than delivering the subject matter only from teachers’ perspective even if the courses are not ICT-friendly (Duraku & Hoxha, 2020). Palmer and Holt (2009) suggest security, level of self-satisfaction, and the time and dedication of both teachers and students in order to implement the changes, as they recognize them as the major factors that determine the quality of online education. Studies on emotions in OE environments have increased in recent years (Loderer et al., 2018). Emotions are thought to influence important components of learning processes, such as attention, motivation, and use of learning strategies, as well as resulting learning outcomes (Fredrickson, 2001; Pekrun & Perry, 2014). However, especially for emotions like anxiety or frustration, negative effects on overall learning outcomes likely outweigh any beneficial short-term effects for most learners (Pekrun et al., 2011). Nevertheless, the question of how students experience OE emotionally has not been answered sufficiently, so far in Chile. The results obtained in our qualitative study carried out on 25 online adult education students showed us three important categories: (a) technological factors, (b) face-to-face education vs OE, and (c) affectivity and emotionality categories. There are several authors who have pointed out the importance of technological factors in the development of OE (Kanuka & Brooks, 2010; Keegan, 1980; Molenda, 2008; Swan, 2010) and how it is related to affective and motivational variables in
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teaching (Molenda, 2008). In the interviews carried out, we could verify the importance given to having a good Internet connection, since this has a direct effect on how virtual learning is perceived in conjunction with adequate technological management. Secondly, the characteristics of developing an OE appear in comparison with face-to-face teaching. The category virtuality vs. attendance refers to the perception of benefits related to the execution of online education and the possible disadvantages that it could have (Levy, 2007; Moore, 2009). Among the perceived benefits of carrying out an OE, the people interviewed indicated the place of execution, that is, having the possibility of attending training courses from the workplace or home. This situation allows matters such as moving around the city, use of public transport, administration of personal and family schedules, and the physical space in which training activities are carried out to be solved in a virtual environment. In the same way, the interviewees positively value the asynchronous media typical of online education, insofar as they have an important support role through the online tutor. Our interviewees value a series of skills related to the pedagogical transmission of knowledge, the generation of an appropriate teaching climate, and the promotion of participation in OE, what we have called soft skills. The main negatively valued aspect is related to the lack of interaction between people attending OE courses. The lack of interaction is reinforced by the fact that, on many occasions, the people participating in the courses do not turn on their computer cameras, which generates a perception of not being present in the activities carried out, generating a distance in the process. Lastly, the affectivity and emotionality categories appear to be highly relevant to our findings. As indicated in the reviewed literature (Burns & Myhill, 2004; Loderer et al., 2018), affectivity and emotionality play an important role in the OE process. Studies show that positive emotions are related to the effectiveness of OE processes (Fredrickson, 2001; Pekrun & Perry, 2014). The first emotion indicated by our interviewees is related to the meaning or purpose of the course held at OE. The absence or lack of a sense of purpose would affect learning transversally because it is closely related to the motivation and commitment to develop and carry out a training process. Within the named emotions, we can indicate the desire or desire to incorporate new knowledge or skill, understood as the desire to learn. Another positive emotion indicated by the interviewees was anxiety or expectations regarding the course to be taken, understood as a positive and open disposition or attitude to incorporate new skills and knowledge on the part of the students. Along with emotionality, another important concept analyzed in our interviews is related to affectivity. Affectivity is not a clearly identified concept. The people interviewed indicate that they have the perception that something is missing in the development of the course, but that something is not well defined, it is not well known what it is, it is found unconsciously. It resembles the desire to have human and close contact, with treatment between people, which had been anticipated by Angelova (2020). This perception of lack of interaction with other people may have an important cultural explanation, considering the characteristics of the country in which the study is carried out.
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When asked about the relationship that should exist between teacher and student, it is valued in a positive and fundamental way in the training process, since it allows for generating trust that fosters spaces for common interaction, generating questions and answers to queries that they have students. All this allows students to generate a feeling of empathy and pleasure with the course taken. Another important aspect is autonomy, which is understood as the will to do things and which is presented as a relevant element when it comes to complementing learning, for example, with the asynchronous means of courses. This autonomy is also relevant to encourage student participation in classes.
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Chapter 4
Affective Movement: An Educative and Intuitive Adventure as a Catalyst for Development Dany Boulanger
People’s development should not be restricted to the intellect sphere—as a content (developing cognition) and a form (the teacher intellectually evaluating the child’s progression with a formal test and analyzing his or her growth as a professional or a person). I state in this paper that intellectually framing people’s development can be an obstacle rather than an enabling condition or a catalyst. Intuition—which is affectively grounded—entails another way of framing people’s development—seeing and enabling the free flow of experience to create the conditions for a qualitative gap—for instance, how the person sees himself or herself. Here, the affect is a condition for re-intellectualizing oneself but also others. In this paper, I propose different theoretical avenues for an emergent model of human development based on an intuitive and educational inquiry into one’s affective experience. I performed an autoethnographic exploration (Ellis, 2004) of my own affective experience by intellectualizing it and then by digging into it intuitively. I generally got guided by Bergson’s epistemology—his concepts of irreversible time and duration—but without following a specific method or analyzing my experience theoretically. To write this paper, I retrospectively reread Bergson’s work to “validate” my theoretical avenues. In this logic for Goethe, “philosophy is of value to him only as so far as it confirms conclusions he has already reached in his own intuitive manner” (Nisbet, 2002, p. 225). For the purpose of stylizing my paper according to an author—to make my claims clearer to the reader and, somewhat, legitimate myself (to fit into a scientific genre)—I explicitly grounded my reflections into Bergson’s epistemological and theoretical perspective. For this reason, the paper takes the form of an application and furthermore an extension of some of Bergson’s ideas.
D. Boulanger (*) Department of Education, Université du Québec en Abitibi-Témiscamingue, Val-D’or, QC, Canada © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. Fossa, C. Cortés-Rivera (eds.), Affectivity and Learning, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31709-5_4
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First, I propose a first way of seeing one’s or others’ development experiences—a static way to make the dynamic (flow) static. It entails unseeing. Second, I deepen this way of seeing by delving into how I intellectually framed my own experience in relation to a specific event. It enables me to identify some processes that may not be obvious or visible. Third, I analyze how seeing intellectually involves dynamic of disguise (lying to myself). Fourth, I delve into a dynamic way of seeing by presenting its epistemological characteristics and then by elaborating on the processes that unfold during my own intuitive investigation which was educative—I developed myself.
4.1 Making the Dynamic Static: Unseeing People—be it laypeople, interveners1 (educators, teachers, psychologists, social workers, etc.), or researchers—usually do not see holistically nor deeply; this is true both externally and internally (Boulanger, 2019a, b; Matusov, 2022; Lightfoot, 2004; Price-Mitchell, 2009). I separate these two spheres inclusively by considering them contextually and in an interdependent fashion (Valsiner, 1998). First, people usually do not see the external depth of their social ecology—the interrelated ecological levels. So, the child’s problems are usually not situated in and amid the “forces” in the mesosystemic and macrosystemic levels—these problems are considered fixed characteristics that are attributed to him or her or his or her family. The constantly changing interplay between the systems is neglected; interveners and researchers make the dynamic social ecology into a series of risk and protective factors or measurable variables that freeze the ecological movements (genotype). People tend to focus on the manifestation (phenotype) of problems by situating them on the surface of people’s life (their behavior or cognitions as factors and variables) or their environment (X and Y well-identifiable, delineable, and objective factors and variables). Second, emphasizing the surface of the self (phenotype) entails making invisible its internal and phenomenological experience, particularly its intuitive and affective dimensions. The deep and internal movements (genotype) that unfold in irreversible time (in the flow) are generally kept invisible. For instance, a child’s continuous attempts at overcoming obstacles when learning and thereby developing himself or herself—which supposes doing efforts and experiencing difficulties—are rarely seen as constructive and educative trajectories filled with limits the child tries to overcome. The underlying process (genotype)—which is affective in nature—is made into a series of behavioral and cognitive manifestations (being competent or not, failing or achieving) (phenotype). The latter are situated along a linear scale in order to externally and normatively establish the child’s level of success and compare children.
What is called relational professions in French-Canadian scientific literature (cf., Couturier, 2003).
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Fig. 4.1 Two ways of seeing across the phenotypic and genotypic planes (This is partially inspired by Goethe’s reference to two modes of understanding (Bortoft, 1996))
Let me take Fig. 4.1 as an illustration. The bottom of Fig. 4.1 represents what is ‘‘really” happening (Bergson, 1888)—the unfolding experience. What are you seeing personally when you look at the image on the top of Fig. 4.1? Do you fill the perceptual gap by imagining what is missing—a hidden process—or do you take the animal heads as representing the full picture? Do you imagine the leaves—which are part of the cultural environment (amid the inside and the outside worlds of the self)—that may constitute obstacle (to moving forward on bike) to be overcome? Above all, do you visualize the underlying cooperative movement (the animals coordinating one another)? What are the answers to those questions when you have a child in front of you? And what are the responses to the same questions when it is yourself that is standing in front of you? Bergson (1969/2003) is intrigued by the fact that people do not even know themselves: N’y a-t-il pas là quelque chose de surprenant ? Nous sommes intérieurs à nous-mêmes, et notre personnalité est ce que nous devrions le mieux connaître. Point du tout; notre esprit y est comme à l’étranger, tandis que la matière lui est familière et que, chez elle, il se sent chez lui. […] Mais la nature ne nous demande qu’un coup d’œil à l’intérieur de nous-mêmes
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D. Boulanger : nous apercevons bien alors l’esprit, mais l’esprit se préparant à façonner la matière, s’adaptant par avance à elle, se donnant je ne sais quoi de spatial, de géométrique, d’intellectuel. Une connaissance de l’esprit, dans ce qu’il a de proprement spirituel, nous éloignerait plutôt du but (p. 33; the emphasis is mine). // Is there not something surprising in this? We are internal to ourselves, and our personality is what we should know best. Yet such is not the case; our mind is as if it were in a strange land, whereas matter is familiar to it and in it the mind is at home. […] But nature asks of us only a quick glance at our inner selves; we then perceive the mind, but the mind preparing to shape matter, already adapting itself to it, assuming something of the spatial, the geometric, the intellectual. A knowledge of the mind, in so far as it is properly spiritual, would rather keep us from that end (Bergson, 1946, p. 46–47)2
People tend to intellectualize themselves as well as others by spatializing—conceiving the world in terms of reversible time—movement and flow, particularly what pertains to (deep) affective and intuitive processes. So people are hiding instead of seeing. For the same reason, they are not enabling the underlying processes! So, after Bergson (1888), it appears that we are strangely at ease with living in the shadow, inside (our own constructed) closets, behind closed doors! As psychological and educational interventions as well as human and social sciences are largely grounded in common sense, common sense and social representations (Fig. 4.2) permeate intervention and research (Valsiner, 2012). Thus, we construct walls (close doors) through social representations acting like screens on the genotypic experience—this is the case personally and socially, both for our internal and external realities (Boulanger, 2019c, 2020, 2021). Using signs—mediational tools—such as language and social representations, people stabilize their constantly changing affective experience by intellectualizing it. In Fig. 4.2, the first arrow symbolizes how the relationship between the mind and the emotion is generally represented—the asset (even if scientists often see it circularly) is a vertical relationship from the intellect to the emotion. You may read assertions like “change your mind, change your emotion” or “change your belief, change your reality” on social media. Try the words “mind, beliefs, emotions” on Google Image and you’ll “see.” On the trend of the predominant cognitivist, we “learn” from researchers and so-called experts of the cognition—giving lecturers to Social representations Intellectual
Emotional
Fig. 4.2 Intellectualizing people’s experiences
This is the formal translation of the original version of Bergson in French (a communication presented in 2022. 2
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interveners—that emotions come from beliefs. Hence, learning cognitive strategies used to manage the manifestation of emotions. When I was a teenager, my school psychologist told me that my emotions came from my beliefs—this was the first time that I “learned this.” Yet, I was resisting: “Really, I am pretty sure this is the exact opposite!” I was not a good learning … and I was probably labeled a resisting client by this psychologist (speaking with his colleagues)! I felt something very different…deep inside, something more fluid, a movement emerging the other way around! This psychologist was like the philosophers in the epoch of Bergson (1888): Ils n’ont pas vu que le temps intellectualisé est espace, que l’intelligence travaille sur le fantôme de la durée, mais non pas sur la durée même, que l’élimination du temps est l’acte habituel, normal, banal, de notre entendement (p. 22) \\ They did not see that intellectualized time is space, that the intelligence works upon the phantom of duration, not on duration itself, that the elimination of time is the habitual, normal, commonplace act of our understanding (Bergson, 1946, p. 33).
Thinking intellectually reduces the experiential flow to a series of lines that represent stops or limits (Fig. 4.2; Boulanger, 2021). When researchers or interveners think that they delve into motion, they generally visualize such immobile moments and they infer from their spatial distance that occurs between them: For instance, the child’s (so-called) “temporal” transition from home to school is inferred from the (spatial) correspondence (similarities) or non-correspondence between the static characteristics of these two systems (Boulanger, 2018). High correspondence or similarity signals a fluid transition. The child is supposed to feel in a state of fluid motion! So, it is not surprising that we do not know ourselves. When I start from the intellect—as my psychologist did suggest to me—I effectively feel “frozen”— without the magnificent winter atmosphere animating my affective experience. I present now how I recently tried to introspect my affective experience starting from the intellect. I performed an autoethnographic exploration (Ellis, 2004) of my own affective experience by intellectualizing it then and by digging into it intuitively. After a conflict with my neighbor who told me that I was weird, I decided to introspect my experience. I started by taking the intellect as a way of seeing it. I describe now what I experienced.
4.2 Static Inquiry into My Affectivity 4.2.1 The Process Involved I tried to rethink this event while feeling the emotions associated with it. Some images (situated in the foreground of my experience) appeared—the face of my neighbor filled with judgment; the moment she told me that I was weird. To those images were associated voices resonating in the background. They spoke a static
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language: “You are weird, you do not affirm yourself enough!” Simultaneously, on the same background, some generic and typical images of experiences in which I “felt” weird during my childhood appeared. All of these images and voices appeared with no nuances: They were generic, and they came back in a repetitive way without changing. It was like taking the main images of a cartoon animation and visualizing them many times in the same order or superimposing them (making a pile) to visualize their common lines: This does not form a movie nor a book! There is no motion there, but a series of lines (Fig. 4.2). Figure 4.3 represents my affective inquiry as grounded in the intellect. This is not to say that I only tried to intellectualize my experience by analyzing it. I did focus on the emotion that I tried to feel and welcome. Yet I let the intellect catalyze the affective flow by overemphasizing fixed images and the associated voices related to beliefs about myself (more on this later). The letter A in Fig. 4.3 indicates, first, a rational segmentation of my experience through a line which is a static boundary clearly delineating it on the surface through a classificatory act—“you felt it therefore you are weird”—and delimiting it—“yet you do not want to be weird.” These voiced images were grounded on social representations—the generic category of weirdness—“when you were a child, you were not part of the popular groups in school.” This category—which is associated with being a member of specific groups sharing common characteristics—is contrasted (in terms of exclusive separation; Valsiner, 1998) to not being weird—“yet, in high school you were a member of some popular groups, isn’t it the case?” No synthesis is possible but a constant resonance of the main voice (weirdness) with a non- convincing resistance (non-weirdness). In these conditions, these vocalized images—which are associated with my personal trajectory as part of a normative society—catalyzed my reflection about the event (the dispute with my neighbor). I ended up concluding: “I feel weird, therefore sad.” The first part of this conclusion about myself—“I feel weird” instead of “feeling sad”—suggests an intellectual belief (weirdness) disguised in an emotion (feeling it). This is not a feeling but an impression of weirdness that is the cognitive integration of the category of weirdness. From this intellectualization, I infer an emotion of sadness. The latter is made sense of in terms of the generic category of weirdness:
Fig. 4.3 Intellectual inquiry in affectivity: static processes
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“You are a sad weird person.” Sadness becomes reduced to a trait associated with weirdness because it is intellectually framed. The letter A in Fig. 4.3 indicates, secondly, a process of condensation (the whole field being reduced to a point; see Valsiner, 2005). The intellect images “condense into perception the oscillations of matter, and into concepts, the constant flow of things” (Bergson, 1946, p. 62). The scope of the whole field of sadness is reduced to weirdness: Being weird entails being sad. Being sad is a belief disguised in an emotion—I had the impression of really feeling sad—yet it was an ontological claim (being sad). The whole scene—the event of my intercourse with my neighbor with the associated images from the past (me in elementary school)—was reduced to this simple equation: sadness = weirdness. A complementary process of restricted generalization (the letter B in Fig. 4.3) unfolded spreading the idea of weirdness to other situations from the past and the (recent) present. I ended up concluding “I was weird, and I am still now in a lot of situations.” The typical intellectual image of people telling me that I am weird appeared, and then, the generalization got reinforced. This made me think that “in all of the situations, the feeling of sadness is not legitimate because it is associated to being weird.” So, I got affectively excluded from those very situations! Here, condensation and generalization went hand in hand: The condensation starts from a generic belief (generalization) associated with being or not a member of a popular group. Generic and typical images (symbolizing the equation sadness = weirdness), around which my experience got fixed and reduced, were associated to this belief. Then, this equation generalized. This delegitimated further the affective experience of sadness—hence the reinforcement of condensation leading to further generalization. This forms a closed cycle. My own resistance—trying to find counterargument—could not modify this cycle. A process of polarization (the letter C in Fig. 4.3) reinforced this cycle and prevented its break; it protected its frontiers. The affective illegitimacy—“you can’t feel sad and nurture this emotion because it happens in situations of weirdness”— entails depersonalizing my experience and therefore reinforcing the boundary between me and others. I constructed the equation “I am weird, he or she is not weird.” He or she is a member of a popular group. I ended up focusing, through generic and typical images, on the traits of non-weird and popular people. Therefore, I phenomenologically excluded myself and thereby reinforced my affective illegitimacy. My affective illegitimacy and my own phenomenological exclusion entailed me feeling ashamed which I really felt. I therefore articulated sadness with feeling ashamed. I built the equation sadness = weirdness + feeling ashamed. This equation retroactively contaminated all of the experiences (letter D in Fig. 4.3), all of the images that flowed in my mind since the beginning of this inquiry. The closed cycle became even more rigid. The (so-called) emotion of sadness—which is supposed to form a movement— became frozen around this multiplicative (process of contamination and the
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subsequent rigidification of the closed circle) intellectual and linear equations, and this contributed to validating and reinforcing a negative image about myself. Now, I synthesize the aforementioned processes: • Condensation. Being weird = “feeling/being sad” (intellect disguised in emotion and reduction of the whole experience to this equation). • Ontologizing: from feeling in context to being. • Restricted generalization. The equation “being weird = being sad” is generalized to many situations + the emotion (sadness) is delegitimized + phenomenological exclusion. • Polarization between me as weird and the non-weird others: boundary self/others and further phenomenological exclusion. • Articulation between sadness and feeling ashamed + retroactive contamination of my whole reflection. Let me insist to say that these different processes fed into one another and happened rather simultaneously.
4.3 The Form of the Experience: The Grids of Disguise As mentioned before, it was not my intention to intellectualize my affective experience. I want to welcome and feel my emotions. Yet, I was animated by a hidden and unvoiced intention—doing this affective inquiry to understand what happened, where it came from to ultimately get a certain control over it and over myself—“stop acting weird and being weird” I even put my hand on my belly to localizing them, handing up spatializing them. I thereby tried to get a certain control over my emotion. Even if I did start from the emotion, I ended up intellectualizing it. The very fact of trying to localize it suggests an attempt at seizing it—situating it in a (spatial) box. I was under the impression that I was feeling an emotion and that I was listening to and going with an affective movement. Yet, the intellect was disguised in this affective movement, because I was framing my whole experience after a hidden intellectual overtone. The intellect was disguised in emotional pants, but its legs (frame) were intellectual. Figure 4.4 situates these processes in the general epistemic orientations of the reflection.
Fig. 4.4 Grids of disguise
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I thought that I was starting by the emotion to let my whole experience unfolds—I was trying to look through an affective grid (the window on the bottom of Fig. 4.4). This window is blue (affective experience). Yet, I was looking through my intellectual grid (in red) while thinking that I was using the affective window. The glasses were blue pale (affectivity), yet the frame of the window was red (intellect). The content of my affective experience was framed by an intellectual form while I was under the impression that I was framing it affectively. Hence, a lot of disguises shadow—intellectual forms in emotional pants! The images that were unfolding were intellectual images associated with static beliefs. The generic and typical image of me being bullied and called weird forms an abbreviation: It condenses in one image the impression of being weird. It is like superimposing the concrete images of many situations and keeping the general contours or vertical lines of the form (me being rejected in a dark scene). This image got fixed around a static belief about myself, and it establishes once and for all my identity (condensation and generalization). This image exhausted the emotions that were in fact more than it but that were reduced to it. I had the impression that the image was all of the emotions—this indicates the double play of condensation and generalization. Because of the frozen nature of the emotion, its intellectualization, its “ontologizing” (feeling sad = being sad), and the emphasis on others (the popular ones), I projected the emotion on the people involved in the events. I had the impression that the affective overtone came from the people involved in the scene. I imagined the bullied or the popular people and I fixed my emotion on them—through their internalized discourses about me (the voices I was referring to in the previous section). It was like if they controlled my emotions at distance. So, I removed my own emotions from my own phenomenological field. This reinforced the polarization process, and it depersonalizes further my own experience. Seeing in an intellectual logic (Fig. 4.1) entails spatializing the experience and taking the stops of the mobile for its mobility (Bergson, 1888). I was thinking in terms of simultaneity—the spatial manifestation of X and Y typical discourses around a fixed image—instead of succession (the deconstruction and reconstruction of concrete images in the whole field of experience). I was simply rearranging and recombining the pieces (the processes of articulation and diffusion) of my experiences—changing their places in a line of associations—without creating qualitative changes (Bergson, 1888). The whole stayed the same. Yet, I was under the impression that I was changing while I was doing too much the same and reinforcing the fixity of the puzzle. I was misleading myself—the more I progressed, the more I was under the impression that I was changing by taking control over my emotion. Here, it was the intellectual grid speaking and creating shadows (dynamic of disguise; Fig. 4.4)!
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4.4 Dynamic Inquiry into Affectivity 4.4.1 Epistemological Considerations The alternative way of seeing (the image in the bottom of Fig. 4.1) entails going into the temporal flow of motion, following its current instead of removing oneself from it. The idea is to “grasp3 the inner life beneath the juxtaposition of our states that we effect in a spatialized time” (Bergson, 1946, p. 82; the emphasis is mine). This way of seeing is intuitive; therefore, it entails knowing oneself: “[i]ntuition is what attains the spirit, duration, pure change” (Bergson, 1946, p. 36). This “attention” to oneself can be cultivated and developed. Yet, it can also be interrupted when we try to seize it—the intellect takes the charge by spatializing it and gives us the false impression that we are still following the flow of our experience. In this sense, an intuitive way of seeing is indetermined. For Bergson (1946) “Intuition is arduous and cannot last” (p. 46). This is an immediate consciousness of one’s own flow. It seems that this way of seeing has the same propriety as the motion that it tries to follow: “Intuition, bound up to a duration which is growth, perceives in it an uninterrupted continuity of unforeseeable novelty” (Bergson, 1946, p. 38). It entails embracing the “indivisible and indestructible continuity of a melody” (Bergson, 1946, p. 82; the emphasis is mine). Instead of discovering our experience as something that is already there and assembling it (modifying the superficial order of those elements with no qualitative leap) we should consider the idea of invention—creating experiences that were not pre-figured and given at the outset (Bergson, 1888). In this way, we could see our own duration, that is, the tendency of our internal and experiential flow to qualitatively expands with no interruptions (the stops that the first way of seeing projects into a motion), the past constantly pushing on the future and our experience growing up (Bergson, 1888). In this perspective, an intuitive way of seeing is an expanded consciousness of oneself in the world. The consciousness expands through an indistinct, indivisible, and qualitative multiplicity. Through the expansive process, we get new perspectives on life that enable us to progressively see the whole experience with its nuances. The indivisible continuity of experience forms a qualitative unit that is inextensive (not pertaining to space) rather than extensive. The former unfolds deeply, while the former is projected on the surface. How Bergson (1888) presents affectivity will help us understand the inextensive nature of the experience and the way of seeing that enable understanding it. Here are some of the main dimensions Bergson (1888) refers to when presenting affective processes related to different emotions: • The (felt) deepness and degree of elevation of an emotional experience. • The spreading of the color of an emotion into the affective field.
In French, it is formulated in a more dynamic way. Bergson did not mean grasping but “ressaisir,” meaning reestablishing. The word grasping may wrongly express a spatial trend. 3
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The freshness that procures an emotional experience. The shades that bring an emotional experience. The quickness and easiness of the succession of affective states. The weight and the intensity of an emotion. The forms of the line of an emotional experience and its rhythm.
These characteristics signify that people can qualitative see his or her internal flow in terms of motions—like with dance (when we feel heavier, for example). I present now the analysis of my own experience when I looked at it through an intuitive mode of seeing.
4.5 Seeing Myself Intuitively Another day, I decided to experiment another way of seeing myself. I “simply” let the emotion lives. I talked to it and said: “You are welcome, I invite you, what do you have to say.” So I opened the door to let the emotion live a life of its own so that I can be conscious of it. Me telling my emotion “what do you have to say” was an invitation to let it speak its own language—which is not fixed words nor concepts— so that I can see it. I accepted surrendering the control on my emotions to simply let them live and speak. So, I created the conditions for an immediate consciousness which is intuitive (Bergson, 1888). The emotion framed itself spontaneously as I asked it to display its own frame— in Goethe’s perspective, to display itself in terms of itself (Bortoft, 1996)—under my invitation: “What do you want to say” suggests “how do you want to say it.” So, I could look through the emerging grid of emotion (Fig. 4.5). My intuitive inquiry enabled (catalyzed) me to see the motion but foremost it gave this motion the
Social representations Intellectual
Emotional A life of its own
Image 1 of event A
Image 2 of event A
Image 1 of event B
Fig. 4.5 Intuitive seeing through the affective grid
Image 2 of event B
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opportunity to live and expand. This forms one unitary and organic process of seeing and enabling the flow of experience. What I experienced was both seeing a process and the process seen, yet there were not points of demarcation between the two. To use a metaphor, an intuitive way of seeing is like dipping into the water (Fig. 4.1) and experiencing the process from the inside. So, the way of seeing was part of the very process I was experiencing because I framed it intuitively (the affective grid in Fig. 4.5). My way of seeing is motion like the “observed” process (in fact the process that I let speak and enable to flow). In this way, the circular and philosophical paradox between the observer being observed by himself or herself while not being able to observe (on a metacognitive level) the observational act get resolved, at least partially. In this logic, when I experienced indeterminacy—the process by which something is not yet determined (Husserl, 1948/1973), the interval before or between determinacy—it was both the indeterminacy of my way of seeing—which is motion—and of the motion that I let emerged. Usually, indeterminacy is felt as discomfort to be reduced, yet it is constructive in certain conditions (Abbey, 2019). This is the case with seeing intuitively and affectivity. When framed in this grid, indeterminacy does not start from the difficulty or impossibility of determining something or arriving at a clear conclusion on oneself or others (I definitively am X, he or she definitively is Y)—this would amount to fixing superficial limits (phenotype) on our experience (Fig. 4.2). Indeterminacy means being OK with not knowing in advance what will emerge—this was felt as a good thing and as a confidence in my own process of unfolding: “I am confident that what is emerging is good and foremost that the emerging process is unfolding in the good direction, that it knows…the way, so that I don’t have to put my mind into it.” I repeat, I was confident that the unfolding process knows the way, its own way, so that I did not have to make it known intellectually, to make my intellect take the control. Indeterminacy is therefore the condition for emergence to happen. In this spirit, the image of the event is not put at the forefront. It is led by the emotions—which appeared at the forefront of my phenomenological field—it came along with it. It appeared in a floating state in the background. The image was not clear and static; its contours were blurred and therefore moving. It was like seeing oneself in the water. Images in suspension are motions. Their indetermined nature makes them changeable alongside the spreading of the affective experience. As represented in Fig. 4.5, the form of my experience was affective and the image was its content. I (intuitively) saw the emotion (feeling sad) at the forefront, yet I also felt it growing underneath the image that changed accordingly, following its rhythm to form a whole symphony. The affective experience expanded in a constructive way. This is a process of constructive expansion instead of restrictive generalization (Fig. 4.3). It expanded from bellow, from the inside. I felt sadness—as an affective state—all inside my body. I simply “knew” that I felt it. It was a phenomenon of immediate consciousness, so that my mind did not need taking control over it. As I had confidence in what I was conscious of—as it was expanding—I did not need to put words or concepts on it. Feeling sadness and letting it grow entails legitimating
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myself: “I am right to feel this way and to experience this process that redefines me, so I am right as a person.” This contrasts with the intellectual process of delegitimating (Fig. 4.3). The emotional experience was more than the image and the latter changed with it. The emotion brought a surplus of seeing (Gomes, 2019)—as it grown—that guides the image. I felt the images changing and growing alongside the affective experience expanding (the form in the bottom of Fig. 4.5). As the emotion of sadness inflated, I freely imagined children insulting me, telling me that I was weird and beating me after school when I was a child. The feeling of sadness guided the intuitive voices associated with this image. Those were not the strict and categorizing voices of the intellectual grid. These voices pertained to immediate consciousness—they express themselves like a vibrating echo. These were the voices of the self simply knowing as it is conscious of itself. There was no need to remind myself—through an intellectual voice—that I knew. The intuitive voice expresses an experience that I know without having to intellectually voicing it through an invasive (situated at the forefront) dialog—like when we try to convince ourselves of something. The intuitive voice of the immediate consciousness was not categorical. It has the properties of the emotion expanding and the blurred images whose traits moved and took on different shades (nuances). The voices were contextualized and brought nuances that catalyzed a qualitative change in how I saw myself: “I was bullied at school at X moment (event 1) in my childhood but it happened in Y and Y very specific circumstances, therefore this is not because my neighbor told me that I was weird (event 2) that I am really a weird person.” As the emotion of sadness associated with each of the two situations contaminated one another (endosmosis), the images also changed and the voices got contextualized and nuanced (Fig. 4.5). I also felt a meta-voice that reminded me to stay in this state and not let the intellect take over. It was a guidance from a distance providing a general direction. Yet, the intellectual images and voices still appeared and disappeared in the background, but I let them move without fixing them or trying to control them. It is like letting a child talk in a classroom when he or she is not bothering his peers. These voices have also the right to exist. At the end, I concluded that I have the right to feel sad and that it does not matter if someone thinks I am weird or not—this is not an issue anymore. I am simply OK. The underlying social representations got nuanced—it got colored by the affective grid (Fig. 4.5). Maybe I am weird, who knows, and what is knowing exactly? The very way of seeing got nuanced and put into perspective—how a social representation is constructed and sustained got nuanced. I ended up being very tired— and feeling now different than others as I think differently (this was a new issue to be resolved or an old issue taking on a different coloration)—and went to bed, and here, this paper is getting to a close. Let me first summarize the main processes and dimensions of my affective and intuitive inquiry: • Inviting the emotion to live and speak in terms of itself (immediate consciousness), through its own grid, and surrendering taking intellectual control over it.
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• Expansion of the emotion. • Indeterminacy as confidence in the unfolding process. • The blurred and indetermined image as the content of the affective form—which is more than the image—growing along with it and taking different shades (nuances). • Osmosis between the emotions and the images of two events. • Contextualizing and changing my conception of myself and questioning the way of seeing. • The guidance of a meta-voice providing a general direction—“do not let the intellect take control.” • The intellect voices still lived but far in the background, without taking control.
4.6 Conclusion In this paper, I present two ways of seeing my own affective experience—intellectual and intuitive. Seeing intellectually ended up reinforcing our personal and social beliefs. Seeing intuitively enabled modifying them. I analyzed both through different processes. The second is hard to perform—it entails letting the intellect speak but not take control over our experience. This is like meditating or doing full- consciousness activities. It entails gently overcoming the intellect—which is an avenue that must be theorized further. I indicated at the outset that I constructed theoretical avenues intuitively being generally guided by Bergson’s epistemological orientation. I am under that impression that this adventure enabled me to identify new ideas that resonate with others—some people who have read the first draft of this paper have validated it to me. This kind of abductive and idiographic exploration that enable generalization by the ground—our common root (which fits with Goethe’s epistemology)—would be further investigated. Also, the avenues that I proposed could be put into dialog with other authors.
References Abbey, E. (2019). Against the social imprisonment of meaning: Ambivalence, ambiguity, and poetic movements to freedom. Journal of Integrated Social Sciences, 9(1), 102–115. Bergson, H. (1888). Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience. Les Presses universitaires de France. Bergson, H. (1946). The creative mind: An introduction to metaphysics. Translated from French by M. L. Andison. Philosophical Library. Bergson, H. (1969/2003). La pensée et le mouvant. Essais et conférences. Réédition réalisée par Bé Gibier. Chicoutimi, Québec, Canada : Université du Québec à Chicoutimi. Catalogué dans Les classiques des Sciences Sociales: Les Classiques des sciences sociales (uqac.ca).
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Bortoft, H. (1996). The wholeness of nature. Goethe’s way toward a science of conscious participation in nature. Steinerbooks. Boulanger, D. (2018). Continuity of learning in discontinuous conditions: Children experience of transition. Integrative Psychology and Behavioral Sciences, 52(3), 409–424. Boulanger, D. (2019a). Parental engagement in the light of the ecosystemic foundations of the field of school-family-community partnership: Toward a psychosocial, dialogical, and developmental perspective. In G. Marsico & L. Tateo (Eds.), The emergence of self in educational contexts. Theoretical and empirical explorations (pp. 213–232). Springer. Boulanger, D. (2019b). Social representations of parental engagement in poor context: Empty parents and full teachers. Psychology and Society, 11(1), 82–98. Boulanger, D. (2019c). Aesthetic social representations and concrete dialogues across boundaries: Toward intergenerational CHARACTERization. Culture and Psychology, 26(4), 778–202. Boulanger, D. (2020). Unfreezing social representations through imagination in open society: Enabling movement and human encounters beyond borders. In T. Valério, A. C. Bastos, & L. Tateo (Eds.), From dream to action: Imagination and (im)possible futures (Series: Advances in cultural psychology). Information Age Publishing. Boulanger, D. (2021). Cultural processes from the inside: What happens during and after a movement? In B. Dans, B. Wagoner, A. Christensen, & C. Demuth (Eds.), Culture as process. A tribute to Jaan Valsiner (pp. 87–104). Springer. Couturier, Y. (2003). Invariants praxéologiques et analyse du travail dans les métiers relationnels : l’émergence d’une langue de l’intervention comme condition du travail interdisciplinaire. In P. Beaucage & J.-P. Dupuis (Eds.), Des sociétés en mutations (pp. 223–236). Éd. Nota Bene. Ellis, C. (2004). The ethnographic I: A methodological novel about autoethnography. Rowman Altamira. Gomes, R. (2019). The exotopy (surplus of seeing) as a value in effective dialogical transactions between schools and communities. Psychology & Society, 11(1), 152. Husserl, H. (1948/1973). Experience and judgement. Investigations in a genealogy of logic. (J. S. Churchull & K. Ameriks, trans.) and introduction by J. S. Churchill. Routledge & Kegan Paul. Lightfoot, D. (2004). “Some parents just don’t care”: Decoding the meanings of parental involvement in urban schools. Urban Education, 39(1), 91–107. Matusov, E. (2022). Sociocultural positivism: Critical evaluation in three research vignettes. Culture & Psychology, 1354067X2211141. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354067X22111 Nisbet, H. B. (2002). Religion and philosophy. In L. Sharpe (Ed.), The Cambridge companion to Goethe (pp. 219–231). Cambridge University Press. Price-Mitchell, M. (2009). Boundary dynamics: Implications for building parent-school partnerships. The School Community Journal, 19(2), 9–26. Valsiner, J. (1998). Dualisms displaced: From crusades to analytic distinctions. Human Development, 41, 350–354. Valsiner, J. (2005). Transformations and flexible forms: Where qualitative psychology begins. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 4(4), 39–57. Valsiner, J. (2012). A guided science: History of psychology in the mirror of its making. Transaction Publishers.
Chapter 5
Dialogical Co-Zone of Proximal Development and Affectivity: Individually and Collectively Overcoming Intellectual Limits Dany Boulanger
In this chapter, I theoretically extend the avenues that emerged out of an introspective and intuitive inquiry into my own affective experience (Boulanger, 2023a; in this book). I situate these avenues in my attempts (Boulanger, 2022, 2023b; Boulanger et al., 2023) at extending Vygotsky’s (1987) concept of zone of proximal development (ZPD). Moving in our ZPD and constructing it through this very movement entail dialogically overcoming an intellectual limit (the superior limit of the ZPD) through affectivity where lies our potentiality. Getting inspiration from Vygotsky’s subjectivistic work as partially different than is more objective orientation when defining the concept of ZPD on imagination and art as well as Goethe (1792, 1810, 1817) and Bergson (1888, 1969/2003) whose approaches are (at least partially) reflected in Vygotsky’s (see Boulanger, 2023b), I propose that people’s potentials are mainly grounded in affectivity in irreversible time. First, I synthesize the processes identified through my intuitive adventure into my affective experience (Boulanger, 2023a). Second, I present the main aspect of my model of ZPD as motion (Boulanger, 2023b). Third, to situate the intuitive processes of affective exploration in this model, I delve into overcoming an intellectual limit (imposed by others and by ourselves through internalization) in the ZPD through affectivity. Fourth, I develop the idea that affectivity is the realm of potentiality in the ZPD. I propose a move from potential to the process of potentializing, and I display how potentializing one’s affective life to overcome an intellectual limit happens in poetic instant. Fifth, I go into dynamic of disguise—when we look intellectually at our affective experience, we are misleading ourselves—which is ideological. Here, I display how the Self constrains himself through the inside by internalizing collective voices and how it can poetically and affectively overcome this dynamic.
D. Boulanger (*) Université du Québec en Abitibi-Témiscamingue, Val-D’or, QC, Canada © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. Fossa, C. Cortés-Rivera (eds.), Affectivity and Learning, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31709-5_5
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5.1 Intuitive Inquiry in My Affective Experience: Synthesis of the Theoretical Avenues In Boulanger (2023a; this book), I presented a twofold analysis of my own affective experience looking at it first intellectually and then intuitively. After a conflict with my neighbor who told me that I was weird, I decided to introspect my experience. I performed an autoethnographic exploration (Ellis, 2004) of my own affective experience by intellectualizing it and then by digging into it intuitively. I got generally guided by Bergson’s (1888, 1969/2003) epistemology—his concepts of irreversible time and duration—but without following a specific method or analyzing my experience theoretically. I started by taking the intellect as a way of seeing it (see Boulanger, 2023a, for details). It ended up reinforcing static beliefs about myself, and it froze my affective experience. Then, I experimented it intuitively. The alternative way of seeing entails going into the temporal flow of motion, following its current. Starting from the emotion (Fig. 5.1), I “simply” let it live. I talked to it and said: “You are welcome, I invite you, what do you have to say.” So I opened the door to
Social representations
Intellectual
Emotional A life of its own
Image 1 of event A
Image 2 of event A
Fig. 5.1 Intuitive seeing of the affective experience
Image 1 of event B
Image 2 of event B
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let the emotion live a life of its own (Fig. 5.1) so that I can be conscious1 of it without intellectualizing it. I thereby invited the affective field to speak in terms of itself (Goethe, 1792, 1810, 1817), to speak its own language, so that I can see it intuitively. The affective experience expanded in a constructive way (Fig. 5.1). I felt sadness living and growing all inside my body, like if it has its own existence (like a woman feeling his or her baby growing inside) with no need to get an intellectual control over it (the mother projecting its own expectations on the growing baby). It legitimated me: “I have the right to feel sad, therefore I am OK.” As sadness expanded and got legitimated, the two images associated to it –my neighbor and the child bullying me at school when I was a child—also freely grown and modify themselves. Those images were blurred—like looking at oneself in the water—and their traits were not fixed. These were images in suspension that moved alongside the underlying affective currents that guided them. A process of contamination occurred amid the affective fields—feeling sad and feeling ashamed—and the images. Fifty (maybe forty-nine) shades of nuances appeared in the images—I relativized and contextualized them so that I ended up changing how I saw myself: “I was bullied at school at X moment (event 1) in my childhood but it happened in Y and Y very specific circumstances, therefore this is not because my neighbor told me that I was weird (event 2) that I really am a weird person.” In the end, I intellectually concluded that I have the right to feel sad and that it does not matter if someone thinks that I am weird or not—this is not an issue anymore. I am simply OK. The underlying (intellectual) social representation (weirdness as being unpopular or inadequate) got nuanced—it got colored by the affective grid. Other issues emerged—feeling different. So, resolving a question opens up other questions in a dialogical flow. Here is a summary of the aforementioned dimensions (see Boulanger, 2023a, this book, for details): • Inviting the emotion to live and speak in terms of itself (immediate consciousness), through its own grid, and surrendering taking intellectual control over it. • Expansion of the emotion. • The blurred and indetermined image as the content of the affective growing along with it and taking different shades (nuances). • Osmosis between the emotions and the images of events. • Contextualizing and changing my conception of myself and questioning the way of seeing. I now present a model—an organistic growing theoretical model—of ZPD as movement, and then, I will extend its affective aspect in relation to the aforementioned avenues.
In Boulanger (2023a; this book), I used Bergson’s (1969/2003) concept of immediate consciousness. 1
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5.2 ZPD as Motion: A Synthesis The asset of this “model” is Boulanger’s (2022) concept of dialogical co-zone of proximal development—a motion-based zone in which people co-evolve by dialogically guiding each other in overcoming their limits.2 In Boulanger (2023b), I pushed further the dimension of movement in reference to Vygotsky’s (1925/1972) earlier work in the book “Psychology of art” and Laban’s (1976) trace-form in dance. Here is how Laban (1976) defines trace-form: Movement is, so to speak, living architecture—living in the sense of changing emplacements as well as changing cohesion. This architecture is created by human movements and is made up of pathways tracing shapes in space, and these we may call “trace-forms” (p. 5).
Figure 5.2 shows ZPD as a trace-form The left part of Fig. 5.2 is a helical representation of development (Campill & Valsiner, 2021). Campill and Valsiner (2021) present the metaphor of the helix in relation to Van Gogh painting himself in terms of his own subjective perspective:
Fig. 5.2 Dialogical Co-ZPD as a trace-form For example, the child’s limit in understanding mathematic is situated in the elder’s actual “competences,” while elders’ inability to master the mathematic program on the computer is situated in child’s actual “competences”; therefore, their cooperation in a computer mathematical game will enable their fluid and progressive movement in their ZPD. 2
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The pictures are always slightly different in colors and forms, like a homunculus of his self. Describable as a meadow in the four seasons, the weather seems to change in a circular rotation between each of them, in a determinate order. While looking closer we see that the meadow itself is not the same as the one it was a year before. Flowers, trees, they all changed slightly and created something look-alike its past. The same can be seen in Van Gogh’s works, his emotions that impacted him in his way to see himself are as those seasons, whereby the paintings framed a similar picture, filled with newly constructed emotions that were build up in him the dynamic change of his self and his environment.
This is a very good example of how representation of movement in panting entails a change in observer’s (the person observing himself or herself or others) perspective as movement is always more than what we can see or do now and there (Vygotsky, 1925/1972). So, rotation brings a surplus of meaning and seeing (Gomes, 2019). The right part of Fig. 5.1 associates each circular loop to a repertory of the Dialogical Self (DS) (the organization of the DS’s voices at a certain moment in a specific context; Hermans & Hermans-Konopka, 2010). There are tensions between different repertories—for instance, between, first, what the teacher wants the child to do, to be, to achieve (which is associated with some normative voices through which the child makes sense of learning situations and speaks to himself or herself or others and about themselves or others in educational contexts) and, second, what this child is doing, being or achieving or what this child wants to do, be or achieve. The teacher projects the child in a certain direction (the repertory at the top of Fig. 5.1) and constructs the child’s own limit (X). In certain catalytic conditions, the child takes the lead by counter-positioning himself or herself. He or she then takes another direction and ends up overcoming teacher’s limit (X). Child’s lead indicates him or her overcoming the teacher’s limits (or its actual limits)—as projected on the child’s future—and going beyond himself or herself through movement. Indeed, when I move, I am always someone else—on the verge of becoming this version of myself. Going beyond others’ suggested or imposed direction does not necessarily translate quantitatively—performing more than the other expects from us. It is more qualitative—overcoming a path (be able to perform multiplication) to do another one (focusing on enjoying mathematic and connecting it with quotidian situations) that will end up leading us further (developmental qualitative leap, developing abstraction in terms of more complex mathematical operations based on affectivity and contextualization). Leading takes the form of two interrelated mechanisms: deviation and connection. First, for each direction (it could be the goal of an activity or its means)—suggested by oneself or others—there is a potential of redirection (the child proposing another goal or means to achieve it) through deviation. Second, through this deviation, the child creates his or her own connections across contexts (e.g., connecting in his or her own way the scientific and the quotidian concepts by making a formal test assignation an informal discussion about informally using mathematics at home) and domains which are untapped potentials. It is important to create conditions enabling the child taking the lead of his or her development through these mechanisms, for instance, by following and enabling
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child’s deviation. Furthermore, leading processes are dialogical and dialectical so that deviation is situated in tension with normative non-deviation (this is a constructive response to it) and connection is a necessary complementary to disconnection. Leading processes are thus filled with tensions and constructed through them— through rotations (moving back and forth from the teachers’ main path and my own, thereby engendering surplus of seeing my own dialogical reality). In Boulanger (2023b), I focused on this model. Here, I want to display how we can overcome the intellect (our own beliefs as internalized) through the affective to go beyond our actual state and the intellectually constructed limits (in North American version of Vygotsky, what the child can achieve with the help of the more advanced others) projected by others. I do this in reference to my inquiry into my own affective life (Boulanger, 2023a, this book).
5.3 Overcoming the Intellect The intellect is the realm of (superficial) categorization—it entails trying to seize people by giving their experience a seize, the seize of a box (a category; see Boulanger, 2023a, this book). We do it collectively and individually through ideologies, discourses, and social representations. We arrive at a fixed representation of ourselves and others—he or she is, I am, they are…X and Y (personal and collective traits). In this way, we personally and collectively construct walls limiting our experience! Teachers identifying the child’s superior limits of his or her ZPD (with the help of more advanced others, for the North American version of Vygotsky) are still constructing a zone between two fixed limits: the limit A to be overcome (the child’s actual “performance”) and the limit B to be reached (what the child could do through mediation). Both are intellectually constructed limits imposed from the outside limiting the child’s spontaneous experience. These limits tend to block how the child spontaneously leads his or her own experience. The intellectual limit is a limiting limit. The idea in my model (Boulanger, 2023b; ZPD as movement) was to consider child’s movement as an attempt at overcoming externally imposed limits in a dialogical constructive and affirmatory act. The child can also overcome his or her own internalized limit—an intellectual discourse on himself or herself as a bad student for example. The intellectual limit is a limit (on oneself and others) to be overcome! This idea is present in Bergson’s (1888, 1932, 1969/2003) conception of élan vital—which I consider cultural—that entails this personal and collective overcoming of the intellect limiting our experience, freezing it, and preventing growth at an individual and collective scale. The child progresses in his or her ZPD when he or she overcomes the intellect. Yet, this is what I did by exploring my affective experience—as presented in the first section of this chapter (Boulanger, 2023a). So, the idea here is to delve into overcoming the intellect through the affectivity where lies our potentiality—the potential to overcome, therefore, to learn and to grow.
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In my own analysis, I tried to change how I saw myself—as a weird person—in relation to a confronting situation. So, I tried to go beyond an actual limit—my conception of myself—through an act of introspection that was mediational in nature—reflecting in relation to internalized discourses as signs. I therefore tried to move into my own ZPD as far as identity construction is concerned. Yet, starting from the intellect reinforced the very limit I tried to surpass. It was a limit that I intellectually constructed—guided by social representations—and reinforced. Yet, in a second attempt, I was able to grow by overcoming this very limit through affectivity. Here lies the “potential” for my own growth as a dialogical and overcoming process. I now turn to affectivity as potentiality to display how affectivity brings such a potential to overcoming our own limits.
5.4 Affectivity as the Realm of Potentiality 5.4.1 From Potential to Potentialization More specifically, I do not refer here to a potential—as something the person possesses (as an ontological fact). I rather delve into potentializing processes—animating (charging, like with a neuron) our experience through dialogically activating tensions. Our affective life is unfolding through currents or waves underneath the intellectual surface. Bergson (1888, 1969/2003) calls it our duration: the past constantly pushing on the present and thereby growing in the direction of the future. It simply happens, and it defines our experience. We falsify it by intellectualizing it. The essence of human phenomenon pertains to this unfolding movement. In Goethe’s (1792, 1810, 1817) perspective, the potential or entelechy represents the phenomenon’s active force as an essence, a living idea that can be experienced and reached through imagination (Hoffmann, 2007). It entails seeing the movement unfolds and tracing its dynamic in a wholistic fashion by identifying its driving forces (entelechy). Which processes animate a plant or the perception of colors, for example? I do not keep Goethe’s reference to the ontological essence of a phenomenon but instead his emphasis on seeing it unfolding (its metamorphosis), to trace its currents, its shape as a trace-form (Fig. 5.1). Seeing the potentiality involves making visible the processes by which a phenomenon animating itself and gets animated (catalyzation). Potentializing signals the act of animating movement. As I mentioned, our own internal life—which is affective in nature—is unfolding all the time (Bergson, 1969/2003) anyway. Yet, it is unclear in Bergson’s work how this “internal active force or agent” (Bergson’s concept of élan vital) makes us change. For me, this internal motion is like a contained—by an effluvium—strain of water. It is contained by our intellectual life. It flows quietly without being forceful without potentializing our intellectual life. It must be animated for its currents to form a catalyst for our mental life reorienting our conception of ourselves (identity).
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Potentializing our growth involves animating this very motion, giving it a life so that it can get a momentum (cultural “élan”) and activates qualitative change. Animating it entails inviting it to manifest itself in terms of itself, to speak its own voice (Goethe, 1792, 1810, 1817) which is the voice of immediate consciousness (Bergson, 1969/2003) instead of the intellect (with concepts and words). It happens aesthetically and poetically.
5.4.2 “Poetization” of Life Poetry is in fact an aesthetic phenomenon. Vygotsky (2022) calls artistic creation “[t]his poetry of ‘each instant’” (p. 112; free translation). And aesthetic or poetic motions have their roots in affective: “No training or instruction can make a dancer keep in step with the music […] or the poetic find the only correct combination of words. All this can be achieved only by feeling […] In any event, the starting point, without which the understanding of art is impossible, is the emotion of form” (Vygotsky, 1925/1972, p. 38). For Bergson (1888), the poet reaches the realm of duration because he or she is “the person for whom emotions take shape (develop) as images and then into a language to follow rhythm” (p. 17; loose translation). For him “[t]hese images don’t realize themselves as strongly for us without the regular movements of rhythms” (Idem) that move our soul. Here, poetic images need rhythm animation—this is the condition for potentializing our life! Animating occurs aesthetically or poetically through affectivity: A thing passes before our eyes wrapped in a bag, so to speak; we know that it exists and where it exists from the place it occupies, but we see only its surface… By restoring the feeling of life, by instilling feelings and sensations into things, so that a stone is really stony, we have what we call art. The purpose of art it to put feeling into objects (Vygotsky, 1925/1972, p. 64).
Restoring the feeling of life is animating it affectively. Expanding Goethe, Hoffmann (2007) refers to thinking motion (water thinking) with our feelings: [w]hat is meant is that a certain aspect of capacity of the feeling of life is intensified and heightened into an organ of cognition. In relation to Water thinking this is the protean power of feeling, its character of continuity and transformation. It is the feeling with which a sculptor forms his works. This is what allows feeling to mold itself to the fluid, metamorphosis form of another being (p. 42; I reemphasize).
I keep from this excerpt the fact the seeing intuitively (Boulanger, 2023a, this book) entails visualizing our own internal and affective movement and thereby—by giving it the opportunity to live—potentializing it. This makes affectivity—as an unfolding movement—a catalytic agent for cognition. In the end of the previous excerpt, the author is implicitly referring to an act of empathy I will briefly refer to later. We do not have to be an artist or a poet to animate our life aesthetically or poetically. We have to create poetic instants (Bergson, 1888, 1969/2003) that anyone can
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experience as our life is like poetry—when experiencing the flow of our experience as poetic motion (Abbey, 2019). For Vygotsky (1925/1972, 2022), the person creative experience entails such aesthetic and poetic experience. In the first part of this chapter, I synthetically presented how I animated my own affective experience. Inviting my emotions to speak its own language, I let it live but foremost I thereby intensified its currents (potentializing it). Hence, the expansion of my affective fields and the “poetization” of the images of different events associate to sadness and weirdness. These images blurred, expanded, nuanced, contextualized, and modified themselves, because they were driven by the rhythm of my affective motions. For this reason, my intellectual beliefs about myself ended up changing. In relation to the model of ZPD as motion (Fig. 5.2), I took the lead of my own growth by seeing and potentializing my affective experience. Through this affective flow, I overcame a limit that I imposed myself through internalizing discourses and social representations about weirdness. As such, this process was mediational—the immediate consciousness of my affective life was filled with poetic images. I took the lead by deviating from this twofold limitation (Fig. 5.2) and, through this, create new bridges in my whole field (links that were blocked by the intellect). This inquiry into my affective enabled a synthetic process of emotional and intellectual life (Vygotsky, 2022). I synthesized disparate and contradictory elements— feeling sad and angry, the fixed ontological belief of being weird and the underlying vague feeling of sadness—to form a new identity whole. I also synthesized my own conception of myself with the internalized discourse (being weird as being unpopular).
5.5 Affectivity in ZPD as Motion: Toward Ideological Repositioning 5.5.1 Dynamics of Disguise Amid Content and Form Initially, I fixed this limit as a boundary to be surpassed. I did, for myself, like teachers often do with children—intellectually identifying a limit to be reached in a ZPD. Like with children’s school experience, my intellectual inquiry paradoxically ended up limiting myself. The limit was first the content of my experience—what (the aspect or content) I was supposed to reach. Then, my intellectual inquiry framed my experience around a fixed belief, and it generates a closed circle that reinforced this belief—the intellectual frame or form became the limit. Hence a twofold limit: a content and its intellectual framing (form). In my first chapter in this book (Boulanger, 2023b), I suggested that intellectualizing entails a dynamic of disguise—the intellect disguises our affective life. Feeling weird is the ontological state of being weird disguised in an affective costume (an intellect with emotional pants). When we frame our affective life in an intellectual
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frame—when we intellectual look at an emotion—we are under the false impression that we are experiencing it affectively. We are misleading ourselves like others collectively—and us as part of this collectivity—and ideologically do! My second attempt—which I intuitively framed—potentialized the affective experience. It enabled overcoming the limit—as content and as a form. I overcame the belief (content) and its intellectual framing (I overcame the very first intellectual process, my first attempt). Overcoming the dynamic of disguise is overcoming this framing—this formation which is an ideological social formation. I was misleading myself like I am socially misled through the social formations of social class and institutions. An underlying dialogical process of renegotiation of cultural discourses and representations also occurred, way beneath the surface, as the process of belief modification occurred. This happened through felt voices—the body feeling of oppression echoed the discourses associated with unpopularity as a child from a proletarian family. A kind of body-affective osmosis (Fig. 5.1) happened—the images of the events (in which I believed that I was unpopular in primary school therefore weird) were felt as collective images of class domination. Yet, was I really leading my own ideological process?
5.6 Ideological Limitations and Overcoming When I wrote my first contribution to this book (Boulanger, 2023b), I also ended up misleading myself—I thought that I was venturing into a process of identity reconstruction from a rather personal perspective. I also pointed out the dialogical nature of this process without delving into the ideological dimension of my adventure. As pointed out by Vygotsky (1987), growing is also historical and collective. It happens collective, and it entails—even alone—modifying one’s structural (in terms of social class mechanisms and ideological processes) relation to the world. In the end of my intuitive adventure, I was under that impression that I was changing. Was it the case? Was I freely leading my own reality with all its structural levels including how I saw myself as a member of a proletarian class? The very fact to tell ourselves that we are free from collective voices—as constraints outside us and as internalized constraints—because we are free individuals (radical constructivism underlying the Self as a free constructer of the world) or groups (radical constructionism emphasizing the local and transient nature of knowledge) can be misleading (Grignon & Passeron, 1989). We are disguising ourselves because we are—at least partially—in a prison without noticing it—we see between the metal bars without seeing these bars. I now elabore on this aspect. In Fig. 5.3, we see that the society (audience) inside the Self is a reflection of the society outside that includes the Self (Boulanger, 2017). The Self “possesses” an audience because the latter is an extension of the environment the Self belongs to. Schematically, we can visualize an epistemic and theoretical switch from the extended Self to the extended society (the green lines symbolize this extension). It
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Fig. 5.3 Self’s “enslavement”
Society Self Society (Audience)
is possible to see that the Self is enclosed in this extension (like a prison or a cage, the green lines symbolize the bars of the prison’s frozen window). We can also imagine the little triangle and its green extension as a muzzle that prevents the Self’s free expression “in” society. To push the idea further, we can imagine Hannibal Lector (character from a series of suspense novels: forensic psychiatrist and cannibalistic serial killer) moving within the confines of a prison wearing a muzzle, but still trying to escape! Society constrains the Self from the outside and from the inside. The internalization and externalization of society are guided (canalized), in a circular and tautological way, by society itself. The society possesses the Self from the inside and because it does not contribute so much to society (how does the Self, specifically, contribute to the social representations, the positions, anchors, and traditions?). Conversely, the Self is closed to itself because it has to use the society’s resources to build something, either directly or indirectly. Is the Self construct something out of itself—freely, autonomously, and in an innovative way—apart from what its already internalized society provides. Is the socialized Self also a personal Self? We can see in the following message that this double-blind dynamic is well- established in publicity: Be yourself like everyone does in the society you are in (first meta-frame), and let us show you how to do this by listening (incorporating) to the present message (second meta-frame). How can I internalize a message that guides this very internalizing “dynamic” and while, moreover, I am not focusing on this dynamic, but rather on its state or product? Society gives us the impression that we are free—the multiplication of de- standardized trajectories, the emphasis on child’s self-esteem in school, and the call for local projects—yet these messages are ideological disguises (Beck et al., 1992; Boltanski & Chiapello, 1999; Bourdieu & Boltanski, 2008; Gewirtz & Ball, 2000; Lenoir et al., 2020). Trajectories are organized into an invisible way by the economic ethos (being a woman in today’s economy and being poor are still constraining); emphasizing child’s esteem in school is part of an individualist and therapeutic ideology; doing locally entails free competition for resources and appropriating our own collective destiny with no state support (yet with the reinforced obligation to meet centralized standards).
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Yet, people are voicing these structural issues! A schizophrene yelling is not isolating himself or herself from reality and expressing an Oedipus conflict with his or her parents; he or she is rather denouncing his or her class situation (Deleuze & Guattari, 1972/2000). Affectivity is ideologically charged! The schizophrene is feeling oppressed and tries to overcome it by voicing it through a sudden and violent bodily act. For Vygotsky’s (2022), the creative process is the starting point for ideologically redefining one’s orientation to the world. He refers to educating people to big reality: On parle de grande réalité si l’on ne veut pas reproduire le monde du petit bourgeois. Il faut convenir que l’enfermement dans un cercle étroit d’intérêts restreints produit chez l’enfant et chez l’adulte un élan de faible envergure, un regard de moineau sur la vie, une étroitesse d’esprit et l’autosatisfaction. Le respect pour la grande réalité ne peut s’effectuer qu’en sortant du champ étroit de l’expérience de la personne, et ce déplacement n’est possible qu’à l’aide d’un comportement imaginatif. (Vygotsky, 2022, p. 91; the emphasis is mine) \\ We talk about big reality if we don’t want to reproduce the world of bourgeois. We have to consider that the enclosing into a narrow circle of interests generate only a small momentum [élan] in children’s and adults’ life, a small view on life, a narrow spirit and people’s own satisfaction. The respect for the big reality can only be achieved by leaving the narrow field of human experience and this move is only achieved by imaginative behaviour (Vygotsky, 2022, p. 91, loose translation; the emphasis is mine).
This mirrors Bergson’s (1932) reference to élan vital in an open society: getting inspiration mobilizer—people mobilizing others by touching on the essence of reality, for instance, through art and poetic—and sympathizing with one another—an affective and intuitive co-recognition. Aesthetic and poetry here represent a very constructive mediator to generate collective movement and intersubjective empathy. People can develop, express, and enable collective sensibility (Gasset, 1930) which are uniting them beyond superficial differences. For example, people from different generations can reunite themselves through activities that generate a sense of ourselves! This has to happen dialogically, and for this, we need mediation and imagination—here, a group process of role-playing and co-constructing poetic image could be fruitful (Boulanger et al., 2023). This can also happen alone—a person guiding himself or herself through identifying to characters in a fiction or a novel (Vygotsky, 1925/1972) and externalizing his or her experiencing through art—as a reflection for further internalization. In the notes he took –addressing himself sometimes to a real and sometimes imagined collective audience- during his trip to Italy, Goethe (1892) expresses his attempt at individually seeing individual as well as collective phenomena. This happened through his own dialogical—by addressing oneself to others—and mediational (through writing) adventure. Seeing collective phenomena—for instance politically—also appeared in his poems (Mahoney, 2002). My own seeing was felt, intuited, and transient—it was therefore very poetic! This was anchoring into poetic images, so I was not separating myself from the world—like with radical constructivism or constructionism—but including in it through animating and illuminating it affectively—which is one the main function of aesthetic and poetic experience!
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5.7 Conclusion In this chapter, I developed a simple idea: We can lead our own ZPD by overcoming intellectual limits (coming from internalized discourses, social representations, and beliefs) through an intuitive and poetic inquiry into our affective experience. In these conditions, the later act as a catalyst through potentializing processes. I opened on collective sensitivity and empathy—this will have to be developed further. My simple ideas appeared more complicated—I epistemically switch (rotation) from my own intuitive experience to theorizing and I make you—dear readers—also switch. How do you feel? Is it like taking a merry-go-round (an attraction)? This may be how generating new ideas work—through a tension with high and low ending up in a synthesis. This is the dynamic displayed by Vygotsky (1925/1972) analyzing Hamlet. In this way, exploring oneself and theorizing after is very poetic. No poetic experience is simple! Yet it provided some keys for how to theorize. I feel that constructed my theoretical ZPD through motion and that some ideas are on the verge of becoming something or somewhere.
References Abbey, E. (2019). Against the social imprisonment of meaning: Ambivalence, ambiguity, and poetic movements to freedom. Journal of Integrated Social Sciences, 9(1), 102–115. Beck, U., Lash, S., & Wynne, B. (1992). Risk society: Towards a new modernity (Vol. 17). Sage. Bergson, H. (1888). Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience. Les Presses universitaires de France. Bergson, H. (1932). Les deux sources de la morale et de la religion. Les Presses universitaires de France. Bergson, H. (1969/2003). La pensée et le mouvant. Essais et conférences. Reedition by Bé Gibier. Université du Québec à Chicoutimi. Les classiques des Sciences Sociales: Les Classiques des sciences sociales (uqac.ca). Boltanski, L., & Chiapello, E. (1999). Le Nouvel esprit du capitalisme. Gallimard. Boulanger, D. (2017). Social representation theory and dialogical self theory: A dialogue through implicit metaframes. The International Journal for Dialogical Sciences, 10(2), 193–222. Boulanger, D. (2022). The concept of dialogical co-zone of proximal development: Gerontagogy and intergenerationality in the making. Integrative Psychology and Behavioral Sciences. The Concept of Dialogical CO-Zone of Proximal Development: Intergenerationality in the Making | SpringerLink. Boulanger, D. (2023a). Affective movement: An educative and intuitive adventure as a catalyst for development. In P. Fossa & C. Cortés-Rivera (Eds.), Affectivity and learning. Springer International Publishing. (In press). Boulanger, D. (2023b). Who is leading the dance and how? Fluidity of movements in the dialogical co-zone of proximal development. In I. E. von Fircks (Ed.), Culture and leadership: From approximation towards symbiosis. Advances in cultural psychology. (In press). Boulanger, D., Gauthier, G., & Tateo, L. (2023). Leading the dialogical co-zone of proximal development: Methodologically and aesthetically enabling the movements of twice-exceptionality of children. In Culture and leadership: From approximation towards symbiosis. Advances in cultural psychology. (In press). Bourdieu, P., & Boltanski, L. (2008). La reproduction de l’idéologie dominante. Demopolis.
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Campill, M. A., & Valsiner, J. (2021). Spiral and helical models for psychology: Leaving linearity behind. Human Arenas, 6, 102. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42087-021-00194-2 Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1977/2000). Capitalism and schizophrenia (Vol. 1). Viking Press. Ellis, C. (2004). The ethnographic I. A methodological novel about autoethnography. North Altamira Press. Gasset, J. O. (1930). The revolt of the masses. Routledge. Gewirtz, S., & Ball, S. (2000). From “Welfarism” to “New Managerialism”: Shifting discourses of school headship in the education marketplace. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 21(3), 253–268. Goethe, J. W. (1792). The experiment as mediator between object and subject. In D. Miller (Ed. & Trans.), Scientific studies (pp. 11–17). Suhrkamp Publisher. Goethe, J. W. (1810). Theory of colours. In D. Miller (Ed. & Trans.), Scientific studies (pp. 157–298). Suhrkamp Publishers. Goethe, J. W. (1817). The influence of modern philosophy. In D. Miller (Ed. & Trans.), Scientific studies (pp. 28–30). Suhrkamp Publishers. Goethe, J. W. (1892). Travels in Italy. Bell. Gomes, R. (2019). The exotopy (surplus of seeing) as a value in effective dialogical transactions between schools and communities. Psychology & Society, 11(1), 152. Grignon, C., & Passeron, J.-C. (1989). Le savant et le populaire. Seuil. Hermans, H., & Hermans-Konopka, A. (2010). Dialogical self theory. Positioning and counter- positioning in a globalizing society. Cambridge University Press. Hoffmann, N. (2007). Goethe’s Science of Living Form, the Artist Stages. Adonis Sciences Books. Laban, R. (1976). The language of movement. A Guidebook to Choreutics. Annoted and Edited by L. Ullmann. Plays Inc. Lenoir, Y., Esquivel, R., & Jean, V. (2020). Une recherche comparative internationale sur les finalités éducatives scolaires: clarifications conceptuelles et caractéristiques. In Y. Lenoir, J. Bourque, A. Hasni, R. Nagy, & M. Priolet (Eds.), Les finalités éducatives scolaires. Pour une étude critique des approches théoriques, philosophiques et idéologiques (pp. 17–35). Mahoney, D. F. (2002). Autobiographical writings. In L. Sharpe (Ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Goethe. Cambridge University Press. Vygotsky, L. S. (1925/1972). The psychology of art. Translated from Russian original version by Scripa Technica. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Vygotsky, L. S. (1987). The collected works of L. S. Vygotsky 1. In R. W. Rieber & A. S. Carton (Eds.), Problems of general psychology. Plenum Press. Vygotsky, L. S. (2022), L’imagination dans l’œuvre de Vygotsky (I. Leopoldoff Martin, Trans.). In B. Schneuwly, I. Leopoldoff Martin, & D. Nunes Henrique Silva (Eds). Peter Lang.
Chapter 6
Effects of Early Childhood Education on Academic Performance and Social-Emotional Development During Adolescence Alejandra Manosalva González and Alejandra Cortázar Valdés
6.1 Introduction Various investigations have shown that early childhood is a critical stage in the development of the human being and, therefore, it is not an issue that concerns only and exclusively the parents and/or caregivers of the children, but also the governments in the generation of pertinent public policies, aimed at the full development of children, as well as the recognition of the implication and the short-, mediumand long-term effects that interventions in early childhood have (Barnett, 1995; Shonkoff & Phillips, 2000). On an individual level, at this stage brain development is key. The subject is arranged in front of the world to receive information, interact and learn, as well as explore its surroundings and interact with other subjects and with the environment. The individual is born with a disposition for learning and it is, especially in the early stages of life, where this must be used, nurtured, and directed to achieve adequate subsequent development (Shonkoff & Phillips, 2000). In addition, through affective and cognitive stimulation, psychosocial and cognitive development can be impacted at this stage, even with results in adulthood, acting as a protective factor (Brooks- Gunn, 2003; Tokman, 2010). At the social level, from childhood, the foundations are generated for the future progress of societies, tending to greater inclusion, equity, and respect for human rights. Thus, early interventions are a development engine at all these levels, which should be a point of investment of resources for the countries and the development A. M. González (*) Faculty of Psychology, Universidad del Desarrollo, Santiago de Chile, Chile e-mail: [email protected] A. C. Valdés Centro de Estudios de la Primera Infancia (CEPI), Santiago de Chile, Chile e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. Fossa, C. Cortés-Rivera (eds.), Affectivity and Learning, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31709-5_6
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of policies on the subject (Cousiño & Foxley, 2011). Investing in interventions at this stage of life can lead to the reduction of existing social gaps and inequities, and even prevent these differences from continuing to widen and deepen over the years (Brooks-Gunn, 2003; MINEDUC, 2014). In Chile, Early Childhood Education has been an area that has progressively gained strength within the educational system, thus achieving a greater investment of economic resources, which has implied an increase in the coverage of nursery schools and kindergartens throughout the country, service provided mainly through the institutions of the National Board of Kindergartens (JUNJI), Integra Foundation, as well as private educational centers and institutions. This has allowed a greater entry of children to the educational system (Tokman, 2010); in this regard, the figures show a general and sustained increase that goes from 21% in 1990 to 43.5% coverage in 2011 (Alarcón et al., 2015). Added to this are the figures derived from the CASEN 2015 survey, which shows a percentage of net attendance for that year, estimated at 50.3% between 0 and 5 years of age (MIDESO, 2016). The focus in Chilean Early Childhood Education has been mainly on the access, and a weaker indication has been seen in the definitions of quality and equity (Tokman, 2010). On a national level, there is little evidence on the long-term effects that educational programs generate and how the evaluations that are carried out have an impact on improvements in educational quality. In the country, studies have been carried out that account for this impact considering the short, medium, and long term, which in general terms have a focus on the transition levels of kindergarten and pre-kindergarten and not necessarily on the middle levels of school. Added to this is the fact that the studies do not necessarily establish a distinction between public and private education systems, but rather between boys and girls who attend the Early Childhood Education system and those who do not attend the Early Childhood Education system, which limits the discussion about the impact and effects generated by the private system and the importance of its regulation. Lastly, the most studied dimension has been academic performance, without incorporating other spheres of an individual’s life (Cortázar, 2015a), thus parceling out the effects and consequences of a system that aims at comprehensive development. This work stems from a Master’s thesis in Educational Psychology carried out within the framework of the FONDECYT initiation project “Effects of Chilean public preschool education on academic and socio-emotional results during adolescence” by researcher Alejandra Cortázar. The objective of the thesis was to study the long-term effects of attending Early Childhood Education, considering the dimensions of academic performance and socio-emotional development, incorporating a third group of analysis: students who attended private Early Childhood Education or another type of Early Childhood Education before kindergarten, seeking to answer the following questions: (1) What is the impact of attendance and non-attendance in Early Childhood Education (distinguishing public education and private education) on the average high school SIMCE academic results in students from Santiago? and (2) What is the impact of attendance and non-attendance to Early Childhood Education (distinguishing public education and private education) on the socio-emotional development of senior students in Santiago?
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The research hypotheses were: (1) students from Santiago who attended public early childhood education before kindergarten present better average high school SIMCE results than students, with similar sociodemographic conditions, who did not attend any type of early childhood education and those who attended private early childhood education before kindergarten and (2) students from Santiago who attended public early childhood education before kindergarten present better results in socio-emotional development indicators than students, with similar sociodemographic conditions, who did not attend any type of early childhood education and those who attended private early childhood education before kindergarten.
6.2 Theoretical Background 6.2.1 Relevance of Early Childhood Education Programs 6.2.1.1 International Evidence Several studies indicate that attending Early Childhood Education between 2 and 3 years of age generates a positive impact on cognitive, socio-emotional development, and health (Burger, 2010; Camilli et al., 2010; Gorey, 2001; Geoffroy et al., 2007), especially in children coming from families with greater vulnerability (MINEDUC, 2014), because it allows the reduction of gaps generated by social inequalities and lack of opportunities among boys and girls from families of different sociocultural contexts (MINEDUC, 2014). There is a certain consensus on the relevance of early childhood education, not only with a focus on boys and girls, but also on society as a whole (Zigler et al., 2011); this, based on the positive findings of the repercussion of initial education in human development in general, in the economy, in neurosciences, etc. In general terms, the studies carried out point to the relationships generated between early childhood education and later development, associated with the areas of cognitive development and, in some cases, emotional skills development (Barnett, 1995; Fantuzzo et al., 2007). In terms of the benefits of Early Childhood Education, Camilli et al. (2010) developed a meta-analysis of the effects of early childhood intervention programs, concluding that attendance at educational programs before kindergarten is associated with better cognitive outcomes, social skills, and school progress. Regarding the academic field, on average the size of the effect of the intervention programs on the cognitive results of the boys and girls is between 0.12 and 0.48, depending both on the characteristics of the program itself and the study (Camilli et al., 2010). Based on the studies that evaluate the long-term effects of early childhood education and care intervention programs, it is possible to observe and differentiate between two large groups (Cortázar, 2015b): evaluation studies of program models and studies that use large groups of data. The former mainly evaluate standards and indicators, such as: size of classroom groups, ratio of educators or teachers per
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child, qualification and/or training of educators, and direct or close supervision through a group of specialists, among others (Barnett, 1995). Among the model, Early Childhood Education programs in the United States are the Perry School (High/Scope Educational Research Foundation, 2017a) and the Abecedarian Project (The University of North Carolina, n.d.), which have been studied within a context in particular, with few boys and girls, and associated with high-quality standards. The Perry School program is based on participatory and active learning in which boys and girls learn through exploration and play (High/Scope Educational Research Foundation, 2017b). A study carried out by Barnett (1995) shows that those who attended the Perry School program at 15 years of age outperformed those who did not attend the program. On the other hand, Berrueta-Clement et al. (1984) longitudinally studied a group of 58 children between the ages of 3 and 4 who attended the Perry School program and a group of 65 children who did not attend. The results indicate that by the age of 19 the students who attended the program presented a decrease in crime, in the incidence of adolescent pregnancy and permanence in the educational system, among others. Regarding the attitudes that the participants maintained towards school during the study, the group that attended the Early Childhood Education program at the age of 15 reported more commitment to school, high levels of motivation, and expectations regarding higher education, with a better perception of their own abilities and with greater responsibility towards their tasks; attitudes that were maintained even at 19 years of age. The Abecedarian Project is an intensive intervention for children around 1 year of age, lasting 5 days a week, 50 weeks for 5 years (Ramey & Ramey, 2004). During this intervention, learning through play and a curriculum oriented to the development of cognitive and social skills are promoted (Ramey & Ramey, 2004). Campbell et al. (2001) showed that boys and girls who attended this program had higher scores on math and language tests between the ages of 8 and 21. Compared with the boys and girls who did not attend the program, the average results show 0.45 standard deviations more in language and 0.37 standard deviations more in Mathematics (Campbell et al., 2001). Ramey and Ramey (2004) compared the results of two groups of children, where the participating group and the control group considered similar conditions of nutrition, social support, and health care; the results showed that the group that participated in the program had better academic results in Basic Education than the control group and a low frequency of attendance at special education centers at the age of 15 (Ramey & Ramey, 2004). Regarding the studies that use databases, the evidence has shown that intervention programs in early childhood education and care have positive long-term effects on academic results, although with smaller effect sizes compared to studies using databases of program models, previously reviewed. In United States, Magnuson et al. (2004) found positive effects of intervention programs in the field of language between the first and third year of basic education; mentioning that, although the effect decreased over time, it was still significant in the third year (SD = 0.6). Another study conducted by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development in the United States found that attendance at early childhood intervention programs had positive effects on cognitive abilities in the third year of basic
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education (SD = 0.9) (Dearing et al., 2009). These positive effects were more prominent in children from families with fewer economic resources than children from more economically advantaged contexts. Subsequently, in the fifth year of Basic Education, they found that a high quality of early childhood education helped to reduce the negative relationship between socioeconomic level and academic results (Dearing et al., 2009). Fantuzzo et al. (2005) suggest that early learning in children who live in the contexts of high risk and vulnerability benefits their development and subsequent academic performance, as well as promotes their resilience. Finally, the study carried out by Berlinski et al. (2008) in Uruguay estimated the effects of participation in early childhood intervention programs on the academic retention of Uruguayan youth at 15 years of age, using data from the Survey of households in that country. The results showed that adolescents who attended Early Childhood Education programs were more likely to continue and remain in school at age 15 and had an average of 1.03 extra years of education than young people who had not attended early childhood educational programs (Berlinski et al., 2008). 6.2.1.2 National Evidence On a national level, there is little evidence on the long-term effects of early childhood education programs on the subsequent development of children who attend Early Childhood Education (Cortázar, 2015a). Of the existing studies, most focus on the effects on academic results (MINEDUC, 2014) and, in general, no distinction is observed between public and private programs, nor with respect to interventions at levels less than kindergarten and pre-kindergarten. An example of Chilean studies is that of Reveco and Mella (1999) that measured the impact of attendance at the kindergarten level on the SIMCE results of eighth grade through the use of Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). In this study, the authors compared the group of children who attended an educational program in kindergarten versus the group that did not attend any educational program, controlling for socioeconomic status (Reveco & Mella, 1999). The results show that the children who attended Early Childhood Education presented an average of 3.4 points more (SD = 0.2) in the standardized test than those who did not attend (Reveco & Mella, 1999). The study by Eyzaguirre and Le Foulon (2001) reports, through a linear regression analysis, that children who attended kindergarten scored an average of 3.3 and 3.5 points higher in Mathematics and Language on the SIMCE test of fourth grade, compared to children who did not attend that level (SD = 0.7). Similarly, the study carried out by Bucarey et al. (2014) reported that kindergarten attendance showed positive and significant effects in the medium term on the SIMCE Mathematics and SIMCE Language tests in fourth grade (2008). For its part, Contreras et al. (2009) evaluated the impact of the pre-kindergarten and kindergarten levels on academic performance in high school, in second year. The results indicate that the students who attended both levels scored on average 6 and 8 points higher in the Language and Mathematics tests, respectively, compared to the students who did not attend Early Childhood Education in that period.
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Other research carried out in Chile indicates that attending public Early Childhood Education establishments for a period of time greater than 7 months is associated with benefits in terms of cognitive and motor development of the participating children (Urzúa & Veramandi, 2011; Noboa-Hidalgo & Urzúa, 2012). In relation to the average levels, Cortázar (2015a) valuated the long-term impact of attending the earliest levels of Early Childhood Education between 2001 and 2003 in the public system through the JUNJI and Integra institutions. She compared the results in the fourth grade SIMCE test in the group of boys and girls who attended the public Early Childhood Education system with the boys and girls who did not attend any type of Early Childhood Education, analyzing the variables of socioeconomic level, type of institution, and gender. The results show that there was a positive and significant effect in the three areas evaluated in the SIMCE test (Mathematics, Language, and Social Sciences) controlling for socioeconomic level (Cortázar, 2015a). The group that attended Early Childhood Education, on average, obtained 11.9 points more (SD = 0.21) in the Mathematics test, 9.4 points more (SD = 0.17) in the Language test, and finally, 8.5 points more (DE = 0.17) in the Social Sciences test compared to the control group (Cortázar, 2015a). In terms of socioeconomic level, this study indicates that the most benefited children who attended Early Childhood Education were those of medium-low socioeconomic level, while the poorest 10% benefited little or nothing (Cortázar, 2015a). In addition, there were no significant differences between the results of the children who attended the two public institutions (JUNJI - Integra), and finally, regarding the gender variable, boys benefited more than girls (Cortázar, 2015a).
6.2.2 Early Childhood Education: The Chilean Context 6.2.2.1 Development of a Regulatory Framework for Early Childhood Education The General Education Law (GEL) of 2009 proposed various improvements to the educational system at its different levels, considering among them the regulation of rights and duties of the members of the educational communities, the establishment of the minimum requirements to be demanded in the levels: Early Childhood Education, Basic and Middle Education; the regulation of the duty of the State to comply with the law, and the establishment of the requirements and processes for the official recognition of educational establishments (Ley No. 20.370, 2009). With regard to Early Childhood Education, in its beginnings, the LGE established that this is a right and that the State should ensure that it is delivered free of charge; however, at that time it was not established as a requirement for admission to Basic Education nor for promotion to it. According to what was proposed by Elacqua et al. (2013), the focus of recent years has been more focused on the advances and demands for School Education and Higher Education, a situation generated by the prevailing context and by strong pressure from civil society. On the other hand, the
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institutional framework for Early Childhood Education poses a challenge, as many sectors were involved in its development, considering the various sources for the design of public policies, for their financing, and also for the implementation of the different programs, projects, and services. There are various education providers at this level, namely: JUNJI, Integra Foundation, municipal establishments, subsidized private establishments and non-subsidized private establishments; the first two being the ones that received the most state regulation (Morales, 2013). In this scenario, various systems coexist that focus their attention on children from their birth to the transition to basic education; JUNJI and Integra Foundation with priority attention and mainly oriented to children up to 4 years of age, and MINEDUC with a concentrated offer for children between 4 and 5 years of age. Added to this are private kindergartens, where for a long time there was no fully established regulatory system (Educación 2020, 2015). Although the latter has changed and today there is the Authorization Law for the operation of Early Childhood Education establishments (Ley No. 20.832, 2015), this regulation has been gradually implemented. In 2013, the educational system advanced in Early Childhood Education through a constitutional reform that established the compulsory nature of the second level of transition (that is, the kindergarten level) and the gratuity from the lower secondary level, in order to ensure the access to that level and with it, to the higher levels (Ley No. 20.710, 2013). Regarding quality, prior to this law of 2013, Law No. 20.529 on quality assurance at all levels was already in force, however, this document did not address specific elements for the Early Childhood Education level. This Law establishes the specific operations of the Agency for the Quality of Education, the Superintendence of Education and the National Council of Education, which advocate for the delivery of quality in education, understanding that the achievement of learning must be ensured, the equity, and inclusion. On the other hand, in 2015 the bill that establishes the creation of the Undersecretariat and the Administration of this educational level began to be discussed, with the aim of positioning the Undersecretariat of Early Childhood Education as an organization that promotes, develops, and organizes the level contributing to quality education and the comprehensive training of children (Ley No. 20.835, 2015). The creation of the Undersecretariat for Early Childhood Education implies the generation of a new institutional framework, considering that this body must prepare, coordinate, apply, and evaluate policies and programs on issues and aspects related to the promotion and development of Early Childhood Education; in addition to coordinating the public services that provide this level of education and promoting the importance of incorporating children into Early Childhood Education throughout civil society (Ley No. 20.835, 2015). In 2015, Law No. 20.832 was also established, which deals with the authorization of operation for Early Childhood Education institutions and proposes a regulation for institutions that, by not maintaining constant state contributions, were not required to have an official recognition, establishing the standards that educational centers must have, aimed at quality and the promotion of the well-being of children
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(Ley No. 20.832, 2015), which refer to both structural evaluation elements, as well as elements of the educational process (Faverio et al., 2013).
6.3 Methodology 6.3.1 Design The study is quantitative, and its objective is to compare the groups of attendance and non-attendance to public Early Childhood Education, regarding their academic performance results and their socio-emotional development results. According Ato et al. (2013), this is a non-experimental study of a comparative type, since the variables are analyzed by examining possible differences that exist between two or more groups of subjects. An attributive variable (also called classification or selection) is used as an independent variable (IV), that is not a manipulated variable, as in the case of experimental and quasi-experimental designs, but rather a previously established variable, according to whether they are exposed or not to treatment. For this work, this variable corresponds to having attended or not Early Childhood Education. A retrospective temporal approach (or also called ex post facto) is used, since both the independent variable (IV) and the dependent variables (VD) occurred in a period prior to the start of the study (Ato et al., 2013; Montero & León, 2007), although with the characteristic of formulating cause and effect hypotheses, in order to replicate the characteristics of an experimental design in a non-experimental context. For the study, the IV is the attendance or non-attendance of public Early Childhood Education, which generates the establishment of three analysis groups: attends public Early Childhood Education (JUNJI and Integra), does not attend Early Childhood Education (any educational system), and, finally, attends another Early Childhood Education system (private).
6.3.2 Participants The participants of the study correspond to senior students of 2016, from various schools in 31 communes of Santiago, who participated by answering the socio- emotional Development Questionnaire applied between the months of May and August 2016 within the framework of the aforementioned Fondecyt Project (Cortázar, 2015b). The mentioned sample was built responding to the objectives of the Fondecyt project, and the procedure used was the following: given the cost of data collection, including all the participants of the original sample of the Fondecyt project (n: 90,000), the students from Santiago who attended public Early Childhood Education programs (JUNJI and Integra) (n: 16,487) and students who did not attend Early Childhood Education (n: 21,259) were considered, which involved 1718 schools from 52 municipalities of Santiago.
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After this, the total student population of Santiago was stratified by commune and later, in each commune, the school with the highest number of students present in the original sample of the Fondecyt project was chosen (with a minimum of 10 students per establishment). Due to the geographical remoteness of some communes and given the low representativeness of these students compared to the original Fondecyt study, the selection included a total of 37 communes of Santiago. The indicated questionnaire was applied to all the senior students of the selected schools, so not only those who attended and did not attend public Early Childhood Education were considered, but also the presence of students who attended another educational system during those years. Considering that the initial idea of this thesis was developed after the collection of information from the Fondecyt project, the data collected in the application of the Socio-emotional Development Questionnaire were crossed with the data of the fourth grade SIMCE of 2008, with the data of the high school SIMCE of 2014 and finally, with some variables built within the framework of the Fondecyt project. The foregoing, always distinguishing the three groups of analysis mentioned. Thus, the sample is made up of 4099 senior students belonging to 60 educational establishments in 31 communes of Santiago, with the following distribution: participates in public Early Childhood Education (JUNJI-Integra) (n: 852); does not participate in Early Childhood Education (n: 992); and participates in another Early Childhood Education system (n: 2255).1
6.3.3 Measures for Analysis 6.3.3.1 Participation in Early Childhood Education The data were recorded from the databases used in the Fondecyt project, from the information provided by JUNJI and Integra, which provided data on attendance and identification of children (between 2001 and 2003), thus constituting the treatment group of the Fondecyt project. These data were cross-referenced with the data from the 2008 fourth grade SIMCE Parent Questionnaire, where parents provided information on attendance at Early Childhood Education centers prior to kindergarten level. Through the above, the control group of the Fondecyt project was constituted. With this, the information delivered after the application of the Socio-emotional Development Questionnaire during the year 2016 served to cross the data and consolidate the third group of analysis: the group that attended another Early Childhood Education system. Because the study has comparative purposes and intends to infer causality, the data analysis was carried out at two different moments, with the following comparisons: (1) Attends public Early Childhood Education v/s Does not Due to the characteristics of the data processed, with information of an individual, community, and school nature, we worked with all the corresponding ethical criteria, regarding the management and use of the information of the participants. 1
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attend public Early Childhood Education and (2) Attends public Early Childhood Education v/s Attends another (private) Early Childhood Education system. 6.3.3.2 Sociodemographic Information The sociodemographic information was collected from the 2008 fourth grade SIMCE data. This measurement also provides characterization data of the educational establishment, community data, regional data, urban/rural location, type of establishment financing, among others. In addition, with the responses of the Parent Questionnaire, information is collected on the level of education, family income, number of members of the family nucleus, participation in Early Childhood Education, educational expectations, knowledge of the results of the establishment, among others. Finally, information for public use corresponding to the National Socioeconomic Characterization Survey (CASEN) in the year 2003 was used, which was the closest to the year of treatment of the group, corresponding to the group that attended public Early Childhood Education. 6.3.3.3 Academic Results (High School SIMCE) The academic results are the results of the high school SIMCE. The SIMCE is a learning evaluation that is applied to all students in the country who are studying the levels evaluated and whose objective is to evaluate learning in different subjects in the skills and contents of the National Curriculum. The results of the tests account for the average scores both at the establishment level and the distribution of students for each level of the learning standards considered by the Ministry of Education, these define what must be known to demonstrate levels of achievement and curriculum compliance (Agencia de Calidad de la Educación, 2014a). The test design contemplates an average score of 250 points and a standard deviation of 50 points. For the 2014 high school SIMCE, the national average score was 252 in Reading Comprehension, 295 points in Mathematics, and 250 points in Natural Sciences (Agencia de Calidad de la Educación, 2014b). 6.3.3.4 Socio-Emotional Development The Socio-emotional Development Questionnaire applied to senior students from Santiago in 2016 is based on the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth (NLSCY) of Canada (2008/2009). This survey was used in a longitudinal study that investigated a sample of Canadian boys and girls since 1994 and its main objectives are: to determine the prevalence of risk factors and protective factors for children and young people, to understand how these factors influence development, make this information available for the development of public policies and programs related to the protection of children and youth, collect information on various topics
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(biological, social, economic, among others), and collect information on the environment in which children develop (family, peers, school, community, among others) (NLSCY, 2009). This survey was chosen within the framework of Fondecyt, due to its design and its psychometric properties. The original survey consists of nine sections, namely: Depression, Self-image, Emotional Quotient of Friends, Parents and I, Behavior Scale, Extracurricular Activities, Activities, Risk Behaviors, and School Behavior. In addition, each of these sections contemplates subscales. The reliability of the NLSCY (2009) Scales was measured through Cronbach’s Alpha, resulting in an acceptable reliability from 0.646 to 0.865 for its different scales. The survey was translated into Spanish and tested on a sample of senior students, to guarantee the survey’s operation in our country. The pilot was carried out by conducting two focus groups with senior students and also the questionnaire was sent to five students for their reading and comments; with this, the items that did not work correctly were reviewed and adapted (Cortázar, 2015b). The final version of the questionnaire, after translation and piloting, consists of 127 self-completion questions, which are structured into various sections and scales that measure socio- emotional development for the group of individuals between 14 and 17 years of age.
6.3.4 Data Analysis The matching technique was used, which develops a control group that resembles the treated group as closely as possible, helping to reduce selection bias. Matching considers observed characteristics, trying to find a group of non-treatment participants that are observationally similar to treatment participants, with characteristics that do not affect treatment performance. Each participant is matched with a similar non-participant and after this the mean differences in the results of the two groups are compared to obtain the treatment effect, which can be seen even if the treatment is not randomized (Khandker et al., 2010). The Propensity Score Matching (PSM) technique corresponds to a statistical technique where a comparison group (control group) is constructed through a single propensity score, which shows the probability of participation using the observable characteristics and based on a probability model (between 0 and 1) of belonging to the treated group, that is, it identifies a comparison group that is statistically similar to the group that receives a certain treatment (Cortázar, 2011). In the case of this thesis, this method seeks to compare, on one hand, the children who attended public Early Childhood Education (treatment group) with those who did not attend Early Childhood Education (control group) and, on the other hand, the children who attended public Early Childhood Education (treatment group) with those who attended another (private) educational system (control group); considering those who have similar sociodemographic and family characteristics. In addition, to observe that the treatment and control groups present similar characteristics (considering precisely the observable variables), a balance is also
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made within the pairing, through a mean difference analysis with Student’s t-test. Of the different criteria for the use of the PSM for the allocation of the participants with the non-participants, for this thesis the technique of the “nearest neighbor” is used together with the technique of “gauge or radio coincidence”; the first refers to the comparison with the propensity score between “n” nearest neighbors (in this case n = 5) and the second refers to the comparison with the propensity scores that are within a certain range or distance, establishing a certain limit or threshold (in this case cal = 0.1) (Khandker et al., 2010). The comparison of the groups with the PSM technique is carried out according to various characterization variables, some prior to treatment and others subsequent to it, which are of a family nature (number of members of the family group, mother’s education, father’s education, living with mother, per capita income, general family income) and of a communal order (poverty rate, percentage of women working, percentage of rural population, average family income and supply of public Early Childhood Education). Finally, for data analysis, we work with the STATA program.
6.4 Results In a first part, the sample belonging to the thesis is described; in a second, the academic results are analyzed; and, in a third part, the results of socio-emotional development are analyzed.
6.4.1 Sample Description The sample is 4099 senior students from various educational establishments in Santiago. Each of the cases contains information on fourth grade SIMCE results, high school SIMCE results, and the Socio-emotional Development Questionnaire applied to senior students. The distribution regarding participation in Early Childhood Education is: participates in public Early Childhood Education (JUNJI- Integra) (n: 852), does not participate in Early Childhood Education (n: 992), and participates in another Early Childhood Education system (n: 2255). Regarding gender, there are 2131 Men and 1968 Women. In relation to the Socioeconomic Level considered for the analysis (SEL according to SIMCE 2008), the sample is distributed as follows: Low SEL presents 160 cases, Medium-Low SEL presents 1280 cases, Medium SEL presents 2041 cases, the Medium-High SEL presents 599 cases, and, finally, the High SEL presents 19 cases. Regarding the dependency of the educational establishments of senior year, the sample is distributed in 291 municipal establishments, 1072 of corporation (private subsidized) and 2645 of private dependency. The majority of the students present a percentage of attendance to classes in senior year higher than 85%, only 12.88% of the sample present an attendance of less than 85%. For the general average of senior year grades, 1.02% of the sample presents an average grade equal to or less than 4.0;
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Table 6.1 2014 High school SIMCE results Area Language score Mathematics score Science score
Answers 3724 3793 3782
Average 244.54 256.28 238.63
Stand. Dev. 48.05 59.70 42.22
Min 128.16 108.94 148.38
Max 389.17 419.88 428.07
Lost cases 375 306 317
Table 6.2 Socio-emotional Development Questionnaire indicators Scales Friendships General self-concept Intrapersonal skills Interpersonal skills Stress management skills Adaptation skills General mood Risk coefficient 1 Risk coefficient 2 Depression
Answers 4036 4055 4037 4049 4033 4035 4033 3931 3898 3825
Average 10.22 8.23 2.95 5.73 4.77 5.24 6.27 18.73 25.03 9.91
Stand. Dev. 2.80 2.65 2.31 1.95 2.63 2.06 1.83 5.06 6.11 5.63
Min 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 6 0
Max 16 12 9 9 9 9 9 36 45 33
the rest fluctuate between 4.1 and 7.0, with a significant percentage (7.51% of the sample) of students presenting an average grade of 5.5. Regarding the results of the sample in the measurements analyzed, the data are shown in Tables 6.1 and 6.2.
6.4.2 Academic Performance Results 6.4.2.1 Attends Public Early Childhood Education v/s Does Not Attend any Early Childhood Education System The treatment group corresponds to the group of students who attended public Early Childhood Education (n = 852) and the control group corresponds to the students who did not attend any Early Childhood Education system (n = 992). Table 6.3 shows the balance of variables for the treatment group and the control group after matching the cases. This result shows that no statistically significant differences (p ≥ 0.05) are observed between both groups considering all the characterization variables, being able to point out that both groups share similar characteristics both at the community and family level.2
The table corresponding to the balance between the treatment group and the control group will be presented only once in this article, since, for all the analyzes of both academic performance and socio-emotional development, both groups share similar characteristics at the community level and familiar, so they can be comparable. 2
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Table 6.3 Balance of characterization variables for the group of students who attend public Early Childhood Education and those who do not attend any Early Childhood Education system Characterization variables Communal variables Poverty rate 2003 Female employment rate 2003 Family income 2003 Rural percentage Public early childhood education offer 2003 Family variables Members of the family group Father’s education Mother’s education Not living with the mother Not living with the father Per capita income Overall family income
Mean treated
Control
T test significance
12.47 33.55 5.7e+05 19.77 0.16
12.57 33.41 5.6e+05 19.44 0.17
0.71 0.53 0.35 0.77 0.31
3.94 1.86 1.89 0.00 0.01 70770 2.4e+05
3.99 1.88 1.89 0.00 0.01 70555 2.5e+05
0.55 0.60 0.79 1.00 0.57 0.93 0.52
This table shows only the balance for the Mathematics test. However, for the Language and Science tests, the appropriate balance is maintained, with no statistically significant differences between the control group and the treatment group, in the characterization variables a
Table 6.4 Effect of attendance to public Early Childhood Education in high school SIMCE Not paired Results SIMCE Math Language Science
Mean Treat 253.71 243.46 263.29
Cont. 261.86 249.84 243.12
Paired
Difference between means Mean Effect −8.15 −6.37 −6.82
Error 2.96 2.33 2.07
T −2.75 −2.73 −3.29
Treat 253.94 243.37 236.43
N 778 771 774
Cont. 256.78 249.35 239.68
Difference between means N 906 893 905
Effect −2.84 −5.98 −3.25
Error 3.64 2.78 2.51
T −0.78 −2.15 −1.29
Following the above, by matching the cases with an adequate balance, Table 6.4 shows the estimate of the effect of attending Early Childhood Education for both groups, before matching and after it. According to this table, if the academic results for students who attend public Early Childhood Education are observed in comparison with those who do not attend any Early Childhood Education system, it is possible to point out that without the matching technique (PSM) the unfavorable differences towards the group that attends public Early Childhood Education they are greater and significant for the three performance tests (Mathematics, Language, and Sciences); that is, on average the control group scores 8.15 points more in the Mathematics test, 6.37 points more in the Language test, and 6.82 points more in the Science test. However, once the cases are matched, these mean differences are reduced for the three tests and only in the case of the Language test is this difference of 5.98 points significant (T = −2.15), which shows that the matching technique adjusts the model, according to the characterization variables, giving more accurate
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results. Within this framework, it is possible to point out that in the Language test, students who did not attend any type of Early Childhood Education do better. After reviewing these results and considering that the studies presented in the literature review on the subject and, especially considering the Fondecyt study from which this thesis is derived, show a positive impact on the results at the level of the academic development, socio-emotional development. and even both. It is striking that this sample from Santiago does not follow this same trend, but instead presents a decrease in the academic results of those who attend public Early Childhood Education versus those who do not attend any Early Childhood Education system. This can be explained by the difference in the composition of the sample and, therefore, in the composition of the analysis groups, opening other possible edges for the discussion of the results. Based on this, it is decided to make a comparison between the samples of the thesis and the sample of the Fondecyt project, to observe the possible differences between the samples and thus, to be able to explain this change in the trend of the results. Although this analysis goes beyond the proposed objectives and the hypotheses raised, it is necessary and pertinent to observe and analyze the change in the trend of the results. To observe these possible differences in the composition of the groups, a mean difference test was performed, using the Student’s t test for independent samples, between the thesis sample (only from the Metropolitan Region) and the sample of the Fondecyt project (national level). The analysis exercise consisted in the formation of five different groups; group [1] corresponds to the Fondecyt group at the national level excluding the sample of this thesis (n = 84,674); group [2] corresponds to the Fondecyt group of the Metropolitan Region excluding the sample of this thesis (n = 16,063); group [3] corresponds to the sample of the thesis that is present in the Fondecyt group (n = 1844); group [4] corresponds to the thesis sample that is not present in Fondecyt group (n = 2255); and finally, group [5] corresponds to the thesis sample (n = 4099). Table 6.6 shows that there are statistically significant differences (p ≤ 0.05) for all the characterization variables (both community and family) and for all the high school SIMCE academic performance tests, average year, between the sample of the thesis (belonging to the Metropolitan Region as a whole) and the Fondecyt sample from the Metropolitan Region (column [5]–[2]), which shows that both groups do not share similar characteristics and, therefore, their results may be different in the various analyzes to be carried out. With all of the above as part of the scenario, we proceeded to continue with the analysis. Then, regarding gender, Table 6.5 shows the estimate of the effect of attending public Early Childhood Education, before and after the use of the matching technique. After performing the matching, for the Mathematics test, the difference between the treatment group and the control group is 9 points, for Language the difference is 8.60 points, and for Science the difference is 7.83 points. These results are significant for the last two tests (T = −2.13 and T = −2.08 respectively), that is, it is observed that the male students who did not attend Early Childhood Education have better results in the SIMCE Language and Science tests, than those who attended. For women, the impact for all the SIMCE tests is not significant after matching, that is, no relationship can be established between the Women who attended public Early Childhood Education and those who did not attend any Early Childhood Education system.
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Table 6.5 Effect of attendance to public Early Childhood Education for men in high school SIMCE Not paired Mean Results SIMCE Math Language Science
Treat 259.14 240.17 241.87
Cont. 268.75 246.12 250.02
Paired Difference between means
Mean
Effect −9.60 −5.95 −8.14
Treat 259.59 240.22 241.64
Error 4.17 3.26 3.01
T −2.30 −1.82 −2.70
Difference between means N 412 407 408
Cont. 268.60 248.83 249.47
N 459 453 457
Effect −9.00 −8.60 −7.83
Error 5.25 4.03 3.75
T −1.71 −2.13 −2.08
Table 6.6 Effect of attendance to public Early Childhood Education for medium-high SEL in high school SIMCE Not paired Mean Results SIMCE Math Language Science
Treat 281.02 261.28 248.49
Paired Difference between means
Cont. 301.03 275.15 268.29
Effect −20.00 −13.87 −19.80
Error 8.82 6.58 6.98
T −2.27 −2.11 −2.84
Difference between means
Mean Treat 282.11 262.96 253.04
N 68 65 68
Cont. 298.13 293.31 274.47
N 121 116 120
Effect −16.02 −30.35 −21.43
Error 13.88 10.01 12.09
T −1.15 −3.03 −1.77
When doing the analysis by socioeconomic level and after observing an adequate balance of the characterization variables for both the treatment and the control groups for each one of the socioeconomic levels, the results show that for all the variables and in all socioeconomic levels, no statistically significant differences were observed between the treatment and control groups (p ≥ 0.05) with respect to the high school SIMCE; with the exception of the Language test for the Medium- High socioeconomic level where a significant impact of 30.35 points (T = −3.03) was observed, favorable for students who did not attend any Early Childhood Education system, that is, in this test and for this socioeconomic level, the control group scores higher than the treatment group, as established in Table 6.6. 6.4.2.2 Attends Public Early Childhood Education v/s Attends Another (Private) Early Childhood Education System The treatment group corresponds to the group of students who attended public Early Childhood Education (n = 852) and the control group corresponds to the students who attended another Early Childhood Education system, assuming that it is mainly private (n = 2255). By matching the cases with an adequate balance, it is possible to indicate that both before the matching and after, there is insufficient evidence to indicate that there is an effect of attending public Early Childhood Education on the high school SIMCE academic results, both at the general level of the sample as well as in the analysis by gender.
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At the socioeconomic level, the results show that there is no significant impact of attendance at public Early Childhood Education in the various socioeconomic levels, with respect to the high school SIMCE results; with the exception of the Language test for the Medium socioeconomic level, where a significant impact of 6.97 points (T = 2.08) was observed, favorable for the students who attended public Early Childhood Education, that is, in this test and for this socioeconomic level, the treatment group scores higher and the control group, as shown in Table 6.7.
6.4.3 Socio-Emotional Development Results 6.4.3.1 Attends Public Early Childhood Education v/s Does Not Attend any Early Childhood Education System For this comparison, the treatment group corresponds to the group of students who attended public Early Childhood Education (n = 852) and the control group corresponds to students who did not attend any Early Childhood Education system (n = 992). The results of the application of the Socio-emotional Development Questionnaire show that for the treatment group and the control group before the pairing and after it, no significant effect is observed in the different scales of socio- emotional development (T = ±1.96). With this, it is possible to indicate that there is no impact of attendance at public Early Childhood Education on the results of socio-emotional development in any of the scales indicated for the group as a whole. If it is analyzed by gender, it is possible to indicate that both before and after the match, there is no significant impact of attendance at public Early Childhood Education regarding the results of socio-emotional development for men, with the exception of the Intrapersonal Skills Scale, with a higher score in men who attended public Early Childhood Education and a positive impact of 0.39 more points on said scale (T = 2.14), as can be seen in Table 6.8. This means that men who attended public Early Childhood Education present a better development in terms of: telling other people how they feel, talking easily about their feelings, and effectively describing what they feel. In the case of women and regarding the results of socio- emotional development, there is no significant impact of attendance at public Early Table 6.7 Effect of attendance to public Early Childhood Education for medium SEL on high school SIMCE Not Paired Mean Results SIMCE Math Language Science
Treat 261.20 249.80 241.10
Paired Difference between means Mean
Cont. 259.23 246.38 240.47
Effect 1.96 3.41 0.63
Error 3.51 2.92 2.58
T 0.56 1.17 0.24
Treat 261.56 249.87 241.32
Difference between means N 402 405 402
Cont. 259.41 242.89 238.67
N 717 706 711
Effect 2.14 6.97 2.65
Error 4.14 3.35 2.96
T 0.52 2.08 0.89
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Table 6.8 Effect of attendance to public Early Childhood Education for men on socio-emotional development Not paired Mean Socio- emotional results Friendships General self-concept Intrapersonal skills Interpersonal skills Stress management skills Adaptation skills General mood Risk coefficient 1 Risk coefficient 2 Depression
Paired Difference between means
Difference between means
Mean
Treat Cont. Effect Error T Treat N Cont. N Effect Error T 10.61 10.73 −0.11 0.18 −0.65 10.61 436 10.53 488 0.08 0.23 0.35 8.65 8.48 0.16 0.17 0.96 8.63 439 8.53 489 0.09 0.21 0.47 3.20
3.07
0.13
0.15
0.88
3.23
431 2.83
482 0.39
0.18
2.14
5.53
5.46
0.06
0.12
0.52
5.53
436 5.45
488 0.07
0.15
0.50
5.13
5.22
−0.09 0.16
−0.57 5.13
436 5.11
487 0.01
0.21
0.07
5.43
5.41
0.01
0.13
0.12
5.41
434 5.54
486 −0.12 0.16
−0.76
6.42
6.42
0.00
0.11
0.06
6.44
435 6.37
484 0.06
0.14
0.46
19.31 19.25 0.05
0.33
0.17
19.30 470 19.21 418 0.09
0.42
0.21
25.75 25.72 0.02
0.40
0.07
25.73 414 25.54 465 0.18
0.50
0.36
8.82
0.35
1.03
8.81
0.43
1.24
8.45
0.36
406 8.27
463 0.53
Childhood Education in any of the scales of the Questionnaire. Finally, considering the socioeconomic level of all the students who attended public Early Childhood Education and those who did not attend any Early Childhood Education system, the results show that it is only possible to observe a significant effect in the low socioeconomic level (Table 6.9), where, after matching the cases, students who did not attend any Early Childhood Education system scored 1.68 points more on the General Self-Concept Scale (T = −2.18). In addition, it is also possible to highlight (for this same socioeconomic level) the Depression Scale, where students who attended public Early Childhood Education score 7.44 points more (T = 3.45) than those who did not attend any system of Early Childhood Education. This means that students who attended public Early Childhood Education had, on average, more responses related to: feeling depressed, restlessness when sleeping, feeling lonely, crying more constantly, feeling that others disliked them, lack of appetite, and feeling that the sadness did not go away even with the help of friends and family. For the rest of the socioeconomic levels, no significant differences were observed after matching the cases.
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Table 6.9 Effect of attendance to public Early Childhood Education for low SEL on socio- emotional development Not paired Mean Socio- emotional results Friendships General self-concept Intrapersonal skills Interpersonal skills Stress management skills Adaptation skills General mood Risk coefficient 1 Risk coefficient 2 Depression
Paired Difference between means
Difference between means
Mean
Treat Cont. Effect Error T Treat N Cont. N Effect Error T 9.77 10.42 −0.64 0.63 −1.02 10.47 35 10.10 38 0.36 1.02 0.36 8.08 9 −0.91 0.59 −1.53 7.33 35 9.02 39 −1.68 0.77 −2.18 2.64
2.65
−0.01 0.43
−0.02 3
34 2.57
38 0.42
5.35
5.21
0.14
0.44
0.32
5.05
34 5.06
38 −0.01 0.79
−0.02
5.2
4.60
0.59
0.57
1.03
4.90
35 5.24
38 −0.33 1.00
−0.33
5.08
4.74
0.34
0.49
0.69
4.38
35 4.36
39 0.01
0.03
5.91
6.63
−0.71 0.38
−1.85 6.18
34 6.87
38 −0.68 0.70
−0.98
17.12 33 18.28 36 −1.15 1.74
−0.66
24.03 24.11 −0.08 1.32
−0.06 23.25 33 25.33 35 −2.08 2.20
−0.95
11.5
2.50
3.45
18.15 17.52 0.62
7.91
3.58
1.09
1.43
0.57
13.30 30 5.86
35 7.44
0.64
0.73
2.15
0.66
6.4.3.2 Attends Public Early Childhood Education v/s Attends Another (Private) Early Childhood Education System For this analysis, the treatment group corresponds to the group of students who attended public Early Childhood Education (n = 852) and the control group corresponds to the students who attended another (private) Early Childhood Education system (n = 2255). The results of the different scales of the Socio-emotional Development Questionnaire do not show a significant effect on the different scales of socio-emotional development (T = ±1.96) neither before nor after matching. Based on the above results, it is possible to point out that both for the group of those who attended public Early Childhood Education and for those who attended another (private) Early Childhood Education system, there is no significant impact on the results of socio-emotional development in none of the indicated scales, which is maintained if analyzed according to gender.
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Taking into account the socioeconomic level of the students who attended public Early Childhood Education and those who attended another (private) Early Childhood Education system, the results indicate that there is a significant effect in the medium-low socioeconomic level (Table 6.10), where it can be observed that the students who attend the public Early Childhood Education system score 0.35 points more than the students who attended another (private) Early Childhood Education system on the General Mood Scale (T = 2.17). This means that students who attend public Early Childhood Education score higher: believe that most things they do will turn out well, expect the best, and enjoy the things they do. It is also possible to indicate that in the medium high socioeconomic level, students who attended public Early Childhood Education score 1.03 points more than the control group on the General Self-Concept Scale (T = 1.97). This means that the students who score higher on this scale present the following abilities to a greater extent: they generally like the way they are, they feel proud of who they are, and they consider that they have many good things about themselves, as indicated by Table 6.11. Table 6.10 Effect of attendance to public Early Childhood Education for medium-low SEL on socio-emotional development Not paired Mean Socio- emotional results Friendships General self-concept Intrapersonal skills Interpersonal skills Stress management skills Adaptation skills General mood Risk coefficient 1 Risk coefficient 2 Depression
Paired Difference between means
Difference between means
Mean
Treat Cont. Effect Error T Treat N Cont. N Effect Error T 10.27 10.50 −0.22 0.22 −1.01 10.28 290 10.20 438 0.08 0.26 0.31 8.44 8.28 0.15 0.20 0.78 8.42 293 8.11 444 0.30 0.23 1.28 3.03
2.97
0.06
5.61
5.66
4.65
3.05
289 2.91
442 0.13
−0.04 0.15
−0.30 5.60
293 5.65
442 −0.04 0.17
−0.29
4.84
−0.19 0.20
−0.97 4.61
289 4.76
438 −0.14 0.23
−0.63
5.06
5.11
−0.05 0.15
−0.36 5.10
292 4.99
438 0.11
0,18
0.61
6.37
6.18
0.19
1.42
290 6.02
441 0.35
0.16
2.17
18.41 18.61 −0.19 0.39
−0.50 18.50 284 18.43 425 0.07
0.44
0.17
24.78 24.86 −0.07 0.47
−0.16 24.79 281 24.93 421 −0.13 0.55
−0.25
−1.74 9.63
−1.85
9.61
0.17
0.13
10.38 −0.76 0.43
0.35
6.38
0.20
274 10.58 414 −0.95 0.51
0.69
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Table 6.11 Effect of attendance to public Early Childhood Education for medium-high SEL on socio-emotional development Not paired Mean Socio- emotional results Friendships General self-concept Intrapersonal skills Interpersonal skills Stress management skills Adaptation skills General mood Risk coefficient 1 Risk coefficient 2 Depression
Paired Difference between means
Difference between means
Mean
Treat Cont. Effect Error T 10.45 10.09 0.35 0.35 1.02 8.17 8.05 0.12 0.34 0.35
Treat N Cont. N Effect Error T 10.60 75 10.06 309 0.54 0.50 1.07 8.36 75 7.33 306 1.03 0.52 1.97
2.94
2.79
0.15
0.30
0.50
3
74 2.73
307 0.26
0.45
0.59
5.97
5.66
0.30
0.23
1.26
5.98
74 5.69
306 0.28
0.35
0.81
4.84
4.90
−0.06 0.34
−0.20 5.06
75 4.99
305 0.07
0.50
0.14
5.14
5.39
−0.24 0.26
−0.94 5.17
75 5.54
304 −0.37 0.40
−0.91
6.24
6.14
0.10
0.41
73 6.07
308 0.16
0.35
0.47
0.24
6.24
19.01 18.74 0.27
0..66 0.41
19.67 73 18.8
300 0.87
1.03
0.84
25.26 24.89 0.37
0.81
25.57 71 24.31 300 1.26
1.22
1.03
9.82
10.07 −0.24 0.77
0.46
−0.32 9.90
70 11.04 296 −1.13 1.07
−1.06
6.5 Discussion This work provides information on the long-term effects of attending Early Childhood Education, considering the public and private spheres, in a cohort of students who in 2016 were enrolled in senior year and who attended (or did not attend) public or private Early Childhood Education between 2001 and 2003. This is important, since it is a study that contemplates the effects of the private sphere, a sphere mainly unknown up to that date, which presents a great heterogeneity in its composition (education in educational centers, paid care at home, among others) and that gradually opens up to the discussion of the issue of regulation of Early Childhood Education in the country. At first, the analysis of academic performance is addressed and then the analysis of socio-emotional development.
6.5.1 Academic Performance For comparison No. 1 (Attends public Early Childhood Education versus Does not attend any Early Childhood Education system), it is noteworthy that the general results of all the participants in the sample indicate that students who did not attend
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Early Childhood Education present greater score (5.98 points) in the SIMCE Language test (SD = 2.78) in comparison with the group, with similar characteristics, that did attend public Early Childhood Education. This trend is maintained (for comparison No. 1) if analyzed by Gender and by Socioeconomic Level (SEL). Regarding Gender, in the case of Men, the results show a significant effect for the Language and Science tests, with 8.60 more points in the first (SD = 4.03) and 7.83 more points in the second (DE = 3.75), in favor of students who did not attend Early Childhood Education. Regarding the distinction by SEL, the results indicate a higher score (30.35 points) in the Language test (DE = 10.01), also for students who did not attend Early Childhood Education and who belong to the medium-high SEL. This is interesting since, when controlling for NSE, the sizes of the groups in some cases are considerably reduced after the use of the matching technique (PSM), which indicates that despite having descriptive differences of over 10 points for some tests (for example, in the low SEL) in favor of students who attend public Early Childhood Education, these are not significant and do not constitute an effect on the results. These results indicate a different position with respect to the studies carried out previously in Chile (Contreras et al., 2009; Eyzaguirre & Le Foulon, 2001; Cortázar, 2015a; Bucarey et al., 2014; Urzúa & Veramandi, 2011; Noboa-Hidalgo & Urzúa, 2012) and also the studies carried out internationally (Burger, 2010; Camilli et al., 2010; Gorey, 2001; Geoffroy et al., 2007; Barnett, 1995; Fantuzzo et al., 2007). Mainly because these studies show positive effects for students who attended public Early Childhood Education compared to the control group, both for academic performance and for other areas of human development, under the premise that education or interventions in the first childhood are a relevant issue both for the development of individuals and for the development of societies as a whole. The indicated discrepancies, which are reported by the results of this work, can be explained by various reasons. One of them is related to the conformation of the sample, a sample of students from Santiago (which includes mainly urban communes) and in which educational establishments that agree to be part of a Fondecyt study participate, with the consent of the directors, the parents, and the students themselves; both situations that could generate a bias. Within this framework, as a result of the differences found, it was decided to zoom in and analyze the differences in means through the Student’s t test between the sample of the Fondecyt project (project from which this work is derived) and the sample of the thesis. The results revealed that indeed the groups present statistically significant differences, so their results may be different and reflect a reality that has other characteristics. On the other hand, regarding comparison No. 2 (Attend public Early Childhood Education versus Attend another (private) Early Childhood Education system), no significant impact results are presented, if the group is analyzed as a whole, nor in analysis by gender. However, when observing the analysis by SEL, it stands out in the average SEL that the students who attended public Early Childhood Education scored 6.97 points more in the Language test (DE = 3.35) compared to those who attended another system educational. The issue of SEL is a relevant topic of discussion in the results of this work, because although SEL was controlled in the analysis
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for both comparison No.1 and 2, the construction of this variable was carried out based on the data contributed by the commune of the fourth grade year establishment (through SIMCE 2008) in order to have an approximation as close as possible to the treatment period. However, the students in the sample may have changed their SEL, considering the new distribution of the establishments in 2016, a variable that was not controlled in this analysis. It is striking then that, for academic performance, the results mainly benefit students who did not attend Early Childhood Education. If we relate this to the previously mentioned idea of the SEL, it is possible that this sample is concentrated in the currently highest SEL, which could have repercussions on their academic results, which no longer depend on their initial educational conditions, but rather this could be explained by mobility in their subsequent educational trajectories. In this regard, it is also important to point out that academic performance is a multidimensional construct where various factors are involved. The estimation of the effect of Early Childhood Education on academic performance is related to certain observable characteristics and to a model based on the bibliographic review, which is a part of this construct and which was assumed as such for the development of the thesis.
6.5.2 Socio-emotional Development In relation to socio-emotional development, for comparison No. 1 (Attends public Early Childhood Education versus Does not attend any Early Childhood Education system), the tendency to observe higher scores in the group that did not attend any type of Early Childhood Education varies. If the analysis of the total sample of students is observed, there are no significant differences. If analyzed by Gender, men who attended public Early Childhood Education present a score of 0.39 points more on the Intrapersonal Skills Scale (SD = 0.18), this being significant, compared to those who did not attend any education system at this level. On the other hand, if it is analyzed by SEL, it is striking that low SEL students who did not attend Early Childhood Education present a higher score (1.68 points) on the General Self-Concept Scale (DE = 0.77), compared to those who did attend. In addition, in this same SEL, the fact that students who attended public Early Childhood Education score more (7.44 points) on the Depression Scale (DE = 2.15) stands out. Although this finding is interesting and may open the discussion about socio-emotional development during adolescence, since the sample size is low (30 and 35 cases for the treatment group and the control group, respectively) after the PSM, it would be risky to venture hypotheses about it. For comparison No. 2 (Attends public Early Childhood Education v/s Attends another (private) Early Childhood Education system), there are no significant effects if the group is considered as a whole, nor when controlling for Gender. However, when doing the analysis by SEL, it stands out in the medium-low SEL that the students who attended public Early Childhood Education score more (0.35 points) on the General Mood Scale (DE = 0.16) compared to those who attended another
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educational system. This positive and significant difference also occurs in the medium-high SEL, where students who attended public Early Childhood Education present 1.03 points more on the General Self-Concept Scale (DE = 0.52). If the general analysis is observed, considering the two comparisons made and the different outcome measures used, it is interesting to observe the following aspects: The difference between the group that attended public Early Childhood Education and the group that did not attend any system of Early Childhood Education (comparison No. 1), in most of the analyzes it benefits the group of students who did not attend Early Childhood Education, which opens the discussion regarding various issues around this educational level. For example, this study is a cohort study that attended Early Childhood Education between 2001 and 2003, when the Curricular Bases for Early Childhood Education were not yet fully installed, that is, there was not yet a complete and precise definition of the curriculum National, nor was there a massive entry of Early Childhood Educators into the classrooms and both educational and care functions were mainly assumed by Early Childhood Education Technicians; there was also no regulation as important as the one currently being considered and which becomes a great need to contribute to educational quality (Alarcón et al., 2015; Bravo, 2015) and, finally, the notion of childcare versus educational center was also an important point, since in many cases the kindergarten was only recognized as a child care institution and not necessarily an institution for educational purposes. Another important aspect to review is related to the difference between the group that attended public Early Childhood Education and the group that attended another (private) Early Childhood Education system (comparison No. 2). And it is that, contrary to the results for the group just mentioned, the significant results found mainly benefit the students who attended public Early Childhood Education, that is, both for academic results and for socio-emotional development, in this comparison, students who do receive treatment show better performance, scoring higher on some of the measures. This is relevant, since it also opens up other points of discussion, especially considering that the “other” group, which was assumed to be the private group, is a heterogeneous group in its composition and of which there is no further background. In this sense, and if one thinks of the analysis cohort, there is no certainty about the teaching methodologies, the curriculum, and the personnel dedicated to this task in those times; even less if one thinks that there was no homogeneity for public Early Childhood Education either. Finally, it is interesting to review how public Early Childhood Education has developed in recent years, what progress has been made, and what are the challenges that are still pending. Above all, because in this field there are public and state resources involved and although coverage has increased considerably in recent years, it is key to be able to advance in educational quality for this level. In this way, one of the great challenges is to effectively achieve equity in access, so that all children can attend initial education. In addition, it is necessary to strengthen the new institutionality, in order to continue advancing in the matter and meet the proposed goals (Morales, 2013).
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In this regard, this study sheds light on the need to continue advancing in initial education, so that effectively this level, which has been considered a relevant pillar at a social level and recognized in the generation of public policies, has the appropriate effects in the short, medium, and long term, in the development of children (Barnett, 1995; Shonkoff & Phillips, 2000; Cousiño & Foxley, 2011). Along the same lines, in terms of quality and directly related to Chilean standards versus international standards, an increase in economic investment at this level is also necessary, precisely to achieve the desired individual and social effects. Funding This article arises from the Master’s thesis in Educational Psychology of Alejandra Manosalva González, from 2018. This thesis was financed by the FONDECYT Initiation project No. 11150075 “Effects of Chilean public preschool education on academic and socio-emotional results during adolescence” awarded by Alejandra Cortázar in 2015.
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High/Scope Educational Research Foundation. (2017b). Curriculum Infant-Toddler. Recuperado de https://highscope.org/infant-toddler Khandker, S., Koolwal, G., & Samad, H. (2010). Handbook on Impact Evaluation. Quantitative Methods and Practices. The World Bank. Ley N° 20370. (2009). Ley General de Educación. Ministerio de Educación. Ley N° 20710. (2013). Reforma Constitucional que establece la obligatoriedad del segundo nivel de transición y crea un sistema de financiamiento gratuito desde el nivel medio menor. Ministerio de Educación. Ley N° 20835. (2015). Crea la Subsecretaría de Educación Parvularia, la Intendencia de la Educación Parvularia y modifica diversos cuerpos legales. Ministerio de Educación. Ley N° 20832. (2015). Crea la autorización de funcionamiento de establecimientos de Educación Parvularia. Ministerio de Educación. Magnuson, K. A., Meyers, M. K., Ruhm, C. J., & Waldfogel, J. (2004). Inequality in preschool education and school readiness. American Educational Research Journal, 41(1), 115–157. https://doi.org/10.3102/00028312041001115 MIDESO. (2016, December 29). Ministerio de Desarrollo Social. Obtenido de Observatorio Social: http://observatorio.ministeriodesarrollosocial.gob.cl/casen-multidimensional/casen/ casen_2015.php Montero, I., & León, O. (2007). A guide for a naming studies in Psychology. International Journal of Clinical and Health Psychology, 7(3), 847–862. Recuperado de https://www.aepc.es/ijchp/ GNEIP07_es.pdf Morales, F. (2013). Radiografía de la institucionalidad para la infancia en Chile. Clave de políticas públicas, Noviembre, 2013(20), 1–9. Recuperado de https://dds.cepal.org/proteccionsocial/ pacto-social/2013-11-seminario-Costa-Rica/10_Correa_Chile.pdf Noboa-Hidalgo, G., & Urzúa, S. (2012). The effects of participation in public child care centers: Evidence from Chile. Journal of Human Capital, 6(1), 1–34. Recuperado de https://www. journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/664790 NLSCY. (2009). National longitudinal survey of children and youth, cycle 8, user guide. Statistics Canada/Human Resources and Skills Development Canada. Ramey, C., & Ramey, S. (2004). Early learning and school readiness: Can early intervention make a difference? Merrill-Palmer Quarterly (1982), 50(4), 471–491. Recuperado de https://siegler. tc.columbia.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/5023-RameyRamey2004.pdf Reveco, O., & Mella, O. (1999). El impacto de la educación parvularia en la educación básica. Recuperado de www.isharon.files.wordpress.com/2007/06/impacto-de-la-educacion- parvularia-en-la-educacion-basica.pdf Shonkoff, J., & Phillips, D. (Eds.). (2000). From neurons to neighborhoods: The science of early childhood development. National Academy Press. The University of North Carolina. (n.d.). The Abecedarian Project. Recuperado de http://abc.fpg. unc.edu/abecedarian-project Tokman, A. (2010). Radiografía de la educación parvularia chilena: Desafíos y propuestas. Serie de Políticas Públicas UDP. Documento de Trabajo N° 5. Recuperado de http://expansiva.cl/ media/publicaciones/wpapers/20100317112011.pdf Urzúa, S., & Veramendi, G. (2011). The impact of out-of-home childcare centers on early childhood development. IDB Working Paper Series, IDB-WP-240. Zigler, E., Gilliam, W., & Barnett, W. S. (2011). The pre-K debates. Current controversies and issues. Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co., Inc.
Chapter 7
The Writer’s Affectivity When Writing to Learn Amparo Galdames-Fermandois
7.1 Introduction Writing is far from being a simple activity, even though we do it every day. We write constantly to communicate with others or to express our thoughts, feelings or criticisms. In formal contexts, the purpose of writing is linked to the recognition, accreditation or validation of ideas or positions, which is why its requirements increase. In education, the link between writing and learning is evident when we use writing as a means of constructing and transforming knowledge. So, teaching and learning how to write becomes a complex, demanding and highly challenging activity. In reviewing the tradition in writing studies, we can recognise how the development of scientific paradigms has influenced the teaching and learning of writing. In the 1970s, linguistics began to emphasize the communicative function of writing. Its focus shifted from the correction and adaptation of the grammatical norm to the effects of the text (Rijlaarsdam & Couzijn, 2000). In learning contexts, writing became an activity whose ultimate goal was to communicate specific knowledge to a specific audience (Castelló, 2007). In the following decade, this communicative approach was enriched by interdisciplinary contributions between cognitive psychologists and linguists (Rijlaarsdam & Couzijn, 2000). These proposals made the difference between conceiving writing as a product and as a process explicit: the product, understood as a particular linguistic unit produced by a subject, was a limited approximation that prevented the unveiling of the process, understood as the development of dynamic and recursive actions carried out by the writer during the activity of writing (Fayol, 1991). In an effort to explain writing production, i.e. to understand the processes A. Galdames-Fermandois (*) School of Psychology, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago de Chile, Chile e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. Fossa, C. Cortés-Rivera (eds.), Affectivity and Learning, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31709-5_7
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and mechanisms involved when a subject writes, the psychologist John Hayes and the linguist Linda Flower proposed the first model of writing as a process in 1980. The impact of this proposal and its later adjustment in 1981 influenced the design of curricula such as the Writing Across the Curriculum movement, conceived as a positive response to the literacy crisis of the time (McLeod & Soven, 1992). Following the impact of these publications, traditional teaching methods began to integrate writing as a process as a learning activity (Mayher et al., 1983; Kinneavy, 1983). Thus, the promise of learning through writing has been conceived as a real alternative in both secondary and higher education (Ackerman, 1993; Navarro & Revel Chion, 2013). In the 1990s, psychologist Roland Kellogg proposed a model of writing based on the specific strategies that would enable the achievement of a given goal along with the types of knowledge required for the successful execution of a writing task (Kellogg, 1994). From this model, proposals were developed related to the training of specific writing skills depending on executive functioning (see Kellogg, 2008). This interests in skill development resumed the distinction between novice and experienced writers addressed in the Sacardamalia and Bereiter model (1987). Proposals from the linguistic perspective integrated the relevance of context into the writing process. Flower (1994) addressed information processing and negotiation of meaning in writing after finding the task environment proposed in the 1980 and 1981 models insufficient to explain the influence of context on writing. Sociolinguistics began to consider the unspoken writing norms of discourse communities (Bawarshi & Reiff, 2010). Besides, the social character of writing was reinforced by the recognition of its functional purposes (Martin, 1997; Martin & Rose, 2003; Martin, 2015). The conception of writing as a social process was also reaffirmed by collaborative learning and group interaction (Ubilla et al., 2017). Thus, the discussions and negotiations between subjects already noted in Flower’s model (1994) were complemented by a particular attention to the demands imposed by a specific community (Allal, 2000). Such a fertile scenario led to the development of didactic research such as discursive genre-based pedagogy (Hyland, 2003). At the turn of the century, writing studies returned to the importance of the product in terms of the written quality. The development of computational tools helped predict text quality based on lexical diversity, word frequency and syntactic complexity (McNamara et al., 2010). The most recent proposals suggest that the identification of functional aspects could be a plausible alternative to determine the quality of texts that accredit knowledge (Lillo-Fuentes & Venegas, 2020). This concise review of the evolution of writing studies allows us to recognise how the bond between writing and learning has been maintained. It is an implicit assumption in the tradition outlined above that writing is a tool that enables the appropriation, revision and transformation of knowledge in the learning process (Alamargot & Chanquoy, 2001; Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1987; Lerner et al., 2012; Márquez et al., 2015). However, and perhaps paradoxically, the question of how the writing process affects the writer does not seem to have been directly addressed. The tradition in writing studies seems to pay no attention to the subjectivity of the
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writer and how he/she might be affected by the action of writing. While didactics of writing has taken up the challenge of studying learning strategies and the active learning of the writer (Camps, 2003; González, 2014; Mirallas, 2016; Montolío, 2014; Zayas, 2012), these practical guidelines are oriented towards the optimisation of the process rather than the affectivity of the subject who writes. From the obvious link between writing and learning, I argue that writing in knowledge production contexts must rescue and integrate the affective dimension in which the subject is engaged when writing. Approaching the relationship between writing and learning from the perspective of affectivity has two important consequences: it re-signifies subjectivity and gives genuine value to the living experience of learning. In this chapter, I attempt to revitalise the epistemic function of writing in order to relate it directly to the affectivity of the person who writes to learn. In the light of this relationship, I re-read some of the more traditional theoretical foundations in order to recognise how the affective dimension is treated in the most renowned cognitivist proposals. I have reserved the last section of this chapter to propose an alternative turn towards the subjectivity of the writer that allows us to understand the affective dimension when we write to learn.
7.2 Writing as an Epistemic Process Traditionally, it is accepted that language fulfils two general functions, namely, ideational and communicative (Feeldman, 1977; Emig, 1977; Cuenca & Hilferty, 1999). This position has allowed us to define writing as an activity that both represent and communicate our ideas (Miras, 2000; Miras & Solé, 2007). From this perspective, writing demands the representation of ideas and concepts that are the object of thought in order to convey them in a written text. Thus, it is understood that writing in learning contexts develops thinking and constructs knowledge in such a way that writing would influence learning (Tolchinsky & Simó, 2001; Mateos et al., 2008). The supremacy of writing as an activity that promotes learning is a long-standing discussion. Janet Emig suggests a connection between the characteristics of learning strategies and some specific attributes of writing. For example, both the deployment of learning strategies and writing are activities that give the subject feedback on the actions taken (Emig, 1977). This feedback occurs in both the immediate and long term, i.e. the person can learn about the effectiveness of his or her own learning strategies in terms of immediate achievement, as well as learn about the evolution of the decision-making process that guided the achievement of a given success. The written text offers a real support for reviewing and re-evaluating decisions that materialised the ideas or concepts, as well as being the actual result of the process of building and transforming ideas. For Emig (1977), some learning strategies are also a reflection of a connective process, i.e. they promote conceptual, generative, synthetic and analytical groupings. This particularity of learning strategies is similar to the connections made in writing: by means of lexical, syntactic and rhetorical
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resources, the writer elaborates explicit and systematic conceptual groupings. Both learning strategies and writing require an active and committed subject who manages to carry out a learning or writing process of a personal nature and at his or her own pace. The associations referred to by Emig (1977) underline an individual dimension of the writer that is characterised by a reflexive activity that cuts across the whole writing process. In this way, we can understand that the learner is an agent who sustains and regulates his/her learning through writing as well as the activity of writing alone (Miras, 2000). This perspective allows us to centre the discussion on the subjectivity of the writer, highlighting the responsibility and active participation that learning, writing and learning through writing demand. Such subjectivity may explain the diversity of choices made when writing in academic contexts. However, conceiving writing as a process foregrounds the writing subject and the decisions taken (or not taken) to reach the written product. As we know, the tradition in writing studies from a cognitivist perspective has turned in recent decades to research the processes involved in writing (Hayes & Flower, 1980; Flower & Hayes, 1981b; Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1987; Flower, 1994; Kellogg, 1994). This focus allows us to affirm that a special interest in the individual dimension has been developed in writing, so it can be understood as a tool or technology that allows the writer to solve the rhetorical problem that involves at least three basic questions. What do I write about? What do I write? And who do I write to? (Flower & Hayes, 1981a). Within this communicative approach, the teaching of writing and the various literacy programmes promote the development of communicative skills which enable the rhetorical problem to be solved competently. As a consequence, the development of cross-curricular programmes emphasises the importance of writing as a communicative tool for accrediting knowledge in learning contexts. In a way, the communicative approach reveals the interpersonal or transactional function of writing (Miras, 2000), which is based on the representation that the writer constructs about the audience to whom the reformulation of a certain content must be provided in written form. As a consequence, in this approach, the rhetorical problem seems to take up the fictional figure of the target audience proposed by Ong (1975). The strong predominance of the communicative function of writing is supported by theoretical proposals closer to pragmatics. Thus, the relevance of fulfilling communicative purposes (Swales, 1990, 2004) has become one of the fundamental axes of proposals such as genre-based pedagogy (Pavez & Galdames-Fermandois, 2022; Venegas et al., 2016). From this perspective, writing must meet the requirements of the community to which it is addressed, which recognises writers as members of certain circles in which knowledge is produced (Bazerman & Little, 2005; Navarro, 2021). Whether from a cognitive or a pragmatic perspective, it is difficult to question that writing fosters learning and thinking in knowledge production contexts. However, the emphasis on the communicative function of writing leaves its epistemic function in second place, which makes the person who learns while writing invisible. It seems necessary to re-read some seminal proposals in order to renew
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the individual dimension in the writing process and the subjectivity of the writer in order to re-interpret the epistemic function of writing. Langer and Applebee (1987) argue that the rhetorical problem is an opportunity for the writer to constantly seek to clarify his/her knowledge. Thus, through the organisation and reflection of ideas, the person carries out dynamic actions that lead to the construction of knowledge. In this way, the writer communicates ideas, but also experiences a change in the state of knowledge through writing. Bereiter (1980) terms this process the epistemic function of writing: the selection of ideas and the reflection related to this selection demands accuracy, so writing is not a mere product, but a constant analytical process carried out by the writer. In this sense, using writing as a reflective activity in learning implies intentionality and engagement. Writing is a tool that stimulates learning and enables the organisation of knowledge to be fostered (Bereiter, 1990), but it is also a learning strategy in itself (Boscolo, 1995; Langer & Applebee, 1987). Writing becomes an activity where language is used as a vehicle for reasoning that transforms knowledge; an opportunity to intentionally decide that a written text is the product of rhetorical problem solving. In line with the perspective of writing as a process, the activities of planning, textualising, reviewing and editing a text should have the subjective dimension of the writer as a transversal axis. The constant tension offered by the rhetorical problem motivates the pursuit of solutions. Thus, the different moments of the process are invaded by questions that are not only related to exploring what is the level of knowledge about the topic or to which audience the transmission of the thematic content is directed, but are also related to a demand to specify alternatives that, subjected to their own evaluation, satisfactorily solve the rhetorical problem. Verifying how the ideas are more accurate in the written product requires adjustments that meet expectations, i.e. that lead to compliance. Actions taken are not sequential, nor do they respond to a static list, but actions are rather dynamic, recursive and personal (Hayes & Flower, 1980; Flower & Hayes, 1981b). With regard to the recursion of writing, it could be suggested that the process is an evidence of how the three times of the subject’s experience are interconnected: past, present and future (Fig. 7.1). This triad involves the writer in a dynamic exercise that allows him to move intentionally from the present moment of his writing (textualisation) to the past: the planning or the moment of elaboration of ideas. Both
Fig. 7.1 The subject’s experience interconnected in writing process
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in the present of the writing and in the planning itself, the writer has the opportunity to project the reception of the text into the future. Past, present and future affectively engage the writer as feelings that reveal satisfaction or discomfort in regard to what he/she thought or planned at the beginning, i.e. in the past of the written text, and what the writer feels/projects that it will cause in the audience (future). As the writer deliberates how clear and adequate his writing is to solve the rhetorical problem, the actions he takes are the product of personal decisions oriented towards the success of his task, i.e. the accuracy of his written ideas (Bereiter, 1980). Subjectivity in decision-making in the writing process suggests that it is the personal commitment of the writer that guides the adjustments made to the text. In this way, writing affects the person who writes, which endows the act of writing with vitality: it is not only about what I write or to whom I write or how precise I write, but also about how the feeling of solving (or not) the rhetorical problem compromises the evaluation of my writing. Under this approach, the epistemic function of writing would not only be linked to the construction of knowledge and learning, but would also be closely related to the affectivity of the writer who experiences the process by developing new ideas in his/her writing. It could be argued that cognitivist models do consider affective dynamics through the concept of metacognition. However, the interest is restricted to the monitoring function proposed by Flavell (1979). The experience we seek to highlight here differs from the idea of an experience in which inferential and analytical processes such as judgements or estimations are engaged (Efklides, 2006, 2009). Our interest in addressing the writer’s subjectivity is oriented towards highlighting the affective state that comprises the writer’s subjectivity is personal, unique and transversal to his/her decision-making process. Therefore, affectivity and epistemic function coexist while writing and this must be understood as indissoluble phenomena. The discussion should be directed towards the experience, i.e. how the subject who writes lives and feels. If we understand that the recursive sub-processes of analysis and synthesis involved in writing are dependent on the immediate situation in which the writer is immersed (Emig, 1977), the rhetorical problem that the writer seeks to solve becomes an affective atmosphere that envelops the person. In this way, before evaluating the writing and its possible adjustments, the writer experiences satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the text, a sort of discomfort. If no resolution is found, he/she may experience frustration. From this standpoint, the experience of the writing process is enriched because it organically integrates the cognitive and affective dimension of the subject. Hence, if writing promotes learning, how it is affected and how the writer feels is part of that promotion. I know that in trying to detail this subjective dimension of the writer, I am initially referring to mere bodily sensations. I suggest that these sensations could be considered as silent signals or warnings that indicate a personal affective state that drives and guides the elaboration of conclusions. In the context of writing to learn, the tension we face when solving a rhetorical problem is an atmosphere that affectively envelops us, and it is within this atmosphere that the learning of content through writing is experienced.
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I will now concentrate on some theoretical approaches to writing. The analysis will be oriented towards unveiling the underlying conceptions of the writer’s dimension, in order to discuss the implications of their arguments. The ultimate objective is to reflect on the extent to which these conceptions have restricted the understanding of the writer’s dimension and how this has reduced the value of affectivity in the writing process.
7.3 Revitalising Old Foundations: Reading Between the Lines of Affectivity In traditional cognitive approaches, attempts have been made to address the study of writing by describing processes and sub-processes. The question we are trying to answer is how the writer carries out these processes. Then, we will review three relevant theoretical proposals in writing studies. First of all, we will focus on the four central hypotheses of Flower and Hayes’ model (1981b) in order to highlight the close relationship that each of them has with the affective dimension of the writer. Later, we will rescue the affective domain of Hayes’ model (1996) to highlight the role of emotions and affections included in this work, which we consider to be direct allusions to the writer’s affectivity. To conclude this section, we will shortly refer to Hayes’ model (2012) of writing with the intention of discussing what could be considered signs of the writer’s affectivity in this proposal.
7.3.1 The First Four Pillars: Flower y Hayes (1981b) The authors represent the writing process in a model that articulates three components. The first of these, called Task Environment, includes all those factors that influence the writing task and are external to the writer. This component includes social factors (e.g. the demands of a writing task) and physical elements (e.g. the written text as form and structure). The second component consists of the cognitive processes involved in writing: planning (deciding what to say and how to say it), translating (called ‘text generation’) and reviewing. The third component is the writer’s long-term memory, which includes knowledge of subject matter, audience and genre. Here we will review the four hypotheses that underpin the authors’ theoretical proposal. Flower and Hayes’ first hypothesis (1981b) states that writing is best understood as a set of distinctive thought processes that writers orchestrate or organise during the act of writing (p. 368). This first statement leads us to a retrospective questioning: Can we recognise that we organise thought processes every time we write? Our writing practice probably includes a moment in which we plan a kind of text route, for which we look for some texts similar to the one we are going to write in order to
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get an idea of the formal and rhetorical characteristics that our written production should comply with. At that same moment of planning, it is perhaps common to project how we will arrange the development of ideas, as well as to ask ourselves how much our audience will know about the topic we will address when writing. In most cases, we will organise certain activities as we analyse the relevance of the information we collect. In this respect, Kellogg (1994) proposes that the writer establishes specific goals that are related to the subject, the audience and the type of text written. This might seem consistent with that first moment in which we set out to write: in some way we are constructing the idea of what we hope to achieve as a result and this idea seems to be the product of a constant analysis of the first actions carried out. The proposal by Flower and Hayes (1981b) describes planning as an act in which an internal representation is constructed that involves a series of sub-processes. The authors specify that among these sub-processes: The most obvious is the act of generating ideas, which includes retrieving relevant information from long-term memory. Sometimes this information is so well developed and organized in memory that the writer is essentially generating standard written English. At other times one may generate only fragmentary, unconnected, even contradictory thoughts, like the pieces of a poem that hasn’t yet taken shape. (p. 372)
If we assume that it may sometimes be difficult to retrieve information from our long-term memory and that contradictory thoughts are generated in this attempt, then it seems reasonable to infer the living experience of feelings of discomfort. In this sense, the planning moment could be understood more as an atmosphere in which we feel dissatisfaction (or partial satisfaction, at best) around the text idea. We may also feel confused and overwhelmed by the amount of information: a tense body is a sign of this sense of bewilderment or consternation. Recognising this type of living experience only in the initial moment of the process (a moment to which we always return) would seem to be a more organic alternative and would allow us to defend that writing as a process is a personal and not a sub-personal activity: it is a person who writes, it is not a cognitive system that executes a set of processes. Those who work in learning contexts and use writing to construct knowledge will recognise that this atmosphere is specific to each learner, i.e. it is subjective. Every time we guide the development of a writing assignment, planning is often a time of great uncertainty. Both novice and more experienced students face great challenges in constructing the representation of the text they are about to write and, although in the best of cases a writing specialist can model the application of various strategies, if the confusion is significant, students’ bodily expressions show their discomfort and frustration. According to Flower and Hayes (1981b), a good writer is a person capable of juggling all the demands of a writing task (p. 373). However, it seems that there are times when even good writers do not succeed because the atmosphere in which they find themselves immersed does not promote satisfactory feelings. Nevertheless, if we look at another moment in the writing process, what happens compared to the initial planning does not seem to be so different. Text writing is
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labelled by Flower and Hayes (1981b) as translating and defined as a process that renders ideas into visible language (p. 373). Regarding this process, the authors indicate that: It is easy, for example, to imagine a conflict between what you know about a topic and what you might actually want to say to a given reader, or between a graceful phrase that completes a sentence and the more awkward point you actually wanted to make. Part of the drama of writing is seeing how writers juggle and integrate the multiple constraints of their knowledge, their plans, and their text into the production of each new sentence. (p. 371)
It seems to be evident that expressions such as ‘conflict’, ‘most uncomfortable point’, ‘drama of writing” and ‘seeing how writers juggle’ underlie the affectivity of the writer. So, how can these references be understood if not through his/her experiences? Can we understand these kinds of expressions if we are left only with the idea that the writing process is a set of distinctive thought processes that writers orchestrate and organise when writing? It is practically impossible to be indifferent to the recognition of our limitations because we are people affected by the task of writing and its demands. Therefore, the writer cannot be reduced to a set of processes and sub-processes, and these cannot be dissociated from affectivity. The second hypothesis proposed by the authors indicates that the cognitive processes carried out while writing have a hierarchical, highly integrated organisation, in which any activity may be embedded within another (Flower & Hayes, 1981b, p. 368). When writing, it is clear that we carry out activities that do not respond to a specific order. These activities vary and we can use them at any time. This flexibility is not stable, as it depends on the results of each decision we make. In this way, our knowledge and skills will be decisive when writing (Kellogg, 2008). The authors state that we may not be aware of the embeddedness of cognitive processes, but a theory that did not include this flexible and recursive feature of writing would not explain why writers decide which processes to carry out, nor how they know when to end one and move on to another. However, if I remember writing an essay in which I had to explain and discuss concepts, to argue a position, it seems to me that the engagement is focused on the accuracy of the ideas written. As I write, I also check how coherent my writing is and, when I decide to pause for a moment, I re-read and feel a certain satisfaction if I understand what I have written, as well as the satisfaction I get from reading that new idea put into words. It is no longer a pre-existing idea, but an idea materialised by the words I am putting into the text. Each time I don’t feel that satisfaction, my writing slows down: if I perceive a lack of clarity, doubt makes me uncomfortable and re-reading can make me feel that I am not being accurate. In these cases, reviewing and adjusting the text can become a dead end and the difficulty of finding the words that really express what I want to write may turn into an attitude of rejection, for example. Affectivity, in this case, is a state marked by the tendency to feel this discomfort and dissatisfaction. One of the illustrative examples used by the authors refers to the embedding of cognitive processes. From this passage, they highlight the verbalisation of a writer
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trying to write (‘translating’ for the authors) the first sentence of an article. The authors explain that: After producing and reviewing two trial versions of the sentence, he invokes a brief sequence of planning, translating, and reviewing-all in the service of that vexing sentence. In our example, the writer is trying to translate some sketchily represented meaning about ‘the first day of class’ into prose, and a hierarchical process allows him to embed a variety of processes as sub-routines within his overall attempt to translate. (Flower & Hayes, 1981b, p. 376)
From this, it seems that the hierarchy or integration of cognitive processes suggested by the authors is more a consequence than an antecedent. The writer, before carrying out the actions he/she declares, expresses a disconformity, this being the antecedent that motivates him/her to look for an adaptation. In this case, the imprecision in writing affects the writer and it is not the integration of processes that produces the revision of the writing. Overall, we can say that when we are surprised by a new idea emerging in our writing, the recursion of the writing process allows us to be flexible and adjust the first guideline or planning we have considered; if we are comfortable with that adjustment, we can go back to the ongoing text. Returning to the initial recording of ideas and applying modifications is an action we take as knowledge is also modified and we feel comfortable or satisfied with that change. It seems more natural to me to recognise the recursion of the writing process as a sign of our affectivity, since the progress of writing is an accumulation of subjective sensations of satisfaction, comfort, discomfort, frustration, surprise or confusion; sensations that go hand in hand with the construction of knowledge in a writing task. The third hypothesis claims that the act of writing itself is a goal-directed thought process, guided by the writer’s own growing network of objectives (Flower & Hayes, 1981b, p. 368). Undoubtedly, when we write in learning contexts, the objectives of our writing are directed towards accrediting acquired knowledge (Moyano, 2000). The authors point out that the participants in their study often considered their own writing process to be disorganised and chaotic, but that regardless of this perception, some sort of coherent underlying structure was ultimately recognisable in the activities they carried out. For the authors, this ambivalence can be explained by the interaction between two sets of objectives in the writing process. The first one is established on the basis of the participants’ verbalisations, which are linked to instructions they give themselves to carry out the process (for example: ‘I will leave this idea recorded here to include it later’, ‘I will look for another source to support this idea’). It should be noted that such objectives would be applied by good writers, so only those who formulate such instructions would be able to write well. On the other hand, content objectives are those that are associated with everything the writer wants to say or do while thinking about the audience of the text. Interestingly, according to the authors, these content objectives evolve into an increasingly complex web of goals and sub-goals as the writing process continues (Flower & Hayes, 1981b, p. 378). In this regard, they argue that modifications in the text respond to more specific communicative purposes and to a greater clarity of
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ideas, which adjusts the initial representation of the text, making it more functional. While I agree to some extent that we refine our objectives as we progress in our writing, I suggest that this is largely due to the engagement we are involved in. I am not restricting this engagement only to a communicative function, i.e. I do not think that engagement depends only on the audience we are addressing and what we want to do in the text, with this audience in mind. It seems to me that before that arrival point, there is a starting point directly related to our own generation of ideas, to the knowledge that we build up and develop when we create new ideas in our writing. It is a subjective engagement that depends on our experience as writers and on the epistemic function of writing. The conviction that allows me to propose the experience of the writer as a point of origin lies in the characteristics of the networks of objectives proposed by the authors. The first is that this set of objectives is closely related to the unexpected discovery experienced by the writer as he/she explores new information and enriches the text. If we experience confusion and surprise when we put new ideas into writing, the experience of these sensations becomes more of an antecedent that would motivate the generation of a network of goals, which would subsequently have an impact on the written text. Therefore, it is possible to assert that the point of arrival (in this case, the audience or the final text) would not be more important, but rather the antecedent that is generated at the starting point, in other words, in the writer’s affectivity. The second feature emerges from the above-mentioned discovery. According to the authors, although the goals that constitute the goal network promote the exploration and consolidation of new ideas, not all of them would be the product of logical or conscious elaboration (Flower & Hayes, 1981b, p. 379). In this sense, it seems more appropriate to suggest that the writer is affected by greater or lesser levels of satisfaction with the new information he/she generates in his/her writing. As a result of this experience, the writer resort to new goals and sub-goals aimed at adjustments or modifications in the subject matter, audience, rhetoric or other aspects of the text. It is at this point that the authors’ fourth hypothesis seems to be more genuinely oriented to the starting point, to the writer’s affectivity. This fourth statement argues that the generation, adjustment and modification of goals is based on learning promoted by the act of writing, i.e. on the epistemic function of writing. In this regard, Flower and Hayes (1981b) point out that: The writer pops back up to her top-level goal and from that vantage point reviews the information she has generated. She then consolidated it, producing a more complex idea than she began with by drawing inferences and creating new concepts. (p. 382)
Actions carried out by the writer and made explicit in the quote lead us more organically to the writing process seen from the starting point, that is to say, from the writer. The fact of explicitly describing the evaluation that the writer makes and the action plans that he/she carries out after it would allow us to recognise the way in which the writer’s affectivity intuitively guides the adjustment, modification and elaboration of specific actions. Here, the discovery of the unexpected is accompanied by sensations of confusion or surprise, which can motivate us to explore and
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consolidate the new ideas we build up as we create the text. Although the authors insist that discovery based on cognitive processes allows us to understand the writing process, the fourth hypothesis of this proposal is an opportunity to reinterpret cognitive processes from the starting point, that is, from the affectivity of the writer. The review of Flower and Hayes’ (1981b) hypotheses invites us to reflect on the extent to which cognitivist approaches have contributed to a fragmented conception of the process. The description focused on a collection of processes and sub- processes outside the subjectivity of the writer seems to suggest that it is not really a person who writes, but a cognitive system that mechanically executes processes and sub-processes according to predetermined goals and objectives. At first glance, this distinction may be interpreted as a subtlety. Yet, if we take into account that this proposal became a transcendental theoretical reference for later studies, and that many of the academic literacy programmes were based on this work, we are no longer facing a triviality. We believe that the scope of a parcelled approach to the writing process contributed to the fact that affective cues were conceived exclusively as aspects concerning motivation and metacognition, as we will observe below.
7.3.2 Motivation in Writing: Hayes (1996) The mid-1990s proposal by John R. Hayes is presented as a new framework for understanding the cognitive as well as the emotional aspects of the writing process. The author defines writing as a communicative act that requires a social context and a medium. In addition, it is also defined as a generative activity that requires motivation and an intellectual activity that requires cognitive and memory processes (Hayes, 1996, p. 10). This important statement warns us, first of all, of the strong influences attributed to socio-cultural factors that were largely neglected in previous models. Secondly, the inclusion of motivation and the recognition, albeit brief, of the contribution made by Gestalt psychologists is striking. In this proposal, the representation of the person brings together four components: motivation/emotion, active memory, cognitive processes and long-term memory (Hayes, 1996, p. 11). Due to the interests of this chapter, we will concentrate on the first of these components, yet we will mention the others only in order to highlight that the affectivity of the writer previously discussed can be recognised beyond an isolated module. We have argued that the writer is affectively engaged throughout the writing process. In this sense, it is encouraging that in this proposal Hayes suggests that the nature of motivation in writing is linked to a predisposition to long-term engagement. However, the engagement we have suggested does not correspond to a given predisposition, since such an idea would lead us to assume a kind of static representation of engagement. Our proposal is to understand the writer as a person immersed in the production of a text, that is to say, affectively involved in the activity of writing.
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The disposition we recognise in Hayes (1996) is linked to the beliefs that writers have about writing itself, that is, the conclusions they draw after a personal experience (McLeod, 1987). Thus, it is inferred that the volitional, or at least partially volitional, character of the disposition is a factor that could determine the writer’s commitment. If we consider that writing in learning contexts is characterised by being a highly demanding task, as well as being a tool used to accredit knowledge, then the beliefs underpinning this kind of provision should be positive. It seems to me that teachers guiding literacy programmes in higher education would disagree with this, since the generalised beliefs are frustration-oriented, hence negatively disposed. When we write, we are caught up in the process: the continuous challenges we experience involve us in the activity to the point of conformity, non-conformity or indifference. The dynamics of thinking about an audience keeps us immersed in the constant tension of projecting the reception of our text. But, above all, writing keeps us engaged as we discover how new ideas take shape in the text. The objective of being clear in these new ideas mobilises us affectively in the constant search for accuracy. So, we adjust, modify and evaluate what we have written until we feel that we have found the desired accuracy. This cluster of emotions is not the result of a decision, but only happens in the living experience of writing. It is possible that this understanding of engagement in writing may be criticised as a romantic desire to believe that the goal of clarity always dominates and prevails during the process. However, when we emphasise the close connection between writing and learning, i.e. when we emphasise the epistemic function of writing, the action of producing a text is often more genuinely motivated by the desire to achieve a clear text. Based on this more primal and unconscious desire, engagement could not be determined by a belief-based disposition. This does not invalidate the idea that different goals converge in the writing process (Hayes & Flower, 1980; Flower & Hayes, 1981b). Hayes (1996) points out an example that some writers may want to convey content, create a good impression of themselves, communicate information in a short message or want to please one type of audience without offending another (p. 18). Regardless of whether the writer sets any of these or other communicative goals, the primal goal of producing a clear text remains at the heart of the writing process, so his/her commitment is really a willingness to seek and achieve that clarity. The scope of motivational and emotional factors for Hayes (1996) is linked to a decision-making process. The author argues that motivation shapes the course of actions through a cost-benefit mechanism. Therefore, individuals will choose the means that is least costly or least likely to lead to an error (p. 18). It is difficult to challenge this idea, since it seems logical to recognise that when we write, apply and evaluate the outcome of the deployment of strategies. However, this approach to motivations remains close to a cognitive level, so that motivational and emotional factors would be linked to a representation of sensations that, in reality, are rather primitive and intuitive and could be associated with satisfaction, comfort, discomfort, among others.
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According to traditional studies, the demands, requirements and challenges of a writing task are factors of the external dimension of the writer and constitute what is called the Task Environment (Hayes & Flower, 1980; Flower & Hayes, 1981b, Hayes, 1996; Kellogg, 1994). If these factors influence the writer’s motivations and emotions, it means that they involve the writer’s affectivity. Thus, although they are external factors, they influence the writer’s internal dimension, which would be very well represented in the models of writing through the interconnection of the internal and external components of the process. However, the restriction of affective aspects to a cause–consequence conception, or vice versa, is somewhat artificial when we experience writing, since we do not represent the emotions that we feel when we write, which is probably because we do not seek to represent them, but only experience them: they affect us and engage us, not in the exclusively decision-making line, but simply affect us because we cannot distance ourselves from the human experience of writing. From this angle, Hayes’ (1996) framework for understanding the cognitive and emotional aspects can be seen as a major contribution to the inclusion of motivation and emotions in the writing process. However, the evident attachment to a cognitivist conception restricts both motivation and emotion in writing to a recognition- based cognitive processing. This promotes a study of the writer’s affectivity as a dimension in which concepts such as motivation only respond to a kind of trigger that explains the decision-making process and its consequences. Next, we will briefly review how this same conception is more explicitly established in a later model by the same author (Hayes, 2012), with the intention of guiding our final discussion to an alternative that allows us to approach the writer’s affectivity from a different position.
7.3.3 The Resurgence of the Void: Hayes (2012) This time, John R. Hayes proposes a model of three overlapping levels: a level of control, a level of the writing process and a level of resources. The first one includes the factors that shape and guide the writing activity; the second considers the internal writing processes and the environmental factors that influence them; while the third level covers the cognitive resources that are important for writing. Due to the interests guiding this chapter, we will concentrate on the first of these three levels, specifically on motivation. It is worth mentioning that though our proposal of affectivity could guide us in interpreting the remaining levels, we direct our discussion to the level in which the author explicitly identifies elements that lead us to the affective dimension of the writer. The level of control proposed by the author is composed of the following factors: motivation, goal setting, current plan and writing schemes. One of the first striking aspects at this level is that affection and emotions in the ‘96 proposal seem to be subsumed within the motivation module. Goal setting in writing is represented as a motivation-dependent module. Factors corresponding to the current plan and
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writing schemes are part of a third consecutive module of the level and they are sequentially concatenated to the two previous modules. Although the author makes explicit that motivation is important for writing because it influences people’s willingness to write (Hayes, 2012, p. 372), he does not elaborate on how he conceptualises this factor or which referents guide its understanding. Three years later, Hayes and Olinghouse (2015) review the model and specify that: Motivation is important throughout the writing process, but its most important impact is getting people to engage in writing at all. People may lack the motivation to write for many reasons. For example, they may not see a purpose for it in their lives or they may associate it with negative consequences. Without the motive to write, writing will not happen. (p. 482)
The representation in the model and the subsequent clarification of how motivation is understood in it leads us to identify a basic contradiction: if motivation, which we assume would include the writer’s affection and emotions, is important for the whole process, why is it represented only as the starting point at the control level? Moreover, if the tradition in writing studies, which the author has actively participated in, has insisted on the essential characteristic of the recursion of the process, why are the factors at this level linearly arranged? The author concedes that the representation of motivation in his proposal is not fully adequate to account for the various ways in which motivation may influence writing (Hayes, 2012, p. 373). However, it is surprising that the role of affectivity in writing has not been contemplated. The absence of the writer’s affectivity in Hayes’ proposal (2012) could be considered a major setback in the attempt of approaching the study of the subject who writes. The conception underlying this fragmented way of considering an affective component leads us to represent an ideal state that conditions any kind of written production. The implications of this conceptualisation lead to overlooking the epistemic function of writing, so there would be no room for advocating the promotion of learning through the activity of writing. This review so far highlights writing as a process involving conceptual, linguistic, motor and evaluative levels of processing aimed at solving a rhetorical problem that requires the writer to decide what to write, whom to address and how to address it. From this perspective, the executive functions involved in writing would make the production of the text and its evaluation according to the requirements of a writing task possible. In simple terms, the tradition in writing studies has insisted on the description and representation of the process by means of models that articulate the cognitive operations involved in writing (Olive, 2014). Despite the ephemeral hope of the inclusion of emotions and affection in the proposal of the mid-1990s, the conceptions underlying the cognitive models have brought with them the evident invisibility of the affective dimension of the writer, restricting its study to the inclusion of motivation as an emotional factor reduced to a trigger in the decision-making process. In the final section below, we seek to promote a discussion that takes us back to the subjectivity of the writer, to his/her inner, emotional and affective world. The
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conviction of integrating the affective dimension of the subject in the writing process is based on conceiving this activity in a comprehensive way and on taking a healthy distance from the tradition of cognitive models in order to turn to the person who writes and who learns through writing. This subject writer experiences writing and learning, so returning to him/her is an unfinished task that we must address.
7.4 A New Look at Affectivity Learning studies are experiencing a shift towards affective aspects (Pekrun & Linnenbrink-García, 2014). In this context, studying writing as a tool that promotes learning implies reflecting on the subjectivity and emotions of the writer. We suggest that a new look at affectivity in writing studies must recognise the affective states in which the writer is immersed. With the purpose of defending writing as a subjective activity in which the affectivity of the writer is naturally involved, in this section we propose some guidelines that can direct the development of new proposals. According to Ravenscrof (2017), writing is embodied, so the gesture of writing (manually or digitally) is a joint expression of thought and emotion. It is difficult to question that thinking and feeling are non-transferable human activities, so we will understand writing as a unique circumstance for each person, i.e. as a subjective living experience. Fleer et al. (2017) point out that ‘[s]ubjectivity represents a new human production that is part of this world, but it never reproduces it; because the world can only be represented through the lenses of those who experience it’ (p. 4). Accordingly, writing could only be understood from the person’s experience, which would encompass not only the writer’s cognitive processes but also her emotions. For the German philosopher Hermann Schmitz, the person is both subjectively and objectively immersed in a circumstance; and the way and intensity in which the subject experiences the circumstances are dynamic aspects transforming over time (Schmitz, 2016/2019). Mercado (2017) clarifies that the Schmitzian circumstance can be understood as a state or constitution of things or people, also a set of factors or circumstances that affect someone or something at a certain time (p. 235). For Schmitz (2016/2019), circumstances would have a subjective meaning that would allow us to recognize when the subject is affectively touched or is attached to a situation. In addition, this circumstance would have an objective meaning as the circumstance itself can be conceptualized, which for Fleer et al. (2017) would be to represent the world. From Schmitz’ proposal, we venture to propose that the writing process is, in his terms, a circumstance. From this point of view, writing would be an activity that have subjective meaning because it is characterized by dynamic affective states that inevitably involve the writer. It would also be characterized by an objective meaning because the writer can conceptualize concrete actions carried out when writing. The interesting thing is that, according to Schmitz, circumstances do not allow the
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distinction between the subjective and the objective. Therefore, writing should be understood as a whole in itself. The proposals of Linda Flower and John Hayes were based on think-aloud protocols. The researchers state that participants ‘…are asked to verbalize everything that goes through their minds as they write, including stray notions, false starts, and incomplete or fragmentary thought’ (1981b, p. 368). The fragments of the protocols selected by the authors, however, allow us to glimpse the subjective meaning of the circumstance: the language of the participants illuminates the situation in which they find themselves (see Flower & Hayes, 1981b, p. 376). In this sense, conceptualising the circumstance responds to an effort to clarify the situation, an effort that involves the writer and keeps him/her affectively involved. In this sense, Mercado (2017) sustains that: Whoever is afflicted at a given moment is the one who is affected, the one who is concerned to respond in a certain way to his/her situation within a specific circumstance; whoever is afflicted, is afflicted, and has been touched by a situation that cannot be avoided, that concerns him/her because it is his/her circumstance. (p. 235)
It is obvious to see how writing involves the writer. In this way, the dynamic tension between satisfactions and dissatisfactions characterises both the atmosphere and the feelings of the writer as a writer. The felt body (Leib) underlined by Hermann Schmitz is a starting point for approaching experience. From this proposal, we can address body expressions that cause emotions such as surprise, confusion, anguish, among others. Writing researcher Susan McLeod (1987) noticed these types of expressions in her students: I am watching a roomful of college freshmen take an essay exam; I can nearly see the tension in the air. Several young men and women stare into space, pencils poised, brows furrowed, sweating slightly. A number of others gnaw their lower lips. Others chew their pens, their pencils, their fingernails. One examinee tears a page out of his bluebook, crumples it up, and fires it at a nearby wastebasket. (p. 426)
Although McLeod (1987) acknowledges her students’ expression, her suggestion of categories and dimensions for a theory of emotions inevitably returns to a cognitive interpretation of affectivity (p. 431). However, if we are guided by a Schmitzian reading, the corporeality and expressiveness of the writer show the intensity of his/ her experience, allowing us to argue that emotions are not linear or discrete. They do not respond to specific times and do not depend on the writer’s construction of a representation. This conception moves us away from abstracting the activities of the writer’s subjectivity, so that it is no longer necessary to explain emotions from cognitive foundations. If we defend the unity of emotion and cognition in the atmosphere of writing, we must interpret the process as a single unit. Congruently, Vygotsky’s late and least recognized work shows his commitment to subjectivity, emotions and affectivity (Mok, 2017). Some of his criticisms were that traditional approaches in psychology have separated intellectuality from volition and affectivity (Vygotsky, 1987), which has been made clear by reviewing the theoretical background in this chapter. While Fleer et al. (2017) agree with Vygotsky on the absence of emotions in traditional
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studies, they also argue that emotions are always felt and understood in social contexts. We do not intend to approach subjectivity, affectivity and emotions in writing from a cultural-historical explanation, but rather we want to stay in the Shmitzian atmosphere and in the affectivity of the writer, since we understand that emotions and cognitive processes that involve the writer coexist there. From this point of view, we take up Vygotsky’s idea that ‘[t]here is a dynamic meaningful system that constitutes a unity of affective and intellectual processes’ (Vygotsky, 1987, p. 50), but we do not force the reflection beyond the individual. This decision is far from simple; on the contrary, it presents great challenges when projecting new proposals. To do so, we should highlight the features of writing that allow us to experience it and to enter into an understanding of that experience. In other words, the main focus is on facts and perspectives, i.e. the objective and subjective meaning of writers. In this way, studying the writing process from this new perspective of affectivity re-signifies subjectivity and gives genuine value to the experience of learning. The journey I have taken in this chapter responds to a profound motivation to explore the affective dimension of writing in contexts of knowledge production and learning. My academic and professional experience has led me to defend the epistemic function of writing, so, from this position, I have re-read some traditional proposals to re-discover the subjectivity of the writer and suggest a new perspective on the affectivity of the writer. In this endeavour, I have abandoned the traditional aspiration to describe a phenomenon objectively to delve into the study of the writer’s subjective experience, a decision that has enabled me to more organically consider how we are affected when we use writing as a means of accrediting knowledge. The reflective exercise of writing this chapter is the very phenomenon I wanted to write about: I have constructed and developed new ideas as I wrote, and this process of constant transformation kept me immersed in an atmosphere full of confusions, surprises, frustrations, satisfactions and discomfort. I was often recalling my students and their expressions when writing essays. Their pessimistic words and burdened bodies externalised an affectivity guided by the deep frustration of not knowing how to write and not knowing what to do about how they felt. The experience of witnessing this affectivity and the opportunity to experience it now reaffirms my interest in continuing to build this perspective in which writers are the protagonists.
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Chapter 8
Affectivity from the Dialogical Perspective of Cultural Psychology: Educational Implications Luciana Dantas de Paula , Isabella Alves Alencar de Araujo , Maria Cláudia Lopes de Oliveira , and Angela Uchoa Branco
Psychology has a long legacy of privileging cognitive and observable behavior while dismissing the affective dimension of human life. Some of the reasons stem from the fact that emotions, feelings, and the affective world, in general, are considered fuzzy topics that are difficult to grasp. Following the tradition of positivist epistemologies, which demands “hard data” quantitatively collected to be considered academically valid and valuable, it makes sense that affectivity has been regarded as a secondary topic to study. Therefore, even sociocultural approaches to psychology, which investigate complex phenomena, have mostly invested in the study of cognition, memory, language, action, etc., (Branco, 2016) in their research efforts to study human development. Authors are particularly engaged in researching human developmental processes within different social and educational settings but continue to avoid a closer examination of the role of affectivity in such processes. This is especially problematic, though, as the affective dimension is a crucial part of human life experiences. The development of complex psychological functions, such as memory, learning, motivation, agency, morality, and creativity—deeply relevant to educational goals—are intimately interdependent with the expression, regulation, and construction of the affective climate or framework that envelopes, impregnates, and guides the quality of self-other-world relations.
L. D. de Paula (*) . I. A. A. de Araujo . M. C. L. de Oliveira . A. U. Branco Department of Psychology, University of Brasilia, Brasília, Brazil © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. Fossa, C. Cortés-Rivera (eds.), Affectivity and Learning, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31709-5_8
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The present chapter’s goals are two-fold: first, it aims at discussing an integrative perspective that focuses on the core functions of affectivity amidst a dialogical perspective on human development and learning. Additionally, we present the contribution of Semiotic Cultural Psychology to the analysis of how affectivity is central to meaning-making processes; by proposing the concept of affective semiosis and its fundamental role in human development.
8.1 Psychology and Affectivity: Historic Notes and Key Concepts Until the transition from the nineteenth to twentieth century, affectivity remained a topic of sole interest in philosophical inquiries. In contrast, psychology has given scarce attention to research on this subject. Although recognizing the relevance of affectivity as part of human relations and activities, psychology tended to address it from a reductionist perspective, entailing a sort of dichotomization and hierarchical approach between affect and language/cognition. Affectivity has traditionally been conceived of as part of a spectrum of opposing psychological functions since Descartes, and thereafter in the history of psychology: on one end, emotions—the organismic, irrational pole; on the other, cognition, seen as the rational pole of human action (Esperidião-Antônio et al., 2008; Kaldis, 2013). The persistence of this opposition, however, consists of one of the various dichotomies spread over the psychological rationale, leading its theoretical efforts in the direction of privileging cognition over affectivity, as if mental functioning could be reduced to rational thinking, and the human mind was devoid of emotions or feelings, those being left only to the body, not the mind. Following a quite different perspective, the Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza, already in the seventeenth century, argued in favor of the integration and mutual constitution of reason and emotion, as did Vygotsky in the twentieth century. Nevertheless, the topic still demands special attention from psychology researchers and theorists. Regardless of how contradictory it may appear, every psychological theory includes some explanatory model concerning issues of affect, affectivity, and related concepts (drive, emotion, feeling, liveliness, move, pathós, sentiment, sensuality, sensitiveness, etc.), suggesting their role in motivation, altered mental states, and pathologies, making use of a vast vocabulary to refer to human affects. The term emotion is one of them.
8.2 Emotions Even though psychology’s object of study has shifted significantly over its 120 years, thanks to various theoretical models, “the way of thinking about it has not changed” (Valsiner, 2017, p. 31), nor the goal of locating it within specific anatomic structures
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of the brain (amygdala, hypothalamus, etc.). According to Valsiner (2017), efforts to locate psychological processes somewhere inside the organism go even further, resulting in a search for the “gene for emotions in the human genome” (Valsiner, 2017, p. 31). A consequence of this biological approach to affectivity is its usual association with emotional outbursts, instinctive expressions, unplanned, or uncontrolled disturbing reactions (Ben-Ze’ev, 2013). This is probably the reason affectivity is considered the opposite of cognition, playing a minor role in the development of higher mental functions. Affects and emotions are reduced to physiological responses, disregarding their great importance to the emergence and evolution of specifically human characteristics, both from phylogenetic and ontogenetic perspectives. The functional and developmental roles played by affects and emotions, though, were highlighted by some theoretical models, in Psychology (Willian James, Jean Piaget, and Henri Wallon), Biology (Charles Darwin), and psychoanalysis (Freud). Since the Renaissance, scientific efforts have contributed substantially to improving knowledge about human morphology and anatomy, including identifying different structures of the central and peripheral nervous systems. In reference to emotions, one of the first meaningful efforts to locate emotional processing in the brain was the topological representation of the correspondence between anatomic brain regions and specific neurological functions objectively mapped by the French physician Paul Pierre Broca. One of the regions identified by Broca was the limbic “region” (Esperidião-Antônio et al., 2008, p. 57) in which he believed affective states were processed. Later, a significant contribution to the neuro-psychological understanding of human emotions was reached by the US anatomist Joseph Papez, who explored a novel systemic perspective based on a circuit of multiple synapses distributed among different locations in the brain, which he named the limbic “system” (Esperidião-Antônio et al., 2008, p. 57). With the empirical support of more recent investigations that benefited from the improvement in MRI technologies, novel neurological structures have been identified in the limbic system, usually referred to as the emotional system. Studies of this type emphasize the interrelatedness of emotions, cognition, imagination, and other higher psychological functions in the morphogenesis and the ontogenesis of emotional behaviors (Esperidião-Antônio et al., 2008). Concerning the ontogenesis of emotional life, the first human proto-emotional responses were found already in the embryonic stage. These responses to internal and external stimuli (sounds, movements, and caress) emerge in the form of spare muscular reactions, spasms, smiles, crying, and continue to evolve along ontogenesis through the mediation of social circumstances, that is, interactions with other human beings. Emotions intertwine with meaning-making processes, which encompass fuzziness and ambiguity, imagination, and sense of self, thus assuming increasingly complex functional roles in human interpersonal transactions. In sum, emotion in human development is prior to the emergence of most cognitive processes, and therefore, it has been considered a more primitive, quasinatural psychological function, closer to nature and distant from culture—and “the mind” (see Plato, Freud).
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8.3 Emotions Versus Cognition The emergence of rationality in human phylogenesis, and the ontogenetic trajectory of individuals redirected the analysis of human conduct towards new avenues. According to Activity Theory (see Leontiev and Luria), cognition resulted from a long historical process. The transition to bipedal locomotion allowed the freedom of human hands to engage in new, creative activities, including the active transformation of reality through work and other kinds of activity. Along historical processes, such activities became progressively mediated by consciousness, which derived from gradual changes in brain structures. These changes encompassed a decrease in the occipital area linked to sensory functions, and an increase in the frontal lobe, usually associated with the development of higher mental processes (thought, language, perception, imagination, attention, etc.), which occurred together with novel forms of human interaction and social development. One important evidence of the correlation between the historical emergence of new brain structures and functions is the advent of rationality as a human-specific psychological function. It consists of a new ability to self-regulating actions and emotions, which allows humans to anticipate, plan, and control actions and emotional responses in advance, as well as skills to repress forms of emotional behavior due to the existence of moral or societal norms. We should be cautious, however, not to embrace a reductionist, polarized perspective by assuming simplistic explanations to what are, indeed, complex processes. The fact that at a certain point along the ontogenetic line human beings develop the ability to manage their emotions should not be confused with the subordination of emotions to cognition. It is noteworthy, therefore, that naturalistic/evolutionary and some sociocultural approaches (such as Activity Theory) consider rationality as the opposite pole to the affective dimension, so that cognitive development depends on the persons’ ability to regulate and control their emotions (see Henri Wallon). Despite varied views on the hierarchical position of affectivity dynamics regarding cognition, language, and other psychological functions, the “affectdriven” character of human social and cultural functioning (Sharma & Tygstrup, 2015) has been progressively recognized by different theoretical frameworks in contemporary psychology. To provide an initial picture of the broad scope of psychological phenomena related to affectivity, we checked a recent edition of the APA Dictionary of Psychology (VandenBos, 2015). There we found a dozen entries concerning different dimensions of the affective experience, such as its intensity, quality, expression, procedures, development, and neurological basis. To mention just two of them, the entry ‘affect’ is defined as Affect – any experience of feeling or emotion, ranging from suffering to elation, from the simplest to the most complex sensations of feeling, and from the most normal to the most pathological emotional reactions. Often described in terms of positive affect or negative affect, both mood and emotion are considered affective states. Along with cognition and conation, affect is one of the three traditionally identified components of the mind (VandenBos, 2015, p. 26–27).
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In turn, the entry ‘affectivity’ is described according to the following definition: Affectivity – the degree of a person’s response or susceptibility to pleasure, pain, and other emotional stimuli. Evaluation of affectivity is an important component of a psychological examination; the therapist or clinician may look for evidence of such reactions as blunted affect, inappropriate affect, loss of affect, ambivalence, depersonalization, elation, depression, or anxiety (VandenBos, 2015, p. 28).
Again, we have definitions characterized by a polarized understanding in which affects/affectivity are featured in terms of positive versus negative feelings. On the one hand, affection continues to be considered in the realm of general psychology as biologically determined, associated with more basic aspects of human experience at the sensitive, biological level. On the other, affectivity refers to cultural emotional expressions and behavior, and deviations necessarily imply pathologizing emotional responses as indicative of mental health problems; namely, their role in mental pathologies is taken more seriously than in people’s daily interpersonal experiences. In short, the way APA dictionary defines affect-related constructs is reductionist and does not present them as part of an active dimension of subjectivation, meaning-construction processes, imagination, or agency. Thus, alternative theoretical positions in contemporary psychology represent an effort to overcome dichotomies, such as affect/cognition, organism/psyche, and subject/culture. These innovative approaches propose a more integrative framework that avoids any suggestions concerning relations of superiority or subordination between the diverse dimensions of human development. Worldwide well-known examples of perspectives following this direction are the theories of Affective Intelligence (Goleman, 1995), and Positive Psychology (Seligman, 2004). Nevertheless, besides the quest for an integrative approach to affections found in both perspectives, neither one provides a genuine productive approach to affectivity, for their main focus is upon individuals alone, and not on their relations with each other. From their perspectives, affects (as well as intelligence and happiness) exist inside our bodies, before or independent of any actual human relationship or interaction; they are treated as objective, discrete, and measurable phenomena, to be assessed by adequate psychological inventories. Therefore, addressing the issue of affectivity through more productive theoretical lenses demands a more sophisticated perspective than those offered by Goleman and Seligman’s frameworks. This dimension of human development is certainly complex, systemic, and dialogical.
8.4 The Phenomenology of Emotions and Affectivity In this section, we refer to Husserl and Levinas’ philosophical ideas as a more encompassing and complex perspective on the issue of affectivity, which expands on the concept and provides material for insightful thoughts about the semiotic cultural approach presented next in the chapter.
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We find philosophical approaches—especially within the branches of phenomenology related to the work of Edmund Husserl and Emmanuel Levinas— the basic structure for an alternative interpretation of emotions and affectivity’s functions in human life and social transactions. Husserl was one of Levinas’ professors. They extracted affectivity from inside the body (the brain, the mind, and the organism) to relocate it in the symbolic space between self, other, and reality (Lotz, 2007). From a phenomenological vantage point, the perceived world is not limited to physical features; the experiential space in which we are embedded in the process of experiencing reality is impregnated with deep affective qualities, which have the power to attract or repel us (Fuchs, 2013). Both attraction and rejection are part of affective experiences in a broader sense. Affectivity is a core topic in Husserlian phenomenology, even though it is more usually approached in reference to Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty’s point of view. Along with his elaborations on the topics of intentionality, intersubjectivity, and other-awareness, Husserl (Lotz, 2007) emphasizes the non-objective, fuzzy, ambiguous character of affectivity, features which make it too complex to conceptualize and hard to define. The construct refers to the possibility of both ‘affecting oneself’ and ‘affecting the other’. Self-oriented and alterity-oriented affects are part of any human experience; thus, Husserl divides the affective experience into three dimensions or contexts related to the body, the mind, and the social world. At first, the affective qualities of the experience resonate in our bodies, provoking an unconscious and unintentional observable response: the body may tremble, shake, tighten up, stop moving, and so forth. These behaviors become the external signs of the internal emotional experience. Almost simultaneously, affects mobilize our minds bringing a certain awareness of what is happening, an initial effort to organize the experience in terms of bad or good, positive or negative. This process is followed by a cognitive effort to name the feelings at stake, to situate them in the broader framework of our own lived experience and according to the social order. Thus, the emotional experience will be categorized and judged taking into consideration of moral and ethical standards. The third dimension consists of sociality, indicating that the affects spread over our interactions and relationships. At this level, affectivity intermingles with language, the most important resource in the mediation of social transactions, intersubjective negotiations, and interpersonal arrangements. Following a phenomenological epistemology, affects are primarily a tool for intersubjectivity, their main function is to keep and improve self-other relationships. No affect pertains to a single person in isolation, quite the contrary, affectivity works to guarantee the minimal conditions for human socialization (Lotz, 2007). Besides the three dimensions, phenomenology proposes a taxonomy of affective layers, which provides the organization and interrelatedness of a broad scope of terms such as mood, feelings, sensations, emotions, vitality, atmosphere, and so on. Feelings are then involved in distinct qualities of the affective experience. Husserl (Lotz, 2007) recognizes that affectivity usually refers to the inner/outer quality of different types of experiences—from the mere attunement between bodies in a
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casual sexual relation to the complex task of constructing a long-term mutual engagement into a joint family project after the wedding; from the fleeting contact between skins that bump into each other in a train car to situations of interpersonal conflict, fights, and attacks that threaten the physical integrity of people. From minimal interpersonal connections, like people sharing the same queue, to maximum cohesion while facing a common enemy to be eliminated. The first layer of affective experiences corresponds to the mere ‘sense of being alive, the primary manifestation of the embodiment of the subjectivity, expressed by the sense of ease or unease, relaxation, or anxiety. Neuroscientists refer to it as the ‘core sense of self’ (Damasio, 1995 in Fuchs, 2013). The second layer refers to ‘existential feelings’ (Fuchs, 2013, p. 4), and it includes the tacit recognition of the presence of one’s body as part of the experiential field. Existential feelings precede any form of consciousness. They do not involve or are directed to specific objects or situations. They refer to the tacit sense of relatedness between the self and the world, of being comfortable in one’s own body. The next layer, ‘atmosphere’, refers to the “holistic affective qualities of the experienced spatial and interpersonal situations” (Fuchs, 2013, p. 4), resulting in a dynamic Gestalt. Atmosphere is experienced as an enveloping aura emanating from the natural or architectonic environment, the first layer where the interactive feature of affects emerges. The fourth layer, ‘mood and attunement’, sets body, self, and environment as part of the same chord, as mood permeates all lived experience by providing it with a certain coloring nuance (pleasant/unpleasant; good/bad). Some features of mood are duration, intensity, pervasiveness, lack of intentionality, and dispositional character. According to Husserl’s phenomenological perspective (Fuchs, 2013), the fifth and last layer of affective experience corresponds to ‘emotions’, considered the most complex expression of affectivity. Emotions have a dual characteristic: (a) the physical component, or bodily changes perceived as embedded in emotional states, leading to movements towards the other and the reality, provoked by specific emotional experience; and (b) the cognitive component, for emotions consist of an “act of evaluation or appraisal of the affordance of a given situation” (Fuchs, 2013, p. 6). Neither the body component nor the movement towards the other suffices to explain the complex and holistic character of emotions in our daily life. The two dimensions are thus united and expressed in four features of the emotional experience: (1) affective intentionality, (2) bodily resonance, (3) action tendency, and (4) function and significance. Emmanuel Levinas (according to Loidolt, 2020) shared with Husserl a common perspective on the intertwining between body and mind, sensuality, and transcendence within the affective experience. One important contribution of Levinas’ elaborations when considering the cultural psychological approach to be presented next stands out. For Levinas, it is inadequate to conceive affectivity in terms of layers or hierarchies because different dimensions of emotionality participate in all forms of emotional experience. Hence, Levinas goes further than Husserl in the argument about the centrality of affectivity in human experience. He conceives subjectivity in affective terms, meaning that subjectivity does not exist without the other, and is
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essentially oriented “for the other” (Loidolt, 2020, p. 2). In short, for Levinas, subjectivity is imperatively addressed to and affectively obsessed with the other.
8.5 The Wholeness Nature of Affectivity The purpose of the previous sections was to clarify a myriad of different theoretical approaches to affectivity and argue that most traditional approaches tend to analyze the issue through different reductionist lenses. Mainstream perspectives in psychology, for instance, conceptualize the various dimensions of human development, affectivity included, in its separateness and distinctiveness, ignoring the holistic character and interrelatedness of all human phenomena. Other problems in investigating affectivity are the difficulties in measuring, observing, and grasping complex phenomena such as affections, emotions, and feelings, which lead most psychologists to disregard affective experiences as a topic to be submitted to scientific research. Consequently, many efforts to include affectivity as part of psychological theoretical models result in the oversight of reducing it to neurophysiological events within the brain. As a result of the compartmentalization of psychological processes sustained by traditional approaches, misconceptions were generated and innovative insights concerning human experience as a whole were almost totally excluded from the realms of psychology. This reductionist approach to affectivity can be summarized in six topics, represented in Fig. 8.1. Despite acknowledging the relevance of affectivity in human relationships and activities, different philosophical and psychological theories tended to focus on one or more of the dichotomies represented in Fig. 8.1, incurring in a reductionist, limited perspective, except for the Husserlian phenomenology. This perspective is different from the others due to the fact that affectivity is explained as part of the unity constituted by self-other-reality. Nonetheless, the notion of culture is not included in what phenomenology conceives as reality, and, therefore, semiotic, historical, political, and axiological aspects of affectivity are excluded as well. To overcome this limitation, in the next section, we will explore an alternative theoretical perspective to affectivity. Semiotic Cultural Psychology is a contemporary theoretical model dedicated to explaining affectivity according to an integrative model considering the very important function it displays in relation to culture and subjectivity, learning, and developmental processes.
8.6 Affectivity from a Semiotic Cultural Psychology Perspective This section’s goal is to provide some basic contributions of the Semiotic Cultural Psychology perspective to approach the issue of affectivity. Our major objective is to elaborate, analyze, and discuss the concept of affective semiosis, a core idea
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Fig. 8.1 From dichotomic theoretical models to an integrated, systemic theory. Elaborated by the authors
when we search for a fruitful theoretical framework to make sense of affectivity, and its role in human learning and development within educational contexts. Semiotic Cultural Psychology attributes a special position to affectivity in human developmental dynamics within specific cultural settings. Affectivity is absolutely central to meaning making, as far as it is not an intrapsychic function but is co- constructed in the context of affective bonds, playing a significant role in processes of intersubjectivity, self-formation/development, and sociocultural development. Hence, this theoretical viewpoint provides a deeper understanding of the self-other- reality connections, highlighting the embodied character of affectivity, and recognizing its core role in human development. The theory conceives of psychological development as a systemic process, whose nature consists in the dialogical dynamics of (trans) formations of the psychological functions along the life course. In the next and following sections, we present, explore, and discuss the potential contributions of Semiotic Cultural Psychology to a radically novel perspective on affectivity and its function in human psychological development.
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8.6.1 Cultural Semiotic Dynamics of Affectivity Feelings emerge and vanish. They were everywhere—and nowhere in particular—in our subjective inner feelings. Yet even with such momentary transitoriness, their role in the psyche is important. (Valsiner, 2017, p. 32)
Feelings are part of the group of phenomena in which every human being is an expert. In fact, all of us have a lot of affective experiences in different dimensions of personal and social life; however, the expertise acquired along a life-long emotional process of experimentation rarely protects us from emotional vulnerability, biases, and misunderstandings within concrete social transactions (De Jaegher, 2021). One possible explanation for human inability to deal with and construct knowledge on emotional issues is that human knowing—the typical ways human beings use to construct knowledge and understand other human beings and reality—do not always correspond to something we are capable to consciously understand (De Jaegher, 2021), or describe/explain in verbal language. Because of the fuzziness circumventing the topic, scientific investigation tends to avoid a deeper look into matters of affectivity, reducing its importance and role within the psyche, leaving it to become an object of philosophical inquiry (Esperidião-Antônio et al., 2008). In this section, our aim is to overcome reductionisms, offering a creative and insightful model to feed our theoretical reflections about affectivity in educational settings, and in-between educational actors. Following the argument that psychology needs to confer a core importance to the topic, as an integrative function of personal experience, meaning-making, and relational life, we focus on Semiotic Cultural Psychology’s theoretical and empirical framework to include the operation of affective processes in the realm of psychological explanation. Bringing affectivity to the front arena of psychological scientific investigation means to adopt critical and innovative venues to the context of general psychology. Semiotic Cultural Psychology (SCP) theoretical project is grounded in developmental psychology and critical social psychological approaches aiming at shedding a new light on issues that have been totally ignored by Psychology, in its effort to become a natural science. SCP assumes a critical perspective that changes psychological individualistic, rational, self-contained, and abstract approach to the study of a generic human being towards the investigation of real, concrete people, inserted in their sociocultural environment and engaged with other human beings. On the one hand, SCP argues that humans’ mental life is ingrained in the historical, cultural, and material structures of society. On the other hand, it recognizes the impact of cultural-specific systems of power, their norms and values concerning the existence of developmental tracks to be followed by individuals. Therefore, the dialogical unity of subject-and-culture is the main object of interest and analysis of the SCP approach (Lopes de Oliveira, 2021; Tateo et al., 2022; Valsiner, 2017). Affectivity is not considered an autonomous process but consists of a qualitative nature that infuses human experiences with particular colors. Another key feature of cultural psychological approaches is the recognition of the qualitative, systemic nature of human beings’ functioning and development, which is totally intertwined
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with semiotic processes. Thus, affectivity plays a central part in most psychological processes within the self-system, and exerts a highly complex, potent function in intersubjective dynamics. Affectivity is related to motivation, emotions, sensation/ perception, feelings, and values. Because of its systemic, field-like feature, affectivity is not self-evident, and demands intensive investigation to be adequately interpreted and understood. Its presence is indispensable in meaning-making processes, as explained next.
8.6.2 Meaning-Making Processes From the SCP theoretical perspective, meaning-making is a core characteristic of human psychological and social functioning. As cultural animals, no human experience is a direct experience, it is always mediated by the culture and signs that convey cultural meanings. Meanings are constructed as part of a vivid dynamic of culturally mediated interpretations of reality and resistance to these interpretations, which engage human beings in interaction and permanent negotiation with each other and the world. Abreu et al. (2021) provide a fruitful example of the sociocultural character of meanings: in Brazilian Portuguese (and other languages in urbanized contexts) jaguars are categorized as a “wild animal”. This category is the product of a social historic and semiotic fabrication in which these animals are placed in dialogical opposition with domestic animals, such as cats, dogs, and bunnies. Consequently, seeing a jaguar evokes affective-mediated meanings leading us to perceive, feel, and act in precise ways: with fear, avoidance, and disturbance. Differently, for Yanomami people, who believe jaguars are an avatar of their mythical ancestors, the sacred meaning of the creature may probably overcome the potential danger that the jaguar represents for people who live in these urbanized contexts, guiding differently their conduct in face of the animal. One aspect to be highlighted concerning meaning-making processes is the fact that meanings can be double-bind social and personal phenomena: their co- construction is contextual historical and cultural, as emphasized in the previous paragraph; and, the subjects always add their own nuance and novelty to meanings negotiated in communication, in the continuous dynamics of internalization/externalization processes (see the next section in this chapter). Moreover, sometimes people’s messages become very confusing to be interpreted due to the complexities of signs involved in the process. For example, a teacher may say “Please, ask your question now, Peter!” but her facial expression and tone of voice express how deeply irritated she is with Peter’s attempt to participate when she is running out of time to finish the lesson. In such a situation, what is her message to him? What should he do? Meanings, therefore, are part of a continuous stream of co-creation that engages culture and individuals, they are neither a property of one person nor of the other but the product of negotiations between both parts, be them collaborative or marked by conflicts and opposition (Valsiner, 2012, 2014).
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In sum, signs are the means that turn possible transactions between subjects and culture, giving rise to symbolic systems produced by a given culture throughout its history. Through relationships and interactions within varied communication practices and rituals, in communities to which we belong, with values we share or not, we actively understand, appropriate, and transform cultures’ symbolic systems. Meaning-making, hence, includes both understanding our cultural environment and ourselves, as a constituent part of culture (Bruner, 1997; Valsiner, 2012, 2021). The process through which meanings are co-constructed is named semiosis.
8.7 Affective Semiosis Semiosis is central to all dimensions of human life—including educational processes and the higher psychological dynamics associated with them—, and affectivity is central to semiosis. Meaning-making processes are, in themselves, deeply affective, and we will explain below. According to Le Breton (2009, p. 118), “Affectivity is mixed with significant events of collective and personal life, implying a system of values translated into practice by the individual, and an interpretation of the facts according to a moral reference” (p. 118). Thus, personal interpretation takes place through the development of unique lenses, which are related but also differentiated from the lenses historically imposed upon the individual by culture and society. Such interpretations (meaning-making processes) are, by nature, affective. Following a similar line, Branco et al. (2020) argue that our deepest beliefs and values, internalized throughout our lives, emerge, and get empowered because there are significant social others with whom we relate, and who affectively touch us differently from others. Human beings do not respond to mechanical, neutral stimuli. The human mind is not a mere processing machine that receives inputs and pays attention to all people, media, or information in similar, neutral ways. Social stimuli and environmental influences are filtered by cultural as well as affective lenses. In other words, most of our pretended natural ‘reactions’ are motivated by affect-laden meanings. It is worthy to highlight that most semiotic theories involve an interest in language and linguistic operations that participate in meaning production but frequently disregard the role of individuals as an essential component of the semiotic (meaningmaking) process. The triadic semiotic perspective that stems from the work of Charles Sanders Peirce is particularly important to Semiotic Cultural Psychology, concerning how the perspective understands the connection between meaningmaking processes, subjectivity, and affectivity. Briefly speaking, Peircean proposal to semiotics is based on a triadic model of the sign action in which the activity of the sign (semiosis) does not represent the mere repetition of a conventional relation between a signifier and meaning, as in structuralist semiotics. On the contrary, meaning generation invariably introduces into the present situation something new, the interpretant, which leads to the transformation of the original meaning. This new
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element, which affects the signifying/signifier unity changing it, is also responsible for the uninterrupted development of semiotic systems as a whole. Peirce was not a psychologist but a philosopher. For this reason, he was purely concerned with signs and their effects in terms of the semiotic logic, disregarding the role played by specific features of the human mind in the fabrication of signs, and the function of sign mediation to the development of the psyche. In other words, along with Peirce’s perspective algorithms, robots and human minds function alike in terms of how they proceed in meaning generation (Lopes de Oliveira, 2018). Based on the extensive work of Jaan Valsiner (2014, 2021) and collaborators, a more adequate approach to semiosis should include the subject that interprets the object, as well as other subjects and realities, which happens through the use of signs in a flow of continuous semiotic fabrication. Culturally fabricated semiotic systems play a core part in the development of the human mind, and this understanding is one of the most innovative contributions by Lev Vygotsky. The Russian thinker formulated the idea, later nominated as the “double formation law”, which states that every psychological function emerges twice in human development, first as part of the external world (society and social interactions), and then in the internal world (psyche). Signs turn possible that social contents re-emerge within human minds. In other words, signs that originally regulated human conduct from the outside (hetero-regulation) are progressively internalized, appropriated by the subject as part of his own semiotic system, by processes of self-regulation. Following the present perspective, affectivity operates a core function in the creative process of semiotic reconstruction of self-regulation out of hetero-regulation. In short, affectivity is intrinsic to all human processes and experiences, such as motivation, emotions, feelings, and values, being crucial to understanding, explaining, and intervening upon such processes. Therefore, meanings co-constructions result from affective semiotic processes. To better understand how affectivity and learning are systemically interconnected in human development, we analyze affectivity operations from the perspective of Semiotic Cultural Psychology. Next, we explain why issues related to human motivation are central to the perspective, and how theoretical concepts and ideas found in Valsiner’s model for the Affective- Semiotic Regulation of the psyche (Valsiner, 2014, 2021) are relevant to make sense of generalization processes occurring in signs’ operations. The concept of affective- semiotic fields together with the notion of metacommunicative frames can be particularly meaningful and productive to explain how the dimension of affectivity plays a formidable role within educational contexts.
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8.8 Affective-Semiotic Regulation, Co-Construction of Trust Relations, and Students’ Motivation in the Classroom Valsiner (2012, 2014) proposed a model for the Affective-Semiotic Regulation (ASR) of the psyche. According to this model, human affective-semiotic experiences give rise to four hierarchical psychic levels that are highly interconnected to each other and are constructed by an individual’s interactions with social others and world’s events along the path to ontogenesis. As previously argued, individuals and their specific historical-cultural contexts constitute each other, based on relevant affective-semiotic meanings that permeate practices and values impregnating their interactions. From birth onwards, individuals actively participate in communicative exchanges with others, their first experiences taking place at Level 1 of the ASR model proposed by Valsiner, and gradually—along ontogeny—giving rise to affective-semiotic fields with increasing power to guide their psyche, namely, to guide their perceptions, feelings, thoughts, and actions. Figure 8.2 explains the major characteristics of each of the four proposed levels. As depicted in Fig. 8.2, affective-semiotic processes start from Level 1 upwards; then, with the emergence of verbal references, they configure specific emotions— like joy, sadness, anger, etc.—at Level 2 (here people give a name to describe what is happening to them). At Level 3, people may talk about their feelings but cannot describe them well. Then, at Level 4, affective-semiotic fields become hyper- generalized, ultimately having the power to guide the self as a whole, namely, one’s perceptions, thoughts, feelings, and actions, which happens with or without the person’s awareness concerning the operation of the hyper-generalized affective- semiotic field. Such hyper-generalized fields are what we regard as values and prejudices. For instance, some parents may think they are instilling in their son’s values of honesty and respect toward others by taking him to church and telling them what is right or wrong. However, their usual interactive practices and verbalizations in daily situations demonstrate they (parents) both are, actually, motivated to be rich and achieve a higher social status no matter what. The parents very likely are not aware that they are, in fact, cultivating in their son a totally different set of values. Their unintended messages concerning the value of money dominate over their talks about being nice to people. Similar situations can be found when a teacher tells her students that they should cooperate, be solidary, and listen to their peers. But she, herself, consistently does not listen to anyone, she compares students’ performances, and promotes fierce competition within the classroom. The model above, by explaining the power of one’s true beliefs (located at Level 4 of the hierarchy), helps to explain why very well-intentioned teachers frequently fail to create the kind of collaborative and affective framework that they so much desire among their students and in their classrooms. Individualism and competition are so ingrained in our collective culture that people internalize these values even without notice. In other words, awareness concerning what teachers’ actual beliefs and values are becomes absolutely crucial to understand what is happening in their classrooms. Such awareness, then, may
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(I feel something strong about it… but cannot describe it well...)
Growing difficulty to verbalize one’s feelings
Level 3 GENERALIZED EMOTIONS
Description of complex feeling experiences
Level 2 SPECIFIC EMOTION CATEGORIES
Anger Joy Disgust
Gradual problems to verbalize affects
Level 1 IMMEDIATE AFECTIVE TONUS
Well-being Discomfort
Level 4 HYPERGENERALIZED AFFECTVE-SEMIOTIC FIELDS
Level 0 PHYSIOLOGICAL PROCESSES
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Emergence of verbal references General physiological reaction Diferentiation of body’s sensations (Values) (Prejudices)
Fig. 8.2 Levels of affective-semiotic regulation of Psyche. (Source: Valsiner, 2014)
help teachers to introduce changes in the way they interact with students, encouraging dialogical practices and respectful communication which entail good quality relations in class, fostering students’ motivation to study and engage with schoolwork. To observe and monitor one’s own actions and interactions, therefore, consist of the best venue to analyze one’s own values and beliefs and how they are affecting the nature of communication and metacommunication processes in teachers’ ways to deal and interact with students.
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8.9 Communication and Metacommunication The Semiotic Cultural Psychology approach relies on the permanent processes of emergence and transformation of meanings taking place during communication among people. Communication flows by several channels and assumes diverse formats, from face-to-face to written materials to all sorts of innovative media. The investigation of communicative processes, thus, consists of researchers’ major effort to make sense of how cultural mediation operates to generate meaningful experiences that contribute to the development of human tendencies and characteristics. The centrality of communication has been highlighted by psychologists and theorists across all human/social sciences (Branco & Valsiner, 2004; Fogel, 1993; Leeds-Hurwitz, 1993; Marchand, 2005). For our present purpose, though, we want to stress the role played by what has been conventionally denominated as metacommunication. The reason why metacommunication is so important in relation to the topic of affectivity derives from the fact that, while communication refers to any exchange of feelings and ideas, being easier to register and analyze, most metacommunication between people is not easy to identify and to interpret. But what is the difference between the two concepts? Figure 8.3 below depicts the intermingled yet differentiated levels of human communication. As shown in the figure, communication flows at the verbal level throughout utterances about any topic (UUU) along the irreversible time. Eventually, verbal utterances may refer to such quality, what is then categorized as verbal metacommunication (MCMCMC). Simultaneously, at the non-verbal level, it flows uninterruptedly as metacommunication, indicating to communication partners the quality of their relation/interaction (the spiral sign). The spiral also involves the verbal level because the specific words employed may, as well, contribute to the quality of
Fig. 8.3 Levels of communication: non-verbal, paralinguistic, and verbal metacommunitation. (Source: Elaborated by authors)
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partners’ interaction/relation. Therefore, as mentioned above, verbal, non-verbal, and paralinguistic levels can be differentiated but are deeply intertwined with each other. Communication is a general category referring to the constant meaning-exchange and meaning-creation processes among people. Metacommunication, though, denotes those communicative processes about the very process of communication that is taking place between specific individuals engaged in the process (Fatigante et al., 2004). It occurs, for example, when one of the interlocutors exhibits an annoyed facial expression while the other speaks to him. Even without saying a word, she conveys to her partner that she is not happy with his ideas. In some circumstances, metacommunication can eventually assume a verbal format—when people verbalize their judgments and evaluations of each other, their interactions or relationship. However, non-verbal communication is constantly happening through non-verbal channels whenever people communicate with each other (Branco et al., 2004; Kelman & Branco, 2014). Metacommunication, therefore, has a huge, substantive power in canalizing individuals’ interpretations of the matters being discussed or said to one another. As it is well-known, non-verbal communication is directly related to emotions, feelings, and affectivity, so it deserves special consideration when our intent is to analyze and understand how affectivity operates upon human learning and development. Moreover, the great difficulties in objectively registering what non-verbal cues mean—such as looks, facial expressions, voice nuances, gestures, etc.— require a great deal of extra effort to properly analyze the phenomenon. Examples drawn from educational contexts may clarify this point. Carla is a fourth-grade teacher at an elementary school. Max, one of her students, usually does not quite understand her instructions, and takes longer to do the exercises correctly. Even though she sincerely believes she treats all students equally, Carla’s voice tone becomes irritated and impatient whenever she addresses Max, which contributes to Max’s growing stress and difficulties. There is also the case when the teacher verbally praises a student but all her non-verbal signals point to the opposite direction, with a dose of irony. Many other examples can illustrate the power of metacommunication within the classroom. Figure 8.3 provides the reader with a depiction of how communication and metacommunication processes intertwine along human interactions. Another example can illustrate how metacommunication and adults’ expectations translated in metacommunications can produce undesirable outcomes. Matthew, a high school teacher, frequently addresses his preferred students with a soft and affective voice tone, accompanied with pleased facial expressions. His non-verbal expressions are different when he talks to other students. Differences perceived in his subtly displayed metacommunicative expressions, then, leads students to compete with each other for his attention, and provokes bullying and conflicts among students in the classroom. The subtle nuances of his behaviors may also end up encouraging better performances by those belonging to his selected group. This last example reveals the operation of what Rosenthal and Jacobson (1968) experimentally demonstrated long ago, a phenomenon they designated as self-fulling
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prophecy. According to this well-known and investigated prophecy, when teachers are led to believe some students do better than others—even though they do not— these students expected to perform better tend to do better in their discipline. Acknowledging the power of metacommunication is important, however, it is not enough. The next question, then, is: How can teachers co-construct trust relations with their students, and why does it matter to the issue of development, learning and motivation?
8.10 Trust Relations and Students’ Development, Learning, and Motivation In an inspiring paper, McDermott (1977) nicely elaborated on “trusting relations”, as he called it, among teachers and students, stating that trust consists of the basis of a successful education. He argues that when trusting relations are not enhanced among teachers and students, the classroom relational environment is negatively affected, while a precious and substantive time is spent in the classroom with subtle battles regarding issues of mutual control. When a teacher’s authority is constantly defied by students not only does the class has less time to dedicate to actual teaching- learning processes but students become less involved—or motivated—to participate in knowledge construction and to engage actively in learning and proximal developmental processes. The obvious result is poor quality educational experiences. The author provides several examples to make his point and criticizes both authoritarian and laissez-faire teachers who do not cultivate an authority status through sensitive dialogical practices and genuine attention to what students say. The central point here is, by co-constructing trusting relations, teachers’ arguments and instructions can become meaningful for students, who may better understand why certain subjects need to be studied, and why teachers’ specific methodologies are applied to their own interests. By creating this favorable affective framework, meaning, a positive metacommunicative frame (Branco, 2018; Fogel, 1993), students’ attention, motivation, and engagement with teaching-learning activities significantly increase, fostering learning, and development. Conflicts, relationship battles, indiscipline, and lack of interest are, hence, substituted by attention, respect, and genuine desire to participate in classroom tasks, as well as by intrinsic motivation, curiosity to research studied subjects, and initiatives to be creative.
8.11 Learning and Affectivity in School Settings: An Empirical Example In keeping with our goal to further advance the conceptualization of affectivity and analyze its functioning from the Semiotic Cultural Psychology perspective, in this section, we illustrate some of the points we have discussed so far with an example
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drawn from the ongoing doctoral research project of the first author of this work. It addresses the relations between affectivity and the promotion of dialogical practices in the classroom, and is based on a teacher’s narrative about the way she dealt with a conflict situation in which she found successful affective ways to deescalate conflicts and create a welcoming environment in her classroom where trusting relations could flourish. This example illustrates how affective-semiotic hetero-regulation can become self-regulation (Valsiner, 2014, 2021) in the context of teacher-students’ interactions characterized by the co-construction of trusting relations (McDermott, 1977). Paula’s research included eight workshops with teachers to analyze possible processes of adult development by discussing topics such as conflict resolution and prejudice deconstruction. Participants were educators annoyed by complex and difficult situations that they faced as professionals, who did not feel confident to properly deal with such situations. According to them, they lacked specific training to intervene upon the problems, and this contributed to their escalation. Therefore, the study aimed at empowering teachers by promoting a dialogical context to identify, reflect upon, discuss, and learn new ways to approach such issues. The eight-week online course engaged 14 teachers from Middle and High Schools in different states of Brazil, each one dealing with their own set of challenges and difficulties. Most participants had one same concern: how to constructively address conflicts, especially those deriving from stereotypes and prejudices? Some of the topics discussed were dialogical practices in the classroom, signs of openness or closeness to dialogue; affectivity and trust relations; authority vs. authoritarianism; challenges, uncertainties, and possibilities; resistance from students, etc. The main idea was to co-construct with participants bridges between theory and practice, that is, to discuss with them how human development psychological theories could contribute to their day-to-day experiences in the classroom. Three months after the course, four teachers were invited for an in-depth individual’s interview. One of the teachers, Stacy (pseudonym), then provided a very interesting account. She said that, right after the course, she faced a big trouble involving students in a high school where she taught. Many teachers had complained about a specific class that was constantly unruly and creating problems. Before resorting to more severe measures of punishment, Stacy proposed to her colleagues to give her the chance of working with those students to implement a dialogical approach in their class, inspired by the eight-week course in which she participated. She began by setting up an open and positively affective classroom environment, by bringing warm tea and coffee to class, as she told them about her intention to “create a different environment for this moment, (…) [to have] a slightly more pleasant conversation. The nights were very cold there at that time, it was winter, so they arrived (...) and there was warm coffee and tea to drink.” She invited students to sit in a circle, initiating a conversation on topics concerning language and philosophy, subjects they were studying in class. This gave the teacher an opportunity to discuss/reflect with them on the issue of students’ behaviors in the classroom. During the interview, she said that:
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(…) other teachers said they felt very provoked by this class, very disrespected, so I brought this problem to the dialogue, and we managed to advance a lot from it, you know, with the students, in the sense that one day they came and said that they knew they really crossed a line. So, they acknowledged it, their behavior, it was interesting, you know (...) it was the effect of the effort made to dialogue [the creation of a welcoming and safe environment], because in some classes I stopped just to do that, drink tea, sit down, listen to them, you know, because they had to participate, they had to feel welcomed by us to engage in that kind of dialogue.
Stacy’s effort to create this welcoming environment for students is, hence, an excellent example of time and energy invested in co-constructing trust relations between students and teachers. She also reported that most conflicts among her students were not related to misbehavior or disrespect but “conflicts [emerging] from the difficulty they have in accepting different ideas from those they are familiar with.” As elaborated by Valsiner (2014, 2021), whenever our deepest values and beliefs are questioned or problematized, we tend to strongly react—sometimes even by violent, emotional ways. It is very difficult to engage in dialogue and maintain an open conversation, for example, when our deepest, rooted beliefs are under attack. When this happens, emotions tend to burst out turning dialogues almost impossible (Matusov, 2009), and people act as though the other(s) were their fierce enemies. Therefore, it requires teachers to have a lot of training, experience, and a steady belief that they would be able to deal with such situations in order to encourage a dialogue instead of simply adopting authoritarian actions to control their students. To face and to help solving conflicts of any kind, teachers must first deal with their own affections, values, and feelings to de-escalate excessive emotional struggles among participants of a conflict. This is exactly why trust relations are so important. In short, they can function as an affective, stable resource or foundation to withstand this kind of challenge. At the face value, what Stacy did with her students (bringing tea and coffee to class) can seem too simple, barely relevant. However, looking through the lens of what was discussed in this chapter, Stacy managed to incorporate in her subtle gestures and affective disposition a myriad of actions that metacommunicated to students her positive intentions and motivations, contributing to significant changes in students’ relational patterns with one another and with teachers. In her account, this simple initiative helped her to make some progress with the students, seeing them much more engaged in teaching-learning activities than before. Back to the model of Affective-Semiotic Regulation (ASR) proposed by Valsiner (2014, 2021), we understand why it is so hard to sustain dialogical practices in school interventions. The point is, since our deepest values are not usually at surface, easily recognized, they may lead us to contradictory actions at times. As an example, we found in another research (Paula & Branco, 2022) that one teacher, who actively struggled to deconstruct prejudices with his students, reacted with negative affect (annoyance) to a student who said he felt uncomfortable with gay kisses, when he should have invited the student to dialogue with him. The problem is that conflict/prejudice issues are permeated by powerful affective qualities, they mobilize our beliefs and values system, and mess with our emotions as we relate
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with others (Branco, 2018). Stacy could have said a million times to her students that she cared about them and wanted to know how they felt, but if, after that, she did not listen to what students had to say, she would communicate something very different. So, instead of just talking, she created an open and informal setting to foster dialogical relationships in the classroom, breaking with hierarchical notions of how students and teachers should behave. She sat together with her students in a circle, listened to them, calmly expressed her own perspectives, showing affection and reciprocity while negotiating with them. In sum, without imposing resources and mechanisms of hetero-regulation upon students (by rules and norms from others), she prompted the development of self- regulation by students, who were then able to recognize their previous behavior as not appropriate (“crossed the line”). This certainly may foster an autonomous sense of self, responsibility, and critical thinking in students.
8.12 Conclusion As stated before, affectivity is systemic, dynamic, fuzzy, and a generalized dimension; it emerges from complex processes that interconnect feelings, emotions, motivations, and values with thoughts, cognitions, and body. The affective dimension is central to meaning-making processes, that is, to the continuous stream of co- construction between self, others, and artifacts, involving both individuals’ and cultural meanings (Tateo et al., 2022; Valsiner, 2014, 2017). It is fruitful to bear these processes in mind when we think about learning environments because they can help us to create innovative intervention strategies that may have a greater chance of success, since they take all this complexity into account. Wherever we look around us, we notice the prevalence of affectivity and its importance to social life. The major personal, institutional, societal, and worldwide problems that disturb individuals and groups relations nowadays are somehow associated with issues of affinity and affectivity: violence, stress, conflicts, lack of empathy, prejudice, indifference, trauma, exclusion, etc. Thus, it is beyond time we overcome simplistic, reductionist, and individualistic views over affectivity, disseminated by the mainstream scientific discourse, by elaborating alternative perspectives that help us to understand the systemic nature of these intricate phenomena. We recognize in new theoretical avenues an essential step to improving institutional alternatives to prevent the negative effects of relational conflicts, and constructing social policies that enhance social equity, inclusion, and justice. In this chapter, we aimed at providing a fruitful contribution to the conceptualization of affectivity, one that may help enhancing learning and developmental conditions within schools. Our starting point was acknowledging that the deep controversies found Western liberal societies led schools (from early education to university) to set up contradictory developmental contexts for their students. Protective dynamics versus interpersonal conflicts, prevention versus creation of personal and social vulnerabilities, goal to promote collaboration versus
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incentives to competition and individualism, for example, are easily observed within schools. Thus, relational problems arise and interfere with students’ learning and development. Interpersonal conflicts and violence end up negatively affecting the relational environment of most schools, with deep implications to the success of teaching-learning processes. Some questions may help us to figure out some possible paths to improve the above-mentioned problems. What are the potential limitations and inadequacies of traditional perspectives on affectivity in the task to promote a better relational environment in schools’ communities? How can alternative approaches to affectivity contribute to schools’ work? Aiming at answering the first question, we provided a historical perspective on the most meaningful philosophical and scientific accounts of affectivity, analyzing their influences over psychology and other social sciences. Our initial goal was to evidence the predominance of dichotomy and reductionism in the traditional approaches to the issue, which posed affectivity within the individual body or mind. Concerning the second question, we argued for the necessity of an integrative theoretical model in which affectivity should be considered in its complex, dynamic, and relational feature. Affectivity is a powerful mobilizing dimension that integrates and provides specific semiotic qualities to all psychological functions of the subject, as well as to self-other and self-culture transactions. In few words, we can assert that transactions sustained by positive, prosocial values and affects contribute to empathic, supportive, and ethic relations, while interactions guided by affects impregnated by competition struggle to power domination, and other antisocial dispositions tend to promote negative conflicts and violence. The integrative model we propose is constructed upon the theoretical groundwork of Semiotic Cultural Psychology. As a dialogical, critical perspective, this current seeks to examine how individuals develop in the framework of social and cultural environments, and how they actively participate in their various social circumstances. Following this perspective, human mental life is deeply embedded in historical, cultural, and material structures of society. Under the influence of culturally specific power structures and relations, their norms and values, each individual developmental trajectory is transformed by the subject’s intentionality, agency, and resistance (Lopes de Oliveira, 2021; Tateo et al., 2022; Valsiner, 2021). Affectivity is, then, a central topic within SCP’s conceptual and theoretical structure. It is conceived as a qualitative phenomenon that provides human experiences with a unique powerful coloring, operating on the boundary of the subject-culture unity, namely, in the context of the self-other intersubjective dynamics. Therefore, investigating this topic is essential to understand how psychological meaning-making processes occur. To conclude, we argue that the most innovative contribution given by the present approach can be summarized by the following idea: affectivity plays a fundamental role on the quality of human interactions and relations, and the promotion of such quality is the ground upon which any educator can contribute to the achievement of satisfactory processes and results concerning both human development and effective teaching-learning experiences. In short, this new perspective may prove to be very helpful to the
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construction of a culture of peace in educational settings, instead of contexts marked with episodes of violence, hostilities, and negative conflicts, unfortunately still so prevalent within such settings. Episodes and social climate that, among other sad consequences, consist of serious obstacles to successful teaching-learning experiences and human development.
References Abreu, M. N., Tateo, L., & Marsico, G. (2021). The affective logic of race: A cultural psychological analysis of racial signifying practices. Culture & Psychology, 28(1), 23–42. Ben-Ze’ev, A. (2013). Emotions [entry]. In B. Kaldis (Ed.), Encyclopedia of philosophy and the social sciences (Vol. 1). Sage. Branco, A. U. (2016). Values and their ways of guiding the psyche. In J. Valsiner, G. Marsico, N. Chaudhary, T. Sato, & V. Dazzani (Eds.), Psychology as the science of human being: The Yokohama manifesto (pp. 225–244). Springer. Branco, A. U. (2018). Values, education, and human development: The major role of social interactions’ quality within classroom cultural contexts. In A. U. Branco & M. C. Lopes de Oliveira (Eds.), Alterity, values and socialization: Human development within educational contexts (pp. 31–50). Springer. Branco, A. U., & Valsiner, J. (2004). Communication and metacommunication in human development. In J. Brokmeier & D. Carbaugh (Eds.), Narrative and identity: Studies in autobiography, self, and culture (pp. 39–58). John Benjamins. Branco, A. U., Pessina, L., Flores, A., & Salomão, S. (2004). A sociocultural constructivist approach to metacommunication in child development. In A. U. Branco & J. Valsiner (Eds.), Communication and metacommunication in human development (pp. 3–32). Information Age Publishing. Branco, A. U., Freire, S. F. D. C., & Roncancio-Moreno, M. (2020). Dialogical self system development: The co-construction of dynamic self-positionings along life course. In M. C. S. L. de Oliveira, A. U. Branco, & S. F. D. C. Freire (Eds.), Psychology as a dialogical science: Self and culture mutual development. Springer. Bruner, J. (1997). Atos de significação. Artes Médicas. De Jaegher, H. (2021). Loving and knowing: Reflections upon an engaged epistemology. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 20(5), 847–870. de Oliveira, M. C. S. L. (2018). Methodological reflections on Peirce’s contribution to a hermeneutic approach to the dialogical self-system development. 2018 International conference on the dialogical self, Braga, Portugal, July. Esperidião-Antônio, V., Majeski-Colombo, M., Toledo-Monteverde, D., Moraes-Martins, G., Fernandes, J. J., Assis, M. B., & Siqueira-Batista, R. (2008). Neurobiology of emotions. Revista Psiquiatria Clínica, 35(2), 55–65. Fatigante, M., Fasulo, A., & Pontecorvo, C. (2004). This is not a dinner: Metacommunication in family dinnertime conversations. In A. Branco & J. Valsiner (Eds.), Communication and metacommunication in human development (pp. 33–81). Information Age Publishing. Fogel, A. (1993). Developing through relationships. Harvester Wheatsheaf and University of Chicago Press. Fuchs, T. (2013). The phenomenology of affectivity. In K. W. M. Fulford, M. Davies, R. G. T. Gipps, G. Graham, J. Z. Sadler, G. Stanghellini, & T. Thornton (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of philosophy and psychiatry. Oxford University Press. Goleman, D. P. (1995). Emotional intelligence: Why it can matter more than IQ for character, health and lifelong achievement. Bantam Books. Kaldis, B. (Ed.). (2013). Encyclopedia of philosophy and the social sciences. Sage.
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Kelman, C. A., & Branco, A. U. (2014). Comunicação e metacomunicação na inclusão escolar. In M. A. Dessen & D. A. Maciel (Eds.), A ciência do desenvolvimento humano (pp. 483–516). Editora Juruá. Le Breton, D. (2009). As paixões ordinárias: antropologia das emoções. Vozes. Leeds-Hurwitz, W. (1993). Semiotics and communication: Signs, codes, cultures. Erlbaum Associates. Loidolt, S. (2020). Levinas on emotion and affectivity. In T. Szanto & H. Landweer (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of phenomenology of emotions. Routledge. Lopes de Oliveira, M. C. S. (2021). Psicologia cultural-semiótica: aportes para a abordagem científica do desenvolvimento humano na contemporaneidade. In A. F. A. Madureira & J. Bizerril (Eds.), Psicologia & cultura: teoria, pesquisa e prática profissional. Cortez Editora. Lotz, C. (2007). From affectivity to subjectivity: Husserl’s phenomenology revisited. Palgrave McMillan. Marchand, P. (2005). Psychologie sociale des medias et de la communication. Presses universitaires de Rennes. Matusov, E. (2009). Journey into dialogic pedagogy. Nova Science Publishers. McDermott, R. P. (1977). Social relations as contexts for learning within schools. Harvard Educational Review, 47(2), 198–213. Paula, L. D., & Branco, A. U. (2022). Deconstructing prejudice in schools: The role of dialogical practices. Estudos de Psicologia (Campinas), 39, e200216. Rosenthal, R., & Jacobson, L. (1968). Pygmalion in the classroom. The Urban Review, 3(1), 16–20. Seligman, M. (2004). Authentic happiness: Using the new positive psychology to realize your potential for lasting. Atria Books. Sharma, D., & Tygstrup, F. (2015). Structures of feeling: Affectivity and the study of culture (Vol. 5). Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. Tateo, L., Marsico, G., & Valsiner, J. (2022). Cultural psychology. In J. Zumbach, D. Bernstein, S. Narciss, & G. Marsico (Eds.), International handbook of psychology learning and teaching. Springer international handbooks of education (pp. 1–19). Springer. Valsiner, J. (2012). Fundamentos da psicologia cultural: mundos da mente, mundos da vida. Artmed. Valsiner, J. (2014). Invitation to cultural psychology. Sage. Valsiner, J. (2017). From methodology to methods in human psychology. Springer. Valsiner, J. (2021). General human psychology. Springer. VandenBos, G. R. (2015). APA dictionary of psychology (2nd ed.). American Psychological Association.
Chapter 9
Learning in Nature About Nature: Two Types of Affective Orientation Pirkko Raudaskoski
9.1 Introduction Sociocultural learning theory (e.g., Cole, 2018; Cole & Wertsch, 1996; Lave & Wenger, 1991) has shown the importance of studying closely concrete learning situations (the material and interactional settings for the participants) if we want to understand how learning takes place in practice. Therefore, all types of learning can be studied with a sociocultural approach, from how children learn (Vygotsky, 1929) to how educational curricula based on sociocultural learning works in practice (e.g., Cliff, 2012). Any situation is a sociocultural (learning) situation for its participants. They must consider where they are (e.g., home, time, place, and institution) and the learnt norms and routines in that situation. All formal and informal social interactions entail a possibility for attaining new knowledge. Sometimes, specific material tools become central for the ongoing activity. It is the combination of the type of situation, the participants and their embodied and interactional possibilities, and the material setting and its affordances out of which possibilities for participation and, therefore, situated learning ensues. In the following article, sociocultural learning theory is discussed in relation to the recent social scientific theorization about affect, where both philosophy and science studies suggest, each in their own ways, that affect can be considered an assemblage. Sociocultural and affect theories have similar interest and they can also be deemed as having affinities with the ethnomethodological approach to studying sense-making processes. The method of analysis used in this chapter is, therefore, a multimodal interaction analysis, which gives the body and the material environment as much importance as to language use in sense-making processes. This means that
P. Raudaskoski (*) Department of Communication and Psychology, University of Aalborg, Aalborg, Denmark e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. Fossa, C. Cortés-Rivera (eds.), Affectivity and Learning, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31709-5_9
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the analytical gaze attends to participants in an on-going event rather than to individuals and their inner life. The chapter introduces a close analysis of a semi-formal learning situation, namely a nature hike to a forest with experts (biologists) as guides. The event took place as part of a larger Danish nature arrangement. The analytical interest turned out to be how two active participants engage in the hike within its pre-planned course (walking to a site where a rod was waiting with a soil sample). The data were approached from the sociocultural perspective with a heightened sensitivity to the affordances that a situation like this provided for the participants to learn (and teach) about nature, with other strangers (unless they attended as a couple or a pair of friends). The biologist guides were experts in different strands of ecology that, while guiding the hike, would stop to ‘lecture’ about different specimens to the group. However, even if the frame of the event was a fairly traditional one of educating adults about the visible and invisible features of nature, it did not constrain other types of participation. During the walk, plants, trees, insects, and other natural wildlife were noticed and discussed. The participants also had a paper-based quiz to encourage finding certain specimens. The two members under closer scrutiny were visibly and hearable inquisitive during the hike, which made it possible to analyze their social practice as an affective activity (Wetherell, 2012, 2015). A close video footage of a constantly changing formation (walking from a site to another, typically as a stretched-out group, gathering around an interesting specimen, etc.) required a trained research team (McIlvenny & Davidsen, 2017) that used two 360° cameras and two traditional 2D cameras, one of which had a possibility to have two different foci (a picture in picture). Especially, the 360° video footage enabled tracing the two participants in this complex mobile constellation.
9.2 Learning as a Relational and Situated Phenomenon Sociocultural theory of learning concerns all types of situations of expanding knowledge, both the abstract knowing that and the practical skills that Ryle conceptualized as knowing how (Ryle, 2009). Most learning takes place in situations with other persons or entities (natural surroundings, man-made technologies, etc.). This means that learning is embodied and situated (cf. Nathan, 2022), which makes it relational. Jordan and Henderson’s (1995) article on interaction analysis has a sociocultural starting point and describes an ethnographically oriented approach to analyzing situated learning in classrooms. Informal learning has also been researched from a sociocultural perspective, for instance, in museum settings (Jakobsson & Davidsson, 2012) and in visits to pre-planned trails (e.g., Zimmerman & McClain, 2016, which used interaction analysis to study the data). My earlier research on technology-mediated interaction was inspired by Jordan and Henderson’s (1995) approach. For instance, in Raudaskoski (2006), I suggested ethnomethodological conversation analysis as an analytical approach to Lave and
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Wenger’s (1991) and Wenger’s (1998) sociocultural learning concepts in order to come closer to the evolving practices in educational settings. The present chapter uses multimodal interaction analysis (Goodwin, 2000, 2013), a recent development in ethnomethodological conversation analysis (Streeck et al., 2011). Charles Goodwin was a central figure in advancing multimodal interaction analysis where embodied actions and the use of the material environment were analytically in focus as much as language use. Goodwin explained these contextual configurations as “the participants use as complementary resources both the specifics of different kinds of sign systems provided by language, and historically shaped structure instantiated in artifacts and the physical environment” (Goodwin, 2000, p. 1517). He knew well the sociocultural school: “Emphasis on cognition as a public, social process embedded within a historically shaped material world is quite consistent with both Vygotskian perspectives [--] but adds to such perspectives an equally strong focus on the details of language” (Goodwin, 2000, p. 1491). A sociocultural take is also strongly present in how he later conceptualized lamination (Goodwin, 2013), both as a moment-for-moment building up an encounter based on the other participants’ contributions but also as an event where cultural tools, norms, and habits are passed on within an activity system (see also Keifert & Marin, 2018). Goodwin (2013) calls the already existing, both temporally shorter- term interactions through contextual configurations and longer-term cultural strata that they are based on, as substrates that any action builds on. Because the sociocultural approach understands the connections of here-and- now activities, during a nature hike, as inherently connected to the (also ideological and normative) historicity of the tools and to the ways of being and doing, a link can be made to the assemble thinking in new materialist or sociomaterial studies (e.g., Ward-Smith et al., 2020; Rantala et al., 2011). The sociomaterial analyses of nature activities tend to concentrate on the encounters through senses with the material surroundings and possible memories that those invoke. Sensory engagement with natural surroundings is an unmediated, affective, experience that is regarded as an important activity also in educating for biodiversity understanding (e.g., Beery & Jørgensen, 2018). To prepare for the close analysis of a snippet from the nature hike presented, the following section will have a closer look at how affect has been conceptualized as assemblage and how multimodal interaction analysis shares some of the basic principles of this approach but aims to analyze them as publicly observable, world-oriented practices. This way, it connects to sociocultural learning theory and with a stronger focus on what the material setting affords.
9.3 Affect as Assemblage Affect has become a popular focus in humanistic and social scientific studies. In new materialist and sociomaterial studies, affect is entangled with embodiment and materiality. Fenwick (2015) gives an overview of new materialism and sociomaterialism in learning sciences. In this chapter, the focus is on the heterogenous assemblages
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that both approaches regard important: New materialism from the perspective of embodied intensities (e.g., Deleuzian approaches) and sociomaterialism as the complicated entanglements of any concrete situation (e.g., actor-network theory). Affect can be regarded as one of the key concepts in new materialist studies that have strong affiliations in aspirations to understand people’s connections to nature. The present chapter appreciates the new materialist take on affect that concentrates on the embodied experiences where all our senses are involved (e.g., Massumi, 2015). Affect, in this sense, is not a clear feeling or an emotion but an intensity that relates to rhizomatic assemblages which connect to heterogenous entities and processes (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987). The approach is critical about traditional research methods that cannot access these preconscious phenomena. However, Margaret Wetherell (2015) sees the consequences of this type of theorizing as constituting individuals who are “non-consciously reacting, their preconscious doing most of the work; rarely, it seems, talking to each other or negotiating” (Wetherell, 2015, p. 149). As a social psychologist, Wetherell (2012, 2015) has interest in how affect works as effectual social practice. This way, the analytical focus goes away from trying to decipher people’s inner sensations to what they are doing and saying in various micro contexts (cf. Raudaskoski, 2020), that is, how they react to situated living moments. Therefore, the philosophical process approach can also be put to work as a publicly available phenomenon. Deleuze’s philosophy requires an open focus on social practices (e.g., Markula, 2019). This coincides with the ethnomethodological interest in practices and the conversational analytical approach to collected data with unmotivated looking: The analyst goes through the recordings of phenomena with an open mind instead of approaching collected data with a predefined focus. The close transcription of the event slows the pace of the actions down and helps notice things that otherwise might go unnoticed (cf. “seen but unnoticed” (e.g., Garfinkel, 1996, p. 11), that is, “initially unremarkable features of talk or other conduct” (Schelgoff, 1996, p. 172). When something stirs the analyst’s interest they start from there, in the midst. For instance, my analysis of two novices’ learning to use an interactive tutorial (Raudaskoski, 2003, also discussed in Arminen, 2005) started from paying attention to an already learnt acronym, which seemed to be forgotten at a later point, so I started deciphering the reasons for that from the participants’ mutual interaction at and with the material computer and its tutorial. As already pointed out above, the analytical emphasis on the concrete practices and their participants connects the analytical method to the sociocultural learning approach. Ethnomethodological and sociocultural approaches to social practices as occasions with a tight connection to the material circumstances can provide necessary methodologies for the new materialist and psychological processes studies, where language use studies unfortunately are generalized as deemed to find stable representations rather than situated occurrences (e.g., Barad, 2007, for discussion, see Raudaskoski & Klemmensen 2019; Raudaskoski, 2021). Charles and Marjorie H. Goodwin’s close analyses of how the environment forms interactions (e.g., Goodwin, C., 1994, 1999, 2002; Goodwin, M.H., 2005; Goodwin & Goodwin, 2012) can be regarded as assemble analyses where the affordances of the material
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situation shape the ongoing human action. To put this in sociomaterial terms, material things are performative (e.g., Fenwick, 2015). In this chapter, the focus will be on “attuning to emerging ideas and action possibilities” (Fenwick, 2015, p. 89) when two differing orientations to the nature material were detected. So, the approach in the present chapter regarding affect and nature does not concentrate on affect as an aesthetic phenomenon, for instance, how a beautiful scene might influence us. But rather it deals more widely about affecting and being affected: Affect as an agency that makes someone or something move (cf. Latour, 2004). This requires participants’ attending to someone or something (cf. Ingold, 2018; Jones, 2005), which in this connection refers to an open attitude rather than intention. In this attentional practice, assemblages connect to pasts (and futures) instead of ‘just’ orienting to the effect of the material surroundings. What is important from the assemble, new materialist or socio-material point of view is that “[--] material things are performative. They act, together with other types of things and forces, to exclude, invite, and regulate particular forms of participation” (Fenwick, 2015, p. 84). Movement is an important part of the emergence of affect: to affect or to be affected (e.g., Daniels, 2021). It requires action that takes the situation forward in one way or another, be it physical activity or otherwise inquisitive behavior (for instance, through questions, comments, etc.). The following analysis shows how affective activity can vary, and therefore be relatable to two types of assemblages. The embodied experience through senses of the nature (going close) is what especially new materialist studies highlight. As a nature hike is about moving, it is possible also to analyze the intensities and rhythms of the moving participants as an important part of the analysis (cf. Markula, 2019 for a Deleuzian approach to movement and sociocultural learning; Meyer & Wedelstaedt, 2017 for an interaction analytical approach to moving bodies in sports; Haddington et al., 2013 for interaction and mobility). However, the data also include an active participant that has another type of attention. Rather than going after tactile or otherwise intense experiences in the surrounding nature, his pace is even, and he asks questions about the invisible aspects related to the item or place in question. His attentive practice points, therefore, for instance, to the assemblages that actor- network studies orient to (e.g., Latour, 2005).
9.4 Data Let us turn to the data extract that caught my interest, and from where I started exploring closer the two active participants’ different ways of showing affect. G indicates a guide and P a participant (see cartoon).1 The transcription conventions follow the Jeffersonian style: (text) for talk that is not quite clear; text for stress; text, for even prosody; >text< for rapid articulation. The transcribed talk (Danish and its English translation) and the action visible in the still frame are parallel activities. Further, talk corresponding to the length of movement (depicted by arrows in the frames) is highlighted. 1
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Before the present scene, G1 had gone through the contents of the rod that was waiting for the group in the forest, and the biologists had taken another sample that G1 also went through, comparing it to the first one, and also to potential samples from other parts of Denmark. She relied totally on the participants’ vision: she ‘sectioned out’ parts of the rod with hands, pointing to specific parts, etc., while explaining about the contents: Why the color of the soil was different and what she could ‘read’ from it concerning what had been going on in the past (farming practices during certain timeframe, various living organisms inhabiting the soil, etc.). The soil, therefore, bore the effects of changing weather conditions and the “environing” that human and other species had done over centuries (cf. Bergthaller et al., 2014). After G1 had finished her explanation of the layers of soil in the rod, G2 changed to another type of participation: He offered the participants a possibility to a haptic experience: 1. Offer to Touch (Author’s Own Creation) (Fig. 9.1): In Extract 1, G2 approaches to the rod and has the thumb and index finger ready to fit in the groove while asking the audience’s interest in feeling the soil. He finishes by pinching the soil, as seen in the close-up insert from the 2D-camera footage. By doing this demonstration, G2 also contrasts it to how G1 had earlier treated the soil sample in her long explanation of its different colored contents: She would tap the rod on the place that he was talking about. The invitation to change from visual to sensory evidence gets some laughter particles from G3, while a participant approaches the rod and takes a sample from around the same place (see the last frame). After this, most of the audience members squeeze a sample; there is a heightened intensity in the group. G2 pinches a sample again and engages in a discussion about the soil at the deeper end of the rod being “more greasy”. This seems to occasion P1 to get active, and he takes a step forward, joins the others in grasping a sample. P2 comes closer too. The participants discuss how the samples felt; for instance, the organic stuff is considered “clayey” by many, connecting to haptic knowledge based on their earlier experiences. When several group members start taking samples and discussing them with G2, G1 steps closer to the rod, mentioning that they should have tried the soil in the first rod sample, the contents of which she had explained earlier, while sampling some
Fig. 9.1 Offer to touch
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of the soil from the lower part of the rod herself. She coming closer to the rod and talking seems to encourage P2 to ask a question about acidity, a topic G1 had dealt with in her explanation of the contents of this rod sample earlier. Meanwhile, P1 grabs another sample from the higher end of the rod, which occasions G2 to talk to him about how it feels: 2. Two Types of Affective Activity (Author’s Own Creation) (Fig. 9.2): P2 was as close as P1 to the rod, and also took a step towards it when P1 stretched himself to take a sample from the rod. In other words, P2 had a perfect instrumental stance (Goodwin, 2007) to feel the soil himself. Instead of doing that, he returned to what G1 had told them before, namely the reason for no bacteria in the upper part of soil sample (P2 pointing in the second frame). This might have been occasioned by G1’s attending to the rod to take a sample. We could treat the two participants’ orientations as ‘subjective’ (P1, haptics) and ‘objective’ (P2, scientific question). Both are types of knowledge, and the first one elicited a discussion between P1, G2,
Fig. 9.2 Two types of affective activity
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and the participants about the tactile properties of the soil. Thus, the same object, a soil sample, resulted in two ways of accomplishing a translation (Latour, 2005) or reference to it (cf. Smith, 2019). A socio-material learning approach (e.g., O’Neil, 2018) would declare that the sample changes from being an object to a subject. While the haptic aspect (cf. Goodwin & Smith, 2020) is available to everybody present to explore based on their life experiences (which resulted in active exchange about how the specimen feels—it became a subject of discussion), questions about the invisible chemical composition require abstract ‘book’ knowledge. In this way, P2, instead of action-wise doing ‘self-deselection’ (cf. Hoey, 2020) by pinching a soil sample when close to the rod, resorted to an alternative way of doing by being an active participant in the buzz of the group. Instead of haptic proof, he oriented to the invisible evidence that chemistry is able to provide. Thus, we witness two affective practices to get evidence about the types of soil in the rod, both of which fit in what had been going on interactionally so far: While P1 resorted to haptics, to “the fun” that G2 had offered to the participants to try out, P2 remained at a distance to the rod, pointing at the part G1 had talked about earlier. In this way, tying his query to G1’s talk about the acidity levels in types of soil. In Goodwin’s (2013) terminology, they laminated their actions to the ongoing event in different ways. This differing in orientation from the same vantage point stirred my interest and I decided to check how the two participants participated in the hike before and after the rod scene. It turned out that P1 also had a highly physical approach in the rest of the hike. While the stretched-out group was walking between intermittent stops, he would run to the woods to get twigs from trees, return to the part of the group he had left, eating some of the leaves, and offering the twigs to others. He also detected some of the plants in the quiz, picked them and caught up with another participant further up in the group, and shared the material answer with her. When the group had gathered around specimens, he enquired about the edibility of certain plants, and dug deep into a rotten tree when a guide asked the participants to feel it, smashing the material in his hand. On the other hand, P2 very seldom touched anything during the hike. Only in the scenario with the rotten tree trunk would he respond to the ‘order’ by lightly touching it. Otherwise his questions and comments dealt with the not immediately observable aspects of the plant or theme under progress: At the first rod, when G1 mentioned that the start of farming practice was visible in the soil, P2 would mention the name of a famous Danish farming developer; at an old tree, he would ask if it was recorded as a heritage tree in a database; when specific insects were discussed, he asked if they were the same as in compost, and so on. In general, P2 provided and asked for knowledge about specimens. So, the way P1 and P2 attended to nature during the hike made it possible for them to engage with them in their preferred ways: Through haptic experiences with other participants and through inquiries and comments about the specimen in question. The question-answer pairs were, however, not the same as in a classroom, as the material that the question concerned was in front of (and under) everybody as a material entity and not as an abstraction. In the case of the soil sample, it turned from object to subject as soon as when participants felt it.
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In the following part, I discuss my observations as occasioned assemble activities within a learning environment. I start with an overview of the complexity of this data from an assemblage perspective.
9.5 Assemblages Firstly, any activity or event can be regarded as a practical assemblic activity that is built up during its emergence (cf. the data clips above). The hike, by being a typical example of its genre, connected to established cultural practices. The guides oriented to the group as willing to learn (more) about the natural environment. Therefore, the walk consisted of moving with intermittent stops to inspect certain plants or insects that the participants could hear and ask more about. In other words, the hike was a pre-planned event, where the biologist guides were the authorities of knowledge about (knowing that) nature. The (assemblic) planned activity resulted in decisions about which specimens would be lifted as foci for the paper-based quiz to detect certain plants, where would the stops be for closer inspection for certain plants or insects, and how would soil samples be provided as the culmination of the hike. How the rod is used in practice (knowing how) to take a soil sample provided a peek to a scientific method that was not as familiar as collecting insects with a net, another tool in use during the hike. However, from an assemblage perspective, also the non-present scientific tools were present in the knowledge the biologists shared with the participants because it was based on the research findings about various types of plants, insects, animals, soil, and so on. The knowledge shared is an outcome of studies that have been accomplished with the help of various scientific gears. The actual hike provided another setting for complex assemblic activity, which is why, I as an analyst, had a possibility to follow afterwards closely from another perspective than as a researcher participant thanks to the holistic video recordings. The group could encounter nature as it is: Identifiable plants to be eaten or to tick in the quiz (a typical learning scenario especially for children) and different types of soil in a rod. The soil samples were the only objects that were not immediately visible for the group; they had to be dug out. As already mentioned, the first guide (G1) went through them layer by layer, explaining what one could read from how the soil looked like. Her interest was not just in the here-and-now material world when she verbalized the connections of soil to the human and natural causes for the soil’s ingredients. The strata were a visible assemblic evidence of centuries of phenomena, not in their detail, but as a generalizing ‘something like this happened at this point’ that G1, with her professional expertise, could recite. When G1 explained how a stratum shows evidence from the first effective farming practices and P2 connected it to a Danish farming specialist of the time, we have an example of how some of the assemblic connections are visible from the earth sample itself (e.g., evidence of certain type of farming), some brought to the situation through interaction (e.g., how that type of farming started in Denmark). After G1’s ‘show and tell’ scenario, G2’s improvisational action to offer to touch the soil sample and P1’s
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joining the tactile experience shows how more intense participation that differs from the routine one is instigated (G2) and welcomed (P1 and others). What emerged is a creative use of the material circumstances with a mobilizing impact on the ongoing routine and predictable activity (cf., Rantala et al., 2011 on the role of guides as uplifting the atmosphere). So, P1 and P2 seemed to have different preferences as to how to attend to the available material nature. By doing that, they showcased their personal histories (e.g., knowledge about edible plants and knowledge about chemical compositions), which, of course, are constituted by a myriad of people, places, and practices (i.e., assemblages).
9.6 Analyzing Affect and Learning as Assemblages Through Social Practice The analysis shows how the assemblage approach connects to sociocultural learning theory: A group of humans with differing expertise about the specimens they encountered would provide a way for others a possibility to learn. With multimodal interaction analysis as a tool to study the concrete practices, the material environment is not ignored (cf. Fenwick’s, 2015 in his critique of sociocultural learning theory). Materiality provided possibilities for movement-intensities, that is, how affect shows in physical tempo and pacing (Wetherell, 2012). The soil in the rod could be felt, a possibility that electrifies almost the whole group; a tree in the forest changes P1’s participation from a walking pace to a run for it, and so on. The strength of analyzing what emerged in the situation is that, instead of trying to map all the possible assemblic connections (cf., Clarke, 2005), the social practice would point at specific ones. It could also show that even if P1 and P2 were attending to the ongoing event and the setting in distinctive ways, both widened its frame through their different types of intensities when they shared their special expertise with the other members, providing the other participants a possibility to learn. In other words, they both showcase affective activity by responding to the material situation, to the potential for action (doing or saying) that arose, instead of ‘lecturing’ about this knowledge in the abstract. It is possible to relate the way the nature hike afforded P1 and P2 occasional encounters with the specimens to participate via their specific interests to Vygotsky’s claim on the interdependence between “scientific and spontaneous concepts” (Daniels, 2007, p. 319). P2’s ability to inquire about the connection between acidity levels and bacteria was an example of how “systematic, organized, and hierarchical thinking that he [Vygotsky] associated with scientific concepts becomes gradually embedded in everyday referents and, therefore, achieves a general sense in the contextual richness of everyday thought” (Daniels, 2007, p. 311). Vygotsky was interested in how children learn to think in more abstract terms and promoted the concreteness of concepts instead of trying to convince learners about them in the abstract. The same claim has also O’Neil (2018) in her agential realist (Barad, 2007)
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approach to sustainability education. This provides another link to the present chapter’s choice to study affective practices in nature from the perspective of sociocultural school of learning. From this perspective, it does not make sense in general to deem P2’s attentive practice with comments and questions about historical or chemical facts as realist or rational and only regard P1’s improvisational, embodied exploration of the material nature as passing the test as a philosophical process affect. Both types of attention can be deemed as affective orientations because of how they emerged: they were occasioned by the material and interactional setting, and they showed care for the practical and scholarly knowledge about the environment in the pre-planned hike. This resulted in occasional learning that was emerging from the material environment that made the participants curious. The key is that the inquisitive attitude took place in the examined entity, which thus became the subject of interest; they could exercise ontological relationality (O’Neil, 2018). Thus, the two differing participation (and learning) styles that P1 and P2 exhibited, were their way of attending and being affectionate when encountering nature. They participated within the affordances of the nature hike as a setting in which the knowledgeable others—biologists—, also had different approaches to the evidence (soil) they inspected, making it possible for P1 and P2 to participate in their own preferred ways: “Materials—objects, bodies, technologies, and settings— permit some actions, and prevent others” (Fenwick, 2015, p. 84). I have in other connections expressed a methodological possibility to analyze these Baradian intraactions with Goodwin’s analytical tools (e.g., Raudaskoski, 2010). In the present analysis, the same material entity (a rod with soil sample) offered a physical substrate that exhibited nature’s material ‘resemiotizations’ (Iedema, 2001) or translations (Latour, 2005) of climate conditions and past inhabitants’ activities as different types of soil that within the event created “a multiplicity of settings for action” (Goodwin, 2013, p. 8) to make sense of. It made possible for the participants to engage in ‘affective’ and ‘rational’ ways of participation, based on the participants’ learnt literacies but, at the same time, offering others a possibility to learn from their participation (cf. Daniels, 2021). The point to emphasize again is that this happened in nature, not about it in another setting.
9.7 Discussion: Methodological Assemblages The combination of ethnomethodological, sociocultural, and sociomaterial/new materialist approaches is an example of diffraction (Barad, 2007; Haraway, 1992) in methodological practice about becoming’s, where the role of the researcher is not to pledge allegiance to traditions and paradigms (cf. Gough, 2016); they are not clear- cut entities but blur at edges. Material-discursive practices (Barad, 2007) produce certain cuts in phenomena, creating inclusions and exclusions: “Phenomena are observable appearances and experiences” (O’Neil, 2018, p. 379). Multimodal interaction analysis made it possible to analyze how P1 and P2 in each their own way were “attuning to emerging ideas and action possibilities—the intra-actions of
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ongoing mattering processes” (Fenwick, 2015). Another significant assemblic point is to understand the importance, pace Barad (2007), of the material apparatus with which an event in flux is studied. In the case of the hike, especially the 360° cameras ensured a footage that covers the totality of the event. This made it possible to follow how various participants encountered the natural terrain and each other in the changing constellations, which ensures that the sociocultural and the sociomaterial analysis of affect and learning is not based on partially captured footage, nor on researchers’ notes or remembered occasions. The evidence for claims about social practices is visible and hearable in the data because video footage can give access to phenomena as they evolve with all the ‘ingredients’ (the material setting, participants, and the connections visible or invisible in the activity, i.e., assemblages). A repeated examination of the recordings is, of course, a different experience from being in the situation. However, it allows a more thorough focus on the other participants in the situation (and how one’s own actions as a researcher might have influenced them). As the nature hike discussed in this chapter shows nature affords many types of unpredictable and affective activities but also playfulness. The focus in socio- material and socio-cultural analyses should, therefore, be on how exactly the participants attend to the material environment. Socio-material learning theories highlight participation in material settings as a continuous emergence with occasioned possibilities for action and ask, therefore, to pay attention to the minor fluctuations (e.g., Fenwick, 2015), which the data extract could be seen an example of. Multimodal interaction analysis provides an analytical tool to examine these and do it from the participants’ perspective, without diminishing the role of the material setting. When the data are approached with an open attitude and the interesting phenomena are analyzed with a method that concentrates on the processual nature of the participants’ situated sense-making in the social and material environment, there is less danger of the analyst imagining what the situation might be like from the participant perspective, based on the analyst’s intuitions. This sometimes happens in education research based on St. Pierre’s (2014) post-qualitative movement, a welcome addition as such to challenge some established qualitative research methods.
9.8 Affect and Learning in Nature Massumi (2015) is one of the central figures in taking further the Deleuzian heritage, also as a learning approach. He does not want to separate rationality and affect but rather regards them entangled. Together with Erin Manning, he has established a project (3ecologies.org) where the traditional idea of knowledge transfer is replaced by an experimental approach to relational learning. The focus is on the embodied experiences while the participants’ sensory palette is activated through various artistic methods. My claim about rationality being as much an affective practice as the embodied entanglement with the material setting is based on the importance of
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place, being in the environment about which the participants learn more. O’Neil’s (2018) agential realist (Barad, 2007) approach to sustainability teaching under a curriculum has a similar message. “In Barad’s agential realist frame, the material (in this case, food) is not a passive object—to be eaten but an active agentic force that collaborates with humans in the creation of social, affective, and cognitive learning experiences” (O’Neil, 2018, p. 379). O’Neil (2018) uses an intra-active pedagogy to transformative sustainability education that nature hikes could be categorized under. She emphasizes the ontological relationship with what the education concerns. We could correlate her approach to various versions of how the nature hike’s content could be delivered, from (the teacher) talking about the forest nature, for instance, in a general lecture to the public, to maybe encouraging attending a nature hike to a forest with human or signed guides to experience it first hand, to actually attending a nature hike. O’Neil calls the last option an ontological shift, as in that the learning environment is the topic, which makes it a truly relational experience. It shows how the possibilities for the direct engagement with the materials under scrutiny in the environment they come from can electrify a learning situation but also how a chance to inquire about them while (pointing) at them in the setting connects the scientific abstract knowledge to the matter (cf. O’Neil, 2018).
9.9 Conclusion The affective assemblages that the multimodal interaction analysis of the data revealed support the socio-material (O’Neil, 2018) point about learning environments in general and, with that, about the possibility to include traditional forms of knowledge as affective practice. Instead of contrasting affective (multisensorial) or rational (scientific) approaches to learning, the focus should be on providing the phenomenon of interest as the learning environment where both learning types can occur and inform each other. Both types can show intensity and active interest. In the present analysis, P1 showcased the Deleuzian move that went for immediate experience with the material nature (and shared it with others through language and material exemplars), whereas P2’s knowledge about the topics pointed at scholarly assemblic knowledge. Learning theories normally consider children and young people in education. However, the rapidly worsening climate change and loss of biodiversity require a reschooling of all the people on the globe to understand how local actions are related to the cultural-historical and sociocultural pasts of (1) the place, (2) the activity, and (3) the participants’ routine ways of participation as self-evident if not absolutely normal and necessary. Ethnomethodological studies of social order concentrate on the reflexive accountability (intelligibility) that we exhibit in everyday and institutional settings. This is what the close data analysis also could be seen as an example of. My analysis of other nature hikes also points at a heightened level of responsibility (Accountability, Raudaskoski, 2013) about the natural environment,
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which is reflected in concrete ways of orienting to the specimens that can be detected (Participation, Raudaskoski, 2013). The close analysis of how two participants of a nature hike oriented to the contents of soil sample taken from below the earth they were standing on made it possible to materialize the past of the spot, providing a visual and tactile experience of the history of the place. The sample provided a way to treat the invisible past life that had taken place in the same spot and the invisible life in the soil itself that depends on the chemical nature of the strand in question. However, these assemblages were not just theoretical possibilities (cf. Clarke, 2005, on mapping) but they were oriented to and made a focus through a close analytic attention to what the participants were doing in the situation. It was their embodied participation between themselves and the environment that invoked the assemblages, that is, that the participants were aware of these. ‘Between’ does not mean that the analyst knew before attending to the data what would emerge, so the analysis was an intra-active one (cf. Barad, 2007 on emerging entities and their entanglements/assemblages). Ingold (2018) has put forward a suggestion for anthropology to become an educational/learning practice which emphasizes being in the world, rather than knowing about it. The two participants could be thought of metaphorically as embodiments of two ‘contradictory’ approaches: affect and rationality. However, in the same way as Ingold considers disciplines as “conversation among fellow travelers following convergent lines of interest” (Ingold, 2018, p. 76), there is no need to contrast the two approaches but see them contribute to the same care for environment. Ethico-onto-epistem-ology (Barad, 2007, p. 185) is not just a concern for us researchers (what kind of world our research contributes to with our tools for analysis) but a matter of all knowledge and learning practices. The present case has shown how “knowing is a matter of part of the world making itself intelligible to another part” (Barad, 2007, p. 185). In our case, a soil sample made itself intelligible through two types of affective “practices of knowing”.
9.10 Postscript What is not dealt with in the present paper is the role of the researcher(s) and the material tools they use to gather data. In the present case, the group effort with several cameras, especially the 360° ones, made it possible not only to trace the actions of the two participants that turned out to be interesting but also the actions of the camerapersons themselves. They participated as interested parties, both as researchers, but also as nature hike participants. Their main task was to document the hike as a complex participation setting, so they were gathering data for later analysis. The data also made it possible to analyze their interpretation of the situation as a data gathering task: How did they negotiate between themselves and as members of the larger group about what they did and, therefore, what was their effect on “what was emerging” (Fenwick, 2015). This type of setup points at the possibility to go one step further and document a true participatory approach to learning (ontological
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commitment, Ingold, 2018). For now, it serves as an example of another type of reflexivity than what is typical in some approaches in which the researcher should reflect on their ‘subjective’ orientations to the research object in question. Here, instead of reflexivity being a methodological choice, the transparency of the actions of the researcher-participants shows how they did their work as part of the group and in that way makes their actions also analyzable (Raudaskoski, in press, 2023 accepted). This way, also Ingold’s (2018) call for anthropology as education could be studied and eventually developed in its concreteness.
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Chapter 10
Learning and Affectivity: Pedagogical and Cultural Dimensions in the Inclusion of Diversity in University Education Cristóbal Sepulveda
and Rodrigo Vera
10.1 Normative Frameworks and Inclusive Educational Cultures The inclusion of diversity in the first decades of the twenty-first century has commanded the social demands of traditionally neglected communities. There has been public demands that operate from the perspective of the paradigm of social inclusion, deepening sociocultural changes that advocate marginalizing exclusion and giving way to diverse expressions of coexistence; agreements that have had more or less social acceptance (Santalla, 2017). Statements about the social world will promote collaborative cultures, which will interweave knowledge about inclusion and that will involve inclusive actions that will practically link all social spheres (Moliner García & Ramel, 2018). One of the social dimensions in which understanding diversity has posed the greatest challenges is the implementation of inclusion in university education. Efforts that advocate the elimination of exclusionary processes are expressed in certain attitudes and responses toward diversity, which are sometimes motivated by gender, ethnicity, social class, religion, sexual inclusion, and disability (Azorín Abellán, 2017). Manifestations of exclusion from diversity, which are accentuated in the evaluation of educational practice and in the identification of its levels of attention to C. Sepulveda (*) Faculty of Education Sciences, University of the Americas, Campus Concepción, Concepción, Chile e-mail: [email protected] R. Vera Exercise and Rehabilitation Sciences Institute, School of Occupational Therapy, Faculty of Rehabilitation Sciences, Universidad Andres Bello, Santiago de Chile, Chile e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. Fossa, C. Cortés-Rivera (eds.), Affectivity and Learning, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31709-5_10
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diversity (Escarbajal Frutos & Belmonte Abellán, 2018) for overcoming these barriers, have suggested six dimensions from which any higher education institution can begin to move towards inclusion: Institutional culture, equitable access, student-centered learning, well-being and participation, employability and mobility, and achievement to complete studies. These dimensions are part of a whole but institutions can choose to advance in some more than others or choose which of them they consider most appropriate to start with (Márquez et al., 2021). The aforementioned are methodological guidelines, which together with the efforts of civil society in order to include diversity in higher education. This educational level is increasingly heterogeneous, leaving exclusivity relegated to certain economically privileged sectors of society, as it has been in the recent past. Currently, its students come from various social and cultural sectors (Brito et al., 2019). As a result of these changes, today’s higher education institutions are true recipients of knowledge and various forms for their appropriation, confronting teachers and institutions with new and demanding occupations for which they were not prepared (Muñoz & Roy, 2020). These challenges allow identifying institutional practices that limit socio- educational processes and the participation of all members of the educational community (Matus-Betancourt et al., 2018), which can have a strong impact on the results of attention to diversity and the generation of inclusive organizational cultures (Lawrie et al., 2017). The inclusion of diversity in higher education in Latin America has developed policies and programs that are in favor of social inclusion and equity. This is under the manifest of social inequalities that still coexist in the region (Mato, 2008; Rodríguez & Mallo, 2012). In the first decades of the twenty-first century, the inclusion of diversity in university education is consolidated as a socio-legal imperative that guides democratic actions toward a common coexistence among everyone (UNESCO, 1998). This is because respect for and acceptance of differences contribute to effectively mitigating social inequality (Abdullah et al., 2015). Thus, citizen participation and social equality are essential requirements in the process of transformation of homogeneous educational cultures towards inclusive educational cultures that value diversity. As can be seen in Fig. 10.1, international and local regulatory frameworks contribute to the development of educational inclusion and the promotion of socio- educational cultures. The social commitment to include diversity in university education and its global impacts is based on the list of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and their respective goals of the United Nations 2030 agenda (2015). From here comes a global commitment that seeks to end poverty, fight inequality and injustice, and tackle climate change. One of the objectives to which the United Nations is committed is to “guarantee inclusive, equitable, and quality education by promoting lifelong learning opportunities for all” (United Nations, 2015, p. 17), and within its goals, it refers specifically to equal access to technical-professional training. In addition to eliminating all forms of exclusion and marginalization in education, they include persons with disabilities, indigenous peoples, and gender disparities, as well
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Legal framework
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Fig. 10.1 Regulatory frameworks for inclusion (Note: Concept map of international and local standards)
as other groups that may be the focus of discrimination. It considers as one of its main indicators “the assurance of equity and inclusion within and through education, promoting a human rights approach, a culture of peace and non-violence with an appreciation of diversity” (United Nations [UN], 2015, p. 17). In Chile, during the last decades, university education has experienced an increase in the number of institutions, in the diversification of educational programs and of course in the number of enrollments (United Nations Development Program [UNDP] and Government of Chile, 2006); however, there is also a growing demand for access to this educational level and therefore, as in many countries of the world, the effective educational inclusion of social groups historically neglected from university education continues to be within the most repeated public demands, materializing in national regulations and in the ascription to international treaties and conventions, which promote an inclusive and quality education, which translates into concrete actions by higher education institutions and that manages to permeate the institutional culture, eliminating all forms of arbitrary discrimination and taking measures to adapt the physical, social, and attitudinal environment to allow the effective participation of all, resulting in the implementation of laws, such as the Higher Education law (Biblioteca del Congreso Nacional de Chile [BCN], 2018), the law that establishes measures on arbitrary discrimination (BCN, 2012), and the Law on Equal Opportunities and Social Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities (BCN, 2010). The aforementioned promote a fair and quality education, an education that advocates the elimination of all forms of arbitrary discrimination, for the democratization of education, for the adaptation of materials, and the implementation of methodological strategies that include everyone. These guidelines were originated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 and subsequent accessions to international conventions and treaties, such as the International Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UN, 2006), in which education is conceived as a human right. However, the recognition of fundamental rights in which there is no discrimination based on gender, interculturality, sexual orientation, or disability,
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among many others, still has its limitations and it is necessary to generate contexts that promote an environment that values diversity in university education. Thus, in higher education there are still gaps toward student diversity, requiring concrete actions in institutional policies that promote inclusion and celebrate the diversity of people (Matus-Betancourt et al., 2018). From these approaches, it is understood that it is necessary to strengthen the policy in higher education, which understand education as a social good that focuses on learning, contributing to the inclusion of societies, groups, and individuals, which were previously very underrepresented and not as an economic value that is exchanged in markets (Smolentseva, 2017). In this sense, it becomes essential to understand the university space as a framework of social knowledge that creates and modifies realities in which everyone must be part of. Thus, the success of inclusion in education is closely linked to the commitment to diversity and coherence in integrative actions that is assumed from the management and promotion of accessibility and inclusion for the entire educational community as an institutional premise (dos Santos & de Melo, 2019).
10.2 Inclusion and Diversity: Pedagogical and Affective Dimensions In the current university context, the inclusion of students depends on the acceptance of human diversity and the recognition of differences. Some experiences show that exclusion from university life is not generated by personal educational needs but by cultures, policies, and discriminatory practices of the institution (Echeita, 2019). It should be noted, then, that the inclusion of all, in the educational context, is imbricated in cultural practices and modes of institutional management. Thus, an education that does not recognize diversity in its students cannot be considered of quality, which is why inclusion must be addressed as a prerequisite of quality, as both terms are analogically dependent (Narodowski, 2008). This is because promoting inclusive and quality education has been established as a priority objective in contemporary society, which seeks to make the inclusion of differences a priority for overcoming injustices and moving towards societies committed to the inclusion of diversity (Navarro-Mateu et al., 2019). To achieve a culture of permanent inclusion, there must be regulatory frameworks that support the individual needs of each student, with an inclusive method such as the Universal Design for Learning (UDL), since it delivers personal educational solutions (Bartz, 2020). Along the same line, another necessary factor to consider in the inclusion of diversity in the student body is the teaching competencies for the attention to diversity, these must be included in the programs of initial and permanent training of the teaching staff that works in higher education, which will respond to the type of
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students that are addressed, the public policies and the geographical context in which pedagogical practices are developed. Faced with these facts, it would be expected that each teacher of higher education knows the educational and social barriers of their students to offer differentiated learning according to the particular characteristics of each one (Castrillón et al., 2015). As can be seen in Fig. 10.2, learning and affectivity are interrelated with inclusion and diversity, which should materialize in university pedagogy. The generation of learning through the application of diversified strategies, which considers the knowledge of students, their contexts, and their abilities, is directly linked to a common curricular framework in which lies the psychological category “affectivity”, which is constituted by affective processes, an instance that involves emotions and feelings, which can be positive or negative, and that contribute to motivation in learning (Calviño, 2011). In this sense, it is possible to point out that students with a high positive affect adopt an orientation to the achievement of learning and are proactive, while students with a high negative affect avoid learning and have low motivation (Serdar Erdogan & Baykose, 2021). In this way, learning and affectivity are contributing elements in educational processes because the inclusion of diversity implies the creation of common learning contexts and processes, which are guided by a single curriculum that is also common to all students and that is diverse in its practical development (Parrilla, 2003). Curricular flexibility, defined as the recognition of diversity in the classroom, implies that the affective and cognitive dimensions are relevant in the understanding of the psychological processes involved in teaching and learning (Queiroz et al., n.d.). Educational problems in which teacher participation is fundamental, by elucidating who the students are, generating strategies for the development of their learning; that is, to understand and act through inclusive pedagogies on the diversity of today’s students (Muñoz & Roy, 2020). Therefore, inclusion means providing equal opportunities for all students, including those with disabilities. But we must not forget that inclusion is for all students, regardless of their disability (Francisco et al., Fig. 10.2 Learning and affectivity in inclusion (Note: The circle interrelates and the arrows give continuity to the process)
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2020). Achieving the inclusion of student diversity is the responsibility of states, governments, legislators, and public policies that are implemented, teachers, directors, administrative staff, mothers, fathers, caregivers, and the students themselves who present socio-educational barriers to access their education. However, it is essential to promote and enhance training aimed at strengthening pedagogical knowledge and experiences, as well as having didactic materials available to include the diversity of students (Diaz-Vega et al., 2020). Thus, with the participation of everyone, including diversity becomes a task of society but it is born in the relationship context, with teachers and students using socio-educational strategies, which depending on how they are managed and diversified, can determine the success of the inclusion of the diversity of students in higher education; pedagogical actions that consider the diverse educational needs of students and their states of mind, since promoting attitudes of well-being produces a high mental capacity to recover from stressful situations (Serdar Erdogan & Baykose, 2021). The aforementioned is fundamental in a way that the university education of the XXI century must consider everyone in their particularities, considering the barriers that restrict their full participation; even modern social transformations must be taken into account, in the light of the just demands of young people (Garcia et al., 2019). Social/institutional responses in favor of the inclusion of diversity that pay attention to the barriers that can restrict their learning become effective when the right to be different is recognized; materializing in foreseeing educational strategies that adapt to the natural diversity of students in the classroom, from a common frame of reference for all, not when isolated to accentuate differences (Sapon-Shevin & Zollers, 1999). Likewise, this demands teachers to develop inclusive curricular competencies in the classroom that allow them to offer students different strategies and meaningful and relevant learning experiences that are transferable to their daily lives. In the same line as the above, Zabalza (2007) proposes the following teaching competencies: • • • • •
Plan the teaching-learning process. Manage didactic work methodologies and learning tasks. Engage constructively with students. Advising students and, when appropriate, colleagues. Evaluate learning (and the processes to acquire it).
From these competencies, the notions of collaboration, attention to diversity, inclusive education emerge, thus the school and the pedagogical relationship that the teacher establishes with his students is democratized, as Ibañez (2002) refers, there must be an emotional disposition fostered in the classroom by teachers (quoted in Díaz Arce & Druker, 2007). Moreover, inclusion is embodied in the principles of diversity, belonging, and dignity (Cosier et al., 2013; Scanlan, 2009). The indicated principles guide the inclusion of diversity and strengthen ethical and moral leadership practices in
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educational institutions, supporting the work of the entire educational community, to promote an inclusive school culture, where children, youth, and adults are welcome and work for the common good (Bradley-Levine, n.d.). Under this logic, it is coherent to bet on the democratization of education, which is colored by the diversity of students in educational establishments. This implies valuing what is truly substantial in learning processes. It is evident then that the various ways in which the role of teacher and student is represented are mediated by a pedagogical interaction, in which the acceptance or exclusion of the diversity of the student body is in dispute. Whether accepted or not, the differences will depend on the emotional disposition that is generated in the classroom, and on the interactional style of the pedagogical relationship, constituted by the characteristics that assume the roles of being a teacher and being a student within it (Ibáñez, 2002, as cited in Díaz & Druker, 2007). These are the type of relationships that emerge in an institutional context and in direct concordance with the cultural traditions they develop as participants of educational organizations. In this context, we suggest that the inclusion of student diversity could primarily be organized from the interaction between the teachers, the students, the contents of the school curriculum, the learning, and the affective factors that involve the necessary motivation in the learning process of everyone in the school context. Thus, to achieve inclusive education in the twenty-first century, universities must consider training all teachers in the educational community in strategies that address the diverse capacities of students and the requirements for the implementation of inclusive education. Likewise, the inclusion of student diversity should not be limited to people with certain disabilities, such as intellectual disability or blindness but should include the majority of people regardless of their type of disability (Elhadi, 2021). This is intending to enhance one of the most significant organizational factors in the inclusion of people, such as organizational culture, and with clear orientations in their institutional policies, which work for an inclusive, transformative culture that raises awareness about the reality of everyone (Barrientos et al., 2021). In this way, considering critical perspectives is crucial to open spaces for both social transformation and the reconsideration of the role of higher education in the face of inequalities and the inclusion of diversity in these organizations (Rodríguez-Garcés & Padilla-Fuentes, 2021). Under these perspectives, the competencies of teachers in university education are not only restricted to didactic skills in the classroom but they are also related to personal values, beliefs, and citizen responsibilities, all of them contributing to the development of broad understandings around the inclusion of students. This considers that diversity is understood from multiple dimensions, such as cultural, disabilities, and sexual, among others; linking the various ways of observing diversity with the heterogeneous models of attention to diversity, it is possible to infer that to achieve true educational inclusion, in contexts of cultural diversity, it is necessary to ascribe to a model of intercultural education (Valencia et al., 2012), which is a model that considers personal experiences, life trajectories, origins, socio-cultural learning, and affectivity relationships framed in the learning processes of students.
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10.3 Inclusive Pedagogy: Cultural and Affective Considerations in Learning Higher education has socio-cultural conditions that involve different forms of social interaction. Respecting differences is an essential value of democracy in universities and the responsibility of everyone; an example of the construction of a society with diversity without predominance or cultural supremacy (Guido, 2010). Michael Apple (2018) raises the relevance of education in the field of democratization of society and the need for the countries of the South to move in a opposite direction to that which has been imposed until now in the educational models prevailing in the different countries of the neoliberal bloc; as the same author says, the difference becomes a paradigmatic construct of otherness. Specifically, in disability, it alludes to the recognition of otherness as how diverse and distinct they are, since difference as argued by Morales (2009) must “be recognized and accepted in its just dimension of difference, without ambiguities or hypocrisies, without ethnocentrism, nor colonizing discourses that seek to change or modify it until it is reduced” (p. 7). This is, as a pedagogy of difference that resists traditional models of teaching. Thus, from a perspective of cultural diversity, the pedagogical consequences of a binary Western thought that tends to highlight the normal-abnormal are discussed and, according to which, the first concept is privileged over the second, and as a consequence relation of exclusion, discrimination, denial, and even violence towards the other are triggered (Guido, 2010). As can be seen in Fig. 10.3, there is an interrelation between pedagogy and inclusion in the framework of university education. A cultural phenomenon that contribute to the construction of socio-educational justice.
Cultural diversity Inclusive teaching
Fig. 10.3 Inclusive pedagogy and culture (Note: The gears show a relationship between concepts and the continuity arrows)
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In this way, teaching in higher education has a challenge to move towards pedagogical practices of a constructivist nature that allow promoting cultural competencies in teachers. Therefore, Hernandez (2022) raises the constructivist teaching that favors students to feel comfortable in the classroom, in connection and greater commitment with peers, and with didactics that facilitate intergroup relationships and reduce pre-judgments in the classroom. In this same sense, university inclusion demands teachers to be aware of the cultural background of their students, which also implies that their work incorporates didactic activities to facilitate the affective approach of students to the subject (Hernandez, 2022). Because university students constitute themselves as cultural representatives of their territories, cultural identity can be seen as the self-identification of one as a member of a specific group based on an articulation of beliefs, traditions, and fundamental values of the group, elements that configure the personal sense (Irvine et al., 2021). Moving towards an inclusive pedagogy consists of creating teaching-learning processes that promote the construction of the student’s identity, within the framework of psychosocial and emotional well-being, promoting educational actions that facilitate self-criticism in students about their emotional perspective on functional and cultural diversity (Sotelino Losada et al., 2022). Moreover, this means cultural contexts constructed in classrooms that show equivalences between subjects to preserve cultural autonomy among university students, as scenarios that enable affectivity in order to facilitate learning (Biondi, 2021). Educational models with a lack of competence to work with diverse populations are challenges of inclusive pedagogy because these models tend to focus on the cognitive exploration of concepts and cultural skills without sufficient attention to the difference and emotional and personal aspects of the students; building pedagogies for inclusion that aim to exceed expectations and slogans effectively address growing educational inequalities suffered by diverse populations (Abdou et al., 2022). The challenge of designing a curriculum of inclusive pedagogies can turn the mandate of culturally sensitive teaching into negative reactions and responses toward the inclusion of diversity in the university context (Buchanan & Song, 2022). These are barriers to overcome, as a product of the diverse cultural origins that teachers and students have, in terms of their training, histories, and educational background. These situations generate opportunities for intercultural learning favor the construction of ideals of democratic education (Kandiko Howson et al., 2022). Culture and learning are the metaphor used for personal and affective development; actions that occur when participants engage in organized and valuable activities of the cultural community, through socio-educational encounters, as guided, and collaborative participation, which build supportive relationships that foster collective responsibility (Fletcher, 2021). To advance towards a culturally focused pedagogy of inclusion, teachers must take into account socio-cultural differences between students, as well as commonalities shared by different cultures in the classroom (Gao et al., 2022), they must
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promote encounters that highlight the variety of cultures (Gupta & Dasgupta, 2021), superimposing affectivity and learning within the framework of the pedagogy of difference. In concrete terms, pedagogy for inclusion seeks to generate links between cultural attitudes/practices to transform indirect forms of power through symbolic resources, conceptual distinctions, interpretive strategies, universal principles, cultural traditions, forms of knowledge, use of history, figures of thoughts, and moral statements (Hindhede, 2020). Proposals for educational inclusion involve providing detailed practical advice on how to design a pedagogical reform to solve problems of cultural conflict, with an emphasis on the cultural basis of social behavior in general, rather than the specific culture of behavior in the classroom (Jukes et al., 2021). Both are related, based on the assumption that teachers are not neutral to diversity and inclusion, and they are also agents that shape the social and cultural context of the educational classroom, overcoming standardized teaching and favoring collaborative learning (Jukes et al., 2021). Democratization in higher education is an expression of the universality of human rights, advancing towards increasing the socio-educational inclusion of its students; therefore, to reflect and redefine the mechanisms of participation in the university context (Vasconcelos & Gomes, 2016). From the implementation of intercultural practices mediated with teachers, a significant change in ethical positioning is expected, understanding the need to focus on differences no longer as something negative that generates tensions and conflicts but enriching, where the “other” is relevant and above all valued (Flores et al., 2021), building new ways to ensure inclusive training is possible by joining forces, channeling collective energies, developing purposeful practices to resist exclusion, and fighting for social inclusion. The inexistent promotion of socio-educational meeting spaces between the different actors of higher education can widen cultural gaps for inclusion in terms of society in general (Gajendran et al., 2022). Decolonizing knowledge and increasing cultural diversity is the horizon for the educational inclusion of higher education.
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Chapter 11
Usefulness of the Perezhivanie Construct in Affectivity and Learning: A Systematic Review Luis Alberto Taype-Huarca, Allison Liseth Zavalaga-del Carpio, and Svieta Valia Fernández-González
11.1 Introduction In recent decades, there has been an affective turn in cultural, social and educational theory. Researchers have been interested in deepening concepts and methodologies beyond the cognitive-intellectual variables involved in the learning process. In this way, constructs such as perezhivanie, meaning, agency, affective assemblages, self- transformation or cultural-historical subjectivity have been deepened, generating influence in the teaching-learning contexts (Fleer et al., 2017; Fossa et al., 2020; González-Rey & Mitjáns-Martínez, 2017; Jiménez et al., 2018; Mulcahy, 2012). Educational theorists emphasise that learning is not just about access to new knowledge and information but that it underlies personal transformation. This implies that this process alters perspectives and interpretations and generates new meanings and subjectivities in learners (Fleer, 2017; González-Rey et al., 2019; Maiese, 2017; Mulcahy, 2015; Painter et al., 2021). Affectivity influences learning in face-to-face and non-face-to-face environments, improves students’ processes and competences, such as motivation and agency. Therefore, it is important to integrate elements of affectivity into educational environments. With this in mind, we must ask ourselves: Can learning that brings about this kind of transformation be understood only from cognitive-intellectual theories? Perspectives linked to affectivity in education emphasise that it is equivalent to emotion or feeling and that resources/materials, such as technologies, texts and others, are used by teachers and students to understand and improve the educational L. A. Taype-Huarca (*) . A. L. Zavalaga-del Carpio Universidad Católica de Santa María, Arequipa, Peru e-mail: [email protected] S. V. Fernández-González Centro de Investigación Psicológica Histórico-Cultural CIPS-HC, Arequipa, Peru © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. Fossa, C. Cortés-Rivera (eds.), Affectivity and Learning, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31709-5_11
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process. This study is structured because there is a need to investigate how theories and methodologies linked to affective processes influence teaching-learning.
11.2 Theoretical Foundations Vygotsky’s cultural historical theory has strengthened its theoretical and methodological influence in the fields of education and psychology in understanding development. This is evident in the increase of research lines and publications in recent years linked to this perspective (Colliver & Veraksa, 2019; Mohammed & Kinyo, 2020; Sun & Zhang, 2021). One of the most influential concepts for education and development within this perspective is perezhivanie (Blunden, 2016; Cong-Lem, 2022; González-Rey & Mitjáns-Martínez, 2016; Veresov & Fleer, 2016). This concept was developed by Vygotsky in Psychology of Art at the beginning of his work and later in The Problem of Environment and The Crisis at the Age of Seven between 1933 and 1934 (Vygotsky, 1929, 1971, 1994). Theoretically, this concept emphasises: The emotional experience [perezhivanie] arising from any situation or from any aspect of his environment, determines what kind of influence this situation or this environment will have on the child. Therefore, it is not any of the factors in themselves (if taken without reference to the child) which determines how they will influence the future course of his development, but the same factors refracted through the prism of the child’s emotional experience [perezhivanie] (Vygotsky, 1994, pp. 339–340).
Thus, perezhivanie is proposed as a unit of consciousness, a theoretical system capable of approaching the complex emotional life of human beings. However, although this concept reveals its importance, its understanding remains elusive. Cong-Lem (2022) points out that although it has gained increasing attention from researchers and theorists, knowledge of the perezhivanie construct remains incomplete, fragmented and controversial. This has led some authors to propose that a complete and up-to-date definition of the construct has not yet been provided: understanding it as a psychological phenomenon that can be studied empirically or only as a theoretical construct (Fleer, 2016; Veresov, 2016). Additionally, the empirical contributions underpinning the construct have not been analysed in depth. Therefore, it is necessary to explore whether empirical research on this construct is useful for understanding processes such as teaching and learning in education. With this approach, the present study analyses the usefulness of the concept of perezhivanie for understanding affect and learning through a systematic review (SR). The study also includes a qualitative content analysis to deepen the review. Thus, the research question was initially posed: What is the usefulness of the perezhivanie concept for understanding affect and learning in development?
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11.3 Methodological Framework 11.3.1 General Description We conducted a systematic review to collect research related to the proposed topic. We used the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) 2020 guidelines (Moher et al., 2016; Page et al., 2021) with a checklist. As a resource for literature analysis, content analysis was used through the ATLAS. ti (8.1) program. This software made it possible to organise the content of the scientific articles into established codes by establishing relationships.
11.3.2 Search Strategy The search for studies for the SR was completed on 22 November 2022. The time interval of the search was free. Search strings were established in English, Spanish and Portuguese using the scientific databases SciELO, Science Direct, Scopus, Education Resources Information Center (ERIC) and Web of Science (WoS) as sources of information.
11.3.3 Phases of the Systematic Review The systematic review was based on four phases with some sub-phases: (a) the first phase of identification established the research objective and the search strategy, (b) the second phase of screening was useful to review basic aspects and select the studies, (c) the third phase of eligibility allowed to evaluate the studies through selection criteria, and, finally, (d) the fourth phase of data inclusion allowed to analyse the selected articles. These phases are developed as follows. The first phase included the statement of objectives; three search strings were delimited: English ((“perezhivanie” OR “perizhivanya”) AND (“development” OR “learning” OR “Affectivity”)), Spanish ((“perezhivanie” OR “perizhivanya”) AND (“desarrollo” OR “aprendizaje” OR “afectividad”)) and Portuguese ((“perezhivanie” OR “perizhivanya”) AND (“desenvolvimento” OR “aprendizagem” OR “afetividade”)). The second screening phase allowed for the review of titles and abstracts to decide whether to include or eliminate them from the process. The review was collaborative, with each researcher individually reviewing all the studies found to avoid possible biases resulting from their prior knowledge of the subject matter. To facilitate this process, the Rayyan platform (Ouzzani et al., 2016) was used, with a parallel review of each title and abstract. In the case of a unanimous disagreement, the final consensus among researchers established the inclusion or exclusion of studies.
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Fig. 11.1 Publication by year of selected articles from the second-phase search
Of the 42 articles obtained for the second phase, the absence of publications on the subject in 2010, 2011 and 2014 stands out, although an increasing rate is observed in the number of publications obtained in the following years. It should be noted that the results obtained for the year 2021 are the highest in the register (see Fig. 11.1). In addition, we can analyse the publications of studies related to the proposed topic by country, with the largest number of studies in Australia (16) and Brazil (6); see Fig. 11.2. Then the third phase allowed the review of full articles according to the selection criteria. Thus, the inclusion criteria were as follows: (a) it is an article or book chapter manuscript; (b) the language of the publication is Portuguese, Spanish or English; (c) it uses perezhivanie as a concept in aspects related to affectivity and/or learning; (d) participants belong to preschool, elementary school, high school or higher education level; and (e) it uses a quantitative or qualitative experimental methodological design. On the other hand, the exclusion criteria imply: (a) it does not state a peer review (article) or an editorial (book chapter); (b) it is a theoretical or systematic review article; (c) it does not have clear and precise quantitative or qualitative data or has statistical or analytical errors; (d) the study was conducted with participants from conditions other than standard education and (e) the study was conducted with participants with some kind of neuropsychiatric or neurodevelopmental diagnosis. Consequently, 17 articles were selected (see Table 11.1). The fourth phase allowed us to make the final selection in order to develop the content analysis of the articles found. The complete and thorough reading of the papers obtained allowed us to identify 25 papers that did not follow the inclusion criteria established in the previous phases. Figure 11.3 shows a flow chart summarising the process of reviewing the studies in the entire SR.
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Fig. 11.2 Publication by country of the selected articles from the second-phase search Table 11.1 Phased selection according to search platform Search platform SciELO Science Direct Scopus ERIC WoS Total
First phase 5 35 70 27 76 213
Second and third phases 3 2 9 8 20 42
Fourth phase 1 1 3 2 10 17
Following the final inclusion of 17 studies, a quality assessment was conducted to consider the rigour of the manuscripts submitted in the sample.
11.4 Results Synthesis Strategy The content analysis approach was used by means of the ATLAS.ti (8.1) program, including two stages. First, the sections of the studies were read through to get an overall impression and preliminary coding of the relevant segments of information. In the second stage, the studies were reviewed back and forth to refine the initial nodes, then grouped into broader categories according to their meaningful relationships. This analytical process, although presented sequentially, was dynamic.
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Fig. 11.3 Phases of the systematic review according to PRISMA 2020 (Moher et al., 2016; Page et al., 2021)
11.5 Findings 11.5.1 Studies Included There was a predominance of articles oriented towards the basic primary and higher education levels. This was probably due to the fact that the most developed lines of research focus on school processes and aspects linked to language study. Tables 11.2, 11.3 and 11.4 provide an overview of the final sample. Five elementary school studies published between 2016 and 2020 were collected, as shown in Table 11.2. At the high school level, only one study was found that fulfilled the required criteria, with this level of education being the least researched according to the findings for the purposes of this review (see Table 11.3). Furthermore, the educational group with the most studies developed according to the objectives of this study was higher education, where ten studies were found between the years 2013 and 2022 that meet the requirements established for content analysis (Table 11.4).
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Table 11.2 Articles selected for the content analysis: elementary school N Title 1 Perezhivanie mediated through narrative place-responsive pedagogy
Authors Renshaw and Tooth (2016)
2 Social inclusion and exclusion of a young child: a cultural- historical perspective of an international mid-semester transition into an international school in Malaysia 3 Perezhivanie as a phenomenon and a unit of analysis for studying children’s interactions with iPads in the early years of school in Saudi Arabia 4 Children’s experiencing of their transition from preschool to first grade: a visual narrative study 5 Memoria e sentido na narrativa de crianças: inspirações vigotskianas para a pesquisa na escola
Adams and Fleer (2016)
6 A cultural-historical study of digital devices supporting peer collaboration in early years learning setting in one Saudi school
Sulaymani et al. (2020)
Sulaymani and Fleer (2019)
Salmi and Kumpulainen (2019) Braga and Smolka (2020)
Aim We explore episodes of deep learning and significant changes to self that students report after experiencing a narrativebased and place-responsive pedagogy called story thread. The focus here is the processes of a mid-semester transition, which resulted in the practices of both inclusion and exclusion.
It examines how children emotionally engage with both iPads and each other when introduced to educational settings in Saudi Arabia, where there is no tradition for their use. The aim is to investigate children’s experiences (perezhivanie) of their school transit nested in the interaction between their motives and perceived demands. The reading of the “Preface” to the book “The Development of Memory” instigated us to analyse an activity recorded during a project on memory and narrative, carried out in the contemporary school context. The study sought to research peer collaboration when using iPads for the first time in the classroom.
Table 11.3 Article selected for content analysis: high school N Title 7 Subject choice and perezhivanie in mathematics: a longitudinal case study
Authors Aim Ng This prospective study adopted Vygotsky’s concept of (2021) perezhivanie to examine students’ lived experiences in learning mathematics and how they related to course choice plans and actual decisions.
11.5.2 Results of Syntheses Given the characteristics of the contexts in which most of the studies were carried out, the information was analysed in two blocks: (a) regular basic education, aimed at children and adolescents who go through the educational process in accordance with their physical, affective and cognitive evolution from the moment they are born
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Table 11.4 Articles selected for content analysis: higher education N Title 8 Identity in activity: examining teacher professional identity formation in the paired- placement of student teachers 9 Perezhivaniya in L2 learning and motivation from a sociocultural perspective: a qualitative analysis of retrospective L2 learning essays 10 Developing L2 identity through the “Perezhivanie” of learning: a case study of two students in Jeju Island
Authors Dang (2013)
11 Preservice teachers’ perezhivanie and epistemic agency during the practicum
Yang and Markauskaite (2021)
12 Investigating affordance in technology-enriched language learning environment through exploring students’ perezhivanija 13 Emoções, perezhivanie e transformação em um curso de formação de professores de Inglês: um estudo histórico-cultural 14 Translanguaging drama: embracing learners’ perezhivanie for embodiment of the repertoire
Qin and Wei (2021)
15 Exploring Chilean EFL student teachers’ development of teacher identity through perezhivanie 16 Unpacking the interaction between foreign language learners’ emotion, cognition, and activity in the flipped classroom in higher education: a perezhivanie perspective
Barahona and Toledo- Sandoval (2022) Qin et al. (2022)
Kim (2021)
Huh and Kim (2021)
Ramos (2022)
Galante (2022)
Aim This paper examines the evolution of the professional identities of student teachers (STs) in a paired-placement teaching practicum in Vietnam. This article focuses on the role of perezhivaniya, or “emotional experiences”, in understanding second-language (L2) learning motivation. We examined how two graduates from non-academic high schools perceived their peripheral school situation through their perezhivanie and described how this situation affected the individual trajectories of L2 identity development as well. This study explores the link between preservice teachers’ emotional experiences and their epistemic agency during the practicum. This study explores how students actualise the possibilities in a technology-enriched language learning environment (TELLE) by examining their perezhivanija. This article aims to discuss how the perezhivania and emotions experienced by an English teacher in initial training can assist in professional development. This article advances the concept of the repertoire through translanguaging drama as a pedagogical practice and examines the resources that can be volitionally mobilised through language learners’ perezhivanie or the emotional, felt and lived-through experience. Understand the multiple aspects and conflicts that shaped the development of the identity of future English teachers in Chile. Investigate students’ emotional experiences and the interactions between emotion, cognition and activity in the flipped foreign language classroom.
(continued)
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Table 11.4 (continued) N Title 17 The dynamic interaction of second language motivation and emotional experience: the case of Chinese learners of English
Authors Tian and McCafferty (2022)
Aim Examine the dynamic interplay of Chinese learners’ emotional experience and motivation in four different L2 exposure contexts that affect the language learning process.
Fig. 11.4 Code network map
and organised into levels, cycles, categories and modalities, and (b) higher education, made up of educational programmes after secondary education provided by universities or other establishments qualified as higher education institutions. Both educational spaces are home to students with different developmental characteristics, as well as subjective and sociocultural complexities that respond to the time, daily life and context in which they develop. According to the review carried out, the authors place an important emphasis on the devices used as a learning strategy, and this is linked to the particular emotional experience described, from contradictions in the experiences to the formation of senses of identity (see Fig. 11.4). Another important point that the authors highlight is the use of discourse as a form of expression of emotional complexity, which is seen above all in basic education, which is combined with an emotional experience that ends up being validated with the perezhivanie construct. In higher education, greater conflicts arise that generate meanings about the identity of the subject, and as this is intertwined with the emotional experience in each situation, be it with peers or teachers, this becomes a transformative practice, which is finally associated with the perezhivanie construct in the breaking of the duality emotion cognition to give passes to a complex subjective vision of teaching and learning that transcends the educational (see Fig. 11.5). According to the word cloud on the perezhivanie construct, the most frequent words are experience, study, language, learning, school, learners, development and education. Experience and study stand out as the most frequent elements, even more than the terms themselves referring to learning subjects. The study of perezhivanie
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Fig. 11.5 World cloud
in the articles reviewed has a primacy of the study of the form of expression of the construct as opposed to the subject who expresses it. This can be problematised by taking into account that in the classical studies of this construct it is the subject who shapes the perezhivanie and not its form which structures it as a reflex arc.
11.6 Discussion This systematic review sought to analyse the usefulness of the concept of perezhivanie for understanding affect and learning in development. Taking into account that studies on development, affect and learning have advanced considerably in recent years, an initial theoretical review was carried out. In addition, a theoretical analysis of the perezhivanie construct was developed from a cultural-historical perspective as the construct has its roots in this conceptual framework that has gained momentum in recent years. On the theoretical understanding of the perezhivanie construct, some authors have argued that it should include at least three discernible meanings: (1) as a theoretical relationship between an individual and his or her environment, (2) as a person’s attitude towards or an abstract/generalised experience of his or her holistic life situation and (3) as a concrete experience of a specific event within that social situation (Cong-Lem, 2022; Fleer, 2016; Veresov, 2016). It is this last point that allows us to justify the development of studies that aim to explore the complex nature of this construct at an empirical level.
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Andrade and Campos (2019), in an outstanding theoretical review of empirical studies on perezhivanie, found that the main areas of knowledge covered by the studies were education, psychology and human development. In addition, they identified some domains, such as a study focused on early childhood development, the context of teacher education and the context of foreign language teaching-learning. In this systematic review study, the final two points are corroborated since the studies found belong to lines that highlight the development of children and adolescents in educational contexts and report mostly research developed on language learners. Research has been explored that was developed from a coherent line of enquiry, proposing strategies of prior critical analysis and foundations for methodological rigour. However, while all the studies reviewed highlight the breadth and potential of this concept, some studies do not detail a solid theoretical framework or consistent methodological strategies. The empirical studies analysed show that perezhivanie is useful for understanding affectivity and learning, given that the levels of education explored emphasise the qualitative study of educational processes, with emphasis on individual emotional processes as well as interpersonal recursive processes and also on the devices used as a learning strategy and the role of the agents in the educational process linked to a particular emotional experience. In this complex process, contradictions in the experiences and the formation of a sense of identity are shown. Moreover, as González-Rey (2016) mentioned, as it is a complex phenomenon that includes many interrelated meanings, it is difficult to accept that perezhivanie can only be studied through observable emotional behaviours or direct verbal expressions of the participants. In other words, we propose that studies that explore this construct should develop a coherent and consistent theoretical elaboration with methodologies and practical devices with rigorous and analytical criteria that allow for a more thorough interpretation and analysis.
11.7 Conclusions In this chapter, a systematic and content-based review of various articles was carried out, which addressed the concept of perezhivanie belonging to the Vygotskyan conceptual framework. The usefulness of this construct for understanding affectivity and learning was demonstrated both for its conceptual basis and for the resources and devices that mediate the study of this psychological phenomenon in development. Although we have more and more certainties at the theoretical level, perezhivanie is still an unfinished and potential concept; because of this, it is still difficult to apply it in theories other than the Vygotskyan conceptual framework, even more so when solid theoretical foundations are not provided. Even though the importance of the study of this process is demonstrated, the review revealed some studies with weak theoretical frameworks showing a disconnection between theory and empirical approaches.
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Although there are publications with unclear bases, we also find more substantiated proposals from research lines in Australia and Brazil (Fleer, 2017; Fleer et al., 2017; González-Rey & Mitjáns-Martínez, 2016; Ramos, 2022; Veresov & Fleer, 2016) that have made great progress in relation to the understanding and study of the concept; this allows us to say that it is necessary to expand theoretical and methodological research related to this topic in order to provide greater relevance and coherence to the study of this phenomenon and strengthen its application for the development of better educational principles and methods. Authors’ Contribution LTAH drafted the project, individually reviewed the abstracts in Rayyan, team-selected the final articles, drafted the introduction, developed the methodological framework, participated in the discussion and developed the conclusions, and reviewed the final manuscript. ALZdC individually reviewed the abstracts in Rayyan, team-selected the final articles, participated in the discussion and developed the conclusions, and reviewed the final manuscript. SVFG individually reviewed the abstracts in Rayyan, team-selected the final articles, developed the content analysis in ATLAS.ti (8.1), participated in the discussion and reviewed the final manuscript.
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Painter, M., Pérezts, M., & Deslandes, G. (2021). Understanding the human in stakeholder theory: A phenomenological approach to affect-based learning. Management Learning, 52(2), 203–223. https://doi.org/10.1177/1350507620978860 Qin, L., & Wei, R. (2021). Investigating affordance in technology-enriched language learning environment through exploring students’ Perezhivanija. Chinese Journal of Applied Linguistics, 44(2), 187–202. https://doi.org/10.1515/CJAL-2021-0011 Qin, L., Yao, L., & Jin, Y. (2022). Unpacking the interaction between foreign language learners’ emotion, cognition, and activity in the flipped classroom in higher education: A perezhivanie perspective. Frontiers in Psychology, 13. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1005237 Ramos, F. S. (2022). Emotions, Perezhivanie, and transformation in an English teacher education course: A historical-cultural study. Revista Brasileira de Linguistica Aplicada, 22(1), 241–269. https://doi.org/10.1590/1984-6398202218421 Renshaw, P., & Tooth, R. (2016). Perezhivanie mediated through narrative place-responsive pedagogy. In A. Surian (Ed.), Open spaces for interactions and learning diversities (pp. 13–23). Brill Sense. Salmi, S., & Kumpulainen, K. (2019). Children’s experiencing of their transition from preschool to first grade: A visual narrative study. Learning, Culture and Social Interaction, 20, 58–67. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lcsi.2017.10.007 Sulaymani, O., & Fleer, M. (2019). Perezhivanie as a phenomenon and a unit of analysis for studying children’s interactions with iPads in the early years of school in Saudi Arabia. Early Child Development and Care, 189(2), 255–269. https://doi.org/10.1080/03004430.201 7.1316267 Sulaymani, O., Fleer, M., & Chapman, D. (2020). A cultural-historical study of digital devices supporting peer collaboration in early years learning setting in One Saudi School. In International Perspectives on Early Childhood Education and Development (Vol. 30, pp. 113–127). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42331-5_8 Sun, Q., & Zhang, L. J. (2021). A Sociocultural Perspective on English-as-a-Foreign-Language (EFL) Teachers’ Cognitions About Form-Focused Instruction. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 593172. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.593172 Tian, L., & McCafferty, S. G. (2022). The dynamic interaction of second language motivation and emotional experience: The case of Chinese learners of English. Frontiers in Psychology, 13. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.905429 Veresov, N. (2016). Perezhivanie as a phenomenon and a concept: Questions on clarification and methodological meditations. Cultural-Historical Psychology, 12(3), 129–148. https://doi. org/10.17759/chp.2016120308 Veresov, N., & Fleer, M. (2016). Perezhivanie as a theoretical concept for researching young Children’s development. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 23(4), 325–335. https://doi.org/10.108 0/10749039.2016.1186198 Vygotsky, L. (1929). II. The problem of the cultural development of the child. Pedagogical Seminary and Journal of Genetic Psychology, 36(3), 415–434. https://doi.org/10.1080/0885655 9.1929.10532201 Vygotsky, L. (1971). The psychology of art. MIT Press. Vygotsky, L. (1994). The problem of the environment. In R. van der Veer & J. Valsiner (Eds.), The Vygotsky reader (pp. 338–354). Blackwell. Yang, H., & Markauskaite, L. (2021). Preservice teachers’ perezhivanie and epistemic agency during the practicum. Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 1–22. h ttps://doi.org/10.1080/1468136 6.2021.1946841
Chapter 12
Processes of Social Subjectivity and Pedagogical Action: Developments to Understanding Learning Difficulties in the School Environment Marília dos Santos Bezerra , Valéria Deusdará Mori, and Luciana de Oliveira Campolina
12.1 Introduction Social subjectivity is defined by González Rey (2005c, p. 203) as a “complex system of subjective configurations of the various spaces of social life that, in their expression, articulate strictly with each other, defining complex social subjective configurations.” From this perspective, social processes are not seen as something external to the individual but have a subjective quality when faced by a subjective production, this one also of an individual nature. We understand that the school is a social institution composed of groups and individuals that permeates a set of rules and values shared by its members. In this space, issues of singular nature are in contact with issues of a social one. Thus, the school’s social spaces become a privileged vantage point to investigate the multiple forms of expression of subjectivity. These forms are further diversified when in contact with other spaces of subjective production. Social subjectivity can be investigated and understood from the various aspects that constitute it. This understanding allows us to evaluate the production of meanings that compose the concrete reality of each school, as well as the production of the individual subjectivity of each person that makes up the school environment. Thus, the school as an institution is characterized as a recursive and contradictory process. In this perspective, the way in which a school’s social subjectivity is configured at a given moment in history is conducive to the examination of which subjective aspects characterize that teaching space. An example of this is the way in which other skills and knowledge, such as those of the medical field, may manifest in the social subjectivity of a school. We currently experience a moment of standarization and naturalization of the teaching M. dos Santos Bezerra (*) · V. D. Mori · L. de Oliveira Campolina Psychology Department, Centro Univeristario de Brasília, Brasília, Brazil © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. Fossa, C. Cortés-Rivera (eds.), Affectivity and Learning, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31709-5_12
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process; anything that does not correspond to what is considered “normal” by the school community is transformed into an illness or a learning disorder. At any moment, it is possible to observe in various communicational media the dissemination of genetic studies and neurology surveys about the functioning of the human brain. Moreover, there are numerous new findings on the functions of different neurotransmitters and new achievements in the mapping of the human genetic code and its relation to human development and learning. These new scientific findings are enlightening as to behaviors and feelings of the human mind, including those that happen during learning processes. Significantly, the biological and medical sciences have been crucial for enlightening what is unique to human beings, considering our neurophysiological and genetic makeup. This knowledge might be further explored in the way that schools, as of late, have dealt with the learning processes of children who exhibit pitfalls in their learning curves. The rise in psychopathological diagnoses and of certain therapeutic approaches tends to oversimplify the issues surrounding school learning and disregard other equally important factors. The attention given to medical scientism started to permeate the field of education, settling into everyday psychological discourse in the school environment, both in the case of suspicion of a diagnosis and on the demand for one. The parties involved in the teaching-learning process appropriate themselves to this medical scientism, and so it started to become an important component of a school’s social subjectivity. Furthermore, the organization of social spaces’ subjectivity lies in the interdependence of individual subjectivities, which express themselves in the permanent action of the actors involved in the institution. Considering that, we may comprehend the way in which the medical model1 impacts professional practices and feeds back into the school’s social subjectivity. It is important to highlight that a school’s social subjectivity is not reduced to the sum of the individual subjectivity of its actors. On another hand, it is neither solely a direct reflex of elements from other social spaces. A school’s social subjectivity is a complex organization of various subjective configurations assimilated into the normative systems of an institution. It is further composed of wider symbolic constructions, such as certain discourses and prejudices; of the school’s relational dynamics, which consolidate themselves in the living spaces people function in; and of institutional codes that subjectively organize its social space. Social subjectivity is one of the dimensions of school learning and one that must be considered when trying to research and understand how children appropriate themselves to scientific knowledge from an individual perspective. Considering that, in this paper, we will discuss the processes of social subjectivity in a school and its ramifications in order to understand the difficulties underlying problems at school.
The logic behind this biomedical approach lies mainly in the weight given to the word “illness” in the theory and practice of educational institutions. 1
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12.2 Methodology The epistemological and methodological approaches that were used in this research were aimed particularly toward the study of subjective dynamics: the qualitative epistemology and the constructive-interpretative methodology (González Rey, 1997, 2005b, 2013; González Rey & Mitjáns Martínez, 2016). The research strategy presented is a case study as a means to intensely investigate the object of this paper in order to create a close approximation of its full picture. The tools utilized were conversational dynamics,2 observations of daily school life, and the analysis of official school documents. The research took place in a public school located in a privileged region of the federal district. Two teachers and a psychologist from the Specialized Learning Support Teams participated in this study.3 The research lasted for approximately 2 years, from 2017 to 2019.
12.3 Analysis and Construction of Information 12.3.1 A Model School: Pedagogical Action Focused on Content The school, like all other institutions, has a unique social subjectivity, which is possible to identify thanks to the dominant social subjectivity forms in society at large. Schools in general assume a hegemonic discourse about their practices, as well as about basic concepts of learning and development. These, in turn, influence pedagogical action and the comprehension of problems related to learning difficulties in different ways. A school’s social subjectivity is organized as a system of configurations in which an institution’s unique processes manifest. It is founded upon the procedures of everyday life, on the relationships between teachers, on its administrative workings, on the pedagogical team’s common understanding of learning and development, on the behavior of its community, on the various groups of students and its internal interactions, on its public or private nature, on the relation between school and family, etc. It is understood that
As per González Rey (2005a), conversation is a process whose goal is to direct the survey participants toward relevant fields of their personal experience. From the participants’ verbal expressions, it is possible to have an approximation of the production of subjective meanings in relation to their motives, needs, conflicts, and reflections. 3 The Specialized Learning Support Teams (EEAA) from the Federal District Education Department (SEDF) are composed of a pedagogue and a psychologist. Its goal is to “promote the overall quality of the learning-teaching process through evaluative, preventive and institutional interventions.” 2
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Social subjectivity, which dominates a school and its practices, is an essential aspect of the quality of learning and development of the students in the educational environment. It de- constructs once and for all the individualistic educational view that a student’s success depends unilaterally on the student-teacher relationship, on the didactics used, on the quality of the teacher and on the students’ capacity for learning. This point of view de- contextualizes both the teacher and the student from the multiple social spaces and their hegemonic forms of social subjectivity in which they are situated.
It is understood that human action in the school environment is arranged in a web of symbolic and emotional processes of a different nature, which, due to its complexity, do not allow for a split understanding between the social and the individual. This chapter aims to deepen the discussion about the social subjectivity of the school in which the research was conducted, having as a forum for analysis the understanding of learning difficulties as a historically organized symbolic production through institutional processes involved in the different stances on learning. The institution in which the research was conducted was inaugurated in the year 1977. It was constructed through the initiative of the Administrative Department of the Public Service (DASP), which was an agency of the federal government that provided elements for the improvement of the state machine, in addition to preparing the Union budget proposal, as an advisory to the presidency of the Brazilian Republic, in order to cater to the children of civil servants who resided in that same neighborhood in Brasília. In order for the children of these servants to attend this school, there was a mobilization of both teachers and management at the time through a direct invitation for the parents to come and learn how an engaged public school worked in the federal district. According to the information in the PPP,4 the school concerned has recently become a national reference in education and is one of the most sought after by the city’s community in the Plano Piloto region. In 2015, it ranked second among the best schools in the Federal District in the Prova Brasil, an evaluation for the Basic Education Development Index (IDEB) evaluation, which is applied in all public schools in Brazil. In 2016, it held third place in the ranking of the most efficient schools in Brazil (source: Codeplan-DF). The school selected for this research has high approval ratings compared to other schools in the federal district. According to the school staff, these results are due to the excellent qualification of the teaching staff and the active participation of the school board. The focus of the actions of the teacher body is on the commitment to a systematic effort to work on the course contents in order to guarantee the learning of all students and the maintenance of the institution’s status as a school of reference. On this issue, Teacher A presents comments that allow us to understand some aspects of the social subjectivity of the school: […] The school is very good. But sometimes we get stuck on the issue of course contents, which limits the development of alternative pedagogical practices. The school wants con-
The PPP is the gauging tool for the operation of an educational institution; therefore, it expresses the pedagogical practices of a school or university and its courses, guiding the administration and academic activities. 4
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tent and I want to work in a different way. I think the school is very content-centric. It follows a traditional line. The performance levels here are exceedingly high. The structure of the school is to want content. I have some freedom in the classroom and I look for other strategies, but I have to follow a plan. Plus, you have the test they do, and if they don’t have the specific content, they’re going to fall short of that school structure.
In another moment of conversation with teacher Thalita about the processes of development and learning of a student, she expresses: (…) I find one boy to be very capable. You know, I think he’s smart, creative. He has answers always ready, at the tip of his tongue, he is a clever boy. But he needs someone to help him with his organization. That person has to be an adult, otherwise he can’t handle it. He needs guidance. He comes from a rural area, I have taught in a rural school, rural kids are different, they are free, they do not adapt to this model. He is out of this context, of the context of this school. Then he can’t keep up, everything is very by the book here.
From the conversation excerpts presented, as well as the information from the school’s pedagogical political project, we can understand that the emphasis on the contents to be learned by students and the maintenance of the school’s prominent position are fundamental aspects of their social subjectivity. Ensuring the quality of teaching, in fact, should be a concern for all those involved in the teaching-learning process. However, when we consider that the focus of pedagogical actions was directed toward a content-heavy aspect of learning, we fail to understand aspects related to the pedagogical needs of children and teachers involved in the teaching- learning process. On this issue, Tacca (2009, p. 57) presents interesting reflections to think about the consequences of these content-heavy actions in the work with children who are falling behind or face complications in the learning process: We can identify that when having to present pedagogical alternatives for working with children who are late or with serious complications in the learning process, the teacher usually steers toward the identification of unlearned content and proposes activities, within the curricular disciplines, for a recovery in the established space of “school tutoring.” There lies the notion that the student must learn what is part of the content of his grade. The activities selected for this can be alternative and thought out based on special materials and even be playful, an aspect that brings the idea of a more enjoyable, more fun, more palatable and more “interesting” learning experience for the child. However, we know that the focus remains on the planed course content, or what the student should know, or the school content that he must assimilate and that will make him be seen as the one who is progressing in “learning.”
Based on the evidence shown so far, we consider that when the focus is directed to the course content to be learned by the student, the activities developed correspond little to the real pedagogical need of the learner. In this fashion, as Tacca (2009) points out, pedagogical actions are organized in a “one-size-fits-all” perspective since they must suit all students uniformly, regardless of the developmental specificities of each child. We can see in the case of the previously mentioned boy that Teacher A shows concern for his development and seeks at least to consider some of his specificities. However, she feels trapped in a model that must be followed by the professionals in that school.
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Teacher B, a pedagogue part of the Specialized Learning Support Teams, confirms during a conversation the emphasis the school places on content-heavy approaches and the demand for results: […] The school demands results. It demands medical reports from the families. In some moments, this is very difficult. It is easier to raise awareness about the clinical report with the families (in the sense that the report by itself does not determine the development of the child) than with the school team. When the school learns of the report, it demands it. It is very difficult to bring up these diagnoses with the team. Here it is very standardized. The demand for results is very strong. The verification of the prerequisites, linked to the contents to be learned by students, is the way that school has to maintain the standard it has today. Sometimes it’s exhausting.
We analyze, from the standpoint of pedagogical actions, that the school pertinent for this research manifested in its social subjectivity the preoccupation with keeping high performance levels and great focus on course content. It demonstrates a high learning expectation from students and a demand for high efficiency in teaching the assigned subjects to their respective grades from the teachers. This, in turn, leads, in our analysis, to the idea of the need for standards and regularization so that the students’ level of learning is more easily gauged and interventions are more easily done. In this evaluation, we also considered that, within a cumulative perspective of knowledge, the activities developed in class took on a “one-size-fits-all” format, as previously mentioned. Evaluating the learner from predetermined results indicates that their value is directly linked to what they reproduced or what they performed from a quantitative and cumulative perspective of knowledge. As Tacca (2009, p. 61) explains, “Those who learned more, did more and did it faster and thus, in a roundabout way, it is inferred that this is what it looks like to be successful in school.” From a cultural and historical understanding of development, while guided by a subjective perspective, we understand that the possibilities of learning manifest in their full diversity, that is, in heterogeneous and nonstandardized forms. Considering the constant search for standardized forms concerning children’s learning process, we can clearly observe the negative impact on the quality of the relationship between teacher and student as well as on other pedagogical actions. According to the information in the PPP, the school identifies that one of the greatest challenges the school community faces lies in dealing with the variety of learning levels children present in class: Among the difficulties registered by the school board were: different learning levels of children within the same class and the increase in the number of students with special needs. Such lags are a great challenge for education professionals, as it requires diversified strategies that work against the clock, and which are often not enough for the satisfactory development of the skills necessary for that student’s grade.
The processes of homogenization of learning, as well as the difficulties of learning, stem from a notion of development from the perspective of a universal subject. This mindset is still present and dominant among many teachers, parents, and education professionals in general. From what has been presented, we can observe the
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impact that such a perspective has on the quality of pedagogical actions and relationships developed with students. The team psychologist also identifies the same problem: […] The school in a social framework has acquired many responsibilities that extrapolate the educational process. We are not prepared for such a situation! Looking for strategies to work with such diversity in the classroom often becomes tiring and does not always achieve the expected result. There is an average of 30 students per room, each with its own particularity, and that brings with them social problems that many might not even be aware of yet.
We highlight that the quality differential in pedagogical actions and relations is not present in standardized learning and teaching methods. Efforts should be directed to the investigation of the type of intervention appropriate for each learning situation. It is argued that the learning obstacles faced by students should be treated as research problems that need thorough investigation. The solutions to such issues must be found mainly in the relational dynamics in the classroom.
12.3.2 Social Subjectivity of School and the Pathologization of Learning In addition to the homogenizing and content-focused aspect of learning, we highlight other indicators for the understanding of pedagogical actions aimed at children who have trouble mastering course contents. Among them, we emphasize the need for a medical report to expand the pedagogical practice options within the classroom. In addition, there should be thorough explanations of the pathological dimension of the child’s intellectual development, which can point to neurological problems that validate learning difficulties: Teacher B: That’s a tough one. I have asked the mother for the medical report several times already. She never brings the exams. She [her child] has some neurological problem, I have no doubt about that, but I need the report. The school needs that report. Now it’s September already. Time is ticking, now all that’s left to do is let the river run its course. I already did what I could have done.
In the excerpt presented, we can observe the difficulties Teacher B faces to establish a type of relationship with her student that is more beneficial for the student’s learning. Teacher B points out how much the girl has presented difficult behavior in the classroom, establishing comparisons with other students. We also analyzed that the teacher blames the learner for her nonlearning, without reflecting on her own pedagogical practice. From the observations made in the classroom, it was possible to perceive the actions taken for those outlying students in terms of learning pace. They were separated from the rest of the class, kept apart, and grouped in the corner of the room with the volunteer educator, while the teacher dedicated herself to teaching the contents to the other children. At the present time, the pathologization of learning difficulties is widespread among schools but takes a specific form in each individual one. When we examine
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the highlighted excerpts of the teachers’ speeches, as well as the pedagogical actions they take, we can understand that, for some school professionals, the explanations for school learning difficulties are justified by the existence of developmental organicist understandings centered on disorders to legitimize not learning at school. As mentioned before, such explanations are arranged in the social imaginary of parents and teachers. The emphasis on naturalistic conceptions of human development extends to the field of learning, in which the investigation of the learning process occurs in the search for the identification of some type of disorder that could be compromising the operations of the child’s cognitive functions. This approach disregards that learning is a complex process that involves other functions, which are integrated into the cognitive dimension, forming a system with multiple possibilities. The organicist conceptions of development are based on the presence of neurological medical reports. These reports are used to legitimize children and adolescents receiving some type of diagnosis linked to the malfunction of some activity of the central nervous system that impacts the proper functioning of intellectual capacities. Thus, having difficulties in reading and writing is not a considered point of discussion in schools. Likewise, there is no investigation on the methods used in class nor on the learning and schooling conditions, but rather in areas of the child’s brain and in their manifest behavior, the causes of difficulties in reading, writing, calculating, and following school content are sought out. In this perspective, we analyze the theoretical ties that permeate the conceptions of human development and learning that are present in educational environments. Such conceptions conflict with the complex reality presented in the teaching- learning processes, oversimplifying the understanding of the integral development of the student, as well as the interfunctional relationships between intellect and emotion. Reevaluating these organicist conceptions with teachers is not an easy task as it is understood that behind every educational action, there is a set of ideas and values that guide and support them. With regard to the practices of evaluation, research, and development of strategies related to the learning process, the school’s pedagogical political project presents us with some clarifications: In addition to continuous evaluations that seek to consider the student as a whole, observing their experiences, daily affairs and lessons, the written evaluation in the form of tests and exams is a reality in our I.E. Its primary goal is to prioritize the identification of the issues and progress and the verification of the possibilities of resizing and continuity of the educational process (…) Basically, the evaluation in our school seeks to verify the previous knowledge of the students, through psychogenesis and diagnostic tests, in order to plan its contents and detect what the student has learned, identifying learning difficulties, diagnosing and trying to identify and characterize the possible causes and solutions. If the student cannot achieve the proposed goals, the teacher, along with the entire coordination and supervision team, seeks to organize new learning situations to give everyone conditions for success in this process through the projects adopted here, such as interventive and regrouping approaches, both inside and outside class.
It is observed, from the selected excerpts, that the learning evaluations are directed to the identification of the problems presented by the students. The verification of learning possibilities is organized according to the investigation of the
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impossibilities students manifest. Besides, we also highlight the need for the school to resort to a standardized and classificatory instruments in order to diagnose the failures expressed by students, characterizing their causes to subsequently carry out actions aimed at solving the identified problems. It is examined that the school in question, in its social subjectivity, shares concepts in which the main investigative axis focuses on explanations of a biological-organicist nature. Based on a linear and Piagetian understanding of development, highlighting internal processes at the expense of social and relational processes, we seek to classify the different types of learning present in school through the psychogenesis test. In this sense, we also highlight the statements of the psychologist of the Specialized Learning Support Team, Márcia. When referring to the research methods used by her in the analysis of children referred to the service, at the time of conversation, she highlights: […] My experience, combined with psycho-pedagogical knowledge related to the child development phase, always give me a foundation to identify deficits in the knowledge acquisition process. I believe that every teacher works based on observation, and it allows us to verify when a student is not reaching what is expected for their age or presents a behavior different from other students.
When analyzing the schooling process, professionals involved in the teaching- learning dynamics should consider that the school is a space in which social and individual relationships are articulated in a network of complex relations that necessarily need to be investigated. In this way, it is understood that a school complaint is but a fragment of a complex network of relationships that are not reduced to the student but that must be worked on in order to optimize their development. The intellect is one of the constitutive aspects of the schooling process, and by choosing it as the central axis of analysis, any professional will make the mistake of disqualifying numerous other factors that make up the learning process.
12.4 Conclusion We conclude our analysis on some processes of the social subjectivity of the school without intending to exhaust the complexity of the instructional processes. Our goal was oriented toward the development of explanatory analyses, which sought to understand aspects of the social subjectivity of the school in terms of conceptions and pedagogical actions and their consequences for the understanding of school learning difficulties. In this sense, we bring attention to some points we consider relevant to our analysis. Starting from a cultural conception of development anchored in the works of Vygotsky and González Rey, we established a foundation in some critical reflections about the social subjectivity of the school, of which we highlight: 1. A quantitative and cumulative approach to learning and development 2. A focus on content and the standardization of learning and development
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3. A negative view or focus on what the learner lacks, forgetting what they do have and without using social situations and collectivity, with a focus on collaboration as a procedure in the learning process 4. Disregard of learning as a subjective process integrated into other cross- functional units 5. Disqualification of diversity and alternative paths as legitimate forms of manifestation of the learning and development process 6. Losing focus on who is the subject who learns, without identification of the unique paths and processes of learning
References González Rey, F. (1997). Epistemología cualitativa y subjetividad. Educ. González Rey, F. (2005a). O valor heurístico da subjetividade na investigação psicológica. In F. L. González Rey, F. L. (Org.). Subjetividade, complexidade e pesquisa em Psicologia (Vol. 1, pp. 27–51). Cengage Learning. González Rey, F. (2005b). Pesquisa qualitativa e subjetividade: Os processos de construção da informação (2a. ed.). (M. A. F. Silva, Trad.) (F. L. González Rey, Rev. Técn.). Cengage Learning. González Rey, F. L. (2005c). Pesquisa qualitativa e subjetividade: os processos de construção da informação. 2. ed. Tradução Marcel Aristides Ferrada Silva. São Paulo: Cengage Learning. González Rey, F. L. (2013). O pensamento de Vigotsky: contradições desdobramentos e desenvolvimento: São Paulo: Hucitec, 2013. González Rey, F. (2016). Advancing the topics of social reality, culture and subjectivity from a cultural-historical point of view: Moments paths and contradictions. Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, 36(3), 175–189. González Rey, F., & Mitjáns Martínez, A. (2016). Una epistemología para el estudio de la subjetividad: Sus implicaciones metodológicas. Psicoperspectivas: Individuo y Sociedad, 15(1), 5–16. Portaria n. 39, de 9 de março de 2012. (2012). Brasília, DF. Recuperado em 30 novembro, 2022, de https://www.sinj.df.gov.br/sinj/Norma/70807/Portaria_39_09_03_2012.html Tacca, M. C. V. R. (2009). O professor investigador: Criando possibilidades para novas concepções e práticas sobre ensinar e aprender. In A. Martinez Mitjáns & M. C. V. R. Tacca. (Orgs.). A complexidade da aprendizagem: Destaque ao Ensino Superior (Cap. 3, pp. 53–96). Alínea.
Chapter 13
The Unity of Affectivity and Learning: Characteristics in Vocalized Responses of Adolescents and Adults Adam Scott LeRoy
13.1 Introduction To begin this chapter, it seemed useful to begin with a story. When I was a child, I had obvious issues with my motor development. From the time I was in preschool, teachers would attempt to correct these issues. However, they never seemed particularly successful, and the underlying issues manifested in various ways, depending on the task. In Grade 2, they manifested in my handwriting. It was very sloppy. And the neatness of my handwriting became a focus for the teacher. She purchased and had me begin using a pencil grip, a basic device that was meant to keep my fingers in the proper formation on my pencil. I hated all of this. The pencil grip kept my fingers in a position I found awkward, and none of the other kids in my class were required to use them. What annoyed me more was that it seemed to increase her monitoring of me. She was constantly checking to see if I was using the pencil grip. She would correct my use of it. And I and the rest of the class already did not like this teacher. She was known as the strict teacher among the rest of the Grade 2 children. I wanted her off my back. One day, she was walking around the room as we worked on our handwriting silently at our desks. Apparently, on that day, I had done a particularly good job using this pencil grip, and it was reflected in the neatness of my handwriting. She called the attention of the class to her and me and held up my assignment, praising the neatness of it and the effort I had been putting in. I remember this specific moment because the anger I felt was so acute. I was mortified. I did not like being called out for special attention, positive or negative. The anger was swelling up in me, and I had no method of articulating it. She was an
A. S. LeRoy (*) Saginaw Valley State University, University Center, MI, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. Fossa, C. Cortés-Rivera (eds.), Affectivity and Learning, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31709-5_13
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authority figure. And I was only about 8 years old. It was not as though I had the language to critique her pedagogy. The most I could do was seethe. Now, this event did not have any particular impact on me. The only reason it has persisted in my memory was the acuteness of the anger and the relevance of the event in certain situations. Anytime adulthood conversations have turned to experiences of “that mean teacher,” I can share that story: Me, Grade 2, and the Pencil Grip. I share the story because I think readers will automatically notice the emotional characteristics that were occurring. Perhaps given those emotional characteristics, certain assumptions might be made about my affect. There is evidence of feelings (e.g., anger), my motivations (e.g., wanting her off my back), and even judgments (e.g., seething and doing nothing). Given these characteristics of affect, we might arrive at a category of affectivity—my experience of those emotional states as a moment of mortification. Then we can observe the situation of learning, the attempts to achieve neatness in handwriting. Already, I think this represents a very complex social situation. And we have not gone into all the other relationships: the teacher’s experience of that situation, her reputation among the rest of the Grade 2 children, the previous efforts to correct my underlying motor issues, and so on. To me, all of these characteristics are important and worthy of study. I think others agree. Human experience and its development have been the focus of many disciplines. Affectivity and learning are certainly a part of that experience and its development. So they have also received focus. But, as I will argue going forward, the quality of such focus has wavered. As my focus will mostly be on a critique of mainstream psychology, I will begin there.
13.2 Mainstream Psychological Definitions of Affectivity and Learning Based on the works of Levin and Stokes (1989), Naquin and Holton (2002) have suggested that “affectivity is an emotion-based trait dimension that creates a cognitive bias through which individuals approach and understand experiences […]” (p. 359). Affectivity has then been divided into two subcategories: negative affect and positive affect. Negative affect can be understood to be “pervasive individual differences in negative emotionality and self-concept” (Watson & Clark, 1984, p. 465), and “positive affect reflects the extent to which a person is feeling a zest for life, feeling up versus down” (Watson & Clark, 1984, p. 472). Interestingly, in my review of the literature on affectivity and learning, what is meant by learning is not clearly defined. I think this necessarily represents not an oversight by the authors but rather a belief that there is a general understanding of what is meant by learning. For example, Gross (2015) explores different conceptualizations of learning; however, the consistency across all conceptualizations is that learning is the acquisition of knowledge.
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13.3 Approaching Affectivity and Learning as Variables So, given these definitions, I suggest that mainstream psychology understands affectivity as a category relating to personality and character traits and how we understand the world, while learning is a category that comprises a set of knowledge we take in from that world. Additionally, mainstream psychology has understood that these two categories must, in some way, relate to each other. So, naturally, there have been studies involving both affectivity and learning. Although I agree with Gross (2015) that conceptualizations, broadly, within the field and across disciplines are often dissimilar, I am more interested in the areas of crossover. That is, within the literature, both categories (affectivity and learning) are primarily characterized by variables and the measures that are believed to correspond to those variables. For example, affectivity is characterized as a measure of personality (Watson & Clark, 1984), and learning is represented by the difference between the scores on a pretest and posttest (Tok, 2013).
13.4 Rationales for Studying Affectivity and Learning Within the area of American education research, I argue that the work undertaken by Dweck (2015) over the past several decades best aligns with the definitions of affectivity and learning I provided above. A full review of this research is not possible within a limited space. It covers the span of Dweck’s academic output, and it has been taken up by numerous other scholars, primarily within research on academic achievement. However, a summation would be that the researchers have studied a belief in either fixed mindsets, a person’s belief that intelligence cannot be developed, or growth mindsets, in which a person believes it can be developed (Dweck, 2015; Yaeger & Dweck, 2020). The point in this is not to reach a full critique of Dweck’s work (of which there are many) but rather to use the literature to clarify the rationale for undertaking the relationship between affectivity and learning, which is that the interest in affectivity and learning is motivated by an interest in motivation. That is, people with positive affects (or growth mindsets) are perceived to continue to perform in spite of challenges. Those with negative affects (or fixed mindsets) cease performing. So the rationale, even when not explicitly expressed by the authors, is rooted in a person’s productive utility and, namely, the manufacturing of consent for greater production, whether in school or in organizational settings.
13.5 Dialectical Critique In establishing these points, I do not seek to besmirch the authors I have cited. My intention is to arrive at a dialectical critique. By approaching affectivity and learning in the manner given to mainstream psychology (i.e., quantitative), researchers have
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arrived at the same flawed conclusions noted by Toomela (2008): the observance of certain external behaviors that are not connected to the mind. Moreover, by believing in causal relationships between affect and productivity, evaluative judgments are placed on states of mind that are already obscured as variables. They become ethereal symbols for the authors’ notions. Returning to my story at the beginning of this chapter, what would these definitions or studies matter to the situation? Was my poor handwriting caused by a negative affect? When did such an affect arrive in my 8-year-old mind? Did my teacher have a growth mindset about the potential neatness of my handwriting, or did she have a fixed mindset in her expectations of children? Does any of this matter when the whole event is something I use to make casual conversation? I do not mean these questions rhetorically. Instead, I use them to make the point that the internal contradictions of the research make it inapplicable to any external situation they might be useful. It does not lead to an understanding of human experience. It does not lead to a developmental understanding of higher psychological function. On its very basis, it cannot. It tells us about variables and the beliefs of the authors. And this contradiction is unresolvable by virtue of the paradigm it has embedded itself within.
13.6 Structural-Systemic Epistemological Understanding of Affectivity and Learning Across several papers, but most notably in The Psychology of Scientific Inquiry, Toomela (2019) has outlined structural-systemic epistemology, a distinct approach that elaborates on ideas primarily in conversation with the works of Aristotle, Kuhn, Marx and Engels, and Vygotsky, to establish certain epistemological assumptions that guide inquiry, rooted in theory. For the remainder of this section, I will primarily focus on the work of Vygotsky and the principles of the cultural-historical theory. However, I must necessarily discuss certain structural-systemic epistemological assumptions at the same time (for a further description of the epistemology, see Toomela, 2019).
13.7 Structural-Systemic Development Structural-systemic epistemology is rooted in a certain understanding that […] explanation is achieved when three questions are simultaneously answered: What are the parts or the elements of the studied thing or phenomenon? In which specific relationships these parts are? and What novel qualities characterize the whole that emerged in the synthesis of the parts (Toomela, 2019, p. 113)?
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To expand, depending on the level of analysis, we can observe a complex whole, which is characterized by certain parts, which are in certain relationships. The classic example used by Vygotsky (1987a) was the water molecule. Water is, of course, comprised of hydrogen and oxygen. However, those same elements can be put in entirely different relationships to create a highly explosive gas. The parts of that whole and the relationships within it are distinguishable, but they are not separable. At the point of merger, both the whole and their parts are qualitatively changed. In short, we cannot study the whole or its parts in isolation from each other. So, in the case of this chapter, once we can observe both affectivity and learning, we have not observed a causal relationship but have observed something or someone characterized by the qualities of the categories to which the symbols affectivity and learning have been ascribed.
13.8 The Social Situation or the General Law of Development I am not an etymologist, but although untrained, I think both myself and the reader recognize the necessity of the cultural-historical meanings associated with these symbols. We would be correct in assuming that affect was not christened in 1984 when Watson and Clark paired the symbol with other symbols like “positive” and “negative.” We would be correct in this assumption because there is always a social situation of development. Vygotsky (1987b) famously noted that development first appears on the social plane and then as an interpsychological category (i.e., within the mind): [...] any function in the child’s cultural development appears on stage twice, that is, on two planes. It firstly appears on the social plane and then on a psychological plane. Firstly it appears among people as an inter-psychological category, and then within the child as an intra-psychological category. This is equally true with regard to voluntary attention, logical memory, the formation of concepts and the development of volition (p. 106).
In the rest of this section, I discuss what is meant by this quote. First, I think it is useful to begin with what is not meant as the Western translation of the above quote has been criticized by both Toomela (2016) and Veresov (2010). For example, for some American sociocultural theorists, the quote appeared to imply that the social environment was an efficient mechanism of development. That is, it reduced the role of an individual person in the refraction of the experience. This is not so. The social environment is one source of development, not the only source of development. There is also a world (i.e., geographical environment) available to the senses (i.e., sensory environment) to which individuals relate. A full understanding of the law also requires an understanding of the use of the term category. In the original Russian text, Vygotsky (1987b) uses the term (i.e., category) to refer to a dramatic collision between two people or entities—the relationship between the event and drama (Veresov, 2010). Such a collision is not
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reflected; it is refracted. That is, a person must interpret the event, not just reflect on it. The interpretation is a refraction (as opposed to a reflection) because a singular event can be interpreted differently by different people in many ways. Nonetheless, the event is internalized. As the process of internalization is characterized by a person’s refraction of the dramatic collision, another characteristic can be inferred— the social situation requires tension, in the process of internalization, which is resolved in the emergence of an interpsychological category (Veresov & Mok, 2018). For example, when playing with toddlers, it is common for parents to ask their child to get certain things (i.e., can you find the ball?) and the child finds the thing that corresponds to the words and brings it over. As this game develops, other words might be introduced by the parent to make it more interesting, like “Can you find the red ball?” In a situation where there is more than one ball and each is of a different color, this creates tension. A new word, a symbol, must be introduced and enter into the toddler’s thinking to resolve the dramatic collision. Basically, something like “red” or “not red” allows the game to keep going. Within a structural understanding, researchers do not see such an activity as creating cause-effect relationships. For example, the parent’s request does not create a new category; the child’s language is sublimated into thought, and qualitatively different categories emerge.
13.8.1 Role of Language Language, as a tool, is another characteristic of the general law of development. As a system of signs, language serves internal and external functions. Also, language is developmental as the role of language in a child’s development changes over time. As in the previous example, such signs (i.e., color to designate a certain shape) can be used to organize internal thinking during acts of social cooperation (Toomela, 2016). Here, I think two important points emerge. The importance of the sign, in the general law of development, reveals the dynamic nature of the process of internalization. It cannot be a mere cause-effect relationship. Refraction in the individual occurs because signs also serve an internal function and are used to reorganize thinking within a social situation. Second, it should be noted that dramatic collision (Vygotsky, 1987b) does not imply some negative quality (e.g., a parent dying) (Veresov & Mok, 2018). Dramatic events have negative and positive qualities that lead to development.
13.9 Structural-Systemic Understanding of Development I think the reader will already detect that given our questions at the start of this section (what parts, what relationships, and so on), we can already arrive at a more complicated, developmental understanding of affectivity and learning. However, another theoretical principle introduced by Vygotsky, the development of a higher psychological function, must also be discussed. Here are a few caveats before
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beginning. First, for clarity, I have discussed these theoretical principles within separate headings, but given a structural-systemic understanding, I do not think of them as separable. Second, in the upcoming section, I will be bringing up ideas discussed by Vygotsky (1987a, b) but as unified by Toomela (2016). To begin to understand higher psychological functions, it will be useful to first understand those earlier-developed lower psychological functions: perception, practical intellect, planning, attention, emotions, and speech. In this way, we can begin to understand the certain parts and relationships that constitute the whole of higher psychological functions and that both the whole and the parts undergo qualitative changes at the point of merger. So we can already assume that affectivity and learning are developed based on lower psychological functions and are internalized during the course of development. Given our earlier theoretical principles, and the characteristics of higher psychological functions, we can also assume they are mediated by language and used in cooperation with others, to anticipate changes in the environment. For example, and to return to the story at the start of this chapter, the affectivity and learning refracted in Me, Grade 2, and the Pencil Grip were dynamically mediated by a number of symbols (i.e., the grip, my earlier experiences, the current moment, and expectations of neatness), in cooperation with others (i.e., the teacher, classmates) and in anticipation of change: Would I be scolded? Would my classmates think less of me? How should I respond? Of course, what I have just outlined are theoretical expectations based on epistemological assumptions and theoretical principles. To answer the questions at the core of structural-systemic epistemology (what parts? what relationships? what novel qualities characterize the whole?), we must conduct further inquiry. Such an inquiry must be qualitative in nature as it has already been seen that the quantitative methods embraced by mainstream psychology are insufficient to answer these questions. So I will draw upon two earlier studies I conducted: one with a group of adolescents and one with a group of interventionists, a very specific type of workers who provide additional support to children in schools.
13.10 Methodology In both studies, a qualitative research design was employed, modified to align with the classical cultural-historical method of observations in a constrained setting. In this type of experiment, the researcher places certain constraints into the research setting to study qualitative changes and identify principles of development. These are not “controls” as they would be applied in modern interpretations of an experiment (Toomela, 2012). The researcher is an instrumental part of the scenario, interested in qualitative changes during the course of development to achieve some new, qualitatively different outcome. So I modified the traditional focus group structure wherein participants might be asked several direct questions. Instead, I introduced sublevel research questions as a tool for participant analysis of a meta-level research question.
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13.10.1 The First Study In the first study, participants were shown (during the first focus group session) two meta-level research questions and then asked to respond to two questions in relation to the meta-level questions (see Table 13.1). Two additional focus groups were conducted. The second focus group was to discuss their perceptions of the first group (e.g., whether it was fun, what should have been done differently, etc.), and the final group was meant to collect adolescents’ perceptions of the Vygotsky Block Experiment.
13.10.2 The Second Study The second study followed a similar format, in which participants were shown two meta-level research questions and then asked to respond to two questions in relation to the meta-level question (see Table 13.2). A second focus group was conducted to discuss their perceptions of the first group (e.g., whether there were additional comments, whether the format was useful, etc.).
13.10.3 Both Studies This format was created in order to elaborate (a) certain qualitative changes that emerged from participant experiences and (b) the relationships that characterized the qualitative change. So, in contrast to the traditional focus group format, Table 13.1 Questions and prompts for the first study What do kids think about during reading class? What things would they do to help themselves?
Is this a question kids could help an adult answer? Is there a better question an adult could ask? Is this a question kids could help an adult answer? Is there a better question an adult could ask?
Table 13.2 Questions and prompts for the second study How was the experience of delivering instruction during the COVID-19 pandemic different from pre-pandemic instruction? How did instructional practice change and how was it effective or ineffective?
Is this a question that interventionists could help a researcher answer? Is there a better question a researcher should ask? Is this a question that interventionists could help a researcher answer? Is there a better question a researcher should ask?
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participants were responding to whether they thought the sublevel research questions were appropriate research questions. They were not directly responding to the sublevel research questions but instead revealing what they thought was relevant to other interventionists. That is, the constraints placed on the setting, analyzing research questions as opposed to the traditional approach to focus group design, became a tool that guided thinking while simultaneously exploring a research question that was the current area of focus and a future course of study.
13.11 Settings 13.11.1 The First Study The first study was conducted in the winter and spring of 2019 in a middle-school classroom in the United States, in the states of Detroit and Michigan. On average, the focus group sessions lasted 25 minutes.
13.11.2 The Second Study All meetings were conducted on Zoom in May and June of 2021. On average, sessions lasted approximately 45 minutes. The sessions were audio and video recorded, and initial transcripts were produced using the Zoom automatic transcription service.
13.12 Participants 13.12.1 The First Study The participants were two boys and two girls. One boy was 13 and in the seventh grade (participant 1), and the other boy was 11 and in the sixth grade (participant 3), while one girl (participant 2) was 11 and in the sixth grade, and the other girl was 12 and in the seventh grade (participant 4).
13.12.2 The Second Study Nine participants were included in this study. Four participants provided intervention for children ages from birth to 3 years old. Five participants provided intervention to children in kindergarten to Grade 3. All of the participants were female and
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Fig. 13.1 Participant group assignment for the second study. Note: This figure shows how participants in the second study were grouped and assigned to focus group sessions
worked as interventionists in either the southeastern or western United States, specifically Michigan. Age data were not collected; however, on average, participants worked in education for an average of 17 years. The longest “years of service” was 27 years, and the shortest was 5 years. Given the different nature of their work and the number of participants, the groups were subdivided (see Fig. 13.1).
13.13 Coding and Analysis The same process of coding was used for both studies, which is similar to that used by Watzlawik and Valsiner (2012). First, a line-by-line reading of the focus group transcripts was conducted. The verbatim wording of the participants was used to establish initial codes (e.g., in vivo coding; see Saldaña, 2015). Following this, I conducted a whole reading of the transcripts and began grouping the previously coded statements into categories. These subcategories retained the original wording of the combined statements and were then grouped into meta-categories. For the purpose of this chapter, the focus will be on a set of responses related to gun violence (from the first study) and experiences of providing intervention during the COVID-19 pandemic (from the second study).
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13.14 Results 13.14.1 The First Study To begin, a portion of the transcript from the first study, which occurred during the second focus group, will be shared. This first focus group began with the facilitator asking the participants to rate their experiences in the first group. Then a broader group discussion began. The participants began to discuss their perceptions of their teachers and then personal problems (i.e., getting in trouble) they had in class. This group discussion then shifted into a discussion of more general personal fears and then a discussion of gun violence. It is useful for the reader to understand what is meant by the term “gun violence.” With this term, I am referring to a very specific American phenomena in which people use automatic or semi-automatic weapons to murder groups of other people, typically in public places. Increasingly, these murders have occurred at public schools and are coordinated around murdering adolescents or children: Participant 3 (P3): And then, listen—there was something else. It’s this girl named Brooklyn. I think I know her. Brooklyn Queen. She was at school one time, she was little, little and her school got shot up and she was the only one to survive. Her teachers died. Everyone of her friends died. Her students. She was the only one that survive. Participant 4 (P4): That was Brooklyn? No that wasn’t. P3: Yes that was. That was Brooklyn. P4: No that was not. P3: Yes that was. She met them all up in heaven. P4: No that wasn’t her. That was somebody totally different. P3: Oh, that was the girl. My bad. P4: I forgot her name. I think it was Baby Kaely. Participant 2 (P2): Yeah, it was her. P3: Yeah Baby Kaely. One dude he just did it and after he killed them-P4: He was mad at the teacher. P2: And then they had it on Facebook. And there was brains on the floor. And I wanted to see what was happening but my parents told me no. P3: There was brains on the floor? P2: Yeah, that’s why they didn’t want me to see. Like if that wasn’t on there-P3: After he did it, he killed himself. Because he knew he was going to go to jail for life. Participant 1 (P1): A murder suicide basically. P4: How did she survive? P3: Cuz she didn’t go to…I think she was hiding in her locker. P4: Then how did she get out? P3: Like, I think she didn’t go to school or she was hiding or somewhere. She was hiding somewhere. P1: She was probably hidden in the bathroom. P3: The dude’s in there with a gun. Do you think she’d be in the bathroom? There’s nowhere to hide in the bathroom. P1: I know a lot of good hiding places. P3: Right, that’s what I’ve been hearing— P4: You know you can just go up on the roof. Well, not on the roof but in the school. P3: Yeah, you could just up there and lay down like this. P1: Cuz if you move, he’ll hear it.
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Within these vocalized responses, I will begin by discussing the dynamic nature of internalization. At one level, it is possible to observe the internalization of the immediate scenario. Characteristics of the discussion are oriented toward checking the correctness of the other participants’ responses, for example, the identification of Baby Kaely over Brooklyn Queen or the appropriateness of certain places to hide to avoid getting shot. This necessarily involves the broader cultural context, not only the prevalence of gun violence in America but also the incorporation of Baby Kaely and Brooklyn Queen, who are musical artists who would have been known to the group. Other dynamic qualities emerged within the temporal nature of the discussion. It simultaneously extended from the immediate situation (i.e., the current discussion), the start of the discussion (i.e., how they felt about participating in the group), personal events (i.e., my parents told me no), and anticipated events (i.e., their need to avoid being shot). Moreover, the complexity of learning can be observed. Learning must necessarily exist in unity with teaching. Their observations of social media and direct training (note: all American children are legally required to receive training specific to someone attempting to murder them or their classmates) are internalized in the learning outcome (i.e., do not get shot) but primarily during reflections on anticipated changes, such as encountering a murderer in the school. Also, at least for this group of adolescents, this unity of teaching and learning is distinguishable but not separable from earlier experiences of unity. That is, this conversation immediately arose from a reflection on their personal classroom experiences, the times they had been in trouble and how they coped, and nightmares. In short, at least at this level of analysis, we can observe that affectivity emerges on the basis of all the parts I have just mentioned and internalized through social relationships that relate to the unity of teaching and learning.
13.14.2 The Second Study For the second study, I will focus on a particular discussion that occurred during the second focus group of one of the kindergarten through Grade 3 interventionist groups. There are a few points, distinct from the adolescent focus groups, that I should note. First, this exchange occurred at a pivot in the conversation. Directly before, the group had discussed adverse experiences with administrative decision- making during the COVID-19 pandemic. Then I asked the group about their perceptions of children’s social-emotional needs. Also, because of the pandemic, these groups were conducted via synchronous Zoom sessions. At least in my anecdotal experience, these types of discussions take on a different character than in-person discussions. Namely, there is far less interjection. Usually, the flow of the conversation is such that one speaker unmutes their
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computer’s microphone, makes their statement, and then mutes to allow for another speaker to respond. So the medium of communication likely introduced characteristics distinct from the adolescent group. Me: I was just curious if there are social emotional areas you think will need to be addressed? Participant 7 (P7): And I think definitely with my Zoom groups. I think once the virtual [kids] came back, like obviously we check in at the beginning, but then they were usually good. When they’re at home and I see what’s going on in their backgrounds. It brings up a whole ‘nother can of worms. And they need to tell me what’s going on and that becomes half of the time. So that was a huge impact for those kids that have been virtual the entire year. Participant 9 (P9): And the kids at school they can walk up to the teacher at random times of the day, and tell them something like “Hey you know, this is what we did last night,” And teacher can say, “Yes.” But when you’re in a Zoom they can’t just do that. They don’t get that interaction and the conversation. And so at the beginning of our Zooms we spend five, sometimes 10 minutes talking about what they did last night, what they did over the weekend, what they just did and making those connections. And we wrapped up our Zooms yesterday, with our virtual groups. And two of the kids were, you know, “Tell me your favorite part about first grade?” [they] said “Coming to this, coming to this intervention.” And I thought you know that was really good because they needed extra help but I think it was nice because it was just are little group of the five kids and myself. And they would say, “Can we stay on with you?” “Sure, we can stay on and talk for a few minutes.” I mean, how do you say no to them? You know and just end the meeting on them? I think it’s important to be able to do that with the kids and give them that social emotional. Participant 8 (P8): I one hundred percent agree. I do the same thing. Sometimes I felt like we really didn’t get through what I wanted to get through because we did spend five to 10 minutes talking about the weekend. You know, even the kids getting a chance to kind of like chat with each other in a small group. I mean they had their breakout room groups with their teacher in math and reading but it’s not--they’re trying to get work done, we are too, but it was just good community building and just a chance to let everyone know kind of what was going on with them. Or like you know with pets, I mean we had so many days, where it was like “Here’s my cat, here’s my dog.” But kind of make do make the best of it, right? P7: About halfway through the year I realized the kids like don’t ever get a chance to just talk and like have a recess with each other. Usually once or twice a week I would do lunch bunch and I would just like leave my Zoom open during the half hour lunch I have. And if they wanted to talk, like I didn’t like plan anything. It’s hard being a kid--even for the kids at school, like it’s just not normal, they don’t get to socialize and they don’t get to--I really wonder what the long-term impact is going to be on some of these kids. Like, especially the little ones that didn’t get to develop the same social skills that you normally would in Kindergarten and First Grade. P8: We were talking about class placement and those have already been done and the list came out and the Second Grade teachers are--well, I mean each year obviously they do a good job of mixing up the kids and not putting all the kids with the IEPs [children receiving special education services] in one class and not putting all the behavior problems together, and you know splitting it up trying equally between boys and girls and things like that--but there was a Second Grade teacher who I heard who felt like she had gotten an interesting group and more so than the others. And these are the kids that are really needy too. Academically really needing that support. And have had the Tier Two support [additional support prior to receiving special education services] and will get that again next year, for sure. So, my learning specialist that I work for, she just kind of reassured her that we will start support as soon as we can. Like, normally we’d kind of ease into the school year and we test, and we do this, but we were talking about the kids that we know that will
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need support--that we have been working with this year, that are not making the progress that they should, we talked about starting to pull the second week of school. P7: Imagine how daunting that would feel? Like knowing that you have disruptions than having to go through the whole summer. Like a feeling of dread and that’s awful.
Within these vocalized responses, similar dynamic qualities are already apparent. First, the question of addressing children’s social-emotional development necessarily incorporates the changes in instructional delivery that were required due to COVID-19 protocols. Namely, the interventionist was exposed to aspects of the child’s homelife that “opened up a whole ‘nother can of worms.” On this basis, different practices emerged. The interventionists began to allot time differently and were directed toward casual conversation because “how do you say no to them?” Perhaps this will seem obvious to the reader, but the broader cultural contexts remain characteristic of these vocalized responses. That is, these changes were necessitated by the ongoing pandemic and by concerns about the effects of social isolation. And similar characteristics can be observed in concerns for other teachers, namely, in the immediate needs (i.e., she had got an interesting group) and, simultaneously, in anticipation of the future needs of children and alterations to when support is provided for the children. Again, it is possible to observe the complex view of teaching and learning as a unity in which parts are distinguishable but not separable. That is, the medium of teaching and learning (i.e., Zoom) emerges on the basis of the conditions of the pandemic (i.e., social isolation) and in relation to anticipated needs (i.e., I really wonder what the long-term impact is going to be). Once more, we can observe that affectivity emerges on the basis of these parts and is internalized through social relationships that relate to the unity of teaching and learning.
13.15 Discussion and Implications For the discussion, let us reset to the beginning. Mainstream psychology asserts that “affectivity is an emotion-based trait dimension that creates a cognitive bias through which individuals approach and understand experiences […]” (Naquin & Holton, 2002, p. 359) and that learning is the acquisition of knowledge (Gross, 2015). Certainly, there are aspects to these definitions with which I agree. But given structural-systemic assumptions, theoretical principles, and the course of study, they equally appear primitive. Affectivity certainly involves our emotions and our experiences, but it is dynamic. People do not possess a fixed affect, and what mainstream psychology has constructed as the external behaviors that coincide with affectivity does not necessarily coincide with a person’s own view of themselves. Instead, and more interestingly, affectivity is a semiotic means of collaboration that relates to different temporal characteristics. The same can be said for learning. Knowledge is not acquired; it is a set of symbols that are internalized through the course of development and, at different stages of development, used to anticipate changes in the environment in collaboration with others. And, at the point of merger,
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these characteristics can be distinguished but not separated. Affectivity cannot be studied apart from learning or teaching or the social situation. Here, I would suggest what lies the most significant contribution of the findings from these studies. Foremost, by accepting structural-systemic assumptions about qualitative change, further avenues of research become open. For example, I do not think (or at least hope) that most people would insist that infants are capable of having an affect or can thereby express their affectivity. So we can begin to delineate developmental stages in which lower psychological functions have yet to fully internalize the characteristics that enable higher psychological functions. So we can construct experimental designs that attempt to qualitatively study the mind, as symbols are internalized and novel qualities begin to characterize the whole. And, finally, we can see that the cultural context is quite complex. Even during adolescence, symbols are internalized to attempt to deal with someone trying to murder you at school. And, in the context of this study, the same is true for the interpretation of a global pandemic. Anticipating changes in the environment is not a mere activity; it can be a matter of life and death. In this sense I think lies the greatest danger in the mainstream psychological point of view. In its paradigmatic study of affectivity and learning, it has sought to control the very political conditions that are part of human experience. Children are quite aware of the violence that can be perpetrated against them. Adults are quite aware of the ill conditions that children suffer from. Although I embrace an empathic view of the world, I do not state these facts to generate empathy. Instead, I mean that research must be rooted in and not attempt to control (or variable-ize) the very material conditions that threaten whether a person continues to exist or does not continue to exist. Such research does not necessitate a political bias on the part of the researcher, but it does require a reckoning with the ways in which capital has disrupted the state apparatus to manufacture consent and the exploitation of labor. Capitalism rewards a lack of empathy in favor of productive utility. It necessitates an affectivity and approach to learning that is cold to the human condition and is a dead end for a productive culture.
13.16 Conclusion Mainstream psychology has constructed affectivity and learning as variables that might be quantitatively measured. This style of research is not rooted in clear theoretical principles and cannot offer value to the necessity of understanding the development of the mind and the broader human experience. A structural-systemic understanding of development offers a clearer theoretical framework for understanding the whole, parts, relationships, and novel qualities that emerge in the developmental process. Future qualitative research can focus on the emergence of affectivity and offer material, social benefits.
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References Dweck, C. (2015). The remarkable reach of growth mind-sets. Scientific American Mind, 27(1), 36–41. https://doi.org/10.1038/scientificamericanmind0116-36 Gross, R. (2015). Psychology: The science of mind and behaviour (7th ed.). Hodder Education. Levin, I., & Stokes, J. P. (1989). Dispositional approach to job satisfaction: Role of negative affectivity. Journal of Applied Psychology, 74(5), 752–758. https://doi.org/10.1037/002 1-9010.74.5.752 Naquin, S. S., & Holton, E. F. (2002). The effects of personality, affectivity, and work commitment on motivation to improve work through learning. Human Resource Development Quarterly, 13, 357–376. https://doi.org/10.1002/hrdq.1038 Saldaña, J. (2015). The coding manual for qualitative researchers. Sage. Tok, S. (2013). Effects of the know-want-learn strategy on students’ mathematics achievement, anxiety and metacognitive skills. Metacognition and Learning, 8(2), 193–212. https://doi. org/10.1007/s11409-013-9101-z Toomela, A. (2008). Variables in psychology: A critique of quantitative psychology. Integrative Psychological & Behavioral Science, 42(3), 245–265. https://doi.org/10.1007/ s12124-008-9059-6 Toomela, A. (2016). What are higher psychological functions? Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, 50(1), 91–121. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-015-9328-0 Toomela, A. (2019). The psychology of scientific inquiry. Springer Nature. Veresov, N. (2010). Forgotten methodology: Vygotsky’s case. In A. Toomela & J. Valsiner (Eds.), Methodological thinking in psychology: 60 years gone astray? (pp. 267–295). IAP. Veresov, N., & Mok, N. (2018). Understanding development through the Perezhivanie of learning. In J. Lantolf, M. Poehner, & M. Swain (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of sociocultural theory and second language development (pp. 89–101). Routledge. Vygotsky, L. S. (1987a). In R. W. Rieber (Ed.), The collected works of L.S. Vygotsky: The history of the development of higher mental functions. Plenum Press. Vygotsky, L. S. (1987b). R.W. Rieber & Carton (ed.)). The collected works of L.S. Vygotsky: Problems of general psychology, including the volume thinking and speech. Plenum Press. Watson, D., & Clark, L. A. (1984). Negative affectivity: The disposition to experience aversive emotional states. Psychological Bulletin, 96(3), 465–490. https://doi.org/10.1037/003 3-2909.96.3.465 Watzlawik, M., & Valsiner, J. (2012). The making of magic: Cultural constructions of the mundane supernatural. In J. Valsiner (Ed.), Oxford handbook of culture and psychology (pp. 783–795). Oxford University Press. Yaeger, D. S., & Dweck, C. S. (2020). What can be learned from growth mindset controversies? American Psychologist, 75(9), 1269–1284. https://doi.org.huaryu.kl.oakland.edu/10.1037/ amp0000794
Chapter 14
Culturally-Based Interpretations of Motivation and Learning Strategies Between the United States and South Korea Hyun Sung Jang
, Yan Dai
, and Jill Salisbury-Glennon
14.1 Culture in Education According to Brion (2021), culture is embedded in every aspect of our lives, and educators are urged to foster culturally based pedagogies for students due to their impacts on student motivation (Cheng, 2019). Although educators agree on the importance of culture, its definition is controversial (Hu et al., 2018; Trumbull & Rothstein-Fisch, 2011). For the purpose of the present study, we drew on Hofstede’s definition of culture and his cultural model due to its wide acceptance and usage in cross-cultural research (Chan & Cheung, 2012; Ju et al., 2016; Tsiligiris et al., 2021). According to Hofstede (2001), culture is defined as “the collective programming of the mind that distinguishes the members of one group or category of people from another” (p. 9). Li et al. (2021) noted that “the core of national culture is the cultural value, which could affect an individual’s behaviours” (p. 3). Taken together, the literature has viewed countries as having independent agencies that distinguish cultures (Hu et al., 2018; Taras et al., 2016). In other words, people’s nationality can become the proxy for representing their own culture to some degree, including their socially constructed values, beliefs, and perspectives. Grounded in the aforementioned notion of culture, Hofstede’s (1980) cultural model was proposed to expound on how individuals in different countries would react differently in certain dimensions. Between 1967 and 1973, Hofstede investigated 40 countries and identified the following dimensions: power distance, individualism vs. collectivism, masculinity vs. femininity, and uncertainty avoidance (Saboori & Pishghadam, 2016).
H. S. Jang (*) · Y. Dai · J. Salisbury-Glennon Department of Educational Foundations Leadership and Technology, Auburn University, Auburn, AL, USA e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. Fossa, C. Cortés-Rivera (eds.), Affectivity and Learning, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31709-5_14
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Table 14.1 presents these four aspects and their definitions based on Hofstede (1980, 2001). Due to the exploratory nature of the present study, we only focused on the individualistic and collectivistic dimensions.
14.1.1 Hofstede’s Model Following Hofstede (1980), many cross-cultural researchers have conceptualized Western and Eastern countries as individualistic and collectivistic cultures, respectively. For example, Markus and Kitayama (1991) asserted that people from Western countries are likely to develop independent self-construal relationships; therefore, they will focus on satisfying their individual needs (i.e., congruent with individualistic culture). On the other hand, people from Eastern countries tend to form interdependent self-construal relationships by which they suppress their internal needs in an effort to satisfy their group needs (i.e., congruent with collectivistic culture). Similarly, Dai et al. (2022) operationalized individualistic/collectivistic culture by examining a Western (i.e., United States) and an Eastern (i.e., China) country. Typically, Eastern countries (e.g., Japan, China, and South Korea) are described as having a collectivistic culture, while Western countries (e.g., Germany, United States, Finland, and Sweden) are known as being individualistic cultures in the literature (Naor et al., 2010). In educational settings, empirical research has been conducted to account for the impacts of individualistic and collectivistic notions of self-construal relationships. For instance, Al Hawamdeh and Al Qatamin (2021) investigated the relationship between individualistic/collectivistic cultures and the intention to share knowledge. Their results showed that individuals in collectivistic cultures were more willing to share knowledge due to more socially oriented work environments compared to those in individualistic cultures. Likewise, Amzaleg and Masry-Herzallah (2022) reported that teachers from collectivistic cultures focus on how to successfully transfer knowledge to students, while teachers from individualistic cultures Table 14.1 Hofstede’s model Types Power distance Individualism vs. collectivism Masculinity vs. femininity
Uncertainty avoidance
Definitions The extent to which individuals will accept unequally organized power In an individualistic culture, people value taking care of themselves and focus on satisfying individual goals and needs; in a collectivistic culture, people prioritize their affiliated group over the individual. The masculinity aspect of culture shows that people are likely to show achievement-based and assertive behaviors to be successful, which often creates competitive environments. Conversely, feminine cultures value cooperation, warmth, and care, which often creates consensus-oriented environments. The degree to which individuals are willing to accept uncertainty and ambiguity
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emphasize more psychological aspects, such as their students’ self-fulfillment, self- worth, and self-esteem, when it comes to delivering knowledge. Additionally, the individualistic/collectivistic notion has been found to affect how the classroom is structured. According to Chang (2021), a collectivistic classroom is more structured with the presence of a teacher’s authority than an individualistic classroom. Given these polarized classroom structures, Chang pointed out that students’ participation will vary between the two. For example, Chinese students (i.e., collectivistic culture) are less likely to generate criticism in classroom discussions due to their cultural emphasis on social harmony. Conversely, US students (i.e., individualistic culture) will engage in critical thinking because constructive criticism is encouraged. Moreover, Trumbull and Rothstein-Fisch (2011) discussed how the process of learning is different between the two culture types. Educators from individualistic cultures view the experience of immediate pleasure as important in student learning, while educators from collectivistic cultures prioritize hard work with the belief that working hard will lead to a deeper level of pleasure. One reason collectivistic culture emphasizes hard work in education can be explained through the Confucian heritage that many Eastern countries uphold. Confucian culture is known to instill the belief that more effort will lead to greater success (Leung, 2014; Yang et al., 2016). Also, parents in Confucian cultures believe that they are obligated to offer better education to their children as a means of achieving higher social mobility (Fwu et al., 2014). In response, their children are taught to follow their guidance in a respectful manner (Helmke & Tuyet, 1999). Deeply rooted in a collectivistic cultures, Confucianism may encourage students to become more studious and work harder compared to students from individualistic cultures. Another reason stems from the difference between self-enhancement and self- improvement. According to Hu et al. (2018), these two concepts differ in that the former exaggerates the positive aspects of one’s character relative to their weaknesses, while the latter tends to place too much emphasis on the negative. Students from an individualistic culture (e.g., United States) are likely to endorse a self- enhancement perspective, while those from a collectivistic culture (e.g., Japan) are likely to accept a self-improvement perspective. Because of this, Hu and colleagues explained that students in a collectivistic culture are prone to endorse self- improvement and focus on overcoming their deficiencies by putting in much effort. Despite these identifiable impacts of individualistic vs. collectivistic cultures, there is a paucity of research that has examined the relationships between the two cultural dimensions, motivations, and learning strategies. To narrow this, the present study sought to investigate Hofstede’s (1980) individualistic and collectivistic dimensions and chose the United States as a representative of individualistic cultures and South Korea as a representative of collectivistic cultures. More specifically, we chose intrinsic and extrinsic goal orientation, self-efficacy, and control beliefs as the operationalized variables of motivation as well as rehearsal and elaboration as the operationalized variables of learning strategies by utilizing the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ) scale (Pintrich et al., 1991).
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14.2 Goal Orientation The concept of goal orientation has remained popular in the literature. When Vandewalle et al. (2019) searched for research dealing with goal orientation, their search revealed more than 2000 publications, along with more than 55,000 citations. One of the reasons why many researchers find goal-orientation research enticing and valuable is its indispensable relationship with motivation. In other words, motivation, which we believe exists but is also vaguely defined, can be operationalized through goal orientation. According to Pintrich et al. (1991), goal orientation is defined as, “students’ perception of the reasons they are engaging in a learning task” (p. 9). If these reasons are found to focus on developing one’s mastery or seeking curiosity, they will be classified as intrinsic goal orientation. On the other hand, if one’s reason lies in extrinsic stimuli (e.g., grades or rewards), this will be classified as extrinsic goal orientation. That being said, depending on how one’s goal is oriented, the way they approach tasks will be different (Lee, 1998). Many researchers have agreed that human actions can be broadly explained through intrinsic or extrinsic orientation (Porshnev et al., 2012). Centered on education, goal orientation represents how individuals manifest their beliefs and how these beliefs create different achievement outcomes (Shi, 2022). The history of achievement goal orientation can be traced back to the late 1970s and early 1980s (Harwood & Chan, 2010). Many goal theorists, including Nicholls (1984), Dweck (1986), and Ames (1992), independently and collaboratively established the foundation for goal orientation theories (Elliot & Dweck, 2005; Horn, 2008; Korn et al., 2019). That is why different terms emerged to describe goal orientation (Salili et al., 2001). For example, Nicholls referred to intrinsic goal orientation as task-oriented, while Dweck referred to it as having a learning goal orientation. Similarly, extrinsic goal orientation was referred to as ego-oriented by Nicholls, while Dweck named it a performance goal orientation. According to Barkoukis et al. (2007), both Nicholls and Dweck formed a conceptual equivalence in that individuals would pursue either task-oriented/learning goals or ego-oriented/performance goals when cultivating and evaluating their competency. For clarity, however, we will follow the terms from Pintrich et al. (1991): intrinsic (i.e., mastery goal) and extrinsic (i.e., performance goal) orientation. In the literature, goal orientation was found to affect self-efficacy, academic achievement, and psychological well-being (Lee, 1998; Sides & Cuevas, 2020). According to Senko (2019), over 1000 articles have endorsed the assumption that intrinsic goal orientation will result in beneficial outcomes (e.g., high effort and engagement), while extrinsic goal orientation will lead to undesirable outcomes (e.g., lack of motivation and poor academic performance). Similarly, Yeh et al. (2019) found that intrinsic goal orientation was associated with the adoption of self- regulated learning strategies. These aforementioned relationships, however, can be complicated and require further investigation with regard to culture. Ho and Nesbit (2013) illustrated that cultural backgrounds may affect the extent to which people think and regulate their
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behaviors; therefore, how they interpret or orient goals may also be affected by culture. For example, Pintrich et al. (2001) found that American students expressed higher extrinsic goal orientation than German students. The difference in extrinsic goal orientation was accounted for by different cultural backgrounds in which American students would have more competitive learning environments than German students. Similarly, Pillay et al. (2000) found that Malaysian students expressed higher levels of intrinsic and extrinsic goal orientations than Australian students. Not only the level of goal orientation but also its intention may be manifested differently depending on the culture. For instance, Porshnev et al. (2012) argued that even though both German and Russian students are extrinsically motivated, German students’ extrinsic motivation stemmed from the desire to outperform their peers, while Russian students pursued extrinsic motivation to gain better scores and pass exams. Taken together, it has been found that culture may affect the level of one’s goal orientation as well as its intention. More contemporary researchers have continued investigating the role of culture in goal orientation. For example, Mazumder (2014) reported that American students had higher extrinsic goal orientations than Chinese students, and Shi (2022) found that non-Asian students had higher performance goal orientations (i.e., extrinsic orientation) compared to Asian students. These findings suggest that different cultural environments may foster students’ goal orientation. To complement these findings, we will specifically examine the role of individualistic and collectivistic cultures in goal orientation.
14.3 Expectancy In the MSLQ, Pintrich et al. (1991) included self-efficacy and control of learning as variables of expectancy, which refers to students’ beliefs about how successfully they would perform their given task (Pintrich & De Groot, 1990). Self-efficacy, which was first coined by Bandura (1977), is defined as “beliefs in one’s capabilities to organize and execute the courses of action required to produce given attainments” (Bandura, 1997, p. 3), while control of learning is defined as “students’ beliefs that their efforts to learn will result in positive outcome” (Pintrich et al., 1991, p. 12). Based on these definitions, it can be said that both self-efficacy and control of learning reflect student beliefs. Notwithstanding this shared view, both variables hold a subtle difference conceptually (Helmke & Tuyet, 1999). Self-efficacy focuses more on one’s belief in their ability to execute tasks, while control of learning (i.e., control beliefs) highlights one’s belief in the influence of efforts on their task.
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14.4 Self-Efficacy According to Bandura (1997), self-efficacy is formed by four cognitive processes, namely, (1) mastery experience, (2) vicarious experience, (3) social persuasion, and (4) physiological or emotional state. Firstly, mastery experience refers to the collective effects of one’s achievements on self-efficacy. It is considered the most salient source of self-efficacy (Capa-Aydin et al., 2018). Secondly, vicarious experience refers to observing people who are at a similar ability level succeed in their performance. Bartsch et al. (2012) noted that witnessing average students will likely increase self-efficacy compared to watching high-achieving students due to the effects of similarities. Thirdly, social persuasion emerges through feedback and encouragement to a student regarding their task. Ahn et al. (2017) mentioned that positive feedback will increase self-efficacy, while negative feedback may undermine it. Lastly, physiological or emotional state refers to one’s physical and psychological well-being. For example, Xiong et al. (2020) found that nurses’ self-efficacy was reported as being lower at the beginning of COVID-19 because their anxiety level was high due to their inexperience in treating this disease. This finding also demonstrates how emotional response (e.g., anxiety) can affect self-efficacy. In educational psychology, self-efficacy is considered to be a salient factor affecting student learning (Satoru, 2018). This is because self-efficacy has been found to be crucial for achievement behaviors (Huang, 2013), academic performance (Travis & Bunde, 2020), and self-regulation (Ariani, 2016). Additionally, self-efficacy can determine what kind of choices individuals would make and how much effort they would expend, as well as their endurance (Iskender, 2009; Komarraju et al., 2009; Schunk & Pajares, 2004). These impacts have remained prevalent in the literature, but their manifestations will vary depending on domains since self-efficacy is domain-specific. For instance, one’s self-efficacy in math is not necessarily transferrable to English or other subjects. In addition to domains, Bandura (2002) claimed that culture plays a pivotal role in one’s self-efficacy. Similarly, Oettingen and Zosuls (2006) noted that self-efficacy will be appraised differently depending on culture. Specifically, individualistic and collectivistic cultures place different emphases on the formation and appraisal of self-efficacy. For instance, individuals from collectivistic cultures rely more on other people’s perspectives than their own; therefore, their self-efficacy is contingent on interpersonal factors rather than individual accomplishments (Usher & Weidner, 2018). Kim et al. (2021) researched how vicarious learning would affect students’ self-efficacy in collectivistic contexts and found that these students’ self-efficacy was highly affected by their mentors, who shared similar cultural identities with them. Ahn et al. (2016) found that Korean students’ self-efficacy was strongly affected by social persuasion, especially from their family members. Ultimately, the emphasis on interpersonal relationships may affect how self- efficacy is interpreted and appraised. Much cross-cultural research has noted that self-efficacy is typically lower in collectivistic cultures than in individualistic ones
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(Ahn et al., 2016; Hamann et al., 2022; Kambara & Lin, 2021). Even though students from collectivistic cultures perform better academically, they tend to rate their self-efficacy as lower due to the impact of Confucian culture, where modesty is emphasized and positive self-evaluation is refrained from (Stankov, 2010). Such underrepresentation of self-efficacy in collectivistic cultures can be attributed to poor calibration (Bandura, 1977). According to Bandura (1977), calibration denotes how well one’s self-efficacy matches their actual performance. If both students’ performance and self-efficacy are measured high, this relationship represents good calibration. If one is higher than the other, however, poor calibration emerges since one’s judgment on their belief does not accurately reflect their performance (Schunk & DiBenedetto, 2016; Schunk & Pajares, 2004). Poor calibration typically happens in collectivistic cultures due to the influence of Confucian culture and the emphasis on interpersonal relationships. Given this inseparable relationship between cultures and self-efficacy, the present study sought to research how self-efficacy may be affected by the individualistic and collectivist cultures of the United States and South Korea.
14.5 Control of Learning According to Pintrich et al. (1991), control of learning (i.e., control beliefs) is defined as “the belief that outcomes are contingent on one’s own effort” (p. 12). In other words, if students believe that their efforts will lead to desirable achievements, they will engage in studying by utilizing a variety of learning strategies. In this case, they will engage in learning because of the belief that they can control their academic performance. That is why Erdoğan and Mede (2021) illustrated that control beliefs are related to one’s performance. Additionally, Madonna and Philpot (2013) noted that control beliefs are the result of one’s cognitive processes. These cognitive processes can lead individuals to attribute their outcomes to internal or external control. If they attribute their outcomes (e.g., receiving lower grades) to internal control (e.g., the lack of effort), they will be able to remain motivated and persistent in their learning because they view it as controllable. On the other hand, if they attribute their outcomes to an external control (e.g., “I wasn’t lucky” or “My teacher doesn’t like me”), they will have lower expectations for their achievements and persistence because they now perceive the learning process as out of their control (Ada, 2020; Pintrich, 2003). In the literature, internal control is typically known as leading to desirable outcomes, while external control is associated with maladaptive outcomes. For instance, control beliefs were found to positively affect self-efficacy (Madonna & Philpot, 2013; Manavipour & Saeedian, 2016; Radovan & Makovec, 2015) and lower anxiety in learning (MacIntyre & Blackie, 2012). Moreover, Al Mulhim (2021) found that internally controlled students retained the content of learning better and showed higher self-regulation compared to externally controlled students. One potential reason that Al Mulhim’s results were favorable to internally controlled
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students is that students with high external control tend to rely on external factors (e.g., teachers). With the resulting lack of independence, externally controlled students may struggle with their academics. Through the lens of individualistic and collectivistic cultures, the concept of internal vs. external control can be interpreted differently. For instance, Carton et al. (2021) reported that authoritative parents (i.e., those that foster children’s autonomy while having clear expectations and guidance) are more helpful in having their children develop an internal control perspective compared to authoritarian parents (e.g., those that force their authority over children behavior). However, Carton et al. (2021) noted that this result may not be applied to Eastern countries as their way of interpreting respect for authority is different from Western countries. Hence, they mentioned that if children from Eastern countries view authoritarian parenting as supportive, then such parenting may help them develop internal control. Similarly, Kobayashi and Farrington (2020) examined the interplay between individualistic vs. collectivistic culture and internal vs. external control in terms of bullying. According to them, Japanese students, the representatives of collectivistic culture, were found to demonstrate external control, and thus they exhibit more attitudes toward bullying compared to the US students, after controlling for other contextual factors (e.g., gender, age, household, etc.). In other words, Japanese students who are prone to place greater weight on the value of group (the effects of collectivism) may become more externally controlled and influenced by external circumstances (the effects of external control) than US students. Therefore, if their group is in favor of bullying, there is a greater chance for Japanese students to be involved in bullying compared to US students due to the joint impacts of collectivism and external control. The aforementioned research indicates the interrelated effects of culture and control beliefs on issues of education, including parenting and bullying. To further investigate this interplay, the present study compared the United States (individualistic) and South Korean (collectivistic) cultures on their level of control beliefs.
14.6 Learning Strategies Much research has been conducted to identify the relationship between learning strategies and motivation (Mazumder, 2014). According to Helmke and Tuyet (1999), learning strategies are defined as “cognitive and behavioral processes which are used in order to achieve a given learning goal” (Helmke & Tuyet, 1999, p. 32). Specifically focusing on the cognitive aspect, Pintrich et al. (1991) proposed the following learning strategies for learning, which include rehearsal, elaboration, organization, critical thinking, and metacognitive self-regulation. In fact, Bernardo et al. (2016) noted that the usage of cognitive strategies is one of the most salient factors affecting student learning. Of the cognitive strategies from Pintrich et al. (1991), the present study specifically focused on rehearsal and elaboration as they are mainly responsible for
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the memory system in learning; rehearsal is responsible for short-term memory (AuBuchon et al., 2020) and elaboration for long-term memory (Bartsch & Oberauer, 2021). Rehearsal is considered a basic skill that supports the process of working memory by reciting the content knowledge. On the other hand, elaboration is a more advanced cognitive skill that supports the long-term memory process by which learners build internal connections between the content knowledge by paraphrasing, summarizing, or creating analogies (Pintrich et al., 1991). Learning strategies have been associated with goal orientation. Although past research indicated the negative correlation between intrinsic goal orientation and the use of rehearsal, Takashiro (2016) found the direct effects of intrinsic goal orientation on the use of both deep (e.g., elaboration) and shallow (e.g., rehearsal) learning strategies. That said, the use of learning strategies may depend on circumstances; therefore, learning strategies are perhaps more flexible. In fact, Pires et al. (2020) found that students utilized more deep learning strategies at the beginning of the semester compared to the last period of the semester. Moreover, team-based learning environments encouraged students to use more deep learning strategies than shallow ones as they wanted to maximize their contribution to group work by elaborating on what they were learning. Hence, both time and the learning environment seem to influence students’ choice of a learning strategy. Culture may play a pivotal role in directing students’ usage of learning strategies. For instance, Pillay et al. (2000) noted that students from a collectivist culture are more likely to use shallow learning strategies (e.g., rehearsal), while those from an individualistic culture place greater emphasis on the use of deep learning strategies (e.g., elaboration). In the past 20 years, however, this traditional notion has been challenged. For example, Wu et al. (2021) illustrated that the stereotype that students from collectivistic cultures heavily rely on memorization (i.e., shallow learning strategy) has been debunked by many cross-cultural studies. In fact, Wu et al. (2021) investigated the relationships between the math performance of five regions representing the collectivistic culture, namely, Shanghai, Singapore, Taiwan, Macau, and Hong Kong. The results indicated that few students relied on memorization, while most utilized deep learning strategies. According to their study, this contradiction of previous research is perhaps due to the educational reform in East Asia, which has aimed to promote critical thinking and independence in learning. To further investigate this phenomenon, the present study will compare the United States and South Korea in terms of the usage of rehearsal and elaboration.
14.7 Purpose of the Present Study As previously mentioned, the present study aimed to examine how motivation and learning strategies would be manifested differently between learners in individualistic and collectivistic cultures. Intrinsic/extrinsic goal orientation, self-efficacy, and control beliefs were chosen to operationalize motivation, while rehearsal and elaboration were adopted to operationalize learning strategies. The United States and
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South Korea have been identified as individualistic and collectivistic cultures, respectively. The present study aimed to answer the following research questions and to test the following hypotheses: RQ1: Is there any difference in intrinsic and extrinsic goal orientations between students from the United States and South Korea? H1: There is a significant difference in intrinsic and extrinsic goal orientations between students from the United States and South Korea. RQ2: Is there any difference in self-efficacy and control beliefs between students from the United States and South Korea? H2: There is a significant difference in self-efficacy and control beliefs between students from the United States and South Korea. RQ3: Is there any difference in rehearsal and elaboration between students from the United States and South Korea? H3: There is a significant difference in rehearsal and elaboration between students from the United States and South Korea.
14.8 Methods 14.8.1 Participants Volunteer participants (n = 353) were recruited from a large southeastern university in the United States and three universities in South Korea during the spring semester of 2020. The entire sample that completed the survey consisted of 108 (47.16%) US students and 121 (52.84%) South Korean students. The total survey completion rate was 64.87%.
14.8.2 Instruments The anonymous survey consisted of demographic questions, the Intrinsic Goal Orientation, Extrinsic Goal Orientation, Control Beliefs, Self-efficacy for Learning and Performance, Rehearsal, and Elaboration of Cognitive and Metacognitive Strategies subscales of the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ; Pintrich et al., 1991). These subscales have been previously used separately from the MSLQ (Aivaloglou & Hermans, 2019; Bong & Hocevar, 2002; Hilpert et al., 2013; Klassen & Kuzucu, 2009). They were used separately in the present study for research purposes as well. The Intrinsic Goal Orientation subscale is a four-item, seven-point Likert-type scale ranging from 1 (not at all true of me) to 7 (very true of me). This subscale evaluates students’ perception of the reason they engage in a specific learning task (Item 1: “In a class like this, I prefer course material that really challenges me so I
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can learn new things”) (Pintrich et al., 1991). The current sample demonstrated adequate reliability (Cronbach’s α = 0.80 for the US sample and Cronbach’s α = 0.69 for the South Korean sample). The Extrinsic Goal Orientation subscale is a four-item, seven-point Likert-type scale, ranging from 1 (not at all true of me) to 7 (very true of me). This subscale evaluates the degree to which students perceive to be participating in a task for reasons such as grades, rewards, competition, and evaluation (Item 7: “Getting a good grade in this class is the most satisfying thing for me right now”) (Pintrich et al., 1991). The current sample demonstrated adequate reliability (Cronbach’s α = 0.73 for the US sample and Cronbach’s α = 0.75 for the South Korean sample). The Control Belief subscale is a four-item, seven-point Likert-type scale ranging from 1 (not at all true of me) to 7 (very true of me). This subscale evaluates students’ beliefs that their efforts to learn will result in positive outcomes (Item 9: “It is my own fault if I do not learn the material in this course”) (Pintrich et al., 1991). The current sample demonstrated adequate reliability (Cronbach’s α = 0.76 for the US sample and Cronbach’s α = 0.69 for the South Korean sample). The Self-Efficacy for Learning and Performance subscale is an eight-item, seven-point Likert-type scale, ranging from 1 (not at all true of me) to 7 (very true of me). This subscale evaluates students’ expectancy for success and self-efficacy (Item 5: “I believe I will receive an excellent grade in this class”) (Pintrich et al., 1991). The current sample demonstrated adequate reliability (Cronbach’s α = 0.91 for the US sample and Cronbach’s α = 0.91 for the South Korean sample). The Rehearsal of Cognitive and Metacognitive Strategies is a four-item, seven- point Likert-type scale, ranging from 1 (not at all true of me) to 7 (very true of me). This subscale evaluates students’ basic rehearsal strategies (Item 39: “When I study for this class, I practice saying the material to myself over and over”) (Pintrich et al., 1991). The current sample demonstrated adequate reliability (Cronbach’s α = 0.71 for the US sample and Cronbach’s α = 0.62 for the South Korean sample). The Elaboration of Cognitive and Metacognitive Strategies is a four-item, seven- point Likert-type scale, ranging from 1 (not at all true of me) to 7 (very true of me). This subscale evaluates students’ basic elaboration strategies (Item 64: “When reading for this class, I try to relate the material to what I already know”) (Pintrich et al., 1991). The current sample demonstrated adequate reliability (Cronbach’s α = 0.75 for the US sample and Cronbach’s α = 0.74 for the South Korean sample).
14.8.3 Procedures Participants were invited to complete the anonymous survey through emails at a university in the southeastern US and three universities in South Korea. The students were invited to read the invitation emails with informed consent and to participate in the study voluntarily on Qualtrics. Students from South Korea were provided with a translated version of the survey to ensure the validity of the study. Students were able to make the decision whether they should participate in the survey or
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whether they should withdraw from completing the survey anytime by closing the website. The survey process aligned with American Psychological Association’s ethical guidelines, and this study was approved by the University Institutional Review Board.
14.8.4 Data Analytic Approach Data were analyzed using SPSS 27. For our data analyses, we used a one-way between-groups multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA). The six dependent variables were students’ intrinsic goal orientation, extrinsic goal orientation, self- efficacy for learning and performance, control beliefs, rehearsal, and elaboration of cognitive and metacognitive strategies. The independent variable was culture (US vs. South Korea). Evaluation of the properties of the dataset, including normality, linearity, univariate and multivariate outliers, homogeneity of variance-covariance matrices, and multicollinearity, determined that the data met the necessary statistical assumptions to conduct the analysis.
14.9 Results To examine the difference in intrinsic goal orientation, extrinsic goal orientation, control beliefs, self-efficacy, rehearsal, and elaboration between the US and South Korean participants, we conducted a one-way between-groups MANOVA. Bartlett’s test of sphericity was statistically significant (approximate chi-square = 382.860, df = 20, p